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“M’fine. Well, I… I’ll do. Honest Lili, I’m good.”
I just about sprinted to the little yard at the back of the bar, and pulled a Marlboro from the pack with shaking fingers, lighting it at the fifth attempt. Even in the wildest excesses of my past I’d never had a conversation with thin air, and I realised I might finally be making the final leap towards full-on insanity. I gave a despairing glance to the darkening sky. “Please God, just ten more minutes. Please,” I begged to the heavens, as if that had ever helped me before.
Lilith
Finn hadn’t eaten a thing all night, and his glass had been refilled countless times. He was unravelling before my eyes and I watched as the signs of his distress began to mount despite his constant battle to stay with us.
It had been a mistake to come out; it was all too much too soon and I knew that now. We needed to regroup, catch a breath before we tried to work out where the hell to go next, and above all we needed to get home before the storm broke.
“Everything okay?” Nat mouthed at me from across the table, and I gave a slight shake of my head in reply.
I stood up. “I’ll go and settle up with Ben. I think I should get Finn home before the procession gets anywhere near the square.”
“Of course,” Nat said. “Y’know, it sounds like they’re already just a few streets away. Makes them about quarter of an hour ahead of schedule.”
“Bugger.” When I’d planned this evening, this had been just another abstract factor to take into account. We would be away from the area long before the crowd arrived, safely back at home with our doors locked, and all would be well. Now, with whatever Finn was hearing, and the tempest raging through his psyche, the parade became yet another enemy to fight.
For over seven hundred years, our region’s Brotherhood of Penitents – still over three hundred strong, long after the age of miracles had passed – had processed solemnly through Santa Marita’s streets every Maundy Thursday, carrying floats that depicted The Passion in all its visceral horror.
It was no longer the blood-soaked display of self-flagellation it had once been, but its participants – los Nazarenos – still wore the same flowing capes and silken, white pointed hoods, with their faces covered to hide their shame from God. Definitely not the kind of thing I wanted Finn to see in his current state. I stood to go to the bar and settle up our bill for the evening.
“Oh my God, they freak me out like, so much?”
“Pardon?” It took me a moment to work out who had spoken; I had forgotten that Vanessa was still part of our gathering.
“Those guys in the parade? The ones that look like the Ku Klux Klan?” She giggled. “I mean, I know they’re not, but they look just like it, don’t you think? I wonder if that’s where the Klan got the costume idea from…?”
I tuned out. She no longer mattered to me because once again my world had shrunk to care about no one else but Finn.
Finn
When I returned to the table Lilith was standing at the bar and having a robust discussion with Nat about who was going to pay the bill. I managed a smile; I had to admire Nat’s cheerful persistence, but he was always going to be the loser in an argument with Lilith.
As I sat down Vanessa turned to me. “Anyway, how are you finding Santa Marita?” she enquired sweetly, apparently oblivious to my display of idiocy.
“It’s, um… good,” I managed. “Kinda gettin’ used to it now.”
“It must be quite a change from your last place?” she asked.
The clamour in my head stepped up a notch again. “You could say that.” Christ, I needed to calm down. It wasn’t really a difficult or intrusive question, and it wasn’t like anyone with an internet connection or even a local newsagent’s wouldn’t know that they were talking to Lady Albermarle’s recently-retired fuck toy but for one moment, with her polished manner and appraising gaze, Vanessa could easily have been one of Blaine’s clients.
“You know, your photos really don’t do you justice,” Vanessa continued, and I knew I couldn’t just be imagining the hunger in her gaze.
Oh God please don’t do this, I thought desperately. I glanced over to the bar. Lilith was punching in her credit card pin and we were so nearly there.
“What did you say?” Vanessa asked, because it appeared that my own thoughts had begun to leak out. “I’m sorry – I shouldn’t have said that. I won’t mention it again, I promise. Look, I know we’ve just met, but I just want you to know that if you ever need someone to talk to…” She placed a manicured hand on my knee in what she clearly thought was a gesture of reassurance.
She may as well have slapped me.
I pushed her away, harder than I’d meant to, and as she flung out an arm to steady herself the contents of her handbag spilled out onto the table. She made a panicked grab for her mobile, and that was when my brittle world finally fell apart.
I might have only recently become reacquainted with technology, but even I could see the microphone symbol that flashed up on the screen and the timer that showed the fucking thing had been recording everything that had been said since she arrived, ready to be sold to the highest bidder, or maybe sent to someone who had already paid.
No matter, because the roaring of a thousand voices in my head was now louder than the cacophony outside and my fingers tightened around the delicate bowl of my wine flute. The crack of splintering glass inspired my last coherent thought: I needed pain to tether me to the present, before I lost my grip for good.
Lilith
I was waiting for the receipt to print out when I heard the scuffle from behind me. I turned to see Vanessa desperately try to grab her mobile, and in that one dreadful moment I knew everything. I knew what she had done and why she had done it and I knew beyond doubt that she had just broken Finn.
