The song ended and Kris and Marc staggered over, arms slung round each other’s shoulders, both out of breath. ‘That was so great!’ Marc gushed, reaching over and slapping a huge kiss on Kris’s cheek.
Bell looked back at them both, loving their happiness but sensing something too. Their unusual exuberance, the way they kept sharing loaded looks . . .
‘What’s . . . going on with you two?’ she asked them slowly with a curious grin.
‘What do you mean?’ Kris was all innocence, but she knew him too well.
She gasped. ‘You’re up to something, I can tell.’ She pointed a finger playfully at them.
‘Us? No.’
‘Come on, tell. You know I won’t shut up until you do!’
Tove was looking between the three of them, equal parts excited and intrigued.
‘It’s true, she won’t,’ Marc shrugged to Kris, who gave a tiny shrug back, his eyes on Bell.
‘Well . . .’ Marc said slowly. ‘We weren’t going to tell anyone yet, because we wanted a little time to just keep it as our secret. But seeing as you’re, like, a damn spy or something . . .’
Both girls’ hands flew to their mouths, already knowing what was coming.
‘. . . Kris and I have decided to move in together.’
‘Oh my God!’ Tove yelled, shooting her arms in the air jubilantly, unwittingly spraying beer everywhere, before flinging her arms around the boys’ necks. The three of them began excitedly jumping up and down in a circle, but Kris pulled away seeing Bell’s expression.
He held out his arms to her and she stepped in for the bear hug, the same thought running through both their heads. Because if Marc was gaining a live-in partner, she was losing a flatmate. Everything was changing again, Life shifting its cogs beneath her feet.
‘I didn’t want to tell you like this, I’m sorry. The whole thing took me by surprise too.’
‘I’m so pleased for you,’ she whispered into his neck.
‘I know you are. But I’m going to miss you, Hell.’
‘Not as much as I’ll miss you. You’ll have Marc.’
‘You’ll always have me,’ he said, clasping her head between his hands and kissing her right between the eyes.
‘Oh god, I’m so drunk,’ she laughed, as happy tears began to trickle down her cheeks.
‘And about to get drunker!’ he cried, just as the fiddles started up again. ‘But first –’ His eyes widened with devilish glee as they heard and recognized the first few chords.
‘Oh no!’ she cried, as they all circled around her and hustled her into the centre of the dancing ring. ‘No, no no!’
‘Yes! First, we’re gonna dance like frogs!’
It was midnight but still the sky burned, a red smoulder that looked like the heavens were on fire. Trees and houses were silhouetted into inky shapes, but by the water’s edge, all the way round the island, small fires flickered on the beaches, and the marina glowed with cabin lights as people held parties on their boats. The bass of distant music was stippled with groups bursting into rousing choruses, shouts of laughter rising into the night like vixens’ barks.
Bell staggered out of the Yacht Hotel, where the dancing was only just really getting going, and tried to get her breath back. She was hot and sticky, her heart pounding, the flowers on her crown wilting but somehow still on her head.
She turned her face to the sky and breathed in deeply. The longest day of the year. The shortest night. She could never decide which was the more optimistic description. Either way, these were the times – day or night – when she missed him most, when it felt most unbelievable that Jack was no longer a part of this. Her loneliness had been a shadow chasing her all day, especially with Kris and Marc’s happy news, and so far she had outrun it, but there were moments when she turned the wrong way and walked straight into it. Like now. As she looked back through the many windows of the grand hotel, watching the people inside dancing and laughing and bloody living, it shrouded her like a veil.
She turned away, needing more than air now, but space too. She wouldn’t be missed. Tove was getting hot and heavy on the dance floor with a guy who had introduced himself by pouring a drink over his head to cool down; Marc and Kris had gone home, no doubt to make their own noise. She didn’t want to go back in there, but she