‘Do you have wool?’ Jeanne asked, voice already wholly excited. ‘Or can I unpick that horrible green jumper in your wardrobe?’
‘You have been through my wardrobe?’ Ethan asked, astounded.
‘There was not a lock on the door,’ Jeanne answered, shrugging as if her response was the most natural thing in the world.
There was a knock at the door then. It startled him and set Bo-Bo off barking. Ethan checked his watch. There was still plenty of time before eleven. But perhaps Keeley had changed her mind and decided to come here.
‘You still smell like a forest,’ Jeanne remarked. ‘But now you look like a ghost.’ She shooed him with a hand. ‘Go and open the door.’
Ethan left the room, bolting down the spiral staircase to the front door, heart in his mouth. He had to remember to be calm when all he really wanted to do was throw his arms around Keeley. He pulled open the door, a smile already working its way over his lips until…
‘Louis.’
Ethan frowned, looking at the man who was unusually dressed down in jeans and a jumper, a casual jacket zipped up to his chin. He couldn’t remember Louis ever coming to his apartment before. And he didn’t really know what to do.
‘Ethan,’ Louis said. He put gloved hands into his pockets and looked as awkward as Ethan felt. ‘May I come in?’
‘I… have to leave for a meeting.’ Ethan stepped outside, pulling the door to behind him.
‘Really?’ Louis asked, shaking his head.
‘Yes,’ Ethan said, a little softer. ‘Really, I have to leave for a meeting but, we can talk… if talking is why you are here.’
Louis let out a weighted breath and appeared equally as heavy in demeanour. ‘I am worried about my mother.’
‘She is not well?’ Ethan asked.
Louis shook her head. ‘Not in the way you mean.’ He sighed again. ‘This time of year…’ He nodded towards the strings of festive lights around the buildings in the courtyard, the sound of a Christmas tune being played on an accordion rising into the air. ‘What has happened with Ferne’s will…’
Ethan waited for Louis to elaborate.
‘I… am worried she is regressing,’ Louis told him. ‘She has been spending time in Ferne’s bedroom again. She has got out all the old photographs, creating collages, reminiscing…’
‘There is nothing wrong with reminiscing,’ Ethan said. ‘Sometimes it can be… healing.’
‘That is just it. She is not healing,’ Louis said. ‘She is going backwards. Instead of using her memories to help propel her into something new, she is going over old ground, living in the past.’
Ethan nodded. It was quite possible that Silvie was doing now all the things he had done immediately after Ferne’s death. He knew Silvie had been the one who had to deal with most of the practicalities of Ferne’s passing, while he had tried to keep on top of the day-to-day running of the hotels as he trudged through his own devastation. Was Silvie’s grief only really coming to the fore now? Christmas always did seem to have a way of increasing the ferocity of feelings.
‘And what about you, Louis?’ Ethan asked. ‘What are your feelings?’
‘I am talking about my mother,’ Louis answered.
‘And I am asking about you.’
‘Why?’
‘Because… I have not taken the time to ask before. Because, perhaps I have never taken the time to ask before,’ Ethan said, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. ‘I am just thinking that… maybe both of us have spent so many years fighting about our place in this family that we entirely overlooked the whole reason for family.’
‘I do not follow.’
‘Ironically, going against our professional brand, family is not ever about perfection. Just as it is not about any one person that belongs to it. It is about the whole. And it is about all our family’s beautiful imperfections.’ He sighed. ‘It is about your father getting furious when his shoes were not polished correctly. It is about Silvie going through those months when she tried to cook herself. It is about you dying my hair bright orange in my sleep and blaming it on your awful friend Rolo. It is about Ferne being the biggest of bitches when she did not get her way.’ He shook his head. ‘We should be helping Silvie together, Louis. What do you say?’
‘God, Ethan,’ Louis said, sighing. ‘All this time you knew I was the one to dye your hair?’
‘Exactly like you know it was me with the penguin. But I truly did not know you were allergic.’
Louis smiled at him then playfully punched his arm. ‘You are an idiot. Still. Even now.’
‘You too,’ Ethan answered. ‘I am sure that will never change.’
‘I miss Ferne,’ Louis said then, shuffling his feet a little against the cold. ‘And I regret not handling things so well when our father died. I shut her out. I shut you out.’ He sniffed. ‘I shut out my mother and eventually I ran away. I don’t want to do that again.’
‘So help me,’ Ethan encouraged. ‘Work with me.’
Louis let out a noise of discontent then. ‘I don’t know what is for the best anymore. And I am also not sure my mother inviting the recipient of Ferne’s kidney here was the best idea.’ He let out a noise of discontent, his hands going to his head. ‘I have tried my best to support it, but my mother has been a little fixated with trying to get me to spend time with her.’
‘I… could not think about that.’ He still didn’t want to think about it now.
‘You should have come to the dinner and the lunch. You could have helped bring some normality to the proceedings. Not that the girls are not good company. They are nice enough. But it gets a little wearing when the only memories your mother is sharing of your sister are the good bits. There is very little mention of the stubborn, foolhardy person Ferne could be. And you know that side of her like I do.’
‘The girls?’ Ethan queried. Suddenly what Louis was saying was drip-feeding into him a lot more slowly than he needed it to. And there was something, the smallest of thoughts, morphing and expanding, prickling his subconscious as he took it on board.
‘She has a friend. A rather nice friend actually but… I do not need the complications of a relationship right now. Not when I am worried about my mother and the hotels and…’
Ethan’s head was suddenly full of Keeley. Keeley’s laugh. Keeley’s smile. The way her hair moved in the breeze of a snow shower, their passionate, perfect night together… Her scars. He swallowed as her words came back to him. It was a shark. He came off much worse than I did. Momentarily, it felt like he was paralysed and then, when adrenaline started kicking in, pulsing around his body hard and fast, it was pushing scenarios he didn’t want to have to contemplate right at him. It couldn’t be. Why would it be. How could it be?
‘What is her name?’ Ethan asked, the words scratching their way up his throat.
‘What?’ Louis replied.
‘The… person,’ Ethan began, suddenly sweating despite the fiercely cold temperature of the street. ‘This… girl. The one that… received… part of Ferne.’ He could not even bear to say the words. But, as Louis opened his lips to make his answer, Ethan already knew what was coming. He braced himself against the brickwork of the apartment, flesh against stone, heart achingly waiting for confirmation he didn’t want…