Page 70 of Loving Jemima

“Then we’ll recover from it, just like we’ve recovered from things before,” said Mo. “We were doing alright before we got the contract. Well, mostly alright. And who knows, even without the contract, Jem probably knows enough fancy people that we can get some good gigs that way.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Ellie said.

“So, it’s probably not the end of the world. At least not yet. Besides, there’s no point celebrating tomorrow’s troubles, so whilst we’re sitting here waiting to get fired—”

“Potentially,” put in Ellie, not quite ready to believe that this really was happening.

“Potentially fired,” corrected Mo. “Why don’t you fill me in on all the juicy details.”

“I’m not giving you a blow by blow account.”

“So there was blowing,” Mo said, waggling their eyebrows suggestively.

“Who blew who?” Carys said, pushing the door open.

“Were you eavesdropping?” asked Mo.

“Only to the good bits, the rest of the time I was debating whether to go down and buy croissants. But then you got to blowing and I thought I’d be better off joining in here.”

Ellie sighed and shook her head. “Go and make some coffee and then I’ll give the two of you the PG rated version of everything that went on, alright?”

Mo and Carys went off to the kitchen grumbling and Ellie laughed. Mo had reacted better than she had any right to expect, a mark of true friendship. And despite what Carys had said about needing to talk to her, Ellie thought that the two were chatting quite nicely in the kitchen. Whatever had or hadn’t happened they seemed to be fine with each other.

Maybe life wasn’t quite as dark as she’d been thinking. She thought about the touch of Jem’s hands on her skin. Alright, life wasn’t dark at all. And once this morning was over, they’d have some answers and, well, then they’d all be able to make plans.

THE TEXT MESSAGE came as Ellie was pre-emptively working on an invoice for the work that had already been done on the Darlington party. She intended to put together a file for whoever might be taking over the project to show what had already been done. Carys and Mo were going through the gossip pagesonline, arguing about outfits, and generally seeming completely normal.

Normal enough that Ellie was wondering whether she’d heard Carys correctly. They didn’t look like they were having any kind of… kissing issues.

She was trying to estimate just how many hours she and Mo had spent on the project and the bleep of the text notification was just what she needed to distract her. It was probably either the phone company or the bank, since those were generally the only places that texted nowadays, but she welcomed the distraction anyway.

Until she opened it and read it and read it again as the band around her chest tightened and her breath left her body. It hurt so much it didn’t hurt at all, she went instantly numb, closing her eyes against the darkness that she knew would be creeping into her vision.

Her body ached with need, her chest heaved with effort, but the tightness in her chest was just too much. Her eyes were closed so she felt rather than saw Mo and Carys rush to her. It was all spiraling away, all leaking slowly down the drain, until it hardly seemed worth the massive effort to make her lungs work, until it all just seemed too heavy to carry anymore.

The last thing she heard was Mo telling Carys to call the ambulance.

THE BED WAS hard and the sheets were scratchy. Ellie wriggled a little, trying to rub the spot between her shoulder blades that itched the most.

“She lives,” said a voice.

Ellie opened her eyes and that was all it took for everything to flood back into focus. The breathing, the text, Jem, and then… this. “Oh God.”

“Nope, just me,” Mo said cheerfully. “And Carys is around as well. But they’d only let us in one at a time, so she went to get a cup of tea.”

Technically, this was the part where she asked what happened, but she knew exactly what had happened. She couldn’t un-know what had happened, even if she truly, really wanted to. “You’re looking… happy,” she said instead.

“I’m glad you’re alright,” said Mo, climbing up so that they were sitting on the edge of the bed. “You gave us a scare.” They paled a little. “I didn’t know if… Well, I didn’t know if it was all going to be alright.”

“And is it?” Ellie asked.

Mo sighed. “Health wise, yes. You had a panic attack, you’re going to be fine, but you’re going to get a psych referral to get these attacks under control. And, um, job-wise we’re apparently going to be fine too.”

“What?” She didn’t understand that.

“I, uh, looked at your phone,” Mo said, blushing. “I’m sorry, I wanted to know what had happened and, well, I saw the message.”

She thought about it now, the words burned into her brain, and they were agony.

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