Eva Mallory’s Husband Hunt, page 15
She tried to untwist it, to pull it, even to rip it off the pipe, but with the combination of her bodyweight and the industrial strength, pull-you-in-in-all-the-right-places fabric of the costume she’d worn, it was a lost cause.
She was stuck.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, really. Other than the unexpected presence of one Mr Mallory, the day had been going rather well. She was long overdue a visit from the curse. She briefly worried that she might die here, suspended over the gaping chasm of water like drying seaweed on a fishing net before realising the rather more realistic outcome – that they would have to stop the whole ride, drain it and then send in a slide assistant and a ladder. Her gut clenched, pre-emptive embarrassment flushing her cheeks as a wave of panic made her stomach tighten and her heart race and skip in her throat.
She was so preoccupied by her full-scale fight-or-flight response that she didn’t notice the increased rush of water around her, nor the creak of movement in the slide above. In fact, she didn’t notice anything happening at all until she saw the figure shoot past her, following the same overly ambitious loop that she had done before suddenly appearing next to her, shooting a hand up to grab the metal pipe in some kind of superhero move that she was panicking far too much to fully appreciate.
Her anxiety wasn’t helped one bit when she saw who it was.
Luke raised a single eyebrow, a curious expression on his face. It wasn’t humour, but it wasn’t concern either, something about the angle of his mouth speeding her heart beyond the parameters which felt healthy.
‘You’re everywhere,’ adrenaline made her blurt, her voice echoing around the bowl of the slide.
There was a flicker of something in his eyes. ‘That’s my line.’
‘Sorry, yes.’ She gulped a breath, chlorine burning her lungs. ‘It’s just that … urgh.’ She shrugged as best she could with her entire body dangling by her shoulder straps. ‘Why are you here?’
‘I’m saving you,’ he said matter-of-factly, and his tone sent prickles of annoyance up her spine.
‘What if I don’t need saving?’
He fixed her with a look. ‘You do.’
She did.
‘OK fine.’ Her cheeks burned in indignation, but she wasn’t really in a position to turn down assistance, however much it got her back up. ‘How did you know?’
He did smile at that, pointing up a little way, over their heads, to a small black globe. ‘You’re on camera.’
Her stomach dropped. ‘Oh Jesus.’
‘Smile.’
The last shreds of her dignity fluttered away, sucked down by the constant flow of the water around them. ‘This is the worst day of my life.’
His grin widened. ‘The year fours are loving it.’
‘Urgh.’ She blew a breath out. ‘They dared me to come on here.’
Luke’s eyes twinkled. ‘I think you’ve just made their day. This is all anyone’s going to be talking about for weeks.’
It was, she knew it. The thought of if made her stomach churn. ‘I’m genuinely mortified.’
He laughed properly then, a sound which she hadn’t heard from him for such a long time, and it probably should have annoyed her, given her current predicament, but it didn’t. Instead it made the grip of anxiety in her throat relax a notch, small ripples of warmth radiating out through her shivering body as his eyes scanned her.
‘OK,’ he said eventually, hauling himself higher. ‘I can see where you’re stuck.’
He leaned in towards her, his brows knotting into a frown as he peered behind her, to where she was suspended by a knot of military-grade Lycra.
‘Still,’ she blurted, feeling she needed to keep speaking to deal with his proximity to her. ‘At least I satisfied my part in the deal.’
His frown deepened, and his free arm worked at the tangle of fabric behind her. ‘Deal?’
‘I told Aaron and Noah I’d come on here if they both did solos in the carol concert.’
‘Nice,’ he said with a nod, vague, as if he were only half listening. ‘OK, I think I can get it. Give me a minute.’
‘I’m not going anywhere,’ she said, laughing weakly at her own joke, but Luke didn’t even crack a smile.
Instead, concentration pulled his lips into a pout. ‘Ah, I need a better angle. Can you lean this way a little bit more?’
She tried to lean, but her costume was so tight around her that only her head and neck moved. He assessed her, brow heavy in thought.
‘OK,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll come to you’ And he shuffled his body closer to her, so close that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her face. Her belly clenched even further, her gut twisting into knots tighter than the one she was suspended from.
‘Grab on,’ he said, an edge to his voice that she was almost positive she wasn’t imagining. ‘Put your weight on me.’
She reached out for him and her arms settled around his shoulders, warm through the thin layer of his wet T-shirt. Her breath caught, and she could have sworn his did too. That feeling consumed her again – the feeling like she was aflame.
It was just like it had been the previous night – dark and desperate, the messy pounding of their hearts joining as one rhythm.
Eva cleared her throat, not even clear on what she was about to say. ‘Listen, about last night—’
But then, in one swift, almost supernatural move, Luke tightened his free arm around her and hauled her upwards, unhooking her from the pipe before he released his own grip on it. And before he could hear what she had to say – before she discovered it herself – the two of them plunged, still attached, into a spiral in the bowl of the slide before eventually, finally, falling into the pool below.
Chapter Eighteen
Eva was still shot through with residual adrenaline that evening, and as she sat at the old, veneered dining table, every sudden noise was making her jump out of her skin. A few minutes previously, Hanna had accidentally dropped the pastry board onto the worktop behind her and for a moment Eva could have sworn she felt her soul leave her body.
‘Are you OK, Eevs?’ Sylvia asked, her eyes flooded with concern as she considered her daughter carefully. ‘You don’t seem yourself this evening.’
‘It’s cause you’re working us to the bone,’ Hanna shouted from the other side of the kitchen, even though the kitchen was perhaps three metres across, if that. It made Eva jump again.
Sylvia tutted softly, her attention not straying from Eva even as she replied to her other daughter. ‘Hardly to the bone,’ she said, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth. ‘And this is part of the deal, you know that.’ She looked over at Ciocia Nelka for confirmation and the older woman nodded sagely in reply.
‘If you want pierogi at Christmas,’ Nelka said, her voice as gentle as it was firm, ‘then you must help to make them.’ Her eyes vanished into the folds of her smile. ‘One day soon I will be too old to do it, and after that, if you do not do them, then they will not be done.’
Ciocia Irenka was at that point already, the gnarl of arthritis in her fingers much too severe for her to effectively pinch the little dumplings closed, and so she was afforded a pass to sit and watch TV in the other room while the others worked. In all honesty, that in itself afforded the others a pass: to not have their pinching techniques razed to dust by Irenka’s overly harsh criticism.
‘It’s OK, ciocia,’ Eva said, smiling past the knot of tension which had been lodged in her throat ever since the situation on the slide that morning. ‘I’m not complaining, just had a tough day.’
She hadn’t told her family about the incident, not at all ready for the almost guaranteed ribbing she’d get about it. You’ll laugh about this one day, Maxine had said earlier as she met a dripping, mortified Eva at the steps of the plunge pool to hand Juni back over, and maybe one day she would.
But not this day.
This day she was just worn down by the whole thing, suffocated by embarrassment and completely and totally over being the unluckiest woman in the world.
That and exhausted by the effort of keeping up this charade that she wanted nothing to do with Luke Mallory. She was tired – bone tired – of trying not to imagine how things could have played out between them.
Had he not been a Mallory.
Had she not been cursed.
But he was, and she was, so she had no choice but to go on pretending.
She turned her attention back to the pierogi then, her practised scoop and fold and pinch, honed through years of doing just this: sitting with her favourite people in the world around an old-fashioned dining table, each playing their part in the dumpling assembly line.
Nelka, whose own joints were not too far behind her sister’s, stuck to the less fiddly jobs – the rolling out of pastry, the cutting of small circles. Eva and Sylvia were in charge of assembly: first a scoop of the filling in the centre of the circle, then the all-important pinching close of the pastry, a job which had been heavily supervised by Ciocia Irenka in past years, but which the two women had now perfected.
Hanna, who they had learned early on did not have the patience for any part of the assembly line, took cooking duty, boiling the small parcels until they floated before leaving them to cool on laid-out tea towels.
It was calming, the ritual, though always underscored by a note of sadness. Tomasz had been the only male permitted to attend their annual pre-Christmas pierogi making night, on account of him being an award-winning chef. Even then, Ciocia Irenka had steadfastly refused to accept his input on any aspect of the process.
‘It is tradition,’ she’d snapped, that one year he’d suggested a different filling, and though he’d deferred to his aunt at the time, that hadn’t stopped the twins from doing the same every year since. It had started a running joke, the proposed fillings growing more and more ridiculous every year, and after he died the joke had remained in his honour, though it had been twenty-two years now since he’d first made it, and Ciocia Irenka had yet to laugh.
Speaking of Ciocia Irenka, she was yelling something from the other room, a strange quality to her voice which made Eva’s blood run cold for a second until she realised why the old woman’s tone was so alien.
She actually sounded excited.
‘Eva! Ewunia!’ she shrieked again, louder this time. ‘You are making the TV!’
Confusion tugged Eva’s brows into a frown. ‘Sorry, what?’
‘Come quickly!’ Irenka bellowed, with genuine delight in her tone, and the other women were so intrigued as to what could finally be amusing her that they almost fell over each other trying to get into the living room. Nobody wanted to miss whatever miracle it was which had finally lit a fire under Ciocia Irenka.
‘What is i… Oh my God,’ Hanna said, stopping abruptly in front of Eva as she clapped eyes on whatever was playing on the ageing TV.
Eva rubbed at her shoulder where it had collided with her sister’s back. ‘God, Han, you make a better door than a window, y—’
And then it registered what was actually on the screen: a clip playing over and over in a loop – grainy CCTV footage of a waterslide. A very familiar waterslide. A very familiar waterslide with two very familiar figures suspended from the pipe right at the very top.
Eva’s heart dropped to her feet. The roughness of the footage shielded her identity a little, but to anyone who knew her well it was definitely, undeniably her.
‘How did they get this?’ she muttered, more to herself than the others, as her eyes fixed on the segment title.
‘Teacher’s Wet,’ Hanna barked, as if she could read her twin’s mind, laughing so hard at the title that her breath came in raspy wheezes. ‘That’s the worst pun I’ve ever seen.’ She swiped at the tears forming in her eyes. ‘Ah, local news. I love it.’
‘Eevs, when was this?’ her mother was asking, from her left. ‘Were you hurt?’
She shook her head in response. ‘Other than leaving my dignity at the top of that slide, I was fine. And it happened this morning. How is it already on the news?’
‘You have to move fast with news of this calibre,’ Hanna said with another snort, before her gaze fell to her phone, which she had automatically reached for as they’d rushed to see what the hubbub was about. ‘Eevs, you’re trending on TikTok too!’
She lifted the phone and Eva and Sylvia craned their necks to see. Sure enough, there it was, the same grainy footage playing in a loop to an obnoxious soundtrack.
‘This is the worst day of my life,’ Eva muttered, unable to look away.
It wasn’t, though. Not even close.
‘They’ve put that “oh no” song on it,’ Hanna managed, between honks of laughter. ‘Oh my God, this is hilarious.’
She was still watching it a few moments later, as Ciocia Nelka ushered them back into the kitchen,
‘OK,’ Hanna said, as she regained her composure. ‘A couple of questions. Firstly, who is that?’
Eva sighed. There was no point evading this; they had ways and means of finding out the truth eventually.
‘It’s Luke.’
Hanna’s brows shot skyward. ‘Cupboard Boy?’
‘Yes.’ Eva resumed her role in the pierogi production line, if only so that she wouldn’t have to meet Hanna’s eyes. ‘And can you stop calling him that?’
She heard her sister’s low chuckle, a sure sign that she would be doing nothing of the sort.
‘He looks different with his clothes off. Anyway, second question,’ Hanna said. She was loving this. ‘Is he a literal superhero?’
Eva’s eyes couldn’t quite decide whether to opt for a roll or a glare, so they settled somewhere in between.
‘I’m just saying,’ Hanna continued, ‘That manoeuvre. Holy sh—’
‘Hanna!’ Eva and Sylvia exclaimed, in unison. Eva did look up at her sister then, and she didn’t miss the smug curl of Hanna’s mouth. She’d always said that Eva would be the one to turn into their mother.
‘Third and final question.’
Eva turned her attention back to the pierogi at that point, but she could see Hanna brandishing the slotted spoon in her periphery. She didn’t respond, though she doubted that would matter much to Hanna.
‘The two of you look awfully cosy there.’
Eva huffed a laugh, defensive, though she needn’t be. ‘Not a question.’
‘And yet,’ Hanna said, slowly, as though she were solving a puzzle, ‘it seems to require an answer.’
‘We weren’t cosy.’ Eva’s answer came too quickly, and she saw her mother’s ears prick up. ‘He was helping me.’
Hanna coughed out a laugh. ‘I bet he was.’
‘Hanna!’
Hanna relented at that, turning back to her bubbling cauldron of dumplings while the others worked, mostly in silence, save for the occasionally waver of a whistle from Ciocia Nelka and the vague hum of the TV, still on in the other room.
‘All I’m saying,’ Hanna blurted few minutes later, just as Eva was finally starting to decompress from the whole ordeal, ‘is if you still want to get rid of the curse, and you’re really not boning Cupboard Boy…’
Eva couldn’t help but cringe. She didn’t even have the energy to Hanna! at Hanna.
‘Then you really need to get a crack on with the husband hunt.’
Eva shook her head, trying to swallow down the flare of anxiety she felt in her chest when she thought about the hunt. It hadn’t been there at the start. She never would have settled on the plan if it had been. Maybe it was down to her startling lack of success thus far, but somewhere along the line it had started to become a penance, a punishment which she felt she had to endure in order to finally set herself free.
But she didn’t voice her concerns, not then, and not an hour later when the twins were alone in the kitchen, bagging batches of pierogi for the freezer.
‘I’m sorry I laughed at your traumatic morning,’ Hanna said, more gently than her usual manner, her expression so earnest that it made Eva laugh.
‘You’re not.’
Hanna’s mouth twisted into a sheepish smile. ‘You’re right, I’m not, but I do genuinely hope you’re not scarred by it.’
She offered a hand out and Eva took it, grateful as always for her sister.
‘I’ll live,’ Eva said, smiling past the drag in her chest, and it made Hanna’s smile fade immediately, her brows hitching into a frown.
‘You sound tired, Eevs.’
Eva shook her head, barely convincing herself. ‘I just need a break. You know, from…’—she motioned vaguely with her hands—‘everything.’
‘Which is why the hunt has to work,’ Hanna said, and it was a question and an answer all at once.
Eva couldn’t bring herself to reply, so she simply nodded. Her sister nodded too, in response, her lips pressed together in thought for a moment or two before she spoke again.
‘I hate to say it, but I think it might be time to try one of Ciocia Nelka’s brother-cousins.’
Eva chuckled, even past the growing lump in her throat. ‘I hate to agree.’
‘But you agree?’
Eva’s yeah was little more than a breath out, a whisper of desperation out into the vast abyss of her fate. After all, what were the chances that Nelka would know more than one sociopath? Pretty slim, Eva wanted to believe.
‘Oh Eevs, I so want this to work out for you.’ Hanna’s face softened way past the benchmark to which Eva had become accustomed. It was just enough to put a little wind back into Eva’s sails.
‘It has to,’ she said, and whatever it was that Hanna heard in her voice, it made her brighten a little, and she reached out a hand to squeeze Eva’s shoulder lightly.
‘Come on,’ Hanna said, with a conspiratorial wink, ‘let’s go tell Ciocia Irenka that we’re planning to stuff next year’s pierogi with a parfait of goat’s cheese and rhubarb.
