‘Tattoo competition? Is that even a thing?’ He was doing it again, trying to claw back some levity into the moment, and this time I let him.
Rhys smiled, clearly pleased that I was no longer spiralling even further into panic.
‘Maybe there are things I’ve forgotten too,’ he conceded, ‘and I just don’t know what they are yet.’
He was trying so hard to make me feel better, although if I was being totally honest, the hug had achieved more to that end than anything he could have said.
That was the moment when I fully realised that Rhys was not only a nice person, but quite possibly the nicest person I’d ever met.
We’d ordered enough Chinese food for four people, and yet there were scarcely more than a couple of mouthfuls of sweet and sour pork and one lonely dumpling left in the foil trays that were strewnacross my breakfast bar. We’d eaten straight from the containers, and it hadn’t even occurred to me to transfer the food to plates or give a second thought to the drips and spills that could easily stain the marble countertop.
We chatted like the old friends that we weren’t, and none of it felt at all odd. The experience we’d lived through seemed to have sped us straight from new acquaintances to the kind of friends who were allowed to ask each other personal questions.
‘Those marks the lightning has left on you—’
‘Lichtenberg figures,’ Rhys supplied, using the official name for the pink-red fractal patterns that were clearly visible under my kitchen halogen lighting.
‘They’re sort of intriguing,’ I said, reaching out a finger – that should have known better – and gently touching the markings on the back of his hand.
His breath hitched.
‘I’m sorry. Did that hurt? Are they painful?’
His eyes locked on mine, and looking away right now would have been nothing short of impossible. ‘No.’
There was a long pause as though we’d both ventured onto quicksand and neither of us knew our way back onto solid ground.
‘The hospital said in most cases they simply fade away after forty-eight hours or so. It’s rare for them to last longer.’
‘And they don’t know why some people get them and others don’t?’ I asked, already knowing more about the weird phenomenon than I was letting on, thanks to a thorough internet search earlier in the day.
‘No. They’re kind of a mystery. But the sooner they go, the better,’ Rhys said, and there was a note of unexpected concern in his voice. I didn’t think it was vanity, because he didn’t seem like the type to be bothered about stuff like that, but the marks were obviously worrying him.
‘They’re not unattractive,’ I said, trying to reassure him, and stepping over so many boundaries I should have had trespasser tattooed on my own forehead.
‘I think some people might find them scary.’
‘Narrow-minded people,’ I said, hoping to make him feel better.
He took a beat or two before replying, and maybe that should have prepared me.
‘I think, to a child, they’d look kind of terrifying.’
Everything went quiet. Alexa was still playing music, the large American fridge-freezer was still humming in one corner of the room, and the distant thrum of passing traffic from the road outside was still there, but none of that could be heard over the sound of the shoe that I had a feeling was about to drop.
‘I expect that would depend very much on the child,’ I said, still holding on to the hope that he was talking about random encounters in the street.
Did the lightning fry all your brain cells? Old Ellie suddenly piped up with. He’s been subtly checking his phone for messages throughout the meal. He’s waiting to hear from someone. How did you miss that?
I hadn’t exactly missed it, but I had been guilty of ostrich-like behaviour. I’d asked loads of questions in the time we’d been at the flat, but not the ones I should have asked.
I think Rhys was on the point of explaining everything when a ringtone that wasn’t mine went off like a siren. He snatched up his phone as though it might have been planning to escape. A picture lit up on his screen. She was blonde and extremely beautiful. I’d feared there’d be a girl in his life, that his heart already belonged to someone else. And it was obvious that it did, as his features rearranged into a smile that was so beautiful it made me want to cry.
She was the love of his life; I knew that without question.
There was a moment of apology on his face, and I really don’t know if it was because he was getting to his feet to take the call in private, or because he’d not been entirely truthful with me.
‘I’m just going to step outside to take this,’ he said, nodding towards my front door.