Merry Measure - Lily Morton Page 0,19

him tightly. “I’m so happy. Congratulations!”

Too late, I see my brother making wild gestures at me.

Bee looks at me in confusion. “Wow! Did you hear already?” he says. I blink, and Bee looks over at Jack. “I ended up scoring some tickets for the Rembrandt exhibition but didn’t think anyone else apart from us was going to be that happy about attending.” He turns back to me. “This is brilliant, Arlo. Tom can go on his pub crawl with Freddy and Diana, and you can have your brother’s ticket if you’d like and come with Jack and me. I never knew you were such a Rembrandt fan.”

“I am?” I ask, and then it sinks in what’s just happened. Bee’s talking about going to a museum, not about getting married. “Oh yes,” I say heartily. “So much a fan. Huge. Ginormous. Wow! A ticket to the Rembrandt art exhibition rather than the pub. Great.”

“Really?” he enthuses. “What’s your favourite work of his?”

I remember with a sinking heart that art history is amongst the many topics Bee is brainy about.

“Oh, er…” I falter, looking desperately at my friends. Nobody catches my silent plea, apart from Jack, who, behind Bee’s back, makes a sudden charade-like gesture. I stare at him closely. He gestures again. “Oh,” I say loudly and excitedly. “The disembowelment one. I love that. So… so visceral and… and so real.” I trail off as Jack lowers his head to the table and bangs it gently.

“Really?” Bee asks, looking puzzled. “I don’t remember that one.”

“Oh yes,” I say faintly. “It was painted during his depressed period.”

Jack’s laugh breaks free, obviously too forceful for him to contain.

Five

Arlo

Jack is still laughing as we wait outside the hotel for Bee and the others.

I shoot him a sour look. “Oh, shut up.”

He snorts again, making my mouth tick upwards despite my attempt to look stern. I shrug. “Well, there’s one silver lining in the typhoon cloud anyway.” He looks at me in query, and I say, “Bee’s well used to our family being odd. This was nothing on the Wright family strange-behaviour measurement.”

“No. It’s nowhere near the time when your dad inadvertently entered that road race in the South of France,” he says solemnly. “Thirty minutes of French people shouting at us was just a wonderful holiday memory.”

I laugh and shake my head. “My fucking family.” A cold wind gusts around me, and I shiver, pulling my parka closer. “Shit, it’s cold. Where the hell are they?”

He unwinds his long, red and black striped cashmere scarf from his neck. “Here, have this.”

“I can’t have that,” I say, startled. “That’s your scarf, and you’ll need it because it’s bloody freezing.”

He shrugs. “I’m not as cold-blooded as you. I swear you’ve got crocodile blood in you.”

“Did you know that crocodiles release heat through their mouths rather than sweat glands?”

He pauses in looping the huge scarf around my neck, and I inhale and get a gust of his woody scent. “Really? How do you know that?”

“Year Two project by Daisy Barrett. What she didn’t know about crocodiles wasn’t worth knowing,” I say gloomily.

He laughs, and I become aware of how close we’re standing. I can feel the warmth of his body and smell his sweet, minty breath. I draw in a sharp breath. His fingers go still where they’re tying the scarf, and our gazes catch and hold. The world drops away, leaving just us.

“Arlo,” he says huskily. “What—”

“Alright, you two art lovers. Ready for the museum?”

My brother’s cheery voice makes me jump, and Jack’s arms fall away. His disappointed expression vanishes so quickly, I’m sure I imagined it.

My brother shoots us a narrow-eyed look. “What are you two doing?”

My fingers clench on the ends of Jack’s scarf. I’d like to wind it around Tom’s neck and pull hard. He interrupted a very interesting moment, and I’m sure death by cashmere is a fair payback.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asks, one eyebrow arched.

“I hope you enjoy your pub crawl as much as I’ll enjoy the exhibit,” I say sourly.

He bursts into laughter. “That was like a car crash in slow motion. Good luck, because now Bee is under the erroneous impression that you are a massive culture-head, like Jack here, and will want to visit every single piece of art in Amsterdam.” He smiles evilly. “Meanwhile, the rest of us will go to a lot of lovely, warm bars and while away the day sampling the best alcohol that the city has to offer.