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I stayed on at the Rossmont once I knew he wasn’t about to expire the moment my back was turned, and Niamh and Feargal agreed to stay in Santa Marita with Sinéad and Sol until we could return home. I even managed to persuade them that they needed to accept wages for house-sitting, which, remarkably, came to a decent amount more than any pay they lost out on back in Dublin.
Even Sinéad, who would have been on Christmas break from her college anyway, was more than happy with an extended stay in the chic little Spanish town, where she proceeded to break the hearts of an entire phalanx of local teenage boys who hung out in the retro games arcade just two streets away from my apartment.
*****
On the tenth of December Finn and I lay together on his hospital bed as the winter sun slowly dipped behind the horizon, waiting for a doctor to sign his discharge paperwork and half-watching some ridiculous American festive movie where an independent young career woman ended up moving from her fabulous loft apartment in New York to the arse-end of nowhere to fall in love with a penniless idiot of an organic pumpkin farmer.
I’d tried arguing with Finn that it was a far more satisfying plot if you watched the film on rewind, but he was having none of it and said that I was clearly showing symptoms of needing to get back to work as soon as bloody possible, and that I was also in danger of receiving nothing but coal for Christmas.
“Imagine, this time tomorrow we’ll be in Santa Marita,” Finn said, and kissed the top of my head. I manoeuvred myself so that I could return the gesture on his mouth, and draped my left leg over his.
“Shh,” I warned, and placed a finger on his lips. “Don’t curse it. Let’s just wait until we arrive and celebrate then.”
“Fair enough,” Finn agreed. “I think we’ve sorted out most of the villains between us, though.”
“Hmm,” I said. “That still leaves room for natural disasters, alien invasion or World War Three.”
“Nah.” Finn hugged me a little closer. “No more bad stuff, no more bad guys, and definitely no more hospitals. We’ve used up our lifetime average in a year.”
“Bloody hell Finn,” I said. ‘If we’re talking averages there'll be about twenty people who'll go through their entire lives without so much as having to see a doctor thanks to us.”
Finn laughed. “Lucky bastards.”
“Yup, and they don’t even realise. But honestly?” I sat up, entirely serious now, before he got any doubts. “I would go through every single minute of darkness again without pause, if it meant I ended up right here with you.”
Finn pushed himself up to join me. “God, but I love you, Lili,” he said, his voice cracking just a little, and held me to him. My head rested against his shoulder, and it felt like coming home.
Finally, Finn pushed himself away a little; not too far, but just enough so that he could look me in the eye. “By the way,” he said, “I can remember.”
“Remember what?” I asked.
“What I said that day when I was flying at forty-two thousand feet,’ he replied.
“Oh.”
“And I still think now what I thought then, so I reckon I can be pretty certain it wasn’t just the magnificent amount of drugs talking.”
“So?...” I gave him a smile that was half-love, half-challenge, because my answer hadn’t changed since that day, either.
Finn Strachan, with his face like a fallen angel and those eyes the colour of moss agate, shyly smiled back. “So, Lilith Bresson. Would you marry me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied.
Epilogue
Finn
We waited until September to get married. Physically I was good by early April and psychologically I was probably back to whatever classed as my version of ‘normal’ by the end of May, but apart from Lilith’s insistence on planning The Day as if it were a military operation there were a few more things I needed to make sure were in place before we got hitched.
Once we knew my body was fixed and my psyche had been closely scrutinised for a few weeks by Luiz for signs of imminent fracture, I still wanted to wait until I could either have the odd glass of Cava as part of the celebration or at the very least I could feel comfortable about others drinking around me. The last thing I wanted was anyone worrying about not being able to enjoy the hooley in any way they wanted, as well as wanting to enjoy the day myself.
If our marriage was meant to be the symbolic start to our happy, peaceful future, I was determined to make it a bloody good one.
*****
“Ooh, looks like the first report has landed!” Henry Masterson exclaimed. He stood next to Victor – now his fiancé – in our kitchen, glass of champagne in hand, and held his phone in the air.
“Which website?” Gabriel James asked, expectantly.
