The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [17]
She remembered a Glühwein incident involving homemade fireworks and an enormous yellow teddy bear. Part of the upstairs floor had caved in. Charlie had leapt up in good cheer to urge the revels to continue. The armchair he landed on had wheels; it ran from under him, causing him to fall, jugular first, onto an abandoned glass of Glühwein.
Stevie had seen the whole thing. No one else seemed to notice, as he lay on the floor of his own sitting room, a shard of glass in his throat. He lay as still as a doll. As Stevie knelt down beside him, blood began to pulse from the wound. His pale yellow shirt turned quickly black with blood.
Stevie had pressed her fingers on his neck, as if feeling for a heartbeat, but pressing hard, trying to stop the blood from pumping out. The shard of glass was held in place between her fingers, like a piece of ice that refused to melt. She was afraid that if she pulled it out even more blood would start spurting.
Charlie’s face had turned waxy and he began to perspire. Stevie thought he would die. She whispered things to him, kissed his forehead, covering her own face and hair and hands with his blood. She remembered ambulances, people in green, his mother arriving at 4 am dressed in black mink.
Charlie recovered, but they had never spoken of the incident.
Stevie drew a breath and became visible again. She saw him notice her and approach.
‘Blasted barman tried to give me vodka with my tonic.’ He stood over her, very tall, very thin, very handsome if his eyes hadn’t been quite so close together. A large scar ran horizontally across his neck.
‘You should drink with me,’ Stevie replied mildly. ‘They don’t seem to be as careless. I’m staying here.’
Charlie looked up at the ceiling. ‘Bit gloomy. Still, not much to be cheerful about I suppose.’
Not the conversation Stevie needed tonight.
‘Joss is back from Barbados,’ he said.
Stevie swallowed her panic.
‘He’s been in Barbados with that Norah model.’ If Charlie had any idea of the effect his announcement might have on Stevie, he certainly didn’t show it. ‘Renting a house that belongs to a friend of mine. Terrible hailstorms.’
This was definitely not the conversation Stevie needed tonight.
‘How awful,’ she grimaced. ‘About the hailstorms, I mean.’
Charlie’s gaze slid around the room. His eyes seldom focused for long. It was a curiously unsettling quality.
‘Anyway, we’re all going to the Savages this weekend. Can’t think of anything else to bloody do. Probably be bored out of my mind. Everything bores me at the moment.’
Stevie stared. She realised she had nothing to say to him.
‘I overheard two girls on a park bench today,’ she blurted out.
‘Someone wanted to kill them.’
Charlie’s eyes were drifting again. ‘Really? I suppose that’s what happens to girls who sit on park benches.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Joss’ show is opening tonight. You coming?’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘He’s threatening to propose to the girl tonight. She’ll probably say yes, too,’ he snorted. ‘I’ll tell him I saw you.’ He finished his drink in a big gulp.
Stevie found herself checking quickly to make sure the scar was watertight.
He kissed her cheek. It felt like a hen-peck.
‘You don’t look well,’ he called over his shoulder as he left the bar.
It made Stevie marvel. His imperviousness. The world didn’t touch Charlie. Actually, it was more than that. The world didn’t exist outside what he chose to see. Inconceivable that other people had feelings, or cravings, or that ideas mattered, that the world changed every day, that people did things.
Things like marmalade were important to Charlie. She used to think it was all just a front. She had spent time wondering about Charlie when she had first met him, trying to get through to the real person. But Charlie managed to hold the entire world at arm’s length. It was a feat Stevie admired; the strength of will it must take to be so utterly blind.
Stevie asked politely