CHAPTER NINETY

VIOLET POV

I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know why I’m not scared. My breath is steady now, and the air in the car is warm enough that my wet clothes don’t feel so bad. My nerves are still on edge, I can feel them beneath the relief. The relief that I got away.

      I stare at Spencer, trying to figure out the guy who grabbed me in the rain and saved me. He saved me.

      How could I ever be scared of a man who saved me?

      He seems strong, Spencer. He seems like the kind of man who could chase monsters away. His jaw is hard, and his nose looks like a Roman carving, and his hair is long enough to curl as it dries. He has heavy brows, serious eyes. He seems serious.

      I feel safer than I’ve felt in a long, long time. Maybe I’m still drunk on tequila after all.

      I feel so small and he feels so big.

“Don’t you want to know where we’re going?” he asks. His voice is nice. Deep. Strong, like the rest of him.

      “Not really,” I say. “Is it far?”

      “No.”

      I shrug. “I don’t really know my way around. I wouldn’t know where we were if you told me, so it doesn’t matter, does it?”

      “I guess not, Violet, no.”

      I can’t stop staring at him.

      “Your friend doesn’t sound like much of a friend.”

      “She’s a crappy friend when she’s drunk.”

      “That makes her a crappy friend, full stop.” He glances in my direction. “A friend like that isn’t worth having, Violet.”

      And he’s right. I know he’s right. But she’s the only one I have. I don’t want to tell him that, but I think he probably knows. He looks like he’d know a lot of things. He’s a proper man. A serious man. A man who knows his way around the world.

      “It’s my birthday,” I say. “My eighteenth. Yesterday. I didn’t even want to go out.”

      “Eighteenth?” There’s surprise in his voice. I hear that surprise from people all the time.

      “Yeah, my eighteenth.”

“I’m sure you’ve had much better birthday parties than this one.”

      But I haven’t. They’re normally shit. I don’t want to tell him that either.

      He turns into a petrol station and asks if I want anything. I don’t.

      He tells me to wait right there. I do.

I lose sight of him inside, and the nerves flutter in my belly. I feel like a kid again, a stupid kid. Maybe it’s because I’m acting like one, buckled in tight in some stranger’s car, trusting everything will be alright because he saw off some guy who was about to steal my V card in exchange for a crappy half-smoked cigarette.

      That’s what stupid kids do, right?

      Stupid kids do stupid things.

I see him pay the cashier, I see him smile at her. He has a nice smile, the kind of smile that makes me feel like a silly girl with a crush. I’m sure I’d be crushing on a guy like Spencer if I wasn’t in such a ridiculously crap situation right now. The cashier’s smiling right back, and I imagine he gets that a lot. You would if you were a guy who looked like him.

      I pretend to be fiddling with my cardigan as he comes back to the car. He puts some bags in the back and slips back in without a word. I don’t try to make conversation. I don’t try to justify my stupid birthday decision-making processes.

      We head out of Brighton. The roads turn to streets, and streets turn to lanes, and we’re at big wooden gates at the foot of an incline. They open as the car pulls up to them, slide right to the side to let us pass. Neat. The driveway is gravelled and opens up into a parking area, one of those nice ones where the gravel crunches under your feet. I bet it’s that fancy pink stuff in the light.

      His house is big. Really big.

 Spencer Douglas must be rich. I mean it’s obvious he’s rich. The car. But I wasn’t thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking straight enough to think about it.

      He turns off the ignition and gets out. Opens my door for me.

  “Home sweet home,” he says. “I’ll take you to Newhaven in the morning, we’ll sort things out, Violet, don’t worry.”

      I nod, and climb out. The gravel is the crunchy type, just like I thought. He grabs the bags from the back, and I look at the house. It’s a barn conversion. Big windows line the lower floor. He locks the car and leads me to the front entrance. It’s big and heavy with a wrought iron knocker. It creaks as he swings it open. I always wanted one of those when I was little – a big door knocker that would make a big thumping sound.

 I’d have loved a house like this.

      A proper home for a proper family.

      I wonder if he has a family.

      He gestures to me inside and I feel awkward, my toes still squelchy from the rain. My pumps are soaked. I ditch them and go barefoot, and he doesn’t seem to care that my hair is dripping down my back and onto his posh wooden floor. He leads the way through to the kitchen. It’s huge and beamed and has one of those fancy range cookers, a granite island, too.

      “What would you like to drink, Violet?”

      “Just water, please.” My voice sounds weak.

      He takes a bottle from the fridge, pours it into a glass. The nice mineral stuff. His fingers touch mine as he hands it over, and they are warm. Big.

      “Thanks,” I say. “For rescuing me. That guy… he was…”

      “A waste of life. Scum.”

      I take a breath. “I’m such a complete idiot. Like Maggie Connor would ever stick around after a couple of tequilas.” I laugh but it sounds pathetic. “What a dufus I am.”

      “She left you on your birthday. She’s the dufus, Violet.”

He slips off his coat, and I realise how tailored it is. He has a shirt on, white. It fits him so perfectly, like those people you see in expensive watch adverts. He could be one of those.

  He rustles in one of the bags and pulls out a bunch of flowers, a cream cake, too. I watch mute. Like a fool. He digs around in a drawer and turns his back to me to block my view.

      When he turns back around there is one of those little striped birthday candles stuck in the icing. It’s lit, this tiny little flame flickering away.

      I don’t know why it makes me want to cry.

      His eyes are so dark. It wasn’t just the shadows in the car. He approaches and I’m not even watching the candle, I’m watching him.

      “Happy birthday, Violet. Sorry, it’s the best I could do. They didn’t have much of a birthday selection at the petrol station.”

      The flowers are carnations. Red ones. The cake is chocolate. An eclair with that thick dark icing I love best.

      It’s the best birthday cake I’ve ever had. The thought pricks at my eyes and my throat feels scratchy. Ridiculous. I’m ridiculous.

      Drunk, and high on adrenaline, and tired, and scared, and happy.

“Thanks,” I say, like that could ever cut it.

      But it does. It does cut it. He smiles like it’s enough.

      “Make a wish,” he says.

      And I do.

      It’s a stupid wish.

      A crazy wish.

      A wish I’ve been making every year for as long as I can remember.

      I wish, I wish upon a star. I wish for my daddy, wherever you are.

      I don’t know where my daddy is. I wouldn’t even know him if I saw him.

      But right now, the guy who rescued me from the rain, the guy with the dark eyes, and the smattering of grey hair at his temples, and the shirt that looks like it came from an expensive watch advert. Right now, I wish this guy could be my daddy.