No Place Like Home

He stuck out his tongue and took another biscuit from the jar he’d plonked on the table alongside their drinks. Showing it to her first, he popped it whole into his mouth in an exaggerated motion.

‘Zachary Benton! Just wait until I tell your mother!’

‘What?’ he asked innocently, chocolate brown eyes full of question, mouth full of chocolate biscuit.

‘For someone with such a privileged upbringing, you have some appalling habits.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he replied, pretending to pick his nose.

Ellie stifled a smile, instead attempting to give the impression she was pointedly ignoring his actions. Zak knew her too well to be fooled but it was the principle. ‘You spoke to whom?’

‘Oh! Sandy. She rang this afternoon at the office as she’s been trying to get hold of you. I gave her a very quick rundown – I didn’t think you’d mind – and explained that your phone had got damaged.’

Ellie’s phone had been in her pocket during Carl’s last attack and had ended up, like so many other things, shattered into pieces. Zak had ordered her a new one to help take his mind off things while he’d waited in the hospital but it had just sat in the box after its arrival as Ellie told him she wasn’t really in the mood to talk to anyone. Zak finally got it out and set it up anyway, partly as a way to keep his mind busy but also knowing that eventually she would want a phone.

‘She was going to ring here but I thought you might be asleep so I gave her your new mobile number and said you’d call her when you woke up.’ He saw her hesitation. ‘I said you’d probably prefer a voice call for now, rather than your usual video chat and she was fine with that.’ Ellie nodded, her eyes averted.

‘Erm, El?’

She looked up at him. ‘Oh no.’

‘What?’

‘You have that look?’

‘What look? I don’t have a “look”.’

‘Yes, you do. It’s that look that says, “I know you’re not going to like what I’m about to say but I’m going to say it anyway because I think I’m right.”’

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That look.’

‘Yes. That look.’

Zak let out a breath through his teeth. ‘OK. Sandy and I were talking and we thought it might do you some good to go and stay with her for a couple of weeks. You know, help with the recuperation, get away from everything.’

‘I don’t need to get away from everything. In fact, I was planning to come back to work next week.’

‘You can still work out there if you want. Your job is pretty portable.’ She moved to reply but Zak stopped her. ‘Ellie, I think this would really be good for you at the moment.’

‘Well, I don’t!’ she snapped. ‘I am coming back to work on Monday. The bruises will have healed more by then and I’m sure everyone already knows what happened anyway.’

‘Ellie, come here.’ Zak stood in front of the antique mirror that hung above a console table. Suddenly the bravado left her.

She shook her head. ‘No. I don’t think I want to.’ Tears unexpectedly pricked the back of her eyes.

Crossing the room, Zak gently put his arms around his friend and led her to the mirror, his arms remaining solid, supportive and tender. Ellie studied his face in the glass – his floppy hair forever in need of a cut, the kind, soft brown eyes, and aquiline nose above a generous mouth. She then forced her gaze to move to her own reflection. It was worse than she had expected. Her left eye was still closed and a mélange of blue, purple and yellow shades. Butterfly stitches held together a cut on her temple about two inches long and her cheekbone was beginning to turn from purple to green. Her lip was still partly swollen with a dark line showing where the split was starting to heal. Zak felt her breath hitch and knew that she had seen enough. He led her back to the sofa. She sat and he swung her legs up and laid the blanket back over them. ‘What about all the people on the plane and at the airport? I don’t want anyone to see me. They’ll stare, even when they’re pretending not to. You know what people are like. I’m like a human car crash. They can’t help it.’ She lifted her head and met Zak’s eyes. ‘I don’t want to be stared at Zak. I feel hideous.’

‘You are not hideous!’ Zak’s voice rarely took on a stern tone but it did now, derailing Ellie’s panicky train of thought. She looked up into his face, its expression serious now.

Her eyes were wary and he had flashes of her looking at Carl like that. His stomach roiled at the fact that they’d nearly lost her this time at the hand of that …

He stopped himself, refusing to let his mind go down that road again. Instead, bringing his thoughts back to the present, Zak gently shuffled Ellie’s legs up as he sat down on the end of the sofa.

‘You underestimate me once again.’ A mischievous grin tickled his lips. ‘Have you forgotten that I am renowned for my cunning plans!’ Ellie smiled in spite of herself. ‘Wait here a moment. I shall return!’ Zak disappeared, before making a dramatic swoosh of an entrance back into the room a moment later with a pair of stylish, oversized sunglasses and a baseball cap, the latter of which he popped on her head. ‘There’s a ticket to Dallas booked for you in business class and, if you want, you can just put the sleep mask on when you’re snoozing and keep the glasses on at other times. They’re dark enough to hide your black eye but not so dark you’ll be tripping over things.’

‘You are too good to me.’

‘No, I’m not.’ He gave his friend a gentle hug. As much as he would miss Ellie, he knew this trip back to see her childhood friend, and the place she grew up, was exactly what she needed right now.

Chapter 2 (#ulink_49d6377a-52f1-5af7-9314-a804548898d8)

Ellie fastened her seatbelt and looked out of the window. She had a connecting flight to make in Texas but hidden behind the sunglasses and cap, she felt a little more relaxed, safer from peoples’ enquiring eyes. Now that she was actually going, she couldn’t wait to see Sandy.

Sandy Danvers was Ellie’s oldest and dearest friend. When Ellie was seven, her father had been promoted which meant a move from London to Kansas. He’d worried initially how his shy daughter, their only child, would deal with the transition from their busy London life to one that would be far more rural, not to mention uprooting her from her friends. He needn’t have worried.

The company found them a beautiful house with a huge garden – or yard, as his liaison had informed him it was called – and, apparently, the neighbours were quite delightful. Having dealt with plenty of sales people over his career, Andrew Laing had taken this with a large pinch of salt. But once they’d arrived, he’d had to concede that it hadn’t just been good sales patter. The neighbours, Mr and Mrs Danvers, really were delightful. A family of six, their eldest two boys were at college so only home on holidays. The next one down was a boy, Ben, who would be going off to college in a couple of years’ time and their youngest was a girl of Ellie’s age, Sandy. She’d immediately taken his daughter under her wing, as her parents had done with him and his wife.

Eight years on, another promotion meant that the Laings would be returning home to England. Andrew knew that any job he took would be easier than telling his daughter that they were leaving Kansas – and so it had proved. Promises of long summer vacations and Easter breaks had done nothing to ease the pain for either of the distraught teenagers. They’d been inseparable almost since the day the Laings had moved in. Forcing them apart had given him more than one sleepless night, wondering if taking this new position had been the right thing to do.

Now, Ellie watched the little luggage trucks whizzing around on the tarmac outside the plane’s small oval window as her mind drifted back to the time she’d had to tell her best friend her family was moving back home. It was funny. She remembered saying those exact words all those years ago. And yet, sitting on the Danvers’ front swing with Sandy, she’d already felt like she was home.

As much as they knew their parents had hoped they’d come to terms with it, two weeks after the announcement had been made, Ellie remembered them still moping together on that same swing when Sandy’s older brother, Ben, had returned home from a day out with friends. After finishing his music degree, he’d returned to the family home while pursuing his dream of becoming a professional musician. He played as part of a band that was popular at functions, and was always writing and recording songs, but over the past year he’d also been spending more time out in Nashville. Nine years younger than Ben, Sandy was the baby of the family and as such had always been a little protected, especially by him. Ellie knew her friend missed her big brother when he was away, but she was wise enough and had a big enough heart to know that was where he needed to be in order to follow his dream. Ellie, however, knew that they had both been thankful to see his kind, handsome face that day. She cast her mind back now to how he’d done his best to comfort them that day.

*

Looking ahead to the porch, Ben saw his teenage baby sister and her best friend Ellie resting against each other on the porch swing. A soft early evening Kansas breeze ruffled Sandy’s dark, and Ellie’s red hair as they sat in silent sadness. Ben mounted the steps, gave them another glance and took a chair opposite with a sigh. Two pairs of eyes flicked up to his. Sandy raised her eyebrows in a ‘hey’. Ellie half smiled but her jewel green eyes remained sad.

‘Hey.’ Silence.

‘I guess Mom and Dad already did the vacations and stuff speech, huh?’

Sandy gave a shrug with the level of indignation only capable of a wronged teenager. ‘It’s not the same, Ben.’

‘No, I know, but sometimes we have to take what we get and make the best of it.’

The two girls looked up at him again. Sandy adored Ben but this didn’t prevent her giving him a fifteen-year-old’s disdainful ‘What?’ look.

‘And don’t give me that look either. It’s just that things aren’t always easy and I know this is really hard for you two but at least there are the vacations – think how jealous all the other kids will be when you tell them where you’re spending yours! Pretty cool to have your best friend abroad. You’ll get to visit each year, travel without your parents, have cute accents that boys’ll like …’

His words percolated in their brains for a few moments and Ben saw the slightest flicker of change in their demeanours. The girls added a couple of their own thoughts and very gradually started to see a few possible upsides of the situation – though obviously they would still have preferred Ellie to remain in the States and thought it vastly unfair of everyone involved to tear them apart. That was a rock solid fact that would never change. Ben stood and left them to the plans they were now making about where they would go together in London. One hand on the front door handle, he threw a look back.

‘Hey?’

The girls looked up.

‘Don’t say anything to Mum and Dad – or you, Ellie – about what I said about boys and cute accents. OK?’

Two grins full of metal braces were his reply – and reassurance.