Magnolia Parks (The Magnolia Parks Universe Book 1)

“Where’s Beej?” Bridget asks, leaning against my door frame before she walks in, sitting on my bed and it takes all my self-control not to scream with delight that she’s wearing one of the outfits I laid out for her. Striped, mohair cardigan with the stripe-detail track pants (both from Marni), paired with the logo-printed flipflops from Isabela Marant. Every night I lay out outfit options for her for the next day—bit of a thankless job but someone has to do it otherwise I’d have a sister who wears Birkenstocks that aren’t the Proenza Schouler special editions.

“Where’s Beej?” she asks as I toss another bikini into my Chelsea Garden Globe Trotter suitcase.

“Angler.” I glance up at her. “It’s his parents’ anniversary dinner.”

“You didn’t go?” She frowns.

I give her a look. “It’s a bit on the nose at the minute, don’t you think? Besides,” I shrug, “Lil would have just spent the entire night fretting. I’d have ruined it for them.”

Lily Ballentine has just officially been elevated to #1 adult in my life as of the last day.

I wrote that on a card, as well as “Sorry, Hamish. You’re #2,” and sent it with BJ to the dinner I should be at with them all—the dinner he tried to make me go to, the dinner he also tried to stay home from—because “Whatever the fuck you need, Parks.” That’s what he said to me. That’s what he always says to me.

“I think it’s a good idea,” she tells me.

I glance over my shoulder. “What?”

“This”—she nods at the bag I’m packing—“you, going away.” I turn back around. “Where are you going?”

“Monemvasia.”

“With?” she asks, open-ended.

I look back at her and I don’t feel like answering because she knows who with, so I pinch my eyes instead. “Did you know?”

She takes a measured breath. “I’d suspected—”

“And you didn’t tell me!” I blink, horrified.

“No, I know.” She sighs. “I just had this strange feeling you wouldn’t take it particularly well.”

I give her a look as I fold the same cropped, rose-print blouse from Miu Miu that I folded just a moment ago because I’m not really pay attention. “Do you think Mum knows?”

“I think Mum’s been dating a hot French guy for the last year in anticipation of what I assume is a pending divorce.”

“What the fuck!” I growl. “Since when did we all become so casual about infidelity?”

Her face softens. “We’re not, Magnolia—it’s just—it’s different. I don’t think they ever really loved each other.”

“Then why did they marry?” I ask, eyebrows up. Her mouth purses a little and she carefully points at me. I roll my eyes because that can’t be true. Elton would have told me.

There’s a knock on my door, and I don’t turn to see who it is because I can tell by the way the knock sounds.

Two light taps in quick succession only using the knuckle of her index finger, and she never waits for permission to enter.

“Can I have a word with you for a minute, Magnolia?” Marsaili asks.

I look over at her and look at her blankly. “No.”

She’s wearing the tie-neck, polka-dot, silk-crepe midi dress from Valentino and she never used to wear Valentino dresses before; she didn’t care about Valentino dresses before, so why does she now?

“Magnolia, look—”

“I told you never to speak to me again,” I cut in.

Her face flickers a bit amused and I hate her for it. “Did you think I was going to listen to that ridiculous demand?” I roll my eyes at her insolence.

No wonder she’s gotten so big for her boots lately, what with her doing my father and all.

“Listen, Magnolia,” she starts again, walking towards me. The clip-clop of her sensible black Gilda 60, suede pumps from Gianvito Rossi makes me extra angry. “This is seeming less and less about your father and I, and, somehow—increasingly about you.”

“Somehow?” I repeat, blinking a lot. “Somehow?”

She takes a steadying breath, bracing herself I think, which is wise of her because I feel like the water just drew back from the shore of my reason, the way it does right because a tsunami hits.

“You knew”—I point at her—“when I was twenty, that BJ and I were going to be together again, you knew that’s what I wanted, more than anything, and you—knowing that, told me that he was a cheater and he was bad and he couldn’t be trusted again and—”

She shakes her head, rejecting it. “Don’t you hold me responsible for decisions you made on your own after getting some advice—”

“On my own?” I blink. “Advice?” I let out a small breath in disbelief. “Hypocritical, bullshit, manipulative advice from the person I trusted most in the world, who told me that the boy I love would only ever hurt me, that that’s all he was capable of because he cheated on me one time and all the while, you’re having an affair with my father—”

“Magnolia—”

“He nearly died,” I say quietly and I don’t mean to say it, it slips out because I think it’s her fault. Even though she doesn’t know what happened, it’s her fault. She and her shitty advice that made me feel like I could never be with him and I shouldn’t want to be with him either and so I started dating Reid all of a sudden, completely all of a sudden—and BJ was so blindsided and so fucked up over it he—well, you know what happened… she doesn’t, but you do.

Marsaili’s face falters. “What?”

“I hate you,” I whisper.

“Magnolia—”

“Get out.”

I point to the doorway that Tom’s standing in. He knocks, apprehensively, watching me carefully. Marsaili is tearful as she bustles away. Tom steps to the side, letting Marsali pass, then flicks his eyes over at me.

“I just heard the news.”

“The news?” Bridget repeats. “It’s out, then?”

Tom walks towards me. “Are you okay?”

His face is super serious, and I wish Bridget wasn’t here, because it’s probably a dead giveaway that he’s not hugging me or kissing me but is instead being super British with his arms folded over his chest.

“I guess,” I shrug.

“When did you find out?”

“Yesterday,” I tell him.

“You didn’t call,” he tells me and I wonder if he sounds a bit surprised.

I glance over tentatively at Bridget, hoping she’ll leave but she doesn’t.

I purse my lips. “I was with BJ.”

He nods once. “Of course you were.”

That strikes me as a weird response considering where we last left things, him being in love with his dead brother’s wife and what-not.

He nods at the half-filled suitcase on my bed. “Going somewhere?”

“Um.” I nod. “I’m thinking I might get out of here for a while. Wait for the press to die down a bit? Blow over—”

He nods. “Am I invited this time?”

I’m thrown for a second. “Of course?”

Tom glances at Bridge, then back at me. “Is BJ coming?”

Bridget looks from Tom to me, like she’s watching a tennis match.

“I mean—” I tuck some hair behind my ears. “It was his idea.”

Tom’s face goes funny, somewhere between amused and annoyed.

“Of course it was.”

I toss the colour-block, stretch-lurex bikini by Oséree into my case, as I eye him. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

His face flickers again. “Would you rather I didn’t?”

“No,” I say quicker than I plan.

“…No, you don’t want me to come?” he clarifies.

“No.” I shake my head. “I do.”

Bridget looks between the two of us, head tilted to the side, kind of fascinated. “Wow.”

I glance at her, roll my eyes.

“I’ll bring Gus.” Tom tells me. “We’ll take our plane. I’ll fly us.”

And just as I’m about to meditate on the wonders of having a fake boyfriend who’s a pilot, something happens and it happens quite quickly—there’s some sort of loud sound—a crashing of sorts—I hear Harley Parks growl my name like he’s never growled it before and then my father tears into my room, pushes past Tom—his eyes are wild, he’s got one phone to his ear, another in his hand that he’s pointing at me, menacingly—

“Did you leak it?” he roars, standing over me. “Was it you?” I blink up at him, my face unflinching, but a little bit scared on the inside because I’ve never seen him like this. “Was it fucking you?” he yells louder. I don’t like how he says the word “fucking”. It’s horribly angry.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell him calmly.

His nostrils flare and he shakes his head. “Yes, you fucking do.”

I straighten out the skirt of my crystal-embellished, polka-dot, silk-jacquard mini dress from Miu Miu and I give my father a tight smile. “I’m quite sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s all over the news,” he growls.

“Your infidelity, you mean?” I clarify, sweetly. He doesn’t respond but his teeth are clenched. “Oh dear.” I shrug delicately.

My father edges closer towards me, jaw tight, fist clenched. “I swear to god, Magnolia, if you leaked it, I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” says Tom, stepping between us and shoving my father back a bit. My father is quite a large man to be honest, but Tom is bigger. His eyes are fierce, his jaw is set, and his face isn’t one to be trifled with. “Finish the sentence,” Tom dares him, glaring down at him.

I don’t know what the end of that sentence would have been. My father’s never threatened me before, he’s never been angry like this before, he’s never looked before like he wanted to hit me, much less kill me, not even the time I accidentally leaked a Kendrick Lamar song in the background of an Instagram video.

“You do realise whose house you’re standing in?” my father asks, squaring up.

“I do, yeah—” Tom nods, coolly. “I think I could probably wipe the floor clean with you any place though.”

“Okay, champ”—Harley snarls, and he gets a mean smile—“want to give it a go?”

“Not particularly.” Tom shakes his head and starts rolling up his sleeves. “But I will.”

“Okay.” Harley grins, and maybe it’s a little sinister and maybe I feel more nervous than you want to feel of your own father. “—I wouldn’t mind making an England bleed,” my father says before he shoves Tom backwards and into me. It’s a bit of a domino effect: Tom falls on to me, I fall onto my bedside table, my lamp falls onto the floor.

My father looks like he’s seen a ghost. Tom looks like he might murder someone. And my hand is bleeding, but only a bit. It’s not deep.

“Magnolia,” my father says, his voice sounding quite different all of a sudden. “Darling, I’m—”

Tom shoves Harley away, aggressively. “Take one more step, I dare you,” he says, then pulls me up off the ground.

“What’s going on in here?” Marsaili runs in.

Bridget’s gotten me a cloth for my hand.

Tom cocks his head towards my suitcase. “This ready to go?”

I nod, a bit dazed.

My sister hands me my passport from my fallen nightstand, then kisses my cheek. Tom grabs my suitcase, lifts it off my bed like it’s a paper plate even though it weighs well over five stone, takes my good hand in his other and leads me towards the door.

We’re in his car. Dark grey, SVAutobiography Range Rover. He’s gripping the wheel pretty tight with one hand; with the other hand, he’s gnawing down mindlessly on his index finger. Tom looks over at me. “He been like that before?”

“No.” I shake my head. “Never.” He keeps driving. “Where are we going?”

He watches the road for a few seconds. His face looks strained. If he were a MacBook he’d have the swirling rainbow of death on his face.

“Where’s BJ?” He glances over at me.

“His parents’ anniversary.”

“Where?” he over-annunciates.

I frown a little, confused. “Angler.”

He nods once. “We’re going to Angler.”

20:32

Tom England

We’re on our way to you now.

What?

Why?

Everything okay?

Big fight with Harley

Bad

Oh shit. Okay.

Is she okay?

Angler, yeah?