Kinky Boots(47)

‘Chelsea,’ he said. ‘Meinrad’s off tying up a woman over in Camden Town.’

‘And you? You and Eleanor?’

When the bartender brought Finn’s pint, he also brought Jill another glass of fizz, and Finn offered her a warm smile. ‘We came to help you celebrate. Vivie told us.’

Jill still couldn’t imagine how Finn had convinced her friend that none of them were insane. She wasn’t sure she could have pulled it off. Ultimately she had been glad to have a friend whose shoulder she could cry on, and she cried on Vivie’s shoulder a lot in those early days, a friend who understood exactly the circumstances of her anguish. She reckoned that Vivie was Finn and Eleanor and Sole Alliance’s way of having an insider, one whom Jill wouldn’t chase away, one who could make sure Jill didn’t try to hang herself or jump into the Thames with a breeze-block tied around her neck.

In addition to Vivie’s eagle eye, Jill knew that Sole Alliance were keeping watch over her. She never actually saw them, except for the occasional glimpse of someone tall and big as a mountain disappearing around a corner, or a wild mass of dreadlocks that vanished in a crowded Shoreditch street before she got a good look. But what was most reassuring, as well as disconcerting, was the smell. Occasionally, always when she least expected it, always when she most needed it, the scent of Finn that she knew so well would fill the air, so powerfully and so close to her that she expected to turn and find him standing there. He never was. Some sort of Sole Alliance magic, or maybe some demon voodoo that Eleanor conjured up.

She wanted to be angry about the close watch she was sure they kept on her. She wanted to call it stalking. She wanted someone of flesh and blood that she could tell to fuck off. But there was no one, and in truth she found it comforting to think they were keeping an eye on her. She found in it some wild sense of hope that she couldn’t fully allow herself and yet couldn’t fully deny herself either. And anyway, it could have just as easily been her imagination.

She returned her attention to the sea-water eyes of Finn Masters looking down at her and, with a sudden tightening of her throat, she realised just how much she’d missed them. She smiled up at him. ‘Have you come to celebrate me still being alive?’

The smile slipped from his face, but he held her gaze and gave her a slow nod of confirmation. ‘Something like that, I suppose.’

She lifted the new champagne flute in a toast. ‘I celebrate that every day, Finn. Cheers.’ They both drank.

For a long moment they sat next to each other in silence, but it was strangely comfortable silence considering all that had passed between them.

‘How’s Eleanor?’ Jill finally asked, when she’d got the courage.

‘I’m fine, Jill.’ Hearing Eleanor’s voice from Finn’s lips was a little disconcerting, but it was Eleanor nonetheless. She knew it was. ‘I miss you.’

Jill blinked hard, and the room seemed suddenly misty. ‘I miss you too.’ The words weren’t as strong as she’d intended. They wavered at the back of her throat before they found their way out.

In an act that could have been either brave or stupid, Finn reached out and laid his hand over hers. ‘I miss you too, Jill.’ His fingers tightened. ‘Every second of every day, I miss you.’

Jill bit her lip and swallowed back more emotion than she was ready to give up just yet. But almost as though they had a mind of their own, her fingers curled around his. ‘I had to know,’ she said. ‘I had to know that I could survive without her, that my life didn’t depend on her. Or you.’

‘I know that.’ Finn said. ‘I understand that. I always understood that.’ He squeezed her fingers until she feared he’d break them, and yet she held on. ‘But letting you go, giving you the space you needed, was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. The hardest thing either of us has ever done.’

She nodded, afraid to speak, not wanting to blubber in such a public place.

Before she could respond, he continued. ‘You have to know that giving you space didn’t mean I was letting you go, not really letting you go. It never meant that. I have every intention of elbowing my way back into your life. I’ve just been waiting for the right moment.’

Her insides leapt at his words, almost as though Eleanor were there inside her again, excited, happy, anticipating. She gave a little laugh. ‘Now that you know I’m not going to die.’

He took both of her hands and pulled her off the stool to her feet. ‘I would have never let you die, Jill. Surely you know that.’ Before she could reply he kissed her. It was quick and awkward and yet she felt Eleanor’s excitement mixed with her own, mixed with the dance of nervous hope they all three felt just below the surface in the space that wasn’t exactly flesh, the space that was just the right size for a demon.