Page 3 of Fangs for the Memories
“I do.” I manage to stop my voice from cracking. “I need to do this, for me. Everything else has been about him.”
Lucy throws her arms around me in a huge bear hug, and everyone else piles in.
I do my best to hold my composure in front of my friends. Now I’ve decided on this course of action, I want to stick to it, despite my nerves.
“Then you have the best time. Do everything we wouldn’t do.” Sophia laughs.
“That doesn’t leave me with much in the way of options, given you’d all do everything.”
“I’m sure you’ll find something,” Lydia says, her eyes twinkling with badness. “Perhaps look up some of those famous Hungarian monsters.” She waggles her eyebrows.
Out of all of us, she’s the one who’s been most interested in the monsters who revealed themselves to the human world ten years ago, despite not much having changed and the creatures keeping to themselves since then.
“Mark had a full monster-hunting itinerary planned. I fully intend keeping to it and posting photos on Insta to piss him off,” I announce.
My friends cheer, and it seems like everyone in the airport turns to look at us, causing mass giggles.
It’s the reason I love them. For a second, my resolve wobbles. What the hell am I doing? I should stay here and sort this mess out.
“Go,” Lydia whispers in my ear, “before you change your mind. A whole new city is waiting for you to explore, and you’ve always wanted to travel.”
She is so right. With the wedding planning and a partner who always seemed to betoo busy, any travel plans I might have had have been on hold for what seems like forever.
“Okay.” I square my shoulders. “It’s time to do this!”
I head towards the security queue, turning back to look at them all. I get waves and kisses blown to me. They give me the strength I need. If nothing else, I’ll have them when I get back.
Although, as I buckle my seatbelt, attempting not to make eye contact with any of the other business class passengers, I’m wishing I’d somehow wrangled Lucy or anyone else on the flight.
How can I possibly belong here? I’m a now ex-business owner from a tiny Sussex village consisting mostly of three cottages and a cow. Lucy, out of all of us, has some experience with money, even if it was from her horrible father and her equally horrible job working as a solicitor for a money grabbing law firm.
I’m not used to wealth at all. Everything I have had was from my own hard graft.
The air stewardess puts down a cold glass of bubbly next to me with a smile.
"I love your scarf!" she says.
"Thank you." I finger the bright silk. "Vintage Dior. My grandmother’s,” I whisper conspiratorially.
"Lucky you," she replies before going on to the next passenger.
While the scarf is most definitely vintage Dior, it didn't come from my grandmother, who wouldn't have known Dior if it hit her in the face, even while she was alive. Instead it came from one of my monthly trawls of flea markets, charity shops, and jumble sales in and around London and cost me all of three pounds.
But no one needs to know that except me.
That’s the way you have to play this game, I think. Fake it. Fake all of it.
My wardrobe, currently in the hold of this plane to Budapest, the clothes I stand up in, and this luxury holiday which would have been my honeymoon are all I have to my name. And I’m going to make the most of it, by hook or by crook.
I signal the stewardess as I down the first glass of champagne and wiggle it at her.
"I'm going to need more of these. Many, many more."
Grace
Mark, being Mark, has gone all out on this holiday. I’m met by an enormous suited man holding up a sign with our names on it and who speaks little or no English, grunting instead in what I believe is agreement. I follow him to a vast limo, and I’m whisked away from the airport into the heart of Budapest.
Budapest might seem like an odd place for a honeymoon, but in a twist of irony not lost on me at all, Mark was obsessed with monsters.
