Free Too Close For Comfort by Eleanor Moran

at any second. Ged had already gone back to work: I felt a wave of protectiveness towards her.
    ‘I was glad to be here for her. I’m back to London in a couple of hours, I need to get back to work.’ I rolled the word around in my mouth like a delicious sweet, comforted by
it. ‘And to my fiancé.’
    ‘What is it you do?’
    ‘I’m a therapist.’
    ‘Yes! I’ve heard about you.’
    ‘Have you?’
    ‘Word travels fast in these here parts,’ she said, putting on a comedy yokel accent that didn’t quite land. ‘I should see how my two are doing,’ she added, like she
knew as much. ‘Good to meet you.’
    *
    When I came out of the bathroom, Kimberley was waiting outside, catching the door handle as it swung open. We stood there, slightly too close.
    ‘I thought you’d left,’ she said, although I couldn’t see why.
    ‘No. I was just talking to Lisa.’ Kimberley’s eyebrows arched up like perfect commas. ‘She seemed really nice.’
    ‘She’s a close friend,’ said Kimberley, wrong-footing me. I tried to keep my face neutral, but it was almost as if she could read my thoughts – how could she have been
simultaneously close to the first and second wife? ‘It’s all very civilised with Joshua. You’d be suitably impressed.’ She paused, waiting for my reaction.
    ‘What, you mean when I’m giving out my gold stars?’
    She gave a tinkly laugh.
    ‘It sounds like you should. Helena said you were a godsend the other day.’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Oh yes! I wanted to talk to you myself by the time she’d finished, but I guess there won’t be time. Shame.’
    I was flattered, almost against my will. I smiled, shrugged my assent. ‘I should go and find Lysette. Wasn’t she amazing up there?’
    A look crossed Kimberley’s face that I couldn’t decipher.
    ‘I could never have done that,’ she said.
    ‘Really?’
    ‘You get back to her. She’ll be really feeling it now – Sarah not being here. She’ll need you.’
    Every sentence that came out of her perfect mouth left a nasty aftertaste.
    *
    Lysette’s eyes lit up at the sight of me in a way that they hadn’t all week. She still had that firework feeling about her – soaring high in the air, liable to
explode. Her scarlet lipstick was bleeding outwards, a sticky red imprint left on the glass.
    ‘Mia! Come and get a drink.’
    Her glass was already held out for a top-up. I smiled at a waiter, asked him for a glass of white and took a modest sip. I don’t really like drinking in the day – growing up with an
alcoholic father has given me control freak tendencies around it. That 4 p.m. muzziness that people like so much makes me feel like civilisation as we know it is crashing down around our ears.
    ‘Everyone’s saying how incredible you were,’ I told her.
    ‘Yeah well,’ she said, a dismissive hand flying up. ‘I had to be. That’s what she deserved. She’d have done the same for me. And she wouldn’t have gone to
pieces at the end.’
    ‘You didn’t go to pieces,’ I said, when what I really wanted to say was that I’d get up there and speak for her too, even if I was ninety years old and deaf as a post and
had to shout the words down the aisle until I was hoarse. She took another slug of her wine.
    ‘Someone had to tell the truth about her.’
    ‘I thought Joshua spoke really well too.’
    Lysette gave a tight little nod. Everything I said sounded like a press release – I couldn’t quite understand why. Was it something about my vantage point, my sense of telescoping in
and out, too close and then distant again? I felt relief in my body at the thought that I only had a few more hours left.
    We both looked over to him, standing in the corner with Sarah’s parents. Sarah’s mum didn’t look all that much older than him, her dark hair glowing with reddish highlights,
big gold earrings framing her face. I could see that vitality of Sarah’s that Lysette was holding on to like a torch. Her dad looked more grey,