‘Come on, we need to eat. Ava, what are you having?’ Penny pushed the menu over, and pointed out a few dishes. ‘The curry is great… or the lamb, or fish and chips?’
The drink was blurring the edges of her anxiety. ‘Yeah. Curry would be fine, thanks. Shall I get some more drinks in?’
They nodded, and Leo grinned over his pint glass, ‘You can still pack them away, Ava. We’ll all have hangovers tomorrow morning at this rate.’
She smiled sweetly at him. ‘Shall I get you a Coke instead? With a stripy straw in?’ It slipped out before she could stop herself. An old shared joke, from a time when she loved to tease him. She bit her lip, furious at her mistake.
‘Of course.’ Amusement made his eyes gleam, and the white teeth showed under the curve of his full upper lip. Yes, still a good-looking bastard. And she wasn’t going to let him get to her.
Coming back with another full tray, she found Stephen and Bethan wedged uncomfortably at her end of the table. Her son scowled at her when she congratulated them on their selection for Tough Love, but Bethan beamed. She was wearing a tight black wool top, and ripped jeans. Her hair cascaded wildly across her pale little face.
‘I’m so excited. I can’t wait to start. Dad is more excited than I am. He keeps trying to give me advice on how to get across the hills faster, and where to land after the zip line. I mean, there is only one place to land isn’t there? Right in Big Water!’
‘Is Huw happy you’re doing the show then?’ Ava was surprised. She had no say as a parent of course, but surely Huw must have some reservations about his daughter going on such an outrageous show. Although it was billed as a test of survival, a love story set in the Welsh hills, and various other tenuous claims, contestants were always fame hungry, and happy to get viewers’ votes in any way they could.
‘Oh yes! He’s always been really supportive of my career. He drives me to modelling auditions and all that. He wants me to be famous like Leo. I will do it too…’ Her face was bright with promise, and watching her, even Stephen’s expression had lightened as she spoke.
Ava couldn’t think of anything to say to this – being famous sounded like hell to her. She smiled tightly and took another slug of her drink. Who would want strangers watching every move you took, obsessing about what you ate, and who you were sleeping with? Plus, when you screwed up, it was front page news. The spirits burned her throat on the way down and she choked a bit. Rhodri reached over and thumped her back. ‘Cough it up, love, and then have some more.’
Ava turned awkwardly to her son. ‘What are you thinking of doing after the show? Are you thinking of uni?’ It was so hard to be natural and unemotional around him, when all she wanted to do was stare, to drink him in, to know every last thing about his life. She fought to keep her expression neutral, her voice cool.
Stephen met her eyes with an indifference that matched his mother’s and gave a barely civil shrug, ‘Maybe. I haven’t decided. Kai’s going travelling. I might go too…’
‘You said you wanted to do media studies at Cardiff, didn’t you?’ Bethan said, grey-green eyes wide, her little mouth pursed.
He glared at her, and Ava searched for another subject. Her son was sitting so close she could have reached out and touched him. All the things she had wanted to say had skittered away, leaving her mind as empty and blank as a fresh sheet of paper.
‘Isn’t it fantastic? Let’s have a toast to Stephen and Bethan’s success in Tough Love.’ Penny raised her glass again, and the others muttered and raised their own.
‘I’m really sorry about Jesse,’ Ava said to the group as the food arrived, steaming hot on rough white dishes. ‘When Pen told me earlier, I was so shocked. I had no idea.’ It was a tester, or some stray thread of instinct that made her speak, and the reaction was… interesting, Ava thought, forking up the tiniest bit of fragrant curry. There was enough on her plate to feed the whole table.
The pause in clattering cutlery and clinking glasses was sharp and shocked.
‘It was such a horrible thing to happen, but he always did go too fast,’ Penny sighed sadly. ‘Kai and Kelly have made the best of it, though, and they’ve still got the house at least. The council tried to throw them out, the bastards, but they won the appeal. The local papers got involved and everything.’ She was neatly unwrapping her paper napkin, and smiling at the young lad who dumped her plate of food on the table.
‘I don’t think you saw Kai as a baby did you, Ava? I forget what happened before you left and what was afterwards sometimes. It was so long ago,’ Paul muttered without making eye contact.
There was a moment of silence as everyone around the table registered the barb. Stephen was watching his mother with narrowed eyes, waiting for her response. Ava opened her mouth but was saved by an apparently oblivious Leo.
‘He was a good rider, and he knew that road like his own garden. The police reckoned it was his error at first, and they said that maybe some animal ran across the road and he swerved to avoid it. Later, they said it was a diesel spill that made him lose control.’ Leo was digging into a vast forkful of flaky fish and mushy peas.
‘No room for error on that corner,’ Rhodri added, watching Ava as she picked at her chicken madras. ‘Not hungry, love?’
‘No, I mean, I am. I was just thinking about Jesse.’
‘Well, don’t,’ Penny told her. ‘It was a while ago now, and accidents do happen, don’t they?’
The atmosphere was electric suddenly, and even Bethan narrowed her eyes at the adults, clearly picking up the tensions.
‘Yes,’ Ava agreed. ‘They do. Excuse me for a moment. Are the toilets still in the same place?’
‘Straight past the bar and down to your right. There’s a new block too. Pub’s gone up in the world,’ Leo told her with a grin.
She locked herself in a cubicle and pressed her hot forehead to the coldness of the stone wall. After a long while the nausea and dizziness passed, and she was able to breathe properly again. The toilet block smelled of piss and disinfectant, and the floor was wet and sticky beneath her boots. But it was preferable to sitting with her old friends, her ex-husband, her son…
It was like being locked in a tiny box with her worst nightmares. How could they all be so blasé about Ellen? Talk about the cliché of the elephant in the room – Ellen’s presence was more like a fucking great mammoth. Her name wasn’t mentioned, of course, but even Penny crassly saying how nice it was to get everyone back together, just showed how far they seemed to have come. Of course, it was such a long time ago they probably thought they were safe.
Word would have got around that Ellen’s parents were going to move, and what about the PI? Nobody had mentioned him yet, but she was certain they knew, were waiting for her to bring it up in conversation. Waiting, Ava thought bitterly, to see what she was going to do. They were a pack, and she was an outsider. Their faces were just too set, eyes too bright and the laughter forced and loud. In some ways they were right, everyone had to move on. But she couldn’t shake her own feeling of needing to clear her conscience.
She took a deep breath, controlling the dizziness with an effort. Once the room had steadied she headed back out past the bar, pausing for a moment to observe the group. They were deep in conversation. Stephen was pointing his fork at his dad, laughing. He was a good-looking boy, and when he smiled, she could see a trace of her own features. Or was it just wishful thinking?
Ava shrugged the thought away and sat down.
‘Here you go, Paul just got you