It Felt Like A Kiss

Chapter Thirty-five




Ellie wasn’t even halfway down the corridor when she heard the door open behind her and, before she could quicken her pace, David had caught up to take her arm.

‘Don’t touch me!’ It was a shriek.

‘Ellie … what I said in there, I had to say it.’ He didn’t even care that she was trying to bat him away with her handbag. ‘I was doing my job.’

‘What? You were just following orders? Do you even know how that sounds?’

David obviously did because he scowled, then closed both arms around her to prevent the damage she was intent on wreaking, and marched her down the corridor to an office, its door wide open, which he slammed shut after them.

It was a fancy corner office panelled in gleaming dark wood and shelf upon shelf of leather-bound books. David pushed her down into one of two stiff-backed chairs in front of the huge desk, which was empty except for a computer and a telephone. He didn’t even have a pen tidy or an in-tray and an out-tray, because he was a cold-blooded, heartless drone.

His hands were still on her shoulders and Ellie pulled her bag close like a cushion she could cuddle for comfort. Now that she wasn’t trying to cause him physical damage, he stopped touching her.

The only thing worse than David touching her was when he wasn’t touching her, which made no sense, but then, everything that had happened today had been completely senseless.

David grabbed the other chair, turned it round and pulled it so close to Ellie that when he sat down, their knees bumped. ‘You should take the money,’ he said in a low voice. ‘He owes you that much, doesn’t he?’

Ellie wanted to smack her forehead in despair. Or his forehead. ‘I don’t care about the money.’ She exhaled slowly. ‘I don’t care about him. And I especially don’t care about you any more.’

David looked her steadily in the eyes. ‘I don’t think that’s true.’ His voice didn’t waver. ‘You wouldn’t be so upset if you were indifferent to me.’

‘I didn’t say I was indifferent,’ Ellie argued, clutching her handbag even tighter to her chest. ‘I said that I don’t care about you any more.’


‘Apart from the first time we met, you’ve always known what I did for a living. Unfortunately, my job requires a certain amount of dissembling,’ David said levelly. Ellie hated when he was like this: cool, watchful as he mentally weighed her up, like he was predicting her next move before she even knew in which direction she was heading. Sometimes she wished that he’d lose his temper and have a good shout. Recently she’d become a big fan of having a good shout.

‘Those people in that room, they’ve corroded your soul.’ She wasn’t even trying to hurt him now, but to warn him before it was too late, though deep down she knew that it already was. He was too far gone and she couldn’t save him. There was a good reason she’d sworn off saving men from themselves. ‘The things they make you do should be beneath you.’

He recoiled a little. ‘I have tried again and again to protect you,’ he protested.

‘No, you’ve been trying to protect your clients and your own career path,’ Ellie scoffed. ‘None of it was for my benefit.’

David suddenly reared up and grabbed her seat back so he was there, right up in her space, close enough to kiss, not that he looked as if he wanted to kiss her. ‘I haven’t been protecting my clients, I’ve been protecting you from my clients.’

Ellie screwed up her face in contempt. ‘You’ve got a funny way of showing it!’

‘I’ll admit that I was determined to think the worst of you. I saw that scene with Richey. And when I read his story in the papers, well, it was obvious you had absolutely no self-respect.’

It was Ellie’s turn to flinch. ‘I’m not like that!’

‘I know. I should have realised it from that first meeting at the Wolseley, but I told myself that you’d eventually run true to type. That you could deal with being papped and tabbed because you were in it for the money and the glory. But you confounded me every time I spoke to you.’ He sighed. ‘For f*ck’s sake, you even paid your own hotel bill! Then that first evening at my flat, I saw who you really were.’

Ellie remembered that evening too. She’d tried to be calm and reasonable but had ended up red-faced and indignant. She was sure she’d shouted at him and had generally been everything that she always tried not to be. ‘Like I keep saying, you met me when my circumstances redefined extenuating,’ she said.

‘That evening it was painfully obvious your life was coming apart at the seams and I bore most of the responsibility for that. You didn’t even whine that much,’ he said untruthfully with a soft little smile that Ellie wanted to return; wanted to more than anything.

‘I seem to remember whining quite a lot, actually,’ she reminded him.

He shrugged. ‘You could have whined more than you did. I got the measure of you that day and the more I got to know you, the more I liked you. And the more I liked you, the more I wanted to protect you.’ David shook his head and Ellie was hanging on his every word, until she remembered.

‘Was it protecting me when you didn’t tell me about Charlie!’ The betrayal hit her anew. ‘He’s my brother!’

‘I couldn’t tell you! You don’t even know the half of it. The things I could tell you …’ He swallowed hard as if he were pushing away the words. Words that would probably break her but she wanted to hear them anyway.

‘What things?’ She couldn’t help the hand that crept up to touch the taut line of his jaw. ‘Tell me!’

‘I can’t. I won’t. Not to protect him,’ David captured her hand, which was still on him, and held it tight, ‘to protect you.’

There were so many things that Ellie wanted from him but pity wasn’t one of them. ‘Because you feel sorry for me?’ She snatched her hand back. ‘Oh God, I’m your lame duck!’

David’s face creased in confusion. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘You feel sorry for me! It’s so obvious now. It’s like Ari. She doesn’t tell me things that I have a right to know because she thinks I won’t be able to cope. You’re just the same. I’m a fully functional adult. I don’t need you to protect me. I can handle some hard truths and I can look after myself.’

‘Maybe Ari doesn’t tell you things that she thinks might hurt you because she loves you?’ David suggested softly. He hadn’t gone back to his chair but was squatting down in front of her. ‘Maybe I’m in love with you too.’

It was enough to make Ellie’s heart go pitter-patter had her heart not been weighted down with a heavy burden. She wanted to believe that love would conquer all and they’d kiss and the screen would fade to black, but you couldn’t let yourself fall in love with someone who only wanted part of you.

‘Last time I checked I was still Billy Kay’s daughter and you were still his lawyer.’ Ellie wished that she didn’t sound quite so bitter; it didn’t become her. ‘Tell me, what’s changed since we had this same conversation in Paris?’

David rested his hands on her knees and tried to stare her down. ‘We can do this,’ he said earnestly. ‘We just have to keep my job and my clients separate.’

‘It’s not going to work. I never want to see that man again, but he’s my father and I’m done with hiding that side of myself away.’ Ellie put her hands on David’s shoulder and leaned forward until their foreheads were touching. ‘If you say you love me, if you want me in your life, then it has to be all of me. All or nothing.’

‘Nothing is ever that straightforward.’

‘It is if you let it be,’ Ellie insisted. ‘I’m not going to be your lame duck.’

‘Why do you keep going on about ducks?’ It was hard to be exasperated with someone when you were forehead to forehead, so they broke apart.

‘I deserve so much more than what you want to give me.’ Ellie stood up but David was now resting on his haunches as he gazed up at her. ‘We can’t have any kind of future because you’re caught up in a filthy business. Why can’t you see that this job, doing the dirty work for men like Billy Kay, is eating away at all the good in you? Stealing it bit by bit. I will try to save you because it’s what I do but I’ll end up destroying myself in the process.’

David bowed his head as if he was a penitent seeking redemption. ‘Then you don’t love all of me either, do you?’

Ellie kind of did. That was the problem and that was why she was heading for the door, while the fire was still in her belly and she had the guts to walk away.

She half expected David to come after her again. No, she wanted him to come after her and tell her that she was wrong. That he could change. That they were worth fighting for, but he didn’t and soon Ellie was standing outside the offices looking up at a dense grey sky that bulged with the threat of rain.

On the street it was humid, as if the whole city was stewing inside a pressure cooker. Ellie ducked into a Pret across the road for a sandwich and ate it in the back of a black cab as she tried to come up with a plan to save her job.

She’d have all the time in the world to think about David and all the ‘couldas shouldas wouldas’ but only about ninety minutes tops to placate an angry boss, so she concentrated on stoking the fire in her belly so it didn’t splutter and fizzle out. Twenty minutes later she was marching up to the door of the gallery and pushing it open with such force that it crashed back on its hinges and made Inge, sitting behind the reception desk, jump in her chair.


‘You frightened the life out of me!’ she snapped in a very un-Inge-like way, rearranging the papers on the desk that had got muddled up during her panic attack. She looked up. ‘Oh! Is it really you?’

‘Of course it’s me! Who else would it be?’ Ellie asked. She sounded cross too, but that didn’t last long because Inge was almost vaulting over the reception desk so she could fling her arms around her.

‘God, I’ve missed you so much! Promise that you’ll never go away for so long again.’

‘I wasn’t gone that long.’

‘Two weeks!’ Inge rested her head on Ellie’s shoulder. ‘It’s been awful.’

That made Ellie almost smile. ‘Did you actually have to put in some hard graft?’

‘So much hard graft!’ cried a voice and then Piers was hugging her from behind. ‘Don’t ever leave us again. Vaughn has been horrible. Like pre-Grace horrible.’

‘He fired Muffin for sending a painting to Burkina Faso when it was meant to go to Buenos Aires,’ Inge explained, which to be fair did sound like a sackable offence. ‘He called her terrible names and he threw that little miniature Damien Hirst skull that he uses as a paperweight at her head.’

‘Really?’ Ellie gently disengaged herself from the group hug. ‘Is he very angry with me too?’

‘The angriest,’ Inge assured her. ‘Piers and I were watching On The Sofa on the computer and we were so engrossed …’

‘You were amazing,’ Piers breathed. ‘Not at first. You kept opening and closing your mouth like a blowfish, but then you were amazing and your hair looked very shiny. Though you really can’t pull off an “Am I right?” You’re not sassy enough.’

‘Thank you for that constructive criticism,’ Ellie said, and the fire was fizzling out because Inge and Piers were so pleased to see her and she hadn’t realised how much she missed them or the gallery. Which reminded her: ‘So, Emerging Scandinavian Artists, was it a sellout? How many orders for the Perspex bicycles?’

‘Lots,’ Inge said helpfully. ‘Lots and lots. So, anyway, when you were on On The Sofa, did it look as if Jeff Jenkins was well endowed?’

‘Yes, did it? I heard he’s packing a monster in his chinos.’

‘Piers! That’s disgusting,’ Ellie said and then she giggled, which meant that her blood was no longer up and Vaughn would make mincemeat of her, call her terrible names too, and not only follow through on her sacking but refuse to give her a reference. It would be a major victory if he didn’t throw any art at her. ‘Is Vaughn … y’know …?’

‘He came up behind us when we were watching and you know how he gets that weird tic in his cheek when he’s stressed?’

Ellie nodded. She knew it only too well.

Inge folded her arms. ‘It was going like a jackhammer.’

‘He swore,’ Piers added with relish. He always enjoyed the novelty of not being the person who Vaughn was swearing at. ‘Said he was adding a new clause to our contracts that we were never to speak to any media outlets without his written permission but it didn’t apply in your case ‘cause you were already sacked.’

‘He said you needn’t bother working out the rest of your notice.’ Inge shrugged apologetically. ‘But you are coming back, aren’t you? Because with you and Muffin both gone, I’ve been really stretched. It’s been hellish.’

Inge didn’t look as if she’d been stretched. She looked as languid and swan-like as ever, but Ellie wasn’t in a position to allay her fears. Not when her own fears were far greater. ‘Is he in?’ she asked heavily.

‘Yes. It’s his last day in the office before he takes the rest of August off. He was meant to leave at lunchtime but he’s been waiting for you,’ Piers informed her. He gave Ellie a pitying look. ‘Grace even popped over a couple of hours ago to find out what was keeping him.’

‘Oh God.’ This was the worst day of her life. This would be the one she remembered when time and distance made all the other worst days recede. ‘I’d better get this over and done with then.’

‘Don’t leave us,’ Inge said forlornly as Ellie started the trudge up the stairs to Vaughn’s office. She was tempted to skulk in her office, and check that no one, like Piers for instance, had messed it up in her absence, but every second she dawdled was another second for Vaughn’s temper to escalate ever higher.

‘Come in.’ Vaughn’s summons was as sharp as her rat-a-tat-tat on his office door.

He was sitting at his desk, staring at his laptop screen, hand fisted in his hair, and didn’t even look up as Ellie stood uncertainly by the door.

‘Sit,’ he barked. This obviously wasn’t going to be an informal chat on one of his comfy white leather cubed armchairs. It was going to a bollocking administered while she sat on the very uncomfortable, very rare, wire mesh Marcel Breuer chair, which would probably snag on her broderie anglaise dress.

By her estimation, Ellie sat there for a good five minutes without Vaughn acknowledging her presence, which was certainly a theme for the day.

Ellie had been here before. Not often. Only once when she’d been outbid at a very important auction. Vaughn had given her the silent treatment for eleven agonising minutes until she’d nearly cried from the sheer antici pation of the impending telling-off. Piers had once sat in this very spot for twenty-three minutes. But instead of feeling cowed and liable to prostrate herself on the floor and beg for mercy, Ellie could feel the righteous anger spark up in her belly once more.

She was so over men and their utter inability to behave like normal, rational beings. The game-playing! The sneakiness! The double-speak! Compartmentalising their feelings until they were so tucked away, they couldn’t find them any more.

Enough!

‘You know what? I refuse to be sacked,’ she said. Vaughn’s head jerked up. He tried to glower but Ellie had taken him by surprise and it lacked its usual ferocity. ‘I don’t accept my dismissal. I rescind it.’

‘You can’t rescind it. It’s legally binding.’ Vaughn had now succeeded in knitting his brows together. ‘You’ve dragged down the good name of my gallery and you went on that awful television show. What did I say to you before the opening?’

‘You said a lot of things.’

‘Never complain, never explain,’ Vaughn repeated grimly. ‘You did both. And if I hadn’t already fired you, I’d be firing you right now. You have no dignity, Cohen. You should be ashamed of yourself.’

When he was being this objectionable, Ellie really had to remember why she wanted to continue working for him. ‘I love my job and I’m good at it—’

‘You’re not that good at it. You knew absolutely nothing when you first arrived here,’ Vaughn said loftily. He was enjoying himself, which was actually a good sign. Ellie didn’t doubt he was furious with her, but if he’d been really furious, his voice would be a flat, ominously quiet weapon that could inflict all manner of pain. ‘You were nothing without me, you’ll be nothing again.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’ Ellie crossed her legs and folded her arms to show that she was serious. ‘The fact I went on TV doesn’t affect my ability to do my job. You trained me up and promoted me because you recognised my talent and—’


Vaughn yawned. ‘Is this going to take much longer?’

‘Are you going to give me my job back?’ Ellie sounded metronome-steady but her heart was racing as much as it had been when she’d stepped onto the On The Sofa set earlier or clapped eyes on her father in the not-so-loving flesh for the first time ever. Today was sucking beyond all measure.

‘No.’ It was brutal and uncompromising. It was f*ck off and don’t ever darken my doorstep again. There was nowhere left to manoeuvre. Except …

‘Fine,’ Ellie said, folding her arms, furrowing her brows and pursing her lips in a way that Lola always described as her epic bitchface. ‘Whatever. I know a really good lawyer and I have an excellent case for unfair dismissal. Excellent. You think the good name of the gallery’s been damaged by me standing up for myself on live TV, well, just wait until my case makes the papers.’

Vaughn was doing some epic bitchface of his own. ‘What’s got into you, Cohen? Whatever it is, I don’t like it.’

‘Well, I don’t like being sacked because of a situation that wasn’t my fault and was an utter living hell, not that you cared about that. My dismissal was unjust and unreasonable.’ Ellie breathed out through her nostrils like an angry dragon. ‘I refuse to be treated like that.’

‘If I’m such a beast to work for, I’m surprised that you still want your job back.’ He made a big show of looking at his watch. ‘So, was that everything?’

It was Vaughn at his most bloody-minded. Ellie wondered if she did actually want her job back. Oh, but she did. She so did. Vaughn had taken a chance on her, seen something special in her and he’d taught Ellie everything she knew about buying and selling art. But he hadn’t taught Ellie everything she knew, which reminded her … ‘I think so. But before I go, I just want to show you something,’ Ellie said, unzipping her laptop case and pulling out her iPad.

‘What? The showreel for your glittering new career as media whore?’ Vaughn asked nastily, but everyone knew his bark was about twenty-seven times worse than his bite.

‘No, if you won’t reinstate me solely because you refuse to admit you were wrong to fire me in the first place, then I wanted you to see the first clients I’ll be representing as an independent art dealer,’ Ellie said. ‘I’ll have to find gallery space, probably in East London, but it’ll be exciting. You know how much I love a challenge.’

Vaughn raised his eyebrows. ‘Just what the world needs. Another jumped-up gallery girl thinking that they have what it takes.’

Ellie held up her iPad to show Vaughn the film she’d shot of Claude and Marie’s trees in all their drooping, paper beauty. Then she showed him their timelapse movie of a forest through the seasons. ‘What do you think?’ she asked anxiously, because this wasn’t part of the scene they were playing. He was her boss, her mentor, and when it came to art, she valued his opinion above all others.

‘Interesting,’ Vaughn murmured. All of him was still, but if he’d been a dog his ears would have been on high alert and his tail would have been wagging joyously.

‘I know I’m getting ahead of myself but I can just see the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern transformed into a magical wood, can’t you?’

‘Maybe.’ Vaughn steepled his fingers. ‘It would also work well at the Guggenheim.’

‘Well, that’s something to consider after they’ve made the Turner Prize shortlist,’ Ellie agreed. ‘So, I’ll be back at my desk tomorrow morning, usual time. OK?’

‘Why don’t you want to set up on your own?’ Vaughn was looking at her with a grudging admiration that had to be killing him.

‘I haven’t quite finished picking your brains,’ Ellie said as she turned off her iPad, because Vaughn wasn’t going to sack her and they were back in that place where he was borderline mean to her and she gave him only borderline attitude. ‘And I’d really miss Piers and Inge.’

‘Do not start getting mawkish or crying, Cohen. Even I have my limits.’

She wasn’t planning on doing either of those two things. Not in front of Vaughn, anyway. ‘Do you want an update on obscure French Surrealists and female painters from between the wars before you go on holiday?’ she asked.

It was another hour, and many phone calls from Grace, before Vaughn left the gallery, after many dire warnings about what would happen if they forgot to set the security system.

Ellie waited until she’d watched Vaughn’s car disappearing out of the mews, then she shut the gallery door and turned to Piers and Inge, who were doing the final sweep. ‘I don’t want to go home just yet and I don’t have any paparazzi following me so I’m going out to drink huge quantities of alcohol. Who’s in?’

Piers said he’d love to but Monday night was his one alcohol-free night of the week, and Inge wasn’t that keen either.

‘Maybe one really quick drink round the corner?’ she suggested as Ellie chivvied the pair of them out of the door. ‘It’s definitely going to rain. The BBC said so!’

‘You won’t melt,’ Ellie insisted. ‘Come on! Today has pretty much chewed me up, then spat me out. If you’ve missed me as much as you said you had, then you have to come drinking with me.’

All she wanted to do was to wipe the day from her memory, and not even the part of the day that featured a baying TV audience or her father barely able to summon up the energy to speak to her. She wanted to erase the picture etched in her brain of David on his knees as he said he was halfway to being in love with her.

Ellie longed to rush back to the offices of Wyndham, Pryce and Lewis and tell him that it was OK. She was ready to be loved by him and compartmentalised the rest of the time. Except it wasn’t OK, it wasn’t even a little bit OK, so alcohol was the best way she knew to temporarily erase some of the pain. She also needed to know that she wasn’t alone – she had people who accepted her wholly as she was, and would even hold her hair back when she threw up from too much vodka. Tonight, she needed a support system, whether her support system liked it or not.

Inge was far too placid to put up much of a fight. Piers capitulated once Ellie agreed that he could go back to his flat and change while she and Inge made their way to a bar in Hoxton that did killer cocktails. En route Ellie rang Tess and Lola and her cousins and the friends that she absolutely knew for certain hadn’t tried to sell her out to any news organisations.

Tonight she wanted to get back to being the girl she’d been before all this had started.





Clerkenwell, London, Present Day

His name is David Gold and he says that, despite his better judgement, he’s in love with her daughter.

They’re not words designed to warm a mother’s heart, and Ari is no exception, but they end up drinking gin and tonics in a pub tucked away behind the Inns of Court.

‘She doesn’t want to be with me,’ he says yet again, and now he’s more mopey and less intense, he seems nicer. But he made Ellie lose her temper, and he’s a lawyer, and though Ari loves Ellie to pieces, even she’s starting to get bored with how much this guy keeps banging on about her.

‘Well, if she doesn’t want to be with you, then what can you do?’ Ari asks briskly.

‘I hurt her, that’s what I did,’ he says, and puts his head in his hands. ‘I tried to play her. And I should have told her about Charlie, about the songs Billy stole.’


‘You knew about the songs, then?’ Ari asks with a snarl because she wants there to be no ambiguity about this.

He inches his bar stool further away. ‘Of course I do. There’s been a contingency plan in place ever since Billy signed the recording contract.’ He stares down at his glass. ‘We never had this conversation, but if you have the stomach for a fight, if you’re brave enough, you have an excellent case against him.’

Ari has white-knuckled hands around her glass and she’s not sure if she’s going to throw it in his face. ‘So what else do you know that you haven’t told Ellie … yet?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he says. For a lawyer, he’s a terrible liar.

‘You know everything, don’t you? You know where every single one of Billy’s victims is buried,’ Ari muses, and he doesn’t deny it. ‘What do you mean by “a contingency plan”?’

He ducks his head, even though Ari still hasn’t thrown anything at him. ‘Your sister wrote to Billy several times after the adoption fell through. She was very upset.’

Ari nods. ‘Upset doesn’t begin to cover it,’ she says. She’s amazed that she can even talk when her heart is in her mouth. She can’t even be angry with Carol. It wasn’t until she’d got pregnant with Louis using IVF – though they used to call it having a test-tube baby back then – that Carol forgave Ari. Not forgave her, but maybe accepted why Ari had behaved the way she did. ‘What did she say in her letters?’

David Gold looks her in the eye. ‘She repeatedly mentioned your intention to have the pregnancy terminated. They’re all on file in my office.’

The room tilts wildly around her, floor rushing up to meet her, ceiling falling down on top of her. Ari can hear a rushing in her head and she thinks she might faint, or that the shame might swallow her whole. Deep in her bones she knows that Ellie would probably forgive her for this one terrible transgression, because surely Ellie must know just how f*cking much she’s loved. But Ari still can’t forgive herself. Didn’t really know what love was back then until Ellie showed her how …

His hand on her arm brings Ari back to the ugly present. ‘Not a day goes by when I don’t regret what I almost did,’ she says in a voice gone rusty.

‘You have to understand that I’m not protecting him.’ His face twists into something ugly for a brief moment. ‘Protecting Billy Kay is a very unfortunate side-effect of protecting Ellie. She loves you very much, that will never change. She could deal with this, all of this but, quite frankly, I don’t see why she should have to.’

Maybe this lawyer guy isn’t so bad after all, Ari thinks just as Ellie rings. Ari can tell when Ellie’s faking it until she makes it. She’s trying to sound perky and peppy as she asks Ari if she has the garment bag containing her boring white work dresses that she left behind and she wants Ari to meet up with her and her friends. ‘Please come,’ she says. ‘Piers is wearing leder-hosen. It’s the most ridiculous thing ever!’

Ari glances over at David Gold, who’s sitting there trying not to listen to Ari’s side of the phone call. He doesn’t seem like one of Ellie’s lame ducks, one of her pet projects. He was more dangerous than that: he is someone who could really hurt her.

‘… we’re at that bar in Hoxton Square, underneath the Thai restaurant. Hang on!’ Ellie is shouting at her friends. ‘It’s called Happiness Forgets. Symbolic, much?’

Ari agrees that it is, and agrees that she might see Ellie later, then hangs up and turns to David Gold. ‘When you love someone, your first and last instinct is to shield them from anything or anyone that might do them harm.’

He nods gravely. ‘I know.’

‘But there are times they’re going to get hurt and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Especially when you’re the person who might end up hurting them the most.’

‘That file, the letters, I’ll make it all go away. As though it never, ever happened.’ David Gold takes Ari’s hands as if he’s taking an oath. ‘You don’t have to worry. It will be all right. I promise you.’

Ari mouths a thank-you, can’t do any more than that no matter how much she wants to, and they sit there in silence for a good minute, her hands in his. Then someone pushes past them and the moment becomes awkward. Ari pulls away and almost smiles. ‘Look, I can’t say I’d be happy to have a lawyer in the family, but David, you’re Billy Kay’s lawyer …’

‘I know. I know. Believe me, I know,’ he snaps.

This relationship is doomed, Ari is sure of it, but he loves Ellie, and Ari has to trust that she’s done a good enough job raising her daughter that she’ll be able to give as good as she gets.

‘Will you please tell me where Ellie is?’

Ari hands over the garment bag, gives him the address of the bar and warns him that if he so much as makes Ellie shed one single, solitary tear she knows a man who’ll break his legs.