Page 18 of Five Gold Rings

I blush. ‘Mrs Kohli, that’s lovely but you are married…’

‘Married, my dear, not dead.’

FIVE

Eve

I’m so sorry.

Don’t hate me.

You didn’t deserve this.

Can we talk?

Did we buy anything for my Uncle Bob?

Did you get me a Fair Isle jumper?

It’s like a really bad break-up poem on my phone. Each line trying to appeal to my better nature but at the crux of it, he’s most worried about heading to his family do without any gifts in hand, without a Fair Isle jumper or even his phone because that’s lying on the street. I hope a bus ran over it.

‘Who uses Facebook Messenger anymore?’ Joe asks, gazing over from the driver’s side of the car.

‘Chris. I threw his phone out of a window, so this is him messaging from a computer.’

‘Oh. Are you going to reply?’

‘I’m going to let him stew, like a pot of red cabbage.’

‘Wise.’

‘But cruel?’

‘Rethink who’s the cruel one here…’

‘True…’

I glance over at Joe lip-syncing the words to Nat King Cole on the radio. I like how he’s some sort of voice of conscience. I feel as if he’s in my corner. The perfect partner to have amidst all this distraction. I put my phone down for a moment.

‘Am I allowed to say that was kind of fun? The sneaking into a party and doing a good thing. I feel… I don’t know the word, energised, maybe?’ I tell Joe.

He raises an eyebrow. ‘Easy for you to say. You weren’t the one in the ice sculpture. I am just glad I made the decision to stop singing. I’m hoping Bublé can redeem that for me. That was awful.’

‘Yeah, what was up with the singing?’ I ask.

‘Can’t hold a note. I’m quite terrible. Really bad. Any longer and the ice would have shattered, and the party would have made the news.Singing man shatters ice sculpture and kills couple celebrating fifty years of marriage.’

I laugh. ‘You’re not even singing now. You lip-sync the words to songs, like you’re whispering them.’

‘Because I can’t sing,’ he says plainly, not even embarrassed by this revelation.

‘Everyone can sort of sing. You must have sung Christmas carols at school.’

‘No, I was told not to sing because it was disruptive.’

‘Do you have hearing problems?’ I ask, turning to him, amused.

‘No, I’m just not blessed in that department,’ he replies. ‘I’m told I sound like a rabid crow.’

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