Page 51 of Swiping Right (and other disasters)

Kiera’s satnav indicated she was less than half a mile from her destination.

“I know. I’m sorry. Look, I need to go. But I will call later. I promise,” said Kiera. There was a silence before Seymour spoke again.

“Ok. Speak later, I guess.”

The difference in the mood between them, from the evening before to now, was dramatic. Kiera felt her heart swoop painfully.

The call dropped. The only thing Kiera could hear was her car engine and the road bumping beneath her.

She was only a few hundred metres away. What she would find when she got there, she did not know.

Chapter Thirty-Six

The layby was empty except for an overflowing bin and a discarded McDonalds bag on the ground. Kiera’s heart sank as she brought her car to a stop. Clodagh’s words echoed in her ears. She pulled up the hand brake, undid her seat belt and gently brought her head to rest on the steering wheel.

She asked herself so many questions in the next twenty seconds, none of which had particularly reassuring or comforting answers. She’d been a fool. She knew she’d made a mistake. She thought back to the day she’d left the house she’d shared with Chrissie. She remembered the emptiness she had felt, the sense that everything she’d ever done was ruined. Her mind turned to her flat, which was now a warm and cosy home, to Lou and Clodagh and her other friends who had been there for her this last year. Then she recalled Seymour’s touch on her skin and the way she had come alive again after so long. She could feel tears beginning to form.

She was jerked out of her pity party by a sudden, insistent tapping on her window. She glanced to the side and saw a face she’d once known. It was thinner than she remembered it being; sadder, too; paler. Unable to speak for a moment, she paused. This wasn’t the Chrissie she remembered. The face looked at her uneasily, eyebrows furrowed. The once glossy long hair was dull and lank. Kiera’s hands were frozen on the steering wheel. Chrissie’s eyes looked desperate, and she tore her gaze from Kiera’s to look frantically around. The fear on her face pushed Kiera into action. She wound down her window. “Get in,” she said.

Chrissie climbed immediately into the passenger seat, clasping a grubby linen shopping back to her, locking the door the minute it was closed. “Please, we need to go now,” she said, her voice laced with panic.

Waves of terror rolled off Chrissie, infecting Kiera, who now found herself looking around. She didn’t know what she was expecting to see. She started the car and moved rapidly off in the direction of the motorway. Back to civilisation.

“What do you need?” asked Kiera, not looking at Chrissie, or the dark grey bags beneath her eyes. “Hospital? Food? What?”

“I need to get away,” said Chrissie. “No hospital. Just get me away.” Her voice was quiet and urgent. Kiera put her foot down and hoped there were no police patrolling.

As Kiera drove, she tried to remember the rosy-cheeked bride she had promised her life to all those years ago. This was not the same woman. And yet it was.

“What happened, Chrissie?” Kiera’s voice was soft. Chrissie opened her mouth. Then she closed it again. She frowned, and her eyes began to fill with tears. Kiera looked over at her, and then back at the road. “It’s ok. You don’t need to talk. Let’s just get you home.”

It was at that moment that Kiera realised she didn’t know what she meant by ‘home’. Their old house was rented out to other people. Chrissie seemed to have burned her bridges with everyone else in Kings Heath. Was she going to take her to her one-bedroom flat? At that point, even more questions began to appear, spiralling around each other, and the silence in the car became overwhelming. Kiera turned on the radio. It was a lunchtime current affairs show, with people ringing in and regaling listeners with their views on the day’s news. She allowed herself to be distracted by the mundane hum.

They didn’t stop all the way back to Birmingham, and Kiera realised she was dehydrated. She suspected Chrissie was, too. It hadn’t been until they were about twenty miles from the flat that Kiera forced herself to acknowledge it really was the only place she could take her ex-wife, for now. Kiera winced as they drove past Seymour’s café. A momentary flood of desire and fear ran through her.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

“This is nice,” said Chrissie, sitting on Kiera’s sofa, clutching a glass of water in her shaking hands. She looked around herself. “These are new,” she said, pointing at the pictures Kiera had put up.

“Most of it’s new,” said Kiera. Unspoken was the fact that after their separation, Kiera had wanted to burn her past life to the ground and start again. Mr Chips emerged from his bed and walked up to Chrissie. He gave her a sniff and then walked haughtily away.

“You have a cat now? I thought you weren’t a cat person.”

“This is Mr Chips,” said Kiera as he hopped onto her lap. “I’m not a cat person, I’m a Mr Chips person.” She gave a small smile.

“Thank you,” said Chrissie. “I know you had no reason to come and get me, but I really think you might have saved my life today.” Kiera didn’t speak, but she had the sense that perhaps today, Chrissie wasn’t indulging in the hyperbole she could at times be guilty of. She was transformed from the vibrant, thriving, confident woman she had been into a shadow.

“Can I get you some food?” Chrissie nodded. Half an hour later, after cups of tea and several rounds of cheese on toast, Chrissie finally began to talk. And when she started, Kiera wasn’t sure she would ever stop. She could feel her phone burning a hole in her pocket. She should let her friends know that she was ok, and what was going on. She wasn’t sure she was ok, though. And she couldn’t ask Chrissie to stop; not now she’d started to tell Kiera what had happened from the moment she had left Birmingham.

“I thought I’d discovered the reason for everything. I thought I had all the answers. Lucian told us all the answers.”

Kiera knew the name, and remembered the suspicions she’d always felt when Chrissie talked about the man. He’d always seemed to hold an inexplicable degree of power over her. And, it seemed, over others.

Kiera listened as the story unfolded. Chrissie and Athena and a group of around fifteen others had been meeting with Lucian with increasing regularity. They would meditate together, eat together, laugh together, cry together. They had committed themselves to discovering their inner truth, to reaching ultimate freedom and joy. Lucian told them all that the only way they could do that was by releasing their earthly ties, and giving them to him for safekeeping. He had already evolved to a higher plane, and would not allow them to weigh him down the way Chrissie and her friends were weighed down.

“Earthly ties?” said Kiera.

Chrissie’s tears flowed freely. “Money,” said Chrissie, and Kiera felt suddenly cold. She thought about their joint savings; the ones she hadn’t wanted to touch until she had spoken properly to Chrissie and worked out what they were going to do with their finances.

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