I asked Pip to help me get the price tag off my dress. Turns out there wasn't one. After that we sat in silence for a while.

Smelling the fresh night air and watching Pip's cigarette smoke wind and disappear into the night is oddly therapeutic. It makes me feel... sentient. Once I got used to it, I forgot how numbing the smell of alcohol could be.

Pip's cool as ever. He lent me his jacket to sit on so my dress wouldn't get dusty on the concrete, but even with his casual drags and toes tapping to the faint sound of jazz, I can tell that he's waiting for me. If only I knew where to start.

"They don't like me, do they?"

My question doesn't faze him. If it does, he doesn't show it. When he looks over at me, his stare is patient, probing.

"Say what you mean, Evangeline." Only slightly drunk, Pip grins when his voice lilts with the subtle rhyme.

I sigh, nibbling at my lip before I try again.

"I don't fit in here," I meet his clear eyes, "do I?"

He leans his head back against the wall, and I immediately feel stupid. He came to have a good time and I doubt counselling his brother's teary girlfriend was what he had in mind.

I bury my face in my hands. "I shouldn't have dragged you out here - into this."

"Evangeline, honestly," he says, eating his 't', "I was dying for a fag anyway, and the guy at the bar said no smoking indoors so..."

I glance at him through a gap in my fingers.

"As for dragging me into it, I think you'll find that my DNA puts me smack in the middle. So," he exhales, and somehow I feel better already, "you want to tell me what happened in there?"

"Your mum hates me."

"So? She hates everyone," he only adds the last bit when I look mildly horrified. "What did she say?"

"She didn't really say anything."

I bite at my nail, and I can taste the scratches of paint coming off, but I'm too tired to care. What even happened? When I try to replay it in my head, I remember Kitty's face, owl eyes and frosted lips, and the venom in Louisa's voice. I remember how tight Nelly's grip was around her wine glass was. I remember that Eric left Lea, and it wasn't the other way I around. That's all.

All I can recall with perfect clarity is how it made me feel. Whatever happened pulled me down from the make-believe pedestal I'd been stood on all night, and blew me over like a leaf in a gust of wind. I felt silly; small.

"I don't know." I admit. "I don't think I remember."

Pip shrugs one shoulder, as though he hadn't expected any other answer.

"Oh my God, I'm being, like, one of those stupid teenagers, aren't I? She probably wasn't even talking about me, and I read into it and got upset, and now I'm out here, bloody boohooing over nothing."

"You're not."

His words are abrupt, and the idle finger that had been tracing lines on the floor stops.

"Mum's a bitch, Evangeline. I love her to bits, and I'd die for her in a heartbeat, but God, she's a bitch."

My brows raise in surprise, although I don't know what's caught me more off guard. The fact that called her a bitch out loud, or that he'd die for her.

"There's a better chance of being struck by lightning than misinterpreting what my mum says." His look is intensely honest, and when Pip makes eye contact, it doesn't shift. All the Macklins seem pretty good at that.

"As far Mum's concerned, Nelly's a lost cause. Eric's the eldest, and no girl's good enough for the eldest. The heir to the proverbial throne."

He's bringing the cigarette up again before he drops his hand for another empty laugh. "And Mum's a proper lady - she'll insult you a thousand times, but she'll mask it in all the flowery language and politesse bullshit, and you end up thinking you're the nutter. You're not, Evangeline."

I slump against the wall while he inhales the smoke. I'm not crazy, great. But is it wrong that I want to be the one to hold my own? I want to be able to look her in the eyes and say, 'I'm in love with your son, and sorry, love, but I'm not going anywhere.' Instead, I crumbled.

"Why?"

"What, why's no one good enough for Auby? Don't know. Something Oedipal, probably?" He speaks through gritted teeth, holding his cigarette in his mouth as he distorts the hazy smoke with his long fingers. "Every time Auby brings a girl about, he introduces them to Mum, then poof, gone. It's like a shitty magic trick."

Imitating his coolness, I mimic the smoke when I exhale and watch my breath, cloudy in the cold air, diffuse.

"So, is it, like, a lot? Does he introduce a lot of girls to you guys?"

"Never had to. He's always met them when we're around - Royal Wedding, Queen Charlotte's Ball."

...And he met me on a South Western.

Pip chuckles and thank God, he knows what I'm really asking.

"No, not a lot of girls. I think you'd be the... third," he squints, "and hey, you know what they say about the third." When he teases me with his little smirk, he drills his finger into the spot on my cheek that's wet with drying tears.

"Fuck off," I laugh, but I laugh with all the faith in my heart, hoping that when I breathe out, the night sky snatches the scent of my faith from the air and takes it up high with the rest of the wishes set in stone.

It's dark, and our features are more hidden with every passing moment - I can scarcely see the colour of my hair - but Pip's black figure is kept alight by his golden curls, sterling ring, and the dying amber light of his cigarette. Apart from in the rare moments Eric and I have alone, this moment, out here, feels like the closest thing to being home.

"Why won't Nelly look at you?"

As ever, his voice is strong and clear, even now, when he's lowered it to ask me a question that I think he knows the answer to.

I study my hands before I answer. The chipped electric blue's made a jagged half-moon.

"Pip, she told me about Faith." It comes out faster than I want it to, or maybe it doesn't. I don't think this is the sort of thing you're supposed to drag out.

He nods, pensive, and I find myself wishing, for the second time tonight, that I didn't know what I knew. It makes me feel like an intruder, to sit here and watch swallowed grief like I understand it.

"I'm sorry," is all I can say.

He turns his whole body when he looks at me. I can only tell because I hear the change in his pocket jingle.

It's a while before he speaks, and knowing that his eyes are on me in the darkness puts me right on the edge, waiting for whatever will break the silence.

"Eric didn't tell you first?"

That's the first time anyone's called him by his name. It's odd, but I've missed hearing it from lips other than mine. It'd be a comfort if the other words didn't make my chest ache again.

I shake my head. The quiet falls again.

"I'm really sorry, Pip."

"Don't be." He says, coins jangling as he turns back, his long legs to his chest. "Figured Nel wouldn't be able to resist."

"How come?"

"Your hair. She'd have loved it. She had it dyed just like that."

I notice when he doesn't say her name, and decide that I won't either.

"And Nel," he exhales heavily, "is taking it the hardest out of all of us." When his head turns towards the restaurant, the low lights leave half his face illuminated, and the other half in darkness. He's watching Nelly's passive figure with tender eyes, still perched by the bar with Kitty. He doesn't look away when he asks,

"Was she drunk? When she told you?"

I recall her manic laughter and warbled chorus of Elenore, and drunk is an understatement.

"Yeah, a little."

Nothing seems to faze him at all. He turns his head from the light back to the darkness, and the cigarette's spark is dying.

"You know," he starts, and he inhales so deeply that he splutters a little before continuing, "when Dad found out, he came straight to school. It's like a two-hour drive on a good day, but Mum says he barely said a word to her, just got in the car and started driving.

"Everyone was looking at me like I'd lost a limb. They expected that I'd be the one to take it the worst."

"Is that how it felt?" I can't help but ask. "Like you'd lost a limb?"

"No." The lone word is short, but his tone isn't. He almost sounds as though he might say more, and when he shifts and brings his knees further into his chest, I hold my breath, hoping that the silence makes him comfortable.

"Don't be too hard on Auby for not telling you himself." I let the breath go.

"Everyone's got their shit. It's a... it's a hard thing to say out loud." He pauses. "I imagine it'd be even harder for him to say to someone like you."

Pip sounds entranced, like he's totally out of it, alcohol aside. If he didn't, I might ask him what he means by someone like you, but I don't, and I don't think you're supposed to make it about yourself when it comes to these kind of things anyway. You can't hold the words of the grieving against them.

The cig's as good as dead now; the glint of his ring's brighter than the dying light. Still, when he sighs with a finality that tells me this moment's soon coming to an end, he offers me the stick.

"S'alright, thanks."

"You don't smoke."

"Nope."

"But Auby does..."

"Mhm, sometimes."

"You're a-dorable," I hear him smile, and I swat his hand when he tries to pinch my nose.

The clear ringing of silverware on crystal sounds from behind us like a costly school bell. Break time's over.

"Alright - alright, everyone, it's time for some Utilitarian cake-cutting," Jono announces over the din, and maybe it's the drink, but he seems more enthusiastic when I can't see his face. "Where's the birthday boy?"

There's a brief sound of commotion to find Eric amidst the multitude, and I imagine him beaming as he's brought to the front with back-claps and handshakes like an Oscar winner.

"Has anyone seen Evangeline?" Eric asks, and when it makes my heart flutter, I realise he's never said my full name like that before.

"Not in a while, no." Kitty says, and I resist the urge to roll my eyes, even though I know Pip wouldn't be able to see it.

"Right, come on," ‌ Pip says with a grunt, "this concrete's hurting my arse and I think you've been summoned."

He's standing now, illuminated by the inside lights.

"Do we have to?" I pout, but I still take the hand he extends to me, letting him pull me to my feet.

Kitty's the first to spot us, with a saccharine smile through the sliding door, and it's unsettling how easily she paints it on, but my gaze is peeled away from her and her false faces when Pip pulls me into a hug. He locks his long limbs behind my back, and with my head under his chin, I feel safer. Safe.

"Thanks," I whisper.

He chuckles, and it vibrates in his chest, against my cheek. "Thank you. Don't worry about Mum, alright? We'll talk."

I want to tell him that he doesn't have to do that, that he's already been so much kinder than I deserve, but I give in with a deep breath, because we're half in the music and half in the moonlight, and it feels like I'm supposed to.

"Okay."

"You're right, you know," he says softly, "about fitting in here... and I don't think it's a bad thing. Means you're where you're meant to be. However you got here."

Stepping back inside feels like passing between dimensions; the glow of the Macklins is this dimension's gleaming sun, except this sun never goes down. No matter what goes on outside the frame, on the inside things stay picture-perfect.

When Eric's eyes land on me, his smile spreads slowly, fading just as slowly when he makes his way to me through the crowd. My eyes are only a little puffy, but he sees it, of course he does.

"Evie?" He says, hushed, and even countless drinks deep, he's a picture of decorum. "Are you alright, my love?"

"Mhm,"‌ I nod, "I'm okay, really," and the concern in his steady gaze tells me he wants to ask me more, but there are too many voices, too many eyes, so he sidles behind me, snaking his hands around my waist.

"Come. Come and cut this cake with me."

Waddling four-legged over to the high table forces a giggle out of me, and I let the warm laughter, his and mine, fill my mind. If I empty it of all the worries and rely only on what I see in front of me, on who I feel behind me, everything is as perfect as it seems.

"Are you going to let me go now?" ‌ I laugh when he almost trips up on my feet, stood behind me with one hand on the cake-knife, and the other still around me.

"No,"he says, pressing a kiss to my cheek, "I don't think I will."