‘Come on, Evie. The band just needed to …’
‘It’s over. You and me. Us. It has been for a while. I suspect you’ve known that too, Dylan, but were just too lazy to look for somewhere else to stay.’
Dylan held her gaze for a split second and then looked away as his cheeks coloured.
‘Catch you later, Dyl,’ muttered Noah, dragging the two sleeping girls from their armchair and guiding them towards the door, their confusion at being awoken from their drunken slumber producing minimal objection.
Frankie offered Evie an apologetic smile as he went to follow in their wake. ‘Sorry about the mess, Evie,’ he murmured, going over to nudge Curtain Guy with his toe. The man rolled over, groaning a vehement protestation, and she recognized him as the band’s drummer, Mitch, whom she had never seen sober.
Dylan watched his friends leave and waited until the door slammed behind them.
‘Evie, I’m sorry, okay. I thought you were …’
‘I mean it, Dylan. I want you to go. Tonight.’
Before he could wriggle his way out of his predicament, Evie strode into her bedroom and grabbed a scruffy rucksack from the top of her wardrobe. She began slinging in Dylan’s clothes, most of which were stored on the floor where he had stepped out of them. Next, she went to the bathroom and emptied the cabinet of his expensive skincare products and toiletries.
She surveyed her living room. Nothing belonged to Dylan. He had made no contribution to its furnishings whatsoever. Everything he owned could be stored in his rucksack. She didn’t feel guilty. One of a plethora of musician friends would offer him a sofa and, if all else failed, his grandparents owned a large Victorian terrace house in Pimlico, which had a spare room permanently made up for him to use – except their hospitality came with house rules that didn’t match Dylan’s ‘laid-back’ lifestyle. He wouldn’t be homeless, or even penniless.
‘Goodbye, Dylan.’ She held open the door, her heart thumping out a concerto on her ribcage.
‘Hey, okay, I get it. We’ve had a blast though, haven’t we? I’ll send you a bunch of tickets when we get our gig at the O2, shall I?’
‘Forgive me if I don’t hold my breath, Dylan. Success doesn’t just fall into your lap, you know. You have to work for it, hard.’
‘Sure.’
Dylan slung his rucksack and guitar over his shoulder and sauntered out of her life without so much as a backward glance. She locked the door behind him and slumped down onto her sofa, dislodging a couple of beer cans, which she slung to the floor to join their cousins. She dropped her face into her palms and succumbed to the deluge of tears that had been threatening to surface since the arrival of Jaxx Benson at the gallery.
Now her world had completely imploded.
An insistent buzzing sliced into her consciousness. She peeled open her eyelids and for a brief moment experienced a faint feeling of disorientation. Then the whole Jaxx Benson nightmare came rushing back at her with a vengeance. A heavy lethargy grabbed at her limbs. She felt as though overnight she had been transplanted into someone else’s body, and life as she knew it had vanished from beneath her feet like quicksand. With difficulty, she pushed herself up to a sitting position and squinted at the kitchen clock.
Who on earth was ringing so insistently on her doorbell at seven-thirty on a Saturday morning?
She swung her legs to the carpet and stood up but immediately collapsed back onto her sofa. Random pinpricks of light danced across her eyes and her stomach reminded her that not only had she forgone breakfast the previous day in her anxiety to arrive at the gallery, but also lunch and dinner. All that had passed her lips in the last twenty-four hours were a few canapés and a couple of sips of Laurent-Perrier.
‘Ouch!’ Her foot had landed on a cracked beer can and she watched in misery as a globule of blood oozed from her big toe.
The intercom buzzed again, this time for a full ten seconds.
‘Okay, okay, I’m coming!’
As she hobbled to her front door, the new day sent beams of weak ivory light through the gap in the curtains, spotlighting the mess Dylan’s friends had abandoned the previous night. A swift pang of regret snaked through her chest, but when she thought of the way he had changed since they had moved to London, the feeling vanished. She was relieved that Dylan’s reign of auditory chaos had ended; grateful that she would never again have to put up with the broken promises to find a job and the discordant strains of his bass guitar and what he, and his fellow band members, labelled as cutting-edge music.
If this was Dylan at the door, ready to display a few seconds of well-practised contrition, she had no intention of letting him in.
She reached the intercom and pressed the button.
‘Hello?’
‘Evie, it’s Pippa. Let me in, will you? It’s freezing out here!’
‘Oh, hi, Pip. Come on up. You’ll have to excuse the state of the flat though. Dylan and his bandmates have wrecked the place.’
‘Something else to add to my lecture list.’
‘No need.’ And she depressed the entry button to allow Pippa in.
‘Oh my God, Evie, I see what you mean about the mess. Dylan’s friends did all this? I would have held a gun to their heads until they tidied up every last can and bottle!’ Pippa picked up a foil takeaway tray between her thumb and forefinger, her pinkie finger stuck out at a wide angle and her upper lip curled in abject disgust. ‘Animals, the lot of them. Where is Dylan, by the way?’
‘Gone.’
‘What do you mean “gone”?’
‘You were right. Our relationship was so past its sell-by date that mould had started to grow.’
‘At last the girl sees sense! That guy was a complete waste of space. Tell me, in the two years you’ve been here, did he even once take you out for a meal or offer to contribute to the rent?’
‘Pippa, you know Dylan’s band was …’
‘Why are you still making excuses for him? You need to move on now that you’ve finally made the break – find someone who will make your heart sing in celebration, not plod along day after day, undisturbed by the arrows of Eros. You know my mantra – Fill Your Life With Passion – otherwise what is the point? Oh, I’m sorry, Evie, are you okay?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Evie, turning her back on Pippa to flick away the tears from her lower lashes.
‘You don’t look fine to me. You look like you’re rehearsing for a cameo role as the reluctant guest in a funeral parlour!’
Pippa followed Evie into the kitchen and leaned her back against the countertop, her arms folded across her chest whilst Evie made coffee for them both. At least Dylan’s friends had stuck to plundering her alcoholic beverages, she thought gratefully. She handed her friend a mug and smiled, hoping to avoid further scrutiny and an enlargement of Pippa’s habitual lecture entitled Evie’s Endless Errors.
It was not to be.
‘You’ve lost weight too, and even the best cosmetics Estée Lauder has to offer can’t disguise those purple shadows under your eyes. And when was the last time you had a manicure? When do you intend to take a break from the whole workaholic whirl you seem to have succumbed to recently?’
Evie strode past Pippa and dropped down onto the sofa, fearful that another bout of last night’s self-indulgent weeping would rear its head. However, it wasn’t her relationship woes that were causing