Page 71 of The Reunion

Bryony steps up to me and grabs my arm in a frantic squeeze. ‘All sorted?’

‘Yup. Back up and running.’

She squeals, fingers pinching my arm, and she smacks a noisy, wet kiss on my cheek. ‘You’re a star! Literally, the star of the show. We owe you! Alright, gang,’ she yells then, turning back to my adoring audience and making it her own once more. ‘We are good to go! Party is back on!’

Everybody begins to surge forward as one, chattering and back in high spirits. I notice that nobody makes a move to leave, which feels like a kick in the teeth. They can’t all be enjoying this reunion that much, can they? Hasn’t anybody else had enough by now?

Fuck it. I’m still leaving. Might as well end on a high note, I suppose.

‘Hey, have you seen Ash anywhere?’ I ask Bryony. ‘Only …’

She blanches, head jerking as if I had just slapped her, and she reels away from me to face the crowd once more.

‘WAIT!’ she bellows, making me wince, and she throws her arms out as if she can single-handedly stem the tidal wave of a hundred and fifty returning partygoers.

Which, unsurprisingly, she does. Bryony has always known how to keep people in the palm of her hand.

She cranes her neck, eyes scanning over our peers and their spouses. She consults her guestbook. She looks at everybody else again, and then swallows hard. Nobody moves, and people remain quiet, all curious and unsure.

And then Bryony asks, her voice carrying easily over everybody’s heads, ‘Where is Ashleigh? Ashleigh Easton? Has anybody seen her?’

There are rumblings of ‘no’. Thea gets up on tiptoe and looks behind her like it’s a game of Where’s Wally. Roisin peers to her sides like Ashleigh might be there and she’s only just noticing, and Josh gives a full-body shrug as he announces he hasn’t seen her in a while.

I get my phone out of my pocket. There’s no way Ashleigh would’ve left me to the wolves and bailed on me, but … maybe she didn’t feel well? Maybe Ryan got under her skin a bit too much and she couldn’t stick it anymore, or she felt embarrassed about having flirted with Freddie? But she hasn’t texted me to say she wanted to leave or apologise for having left, and I know she would have done, so she must still be here somewhere.

Bryony looks at me, and I shrug.

With an exasperated sigh, she whips back to everyone else. ‘You’re telling me nobody has seen Ashleigh Easton for the last hour? For God’s sake, people, someone must know something! She can’t have just vanished into thin air!’

‘Er …’ Someone clears their throat and Bryony’s gaze zeroes in on them. A few people shuffle to reveal Hiro, a violin in one hand and his other raised awkwardly. He coughs again and then says, ‘Uh, I don’t think Ryan ever signed the guestbook, Bryony. I haven’t seen him for a while either.’

RJ whistles. ‘Oh, shiiiiit …’

Priya squeals. ‘Shut up.’

Shaun’s girlfriend, Aisha, looks around. ‘What? What’s going on? What’s the matter?’

Bryony throws her head back, hurls the guestbook to the floor and yells, ‘Fuck!’

And Freddie Loughton cracks up laughing. ‘I’m calling it now – those two have definitely murdered each other.’

Chapter Thirty-Five

Ashleigh

‘Most Likely to Kill Each Other’

I’m not even pretending to myself anymore, not even for my own sense of self-preservation, because – really, what’s the use? I just had sex with Ryan Lawal, and it was great. I’m almost willing to give him some leeway on what a swaggering, conceited prick he is, because he’s certainly not all talk.

Almost. I’ve just been thoroughly fucked – I haven’t completely lost my mind.

We don’t bother to seek shelter from the sprinklers, both drenched in the instant they kick on, but I do eventually push Ryan off from on top of me to stand up on the bench and see if I can manually turn a couple of the sprinklers off, but it’s no use. I don’t see a valve anywhere to control them.

But, then again, I don’t exactly try very hard to find one.

Not when I clamber down from the bench and Ryan catches me from behind to pull my body back against his, his hands roaming over my flesh. He starts kissing my neck, and I only put up a slight protest before leaning back against him to let him enjoy himself. The heat of his hands feels good, the roughness of his skin novel in its unfamiliarity, drawing all my nerve endings on edge in anticipation.

‘We’re getting soaked,’ I tell him, in another feeble attempt to do something about the sprinklers. I even go so far as tugging my body forward slightly, even though my feet stay planted right where they are and I don’t push his arms away.

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