The Reunion

Dan asked him. ‘Is there something?’
    Zac shook his head. ‘Not for me to say,’ he said quietly. He finished off his beer and got up to place the bottle with the rest of the empties on the kitchen counter.
    ‘No, go on,’ Dan said. ‘Tell me. I won’t say anything to her. What is it? She doesn’t want to try acting again, does she? Because we tried that at college and it didn’t work out. She’s got the looks and the sense of drama all right, but the woman can’t take direction.’
    Zac grinned. ‘It’s not that.’
    ‘What then?’ Even in the half-light, Dan could see from the way Zac shrugged, lowered his lids, that he was embarrassed. ‘Money? She needs money?’
    Zac puffed out his cheeks, spreading his arms wide. ‘I can take care of her. I will. She’s broke. She has been for a long time, she ran up a lot of debts. I don’t exactly earn a lot, but we get by. Only… well. You know Lilah. Getting by isn’t really her style.’
    Dan was only half listening. He was rather pleased that she wanted to ask him for money. That was familial, wasn’t it? When you were hard up, got yourself into debt, you turned to family, didn’t you? That’s what people did, wasn’t it?
    ‘She has this whole thing,’ Zac was saying, ‘about how you owe her.’ He held his hands up in supplication. ‘I don’t think that. I think she’s taken resentment over that film too far. But she seems to think that she deserves something from you. Reparations, she calls it.’
    Dan’s heart sank then. She wasn’t turning to him because she thought of him as family, she saw it as repayment of a debt – worse, punitive damages for what he’d done to her.
    ‘Don’t say anything to her, Dan, I shouldn’t have mentioned this.’
    ‘No, no,’ he said distracted. ‘Of course not.’ He pulled his phone from his pocket again, ran his fingers over the touchpad to bring it to life. He brought up Claudia’s message and tapped ‘reply’.
    There was a noise from the hall and Jen appeared in the doorway. She was leaning against the arch, her hair falling forward a little into her face. She looked exhausted.
    ‘I’m off to bed,’ she said. ‘Will you two be OK?’
    ‘Course we will,’ Zac said. ‘I think I’m ready to crash out myself.’
    ‘Dan?’
    ‘Yeah, fine. You go on.’
    ‘OK,’ she said. She walked over to him, leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. She smelled of vanilla, and a touch of something citrusy. The scent sparked something, a memory travelled through him like electricity. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly, brushing her thumb over his cheekbone, ‘that things got so fraught today. I’m so glad you came.’
    His breathing was shallow. He brought his hand up to take hers. The room seemed oddly still – the fire no longer crackled, the wind no longer howled, Zac may as well have disappeared into thin air. ‘I’m glad, too.’
    She let go of his hand and turned away.
    He sat in the darkness for a long while afterwards, staring at his phone, looking over at the staircase, listening to the creaking of the house, people moving around upstairs, Zac’s heavy footfall, Jen so much softer. When she kissed him, spoke to him in that low voice, when he could smell her and touch her, he was transported. It was a revelation. He had a chance. He couldn’t let it pass. He replied to Claudia’s message:
Don’t tell him yet. We need to talk. Call me.

 
     
    September 1999
    Email exchange between Dan and Lilah
    Dan to Lilah
    Lilah,
    I called three times yesterday, I assume you’re ignoring me. I’m sorry you took offence at some of the stuff in the film. You have to know that while there were aspects of you in the Zara character, it wasn’t supposed to
be
you. Let me take you out for champagne as an apology? Please, I don’t want us to fall out over this.
    Dan
     
    Lilah to Dan
    You’re sorry I took offence? Are you kidding me? I didn’t take offence, Dan, what you did was offensive. And I don’t care about the fact that the character might have had aspects of me or not, you used things I’d told you in confidence, you used my words, my actual words. You used things I told you when I was desperate, broken-bloody-hearted. Tell me, were you making notes when we were having all those chats when I stayed with you? Maybe you were recording me? Did you bug my room?
    You’re an arsehole and no quantity of champagne will make up for this.
     
    Dan to Lilah
    Of course I wasn’t bloody