Me, You and Tiramisu
Charlotte Butterfield
The love story of the year!Fall in love with the perfect feel-good romance for fans of Katie Fforde, Jill Mansell and Carole Matthews.It all started with a table for two…Life for self-confessed bookworm Jayne Brady couldn’t be better – she has a twin sister she adores, a cosy little flat above a deli and now she’s found love with her childhood crush, gorgeous chef Will.But when Will becomes a Youtube sensation, thanks to his delicious cookery demos (both the food and his smile!), their life of contentment come crashing down around them. Can Jayne have her Tiramisu and eat it?What readers are saying about ‘Me, You and Tiramisu’:‘Lives up to the standards of Sophie Kinsella, Abby Clements and Carole Matthews’ Being Unique Books‘A wonderful debut: engaging, emotional and entertaining’ I am, Indeed‘A lovely surprise of a read’ Books and Me
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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017
Copyright © Charlotte Butterfield 2017
Illustration by Jacqueline Bissett
Cover design by Holly Macdonald 2017
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be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Ebook Edition © February 2017 ISBN: 9780008216504
Version 2017-02-01
Table of Contents
Cover (#ucf8b8b9d-f9fc-54d0-b7ed-87d3ff2b17f9)
Title Page (#u86545ef0-c1cc-5ad1-90b2-be66c0d82ccb)
Copyright (#u110fa363-68c7-55e9-a8c9-d0103110dca7)
Dedication (#uf7bed876-7a5d-5f15-abbd-2e8fe539fecb)
Chapter 1 (#uaaae01f4-d94d-56f5-8c4d-0af044ccce36)
Chapter 2 (#u5473199e-fe87-5542-b711-644dc2d4e54c)
Chapter 3 (#u17f94501-0583-5746-9252-73c10cf33f76)
Chapter 4 (#u2b56010f-47db-52b5-abf2-8e38666b7e8d)
Chapter 5 (#u5e2663ed-67f7-5b61-848d-1ecb283f1a7d)
Chapter 6 (#ud2ebbc30-5f20-5b8d-98b9-3e0043eb0560)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
About HarperImpulse (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
For Team P:
Ed, Amélie, Rafe and Theo
Chapter 1 (#uc5f6e201-e9fe-5802-96b4-0a8e48becffd)
Fate was supposed to throw them together again in Rome, standing in the shadow of the Coliseum, exchanging guide-book-gleaned titbits on the tyrannical reign of Nero. Or often, in another one of her daydreams, they’d be in the grand lobby of the Royal Albert Hall, swapping polite apologies as they jostled into each other a few minutes before the lights dimmed at the Last Night of the Proms. Sometimes they’d be smiling nervously at each other as they prepared for their hot-air balloon to slowly lift off the ground over the sun-soaked sand of Queensland, or occasionally sitting at sunrise on neighbouring blankets watching turtle eggs hatch on a beach in the Florida Keys. Jayne had never been to Italy, Australia or America and, truth be told, she didn’t actually like classical music. But regardless of these small, and insignificant, realities, not once had she imagined that her reunion with Billy would be accompanied by a lingering smell of analgesic and mouthwash on a dark February afternoon in Twickenham.
**
Jayne had arrived uncharacteristically late; her cheeks were flushed from getting off the gridlocked bus and deciding to run the remaining half mile with her satchel containing thirty dog-eared exercise books bashing violently against her hip the whole way. The door let in an icy gust before slamming behind her, rudely announcing her arrival to the packed waiting room. Flustered and overly apologetic, she sandwiched herself into the only available seat, which was under a graphic poster screaming the words Disorders of the Teeth and Jaw.
She tried to keep her elbows close to her body as she took off her glasses to de-steam them and yelped as her bag slipped to the floor, scattering books and papers across the waiting room. Twelve pairs of eyes looked up at the unexpected commotion as Jayne fell to her knees reaching under the plastic chairs and leaflet-laden coffee table. ‘Sorry, sorry, I’m so sorry,’ she kept uttering while plunging her hand between boots and shoes.
‘Here’s a few more,’ a man’s deep voice uttered to her side. He was holding a pile of books and papers. ‘I think that’s the lot.’
‘Thank you so much,’ Jayne replied, accepting his outstretched hand to help her back onto her feet, ‘What an idiot.’
‘Don’t be daft, it’s fine.’ He looked at the top sheet of paper he was still holding and read its title aloud. ‘Terry Pratchett has been called the Shakespeare of today, discuss. Wow, now that’s the kind of essay I wouldn’t have minded writing when I was in school, or even now, actually!’
Jayne blew her hair out of her face as she took the papers off him, stuffed them in her bag and sat in the empty seat next to him. ‘A Pratchett fan?’ she said.
‘Have been for years,’ he replied. ‘Is that really what kids are learning nowadays?’
‘Not officially, but it’s a bit of light relief after the mocks. For me more than them, I think, although I may have converted a few of them. What was it he once said, ‘The trouble about having an open mind is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it’?’
‘My favourite quote of his was, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short and the pen is very sharp’.’ They both laughed. Jayne retrieved a bottle of water from her bag and took a big gulp. She’d wanted to nip to the bathroom and give her teeth a quick brush before her appointment, but then she’d lose her seat, and she thought that it might seem a bit rude if she just got up in the middle of her conversation with this random man. She settled for swishing the water around her mouth like a wine-taster; that would have to do.
The man courteously waited for her to swallow before adding, ‘So what else do you normally like reading, then?’
‘Anything really,’ she shrugged. Being in London, talking to a stranger, albeit one that you’re touching shoulders with, was a rare phenomenon. She hadn’t yet dispensed with saying ‘sorry’ or ‘excuse me’ when she mistakenly jostled someone on the tube, which immediately singled herself out as an outsider, even after fifteen years in the city, but there was a difference between proffering up instinctive apologies and actually having a conversation with someone she didn’t know. She didn’t have anything better to do, though, apart from a quick floss, but then, that’s what she was just about to pay someone to do.
‘I usually have a few books on the go, which I know you shouldn’t do, respect for the author and all that, but, um, biographies, classics, I guess, and I try to read a few of the Booker list each year, because I feel that I should, historical fiction, some science fiction if it’s not too weird, a bit of crime, if it’s not too gruesome, um, poetry, I do like a good poem.’
‘Who doesn’t?’ He replied smiling. Up until then their exchange had all happened side-on, giving a nod to the unspoken English rule of respecting one another’s personal space, quick side glances punctuating the questions and responses. Jayne swivelled slightly in her seat to face him; he smiled and then, embarrassed, they both quickly looked away. This didn’t happen to girls like her. Strange men in public places didn’t just strike up a conversation about literature.
She started scrabbling through her bag for her phone, under the pretence of checking the time but actually just to break the silence. Thank God he didn’t know that without her glasses she could barely see the screen, let alone the numbers on it, but she didn’t want to put her specs on and spoil the illusion of being a seductive temptress. She was pretty sure he was incredibly attractive, but admittedly, at that moment he resembled a beautiful pastel drawing that was delicately smudged around the edges. To keep up the charade of having the power of sight she sighed, prompting the man to venture, ‘They seem to be running late today.’
She nodded and took one of the essays out, but deciphering the swirled swags and tails of teenage penmanship didn’t really cut it as a distraction technique, particularly as she was only pretending to read. Her eyes began straying to the side, at exactly the same time as the man looked up from the page of his book.
‘You know, reading shouldn’t really be so much of a chore,’ he teased. ‘If your forehead got any more furrowed you’d start to lose things in there.’
‘Is it that obvious?’ she smiled, ‘Here I am trying to earn an honest living and all I get is mockery.’
She could sense his mouth turning up at the edges at her feeble attempt at being affronted, and he held his hands up, ‘Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on your obvious dedication to education; it quite literally seeps out of you.’
‘I hate the word ‘literally’,’ Jayne rolled her eyes, ‘Like it literally kills me. And ‘seeps’, now you come to mention it.’
‘I’m like that with ‘gusset’.’ He shivered theatrically. ‘Eugh.’
‘I have a theory about that, actually.’
‘This’ll be interesting. A theory about gussets.’
‘Indeed. I think, in the case of gusset, it’s purely because of what it describes, so if it swapped its meaning with a nice word, it would be okay – like if Judy Garland had sang ‘Somewhere Over the Gusset’ it wouldn’t be a horrible word.’
‘Okay, so by that reasoning, and I grant you, it’s a valid theory, we’d be sitting here saying ‘I loathe the word ‘rainbow’, bleurgh. Vile word. Yuck’.’
‘Exactly!’ They both sat back in their seats smiling. The room had relaxed; it felt lighter, more convivial.
Jayne started to feel butterflies building inside, a sensation she hadn’t really experienced since she was a teenager. It was quite an achievement to get to the age of thirty-three and to never have experienced anything resembling a light storm, let alone a thunderbolt. She’d even tried match.com recently, at Rachel and her friend Abi’s insistence, which she thought should really be renamed lookingforaquickbonk.com because every bloke’s interest had evaporated once she’d made it clear that she wanted dinner first. She didn’t think it was too much of a hardship for a man to endure a meal with her if mediocre but enthusiastic lovemaking might be on the menu after, but it turned out that it was.
‘Okay, Mister, I’m going to enter into the spirit of this because, well, we’re clearly not getting our teeth seen to any time soon. Quick-fire round. Favourite character of all time?’
‘Huckleberry Finn. You?’
‘Jane Austen’s Marianne Dashwood.’
‘Predictable, but it’s your call. Favourite book from childhood?
‘TheMagic Faraway Tree.’
‘Excellent choice. I loved Moonface. And Mr Saucepanhead.’
‘Saucepan Man.’
‘What?’
‘His name was Saucepan Man, you said Saucepanhead.’
‘You say tom-arto, I say tom-ay-to.’
‘Well, no, we both say tom-arto, because we are not from the Land of the Brave.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ He comically puffed out his chest and affected a deep baritone voice, ‘I am incredibly courageous.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ she quipped back without missing a beat, ‘but just to prove it, what was the last macho thing that you did?’
Still in character as Johnny Bravo he said, ‘well, I asked an attractive stranger sitting next to me in a waiting room for her number so we can meet up and celebrate our clean teeth by drinking red wine and coffee.’
The invitation had been so unexpected Jayne almost had to sit on her hands to stop them from applauding. Quickly composing herself, she replied with what she hoped was a tone of flirty sarcasm, ‘Wow, you are a charmer.’
The elderly lady next to Jayne who had been following their exchange with a barely concealed smile reluctantly left her seat after being called by the clipboard-wielding receptionist, but not before giving Jayne a little wink.
Jayne moved her coat and scarf off her lap and onto the warm vacant seat. ‘I need to save this for my twin, she’s meeting me here after my appointment,’ she felt the need to explain.
‘Oh my, there are two of you?’
‘Yep, non-identical. The only thing we share is a birthday, though, so you can put your seedy thoughts back in their box.’
‘Seedy thoughts, indeed. Jeez, a second ago I was a charmer and now I’m a pervert. How did that happen?’
‘It’s a delicate tightrope you walk. Right, back to books. What’s your favourite last line of a book?’
‘Oooo, good question, but very easy. ‘The president of the immortals had ended his sport with Blank.’ Who’s Blank?’
‘So simple you’re embarrassing yourself – and the answer is Tess of the D’Urbervilles.’
‘She shoots, she scores. Okay, maybe that one was too easy, how about …’
He was cut off mid-sentence by a woolly mammoth smothering Jayne in a bear hug. ‘Oh my God, Jayney, I’m so sorry I’m late!’ Rachel shrugged off her huge fake-fur coat, and plonked herself down on the spare chair. ‘Rubbish day, didn’t stop, so sorry, were you waiting long? She suddenly stopped, aware that she’d interrupted a conversation. ‘Oh Jeez, sorry, who are you?’ she stuck her hand out over Jayne, and he slowly took it.
‘Will.’
His name was Will. They’d been talking for a quarter of an hour and her sister had managed to get this information in under a minute. It had never even occurred to Jayne to ask him his name; maybe this was why she was still single. Finding out his literary preferences seemed much more important than what his parents had decided to call him.
‘I know you – I’m sure I do,’ Rachel was peering at him, eyes narrowed.
A little part of Jayne started to wither and die inside. Please, please let Will not be one of the multitude of men she had seen making the walk of shame from her sister’s room as she was leaving for work in the morning. The trouble with having a flatmate whose aim in life was to horizontally rumba with all of London’s bachelors, and much to Jayne’s disgust and Rachel’s annoyance, some who were bachelors only in mind and behaviour, but not in the eyes of the law, was that it didn’t leave many men who were untouched for Jayne. Not that it had ever bothered her before, but at that moment, it really, really did.
‘Will? Jesus, it’s Billy!’
Oh God.
Jayne decided that she didn’t want any part in their cosy reunion, so started to fidget in her seat, packing her pathetic little belongings back in her bag before they started doing whatever it was people did after one-night stands.
He shrugged apologetically, offering up a polite smile to compensate, ‘Um, sorry, I don’t think we’ve met,’
‘Billy, Billy, I’m Rachel, Rachel.’
Jayne suddenly felt really bad for her sister. Having a person who’s seen you naked not remembering, or even worse pretending not to, was really humiliating, and she knew all about that. For it to happen to Rachel was actually quite unheard of; it was normally her sister feigning ignorance in a corner when a dubious pull popped up, never the other way round.
‘Jeez, Billy, this is Jayne. Jaayynne,’ Rachel implored.
‘Jayne? Jayne? Oh my God!’ Before she had the chance to duck out of the way, or at least prepare herself, Will had lunged at her, enveloping her in a huge hug and burying his face in her neck. She had no idea why a conquest of Rachel’s would be so emotional, but she let him carry on holding her because he smelt of coconut. She chose to put to one side the fact that he’d slept with her sister, because this was the closest she’d come to male contact for nearly two years, and up until four minutes ago, she was going to marry him.
Rachel suddenly started hugging both of them over the top of his hug, so she was trapped in some strange kind of pyramid embrace. What the hell? Jayne started wriggling free of the pair of them and finally extracted herself from their bizarre outpouring of affection.
‘Jayne? What’s wrong? I thought you’d be really pleased to see him after all this time? Why are you being weird?’
Me? The world has just gone crazy, she wanted to shout, but ever the diplomat, settled instead for, ‘Um, sorry, I just think it’s a bit inappropriate, and I should probably leave you two alone, to … er … reminisce without me.’
‘Jayne. Put your glasses on.’
‘What?’
‘For the love of all that’s holy. Put. Your. Glasses. On.’
She did.
‘Now look at him.’
Jayne’s heart flipped over and she thought she was going to be sick. It had taken eighteen years, but she’d finally found the first love that had slipped through her inexperienced fingers. Speak she willed herself, say something amazing, something heartfelt and articulate. Show him what he’s been missing for nearly two decades. Opening her mouth to speak, to add to the magic of the moment, Jayne’s first words were suddenly indecently smothered by an officious voice shouting, ‘Jayne Brady, ready for your scrape and polish?’
Chapter 2 (#uc5f6e201-e9fe-5802-96b4-0a8e48becffd)
The next few seconds happened in a blur; Jayne’s heart thumped loudly in her ears. Her thoughts whizzed through her mind faster than they ever had before and yet she instinctively rose out of her chair as her name was called. She’d never been one to defy authority, or sidestep an obligation; in fact her reliance on rules and propriety were a regular topic of ridicule from her sister. Jayne took three steps towards the nurse before she stopped abruptly in the middle of the room. What was she doing? She’d dreamed of this moment, well, not this moment exactly, she’d never considered that this was how it would happen. Semantics aside, it suddenly seemed ludicrous to her that she was prepared to pause it while she had her incisors whitened.
‘Um. You know what? I think I’ll reschedule. Er, if that’s okay? If it’s not, I’ll come now, but I’d really rather not,’ she heard herself say. Turning around to seek approval from Will and Rachel at her impulsiveness, she saw that they’d both stood up already and Will was holding her coat open for her to step into.
Will and Rachel had excitedly chosen the pub that the three of them were now walking briskly towards. Their speed had little to do with the unforgiving climate; they were propelled instead by their eagerness to allow almost two decades to melt into insignificance. Jayne kept pace with them, hearing their animated chatter, yet unable to add to it herself.
There wasn’t a day in eighteen years that she hadn’t fantasised about this moment; most mundane tasks had been tinged with a fleeting thought of where or what he was doing, she’d concocted the most creative and implausible scenarios where serendipity would thrust them together again, and now it was actually happening. On an icy pavement in a London suburb, against the tide of collar-up commuters, she was walking with Billy.
**
On the night she first met Billy, Jayne and Rachel were sitting in their kitchen, still in their school uniforms with the remnants of their microwave meals congealing on the plates in front of them. Rachel was engrossed in carving the words INXS into the back of her calculator with a compass while Jayne was studiously rewriting her essay using her sister’s slightly more sloped handwriting, remembering not to dot her ‘i’s’ like she would have done, but to draw a small bubble over each one instead.
Their mother, Crystal, was precariously balanced on the edge of the worktop hanging up a Native American dreamcatcher in the window that she’d just bought in a gemstone shop in Totnes. ‘I’ve got a new client coming round later for a reading, girls, so make yourself scarce.’
Of all of Crystal’s money-making schemes over the years this was the one that Jayne hated the most, and yet sadly was the most lucrative, so Crystal had no intention of cancelling it. Simply by closing her eyes, leaning forward in her chair and saying the words, ‘they are safe on the other side, and they love you,’ she made forty quid a session.
‘And?’ Rachel had yawned, leaning back in her chair.
‘And, this one might be my ticket out of this place, so don’t be like you usually are.’ Neither daughter had even flinched at their mother’s choice of words, they’d heard much worse. ‘It was bloody bad luck,’ was how Crystal had always described her unplanned pregnancy. ‘It was a night of passion under the stars, but I’ve been paying ever since!’ was the title tune on the backing track of their childhood and it was usually accompanied by a Chardonnay-scented hiccup and a sharp inhale of a Lambert & Butler.
Apparently their father’s name was Neil, aka Jupiter. That’s as much as they’d ever managed to get out of their mother regarding the identity of their dad. To be fair to Crystal, it wasn’t that she was deliberately withholding specifics from them, it was the only information she’d gleaned from him before she’d shed her sarong on Thailand’s Koh Pha Ngan beach and celebrated the full moon with some intoxicated love-making. Neil left Paradise Bungalows the next day for a school-building project in India and Crystal moved on soon after to a rice farm in Bali.
She’d initially put her tiredness and weight gain down to the carb-heavy diet and intense manual labour, but five months into her pregnancy there was no mistaking what was happening inside her body. She flew home to have the girls and her free spirit evaporated a little more each day, leaving behind a bitterness that was impossible to shift.
Despite only knowing Neil for a matter of hours, and ignoring the fact that little of that was spent talking, Crystal still blamed Jayne’s shortsightedness on this teenage lothario, along with her ability to put on a few waist inches by passing a wrapped chocolate bar. But over the years Jayne had learnt to channel her grandmother’s mantra of ‘deal best you can with the lot you’ve been dealt’. She reasoned that she should know, having had to help raise her eighteen-year-old daughter’s dark-haired twins in a seaside town where being from Exeter was considered exotic.
By the time the doorbell went that evening, both girls would have forgotten about Crystal’s grieving client had it not been for the overwhelming smell of sandalwood incense that engulfed the house, which apparently energised the spirits. ‘It’s what the clients expect,’ Crystal had said the first time the girls coughed their way through the fug.
This client seemed to fill the doorway; his broad shoulders were slightly stooped, yet still blocked out whatever remnants of daylight were left in the reddening sky behind him. Crystal had been characteristically effusive in her welcome. The social niceties and wide smile that only made their appearance when in the company of vulnerable people with cash were flaunted with abandon.
This time was different, though. The girls had almost walked straight past the man’s smart navy Volvo that was incongruent with the potholed driveway and forlorn wasteland of a front garden. As Jayne drew level with the driver’s window she had glanced in and seen a teenage boy sitting low in the seat, shoulders hunched, his dark lanky hair obscuring his eyes. She’d tapped on the window, but he didn’t respond. She’d knocked harder, hurting her knuckles, until he’d slowly raised his head, his eyes tired and lifeless.
He’d reluctantly leant across and wound down the window an inch. Rachel had nudged Jayne to move on, to see the inch as a deterrent, not an invitation; his whole demeanour had suggested that he just wanted to be left alone with his dark thoughts, a concept alien to Jayne, yet one that Rachel recognised and understood.
He’d answered her questions with expressionless shrugs and turned down the invite to join them on their walk into town with an almost imperceptible shake of the head. So Jayne had no choice but to open the back door of the car and climb in. Which is where she spent the next half an hour. Talking to the back of his head.
She’d once tamed a baby badger by leaving milk and bread out every night, crouching still in the shadow of their dustbin until it gradually relented, delaying its retreat back behind the shed by a few more seconds every day. Cracking Billy was slightly harder, but even he had a breaking point. A few days later when his dad had booked a repeat reading, Billy eventually surrendered and agreed to join them on their early-evening walk into town.
‘You go, Jayne,’ Rachel had nudged her in the back towards the off-licence door.
‘No! Why? You go!’
‘I can’t, that’s the bloke that knew my ID was fake last time.’ The sisters had then both turned and looked at Billy, their looks of expectation fading as they realised that he barely looked all of his fifteen years, let alone three years older. ‘Billy, tell Jayne to get the cider,’ Rachel had ordered.
‘Um, Jayne, I think you should get the booze, you look really old.’
‘Gee, thanks Bill, way to win new friends.’
‘Um, I, er, just meant that with your, you know, natural assets …’ He’d broken off to mime two mountains jutting out from his chest, ‘and your height, you’re the best choice.’
‘Well, thank you for the impromptu game of charades just there, but I’m actually the same height as Rachel.’
‘Yeah,’ Rachel had interrupted, ‘but your hair adds about five inches. For the love of all that’s holy Jayne, get the frickin’ booze, and remember, 11
October 1982, 1982, 1982.’
Having confidently secured the contraband the three teens had headed to the park to drink their stash, lament their luck in being allocated such crap parental role models and to lie back on the grass and gaze up at the light pollution. As the days had turned into weeks, and aided by cheap strong cider, they had graduated from grunts to words, from vague teasing chat to whispered, confiding thoughts – the type that only teenagers have the right to voice out loud.
They were an unlikely threesome back then. Jayne with her jolly optimism and round John Lennon-in-the-Yoko phase glasses; Rachel with her morose moodiness, clad in the current season’s must-haves – a walking oxymoron if ever there was one. And Billy. He had been one of those boys whose width hadn’t yet expanded in line with his height. He was already over six feet tall, but his body had looked as if it had been stretched. His jeans were perpetually falling down, not through any desire to be a frontrunner in the fashion stakes, purely through the lack of any discernible body shape. He wore glasses too, but his were thick-rimmed like Buddy Holly, and his hair flicked over his collar, due entirely to the fact that the person who used to drag him to the barbers was no longer around.
He’d been a helpless bystander to his mother’s swift decline. In the space of three months his home had gone to one filled with tantalising odours of dinner and the sound of Italian folk songs from his mother’s native Sicily, to one where only whispering was permitted and the only fragrance was disinfectant and disease. The doctor had said that cancer doesn’t have a smell, but Billy said it did. Before she’d passed away his mum had written him lots of little notes, each one clearly labelled in her neat handwriting, which had started to show signs of shakiness.
For every milestone in his life there was a corresponding envelope and in a fit of grief after returning from the crematorium he’d ripped open all the ones right up until his fortieth. He’d barricaded himself in his bedroom, away from the black-clad relations eating heat-direct-from-the-freezer sausage rolls and the unrelenting sound of their disrespectful chatter. He’d kept hearing little flashes of laughter rise up the stairs, which had made him so angry he’d punched a hole in the partition wall, so he’d moved his poster of Faye from Steps over it so his dad wouldn’t see and try to talk to him about his feelings.
He’d been lying on his back when he’d told Jayne and Rachel this, deliberately looking up at the cloudless sky and not at them so they wouldn’t see a small tear slowly run down his cheek and pool in his ear. But Jayne did.
It was edging towards the end of the summer and the three of them had shunned their usual spot in the park for a little cove between Torquay and Paignton that only the Devonshire locals knew about. They’d bought some crisps and sweet dessert wine that they were drinking from the only plastic cups that the Co-op had in stock,ironically, considering the turn the conversation had taken, with colourful party balloons on them.
Billy had flipped over then so he could see them better. In doing so he had given Jayne a tantalising glimpse of his taut stomach, tanned from a summer mainly wearing just board shorts. Her pulse had quickened, although she hadn’t at the time realised why.
‘Now here’s a question,’ he’d said, ‘Why do you both call your mum Crystal and not Mum?’
Jayne quickly glanced at Rachel to see which one of them was going to respond first. The answer would be the same regardless of which sister spoke, but Jayne knew her version would be less peppered with expletives. Rachel’s eyes were cast down, concentrating on her finger tracing patterns in the sand. ‘Ironically, her name is actually Catherine,’ Jayne said. ‘But she changed it to Crystal when she was a teenager. Catherine the Clairvoyant doesn’t really have the same ring to it, does it?’ Jayne paused. ‘But when we were really young, we were on this beach actually–’
‘On the rare occasion she took us anywhere,’ Rachel had interjected.
‘Yes, on the handful of times we were allowed out of the cellar – Jesus, Rach, it wasn’t that bad! Anyway, we were here, about six or seven years old and there was this bloke she fancied–’
‘Sensing a pattern yet, Billy?’ added Rachel, picking up clumps of sand and letting the small grains cascade gently between her fingers.
Jayne carried on, ‘and one of us shouted ‘Mum’, and she went ape and said that from then on we had to call her Crystal and to say that she was our sister, and our real parents had died in a fire.’
‘Jesus.’ Jayne still remembered how Billy’s eyes had grown wide with disbelief and how the cloak of pity that he’d worn around him ever since they’d known him then extended to include his two new friends too.
That summer was one of Jayne’s favourite memories of adolescence. Actually, if she was completely honest, it was her favourite hands-down. She didn’t have many happy recollections to choose from, so you could argue that it was all relative, but even taking that into the equation, the summer they had met Billy was a game-changer. She and Rachel had always avoided any outside interference from anyone else; they’d never explicitly talked about why they didn’t try to integrate themselves with anyone else at school, or on their road, but they both knew why. Crystal’s inability to relate to children was even more pronounced, if that was possible, if she didn’t share some DNA with them.
Billy’s detour into their lives was a timely reminder that there was life outside of their twindom. But as the cooler evenings started to seep in, Billy’s dad was offered a job with his brother’s brick-laying business in Slough.
Billy had ridden around on his bike the morning of the big move, despite them having said goodbye the evening before. ‘I got this for you,’ he’d mumbled, blushing. He’d held out a red and green friendship bracelet. ‘I thought you might like it. Or not. You don’t have to wear it. Bye.’ He’d turned to go, swinging one leg over his battered BMX.
‘Wait!’ She’d shouted, ‘Um, thanks Bill, it’s really nice. I um, actually got you a book – it’s only second-hand, but you once said that you liked Terry Pratchett and this is his new one. Wait here.’ Jayne had run upstairs to get it from underneath her bed. It had been there for nearly three weeks, still wrapped in the rough, recycled paper bag it came in. She hadn’t known how to cross over into the realm of present-giving-for-no-reason without it seeming odd, so she had carefully stowed it until she had figured out a way to give it to him without simultaneously combusting in mortified embarrassment. She’d bounded back down the stairs, flushed. ‘Here,’ she’d said, thrusting it into his hands.
‘Thanks, Jayne, this is great. I’ll start it in the car now. Um, say bye to Rachel too, and, um, well. Bye.’
He’d looked as though he was going to start peddling and then thought better of it; then he’d quickly leaned over and crushed his mouth onto hers. His tongue had darted frantically into her mouth, then out again, and then he was off, wobbling furiously down the cul-de-sac.
**
They’d suddenly stopped walking and were standing outside a restaurant. Jayne didn’t need to look at its name or see the menu to know that it was Italian. Rows of Chianti bottles with wicker bases and eruptions of hard candle wax lined the windows, and you could glimpse the ubiquitous red-and-white-checked tablecloths beyond. Jayne tuned back into what Billy, Will, and Rachel were discussing. It seemed as though they’d decided that a celebratory drink deserved an upgrade to dinner.
‘This suit?’ asked Will, gesturing to the restaurant. In that moment he could have bought a can of dog food and three plastic spoons and she’d have nodded just as eagerly as she found herself doing now.
Chapter 3 (#uc5f6e201-e9fe-5802-96b4-0a8e48becffd)
It may have been the warmth of the room or more likely the potency of the house wine, but Jayne found herself starting to relax. Having been initially shocked into silence, she was making up for it now, gabbling and prompting, asking and touching. She couldn’t stop touching him, actually couldn’t stop herself. She was peppering every question by gratuitously resting her hand on his forearm, which he, in turn, instinctively flexed a little each time it happened.
Rachel was sitting back in her chair smiling. It had taken her four years to persuade Jayne to cut his friendship bracelet off her wrist, by which time it was all matted and the once-vibrant red and green had faded to a grimy sort of grey. ‘Darling girl, it’s time,’ she’d said, approaching her sister with her nail clippers as they’d sat in Jayne’s room in her hall of residence.
Wearing his friendship bracelet had become a sort of talisman, a constant reminder that someone once thought that she was okay enough to buy a bracelet for. But Rachel was right; the chances of getting anyone else to ever kiss her were greatly reduced while she sported a grubby shackle around her wrist, so it went in the bin. Although, somewhat predictably, it didn’t stay there long; Jayne had waited for her sister to leave and then unearthed it under the two chicken-and-mushroom pot noodles they’d had for their dinner and popped it in her drawer.
Jayne had never been one of those girls whose sense of self worth depended on how many boys flirted with her. In fact, she’d be the first to admit that she wouldn’t have a clue if someone was actually flirting with her anyway – then or now. A wink probably indicated an eyelash gone rogue, a smile was no doubt meant for the person standing behind her and cheesy one-liners just elicited a quiet contempt from her, not giggles. In the months, then years, after Billy left, all the other sixth-formers were busy padding out their bras at the same time as their UCAS forms. Jayne, meanwhile, began burying herself in books, while glancing at her decorated wrist each time she turned a page.
Now that Jayne had the power of sight, and hindsight, she could see the shell of fifteen-year-old Billy was encased in a more mature, infinitely more stylish, and devastatingly attractive package. Even as a teenager he’d had an effortless soulful look that achieved that rare quality of never looking contrived. Back then, he’d never been so desperate for peer approval that he’d made a conscious decision to fit in, he just managed to. He listened to the Rolling Stones because he genuinely liked their songs, not because it embodied any sort of retro cool. He was the opposite of many of the kids at school, who swaggered about with a giant red tongue emblazoned on their t-shirts, while not being able to name five of their songs in a pop quiz. He still gave off that air now; nothing about him seemed put on or unnatural. He laughed because he found something funny and smiled because he felt like smiling.
Jayne was making no effort to conceal her excitement; she’d even wriggled to the edge of her seat, sitting as far forward as she could without gravity making the chair tip. ‘I can’t believe this! Okay, start with how you got here,’ she said, taking a bite of her garlic bread.
‘Bus. Number 33.’
‘No, you arse, why are you in London? What do you do here? Do you live here?’
Smiling at Jayne’s impatience, he said, ‘Yes I do, I moved here after catering college and then–’
‘You’re a chef! You always said you wanted to be – well done! Wow! That’s awesome!’
‘He’s a chef, Jayne, not a nuclear physicist, let the poor man speak,’ Rachel rolled her eyes at her sister, ‘Sheesh!’
‘Sorry, please continue.’
‘Thank you,’ he bowed his head in mock reverence. ‘So anyway, after college, I came up here to work in a kitchen in a hotel, which was really hard work but I stuck at it for about three years because even though the head chef was a nightmare, he was also amazing. But then I realised that I was in London and I should be enjoying it rather than being stuck in a sweaty kitchen pan-searing scallops all night every night, so I went to work in a riverfront café in Richmond, which was cool, very trendy, and stayed there for another three or four years and then last year I opened up my own deli.’ He paused, looking from one sister to the other, ‘What about you guys? Rachel, is Vivienne Westwood threatened by your genius yet?’
‘Sadly not,’ Rachel ventured as she dipped a breadstick in balsamic, ‘but I did go down the design route, kind of. I work for an interior-design firm, we do bars and restaurants. But not ones like this. More glass and metal and uncomfortable bar stools. Places where city types go to spend huge amounts of money on martinis.’
‘She’s underselling herself,’ said Jayne, ‘you should see some of the places she does, they’re amazing – the one at the top of the Midas Tower was incredible.’ Jayne turned briefly to her sister, ‘It was a bit dark, though. It was really difficult to read while I waited for you.’
‘Jayne, you are the only loser who would actually bring a book to a bar, so no offence, but that comment doesn’t count.’
‘A-hem.’ Will reached into his jacket pocket and held his book aloft for Rachel to see.
‘Oh. Okay, you two are the only losers.’
Will and Jayne shared a conspiratory smile, and then he said, ‘So Jayne, what do you do, apart from sneak in unapproved, yet indisputably genius, books to classrooms?’
‘I teach English and drama.’ She couldn’t help but sound a little apologetic at her career choice – here he was fulfilling a dream he’d had since he was fifteen, as was Rachel, kind of, and she spent her days specialising in riot control at a rowdy comprehensive. She clearly recalled sitting on the harbour wall in Brixham eating chips with Billy, announcing that she was either going to be an actress, a criminologist or a marine biologist. As a teenager you had all these fanciful ambitions that it never occurred to you weren’t realistic.
Mrs Slade, the careers advisor, once went around the room asking each child in turn what they wanted to do in life. Claire Bishop, who now showed people to their tables at The Inn on The Green, home of the two-meals-for-a-tenner menu, was adamant that she was going to work for NASA, and if you’d have told a fifteen-year-old Paul Ackroyd that he would forgo a future in politics for a spot on the fast-track graduate training scheme at Morrisons’ he’d have punched you in the face. Although, the fear of the act of violence returning to haunt him when he reached the hallowed door of Number Ten might have stopped him.
‘But teaching’s cool,’ Will said, ‘is it fun?’
‘You know what, it actually really is. I did drama at uni, and for a while wanted to go into acting, and so I did a couple of crappy plays that no one went to apart from friends of the actors who were in them–’
‘That’s not true, you were really good!’ Rachel interrupted. ‘Especially that one where you were an old Italian widow – what was that called?’
‘I was a Romany gypsy, and no, I wasn’t, but thank you.’ Jayne tipped her wine glass at her sister in a silent toast, ‘and so then I set up a drama club for kids who otherwise would be stabbing each other in the neck with sharpened pencils, and loved it, so then did a teaching course and here I am, ten years later, deputy head of English and Drama at what The Globe once called ‘The worst school in Britain’.’
‘And is it?’
‘No, not really, it’s in a bad area, and the exam results aren’t great, but apart from your usual handful of sociopaths that I should probably tip the police off about now to save time later, the kids are fab, and I love it.’
‘That’s really good,’ Will leant back in his chair, ‘I’m so pleased both of you found things you really like, and managed to get the hell away from Cruella. Sorry, am I allowed to call her that?’
‘That’s being kind, and not leaving Paignton was never an option!’ spat Rachel. ‘Can you imagine, if we hadn’t got out when we did, Jayne would be working in one of those amusement arcades that only have 2p machines that move back and forwards and I’d be on the game.’
‘At least you’d make money from sleeping with lots of men,’ Jayne jibed, ‘at the moment, you’re doing it for free.’
Rachel pinched her sister’s arm while pretending to pointedly ignore her comment. Focusing her attention solely on Will, she said, ‘I haven’t been back to Devon since leaving home at eighteen. Jayne goes back a bit more than me.’
‘What about your grandparents, though? You guys were quite close to them weren’t you?’
‘Sadly Pops died a few years ago, but Granny’s still fabulous,’ Jayne smiled, ‘We get her up to London a few times a year – she stays in town and we go for afternoon tea at the Savoy and to Sadler’s Wells to see the ballet. Basically she keeps us cultured in our otherwise heathen existences. But what about you? How long did you live in Slough?’
‘Ah, Slough. You know how in the credits for The Office it shows that big grey 1970s building on a busy roundabout? Well, that’s the best bit of it. I’m not kidding. Dad still lives there with his new wife, Trish, but I was hatching an escape plan pretty much as soon as we arrived there.’
‘So where do you live now?’
‘Richmond, above the deli.’
‘I love Richmond!’ Jayne gushed, ‘So you’ve been a couple of miles away from us all this time.’
‘Indeed.’ Will’s eyes twinkled, ‘I can’t believe you guys are here – this is awesome.’ The three of them sat in an easy silence, the kind that only happens when you’re with people who know each other really well, and even though almost two decades had passed since their last moment of amiable peace, it didn’t appear to matter at all.
They were still reminiscing and laughing long after their plates of tiramisu and coffees had been finished. The waiters started upending chairs on all the empty tables around them. The message couldn’t have been less overt had the staff all come out in their pyjamas.
‘I think that’s our cue. Subtle, aren’t they?’ Rachel said, thanking Will as he gallantly helped her back into her faux fur.
‘So, do you live near here? I can walk you back if you like?’
Jayne quickly replied, ‘that would be great,’ trying to sound as nonchalant as a bottle and a half of thirteen per cent wine would allow, at the exact moment Rachel replied, ‘No thanks, we’ll be fine.’ Sensing the eagerness, bordering on desperation, in her sister’s voice, Rachel then countered, ‘I mean, if it’s not too much trouble …’
Jayne knew she’d said it before, and no doubt would do again, but as the three of them linked arms and started weaving drunkenly towards the door, she made a telepathic pledge to work really hard to stop all wars and be the catalyst for bringing about world peace if God could just manage to make Will fall in love with her. Again.
Chapter 4 (#uc5f6e201-e9fe-5802-96b4-0a8e48becffd)
She felt a bit guilty about asking Him for an escape route out of singledom when there were refugees and victims of human trafficking and lepers in the world. Were there still lepers in the world? Jayne drunkenly wondered as they reached the Thai takeaway they lived above. Rachel started fumbling with her keys in the lock when Will leaned forward and said quietly in Jayne’s ear, ‘I’d really like to see you again.’
Deliberately misunderstanding, to protect herself from looking stupid Jayne replied, ‘That would be great, I’ll check with Rachel when’s good for her and let you know.’ Rachel’s back stayed resolutely facing them, even though she’d already turned the key in the lock.
Will, slightly chastened, swayed from foot to foot, ‘Um, obviously I want to hang out with both of you sometime, but I actually meant just you. By yourself. With me.’
‘Oh. Cool. Um, yes, that would be fine. I mean great. That would be wonderful. I’m free tomorrow.’ She checked her watch and saw that it was after midnight, ‘I mean today, tonight. Oh Jesus, does that make me sound really desperate? I mean I usually do have a really packed rock’n’roll schedule, but as luck would have it I’ve just had a cancellation,’ she grinned sheepishly. ‘And now I’m talking too much. You can retract your invitation at any time and I absolutely will not be offended.’
He smiled and ducked his head so his lips brushed her cheek ‘Tonight sounds awesome. There’s a little wine bar in Richmond called Magnum’s, do you know it? How about we meet there at eight?’
Will was barely out of earshot when Rachel spun round on the doorstep screaming. ‘O.M.G. He asked you out! You’re going on a date with him! This is beyond brilliant!’ Her eyes suddenly grew wide in horror, ‘Oh God. You have absolutely nothing to wear. If only we were the same size, that new DVF shirtdress I bought last week would be perfect. Right. I’m meant to be doing Zumba with Marco but I’ll tell him we’re spending the day finding you something gorgeous, he’ll understand.’ She started typing furiously on her phone, ‘I’ll tell him to meet us at Selfridges at ten.’
‘Ten? A.m.? On a Saturday? Seriously Rachel, I’ve got clothes, it’s not as though I walk around with nothing on all day every day, I’ll dig something out.’
‘Dig something out? Please tell me you didn’t just say that you would ‘dig something out’ for possibly the most important date you’ve ever had or ever likely to have? Jesus, Jayne, can you start taking this seriously?’
It had always been the same. When they were little Rachel used to lay out Jayne’s clothes for her each morning to take away the risk of her making a huge sartorial error. Even Rachel’s school uniform had been customised to the point of bearing little resemblance to its original incarnation. Her skirt had given two fingers to the school regulation of knee-length and she’d even cut her tie in half all the way down before carefully hemming it. Jayne had commented at the time that she’d looked like a country-and-western singer, but like Rachel had swiftly retorted, ‘It’s called fashion, Jayne. You wouldn’t understand.’ Which was true. It wasn’t that she didn’t care how she looked, but she’d always placed function above form in life, and warmth and comfort received greater prioritisation than colour or shape.
Jayne sighed. Resistance was futile. ‘Fine, if it’s so important to you to take me shopping and do a Gok, then okay, I will allow you and Marco to guide me through the maze of Selfridges, but if either of you make any attempt to manhandle me into dresses or make any reference to my ‘bangers’, I’m walking out and you can get another hobby.’
‘Deal.’ Her phone pinged. I’m there like a bear. Mxx
Dear Lord, what had she let herself in for? Thankfully Jayne had had a lifetime of dealing with Rachel, and Marco was the exact replica of her, right down to their shared love of the naked male anatomy. They’d felt a gravitational pull towards each other during design college somewhere between the module on concealing air-conditioning vents and the importance of layering textures in your soft furnishings. Back then he was called Mark, before the run-of-the-mill ‘k’ was dropped in favour of the most exotic ‘co’.
Learning the art of making friends at the age of nineteen was a new one for both of the sisters but Rachel, with her chemically straightened afro cut into an angular black bob, heavily rimmed kohl eyes and a scowl that said, ‘what the hell do you want?’ permanently inked on her face, found it harder.
Jayne had tried to get her to smile encouragingly or even just tone down the stare that said: ‘I could kill you with one sarcastic put-down’. Rachel had howled with mirth when Jayne suggested that ‘a stranger was just a friend she hadn’t met yet’, which made her silently vow to stop reading the slogans on t-shirts and memorising them for future repetition. Rachel wasn’t being deliberately rude or obtuse, though, the truth was she was just fiercely independent. Their upbringing had turned Jayne into an apologetic people-pleaser and given Rachel an almost impenetrable body armour.
Jayne had also spent most of her university life with her nose touching her textbooks, but for her it was borne partly out of love for her subject and more than she would ever admit because it was the first time she wasn’t in the same class as Rachel. They’d never had to experience that moment where you walk into a new classroom and have to do the dreaded scan to see where the empty places were and who looked the least-offensive person to sit by, because they’d always been greeted by the other one with one hand in the air waving and the other firmly planted on the seat next to them, mouthing ‘saved’ at anyone that dared to attempt to sit down.
Everyone always assumed that being a twin meant that you had this invisible bubble sealed around you that repelled and reflected any outside interference, and this was sort of true, it does take a very special kind of person to see a crack and squeeze into it, and boy, was Mark/co persistent. When Rachel called her sister excitedly on her way home one day in her second term to say that she’d met this guy called Mark and they were going to see one of his friends play in a band that night at a random bar in Clapham, Jayne couldn’t have been more surprised. Nice surprised. Not a little bit jealous in the least. Nope, not her. Good on Rachel. And Mark. She had hoped they were very happy together.
Thankfully this level of ‘nicely surprised’ soon gave way to ‘actually nicely surprised’ because Marco became the confidante that Rachel always wanted Jayne to be. It meant that she turned to him to discuss the guest editorship of the latest issue of Wallpaper and whether perspex platforms were going to make a comeback. Jayne had very little to contribute on either of these topics, so Marco being around actually worked in everyone’s favour.
How Jayne escaped relatively unscathed from the morning’s shopping she had no idea – in fact she was pretty certain Rachel and Marco would still be standing outside the changing room suggesting that if she leant forward, she could squeeze into the bodycon dress a little easier, had she not called time on the whole charade at about three. Jayne had got so bored she’d even resorted to taking armfuls of clothes into the cubicle with her, locking the door and then sitting in the corner playing solitaire on her mobile pretending to change, while her personal shoppers shouted out encouraging comments and questions, such as ‘what does the teal one look like?’ To which she’d replied things like, ‘what’s teal?’ while putting a three of clubs on top of a four of hearts.
They’d finally all decided that skinny jeans were not made for her – Jayne knew this after trying one pair on; why she had to try on a further three pairs was beyond her, ‘They’re different brands, so different cuts,’ was Marco’s reasoning, but she thought the clue was in the name. But the outfit that finally raised a smile from Rachel, jazz hands from Marco and an ‘Hallelujah’ from Jayne was a long maxi dress with a swirly paisley print in oranges and reds, which, according to Rachel, was very ‘retro-chic’ which was, apparently, a good thing.
That evening she teamed her new purchase with her failsafe denim jacket that had been a faithful staple of her wardrobe for a decade, big hoop earrings and, miracles of miracles, hair that seemed to instinctively know that it had to behave itself, and she was ready to go.
‘You look lush, Jayne, really lush.’ Rachel stood to give her a hug and Marco gave her a big thumbs-up from the sofa, where he was lounging, throwing cashews into his open mouth. ‘If you’re not coming home tonight, text me.’
‘Shut up, like that’s going to happen. It’s not even a date date. Just two friends talking about old times. Together. In a friendly, platonic, keeping-clothes-on kind of way.’
‘Oh okay. I’ll come too then, shall I?’ Rachel said mischievously.
‘Don’t you bloody dare. See you later!’
He was already sitting at the bar when Jayne walked in, and spotting her loitering at the door, gave a little salute. Oh God, he was gorgeous. She had a flashback to the restaurant last night, even once she had the gift of 20/20 vision, she’d been so overwhelmed with the reality of who he was she hadn’t fully comprehended quite how absolutely beautiful he was. The gaunt, lanky features of fifteen-year-old Billy had mellowed and softened, and thankfully his dark straggly mullet had since been ceremoniously lopped off. Even his childlike nickname had morphed into a more mature moniker that suited his new broad shoulders and strong silhouette. The ridiculously blue eyes that had once been hidden behind a centimetre-thick piece of glass were now dancing. He stood up as Jayne approached him – gentlemanly too, she thought – and he towered over her, which, as she was just shy of six foot herself, almost never happened.
‘Hey you.’
‘Hey.’
There was a semi-awkward moment where they both weighed up how to add an element of tactility to the greeting. Kiss, hug, both? Both it was. Excellent.
‘So we don’t see each other in eighteen years and then twice in twenty-four hours?’ He helped her shrug off her coat and hang it on the back of her chair. He even waited until she sat down to perch back up on the stool himself. ‘I ordered a bottle of Prosecco to celebrate. I know it’s essentially poor man’s fizz, but I thought this moment warranted something sparkly, and I am, lamentably, a poor man.’
Jayne grinned to put him at ease, and also to give her mouth something to do, ‘bubbles are bubbles to me, and that sounds super.’ Super? Super? Jesus, Jayne, why not just order lashings and lashings of ginger ale and be done with it.
After returning the bottle to the ice bucket on the bar he turned and held out a glass for her. ‘Here you go, Madam.’
‘Cheers, here’s to … erm … old friends?’
‘Old friends. And new beginnings.’ They tapped glasses, ‘Um, did that sound as cheesy as I think it did?’
Thankful that the first laugh of the night was aimed at his awkwardness and not hers, she giggled, ‘yes, a little bit, but I know what you mean.’ She could see his neck and cheeks colouring a little – if she didn’t know better she would say that he was nervous, which was ridiculous, he couldn’t be. That would be like Heidi Klum in awe at meeting Meatloaf. Rachel said she did this too much, exaggerate her flaws for comedic effect, and she knew she was right. Obviously she didn’t actually resemble Meatloaf, that would be incredibly unfortunate, but she was also fairly realistic that neither, sadly, would she ever be mistaken for a close, or even distant, relative of Ms Klum’s. Except perhaps in one of her annual over-the-top Halloween costumes. See? I did it again, Jayne thought.
‘So,’ Will said finally, taking a Dutch courage sip, ‘How were the last nineteen hours since I last saw you?’ Jayne started regaling him with the highlights of her day spent with the fashion police and soon they were both laughing, which proved to be quite difficult while balancing precariously on a barstool that was about half the width of her behind.
Thankfully, before too long a couple vacated the battered leather Chesterfield that was nestled at the end of the bar, so they could continue their inane banter in more comfort. They sat alongside each other, both turned inwards, he stretched his arm along the back of the sofa and Jayne kept getting whiffs of a heady combination of expensive aftershave that almost masked his coconut shampoo, and his natural masculine muskiness that made her want to run her tongue all over his face. She didn’t, though. Not yet.
He told her all about his day in the deli over a sharing platter of fried seafood, giving her enlightened observations on all the regulars that came in for a chat and a slab of stinky Italian cheese. It seemed to Jayne as if he’d built up a proper little community around his shop; she had no doubt that the quality of his produce was outstanding, but she was also absolutely certain that the Bugaboo Brigade found other reasons for choosing his establishment as their regular low-fat latte haunt – less to do with what was on the counter and more to do with what was behind it. He seemed totally oblivious to his own personal merits, though, just delighted that his carefully sourced prosciutto was garnering such a following. Bless him.
‘There’s this old dude called Bob the Boat because he lives on a canal barge,’
‘And his name is Bob?’ Jayne helpfully interjected.
‘Exactamondo. And by all accounts he was this proper Romeo back in the day, with a little black book of women that was not very little. He’s hilarious. He’s over eighty and is always entertaining different ‘companions’ on his barge – so he comes in for exotic ingredients for aphrodisiac canapés, dirty sod.’
‘Good on him.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ Will raised his glass, ‘Here’s to Bob the Boat, and all who allow him to sail in them.’
‘Eugh! That’s gross! You’re gross.’
He paused for a moment, studying his glass before looking sideways at Jayne. He reached over to tuck a stray curl behind her ear and said quietly, ‘And you’re beautiful. I thought it then, and I think it now.’
They half-walked, half-ran, doing a funny sort of power walk that Jayne had only ever seen lycra-bottomed mums with pushchairs and wrist weights doing along the towpath. Quickly weaving in and out of people meandering slowly along the pavement, Jayne didn’t know who was pulling whom along, they both seemed equally eager to reach their destination.
As soon as the door to his flat slammed behind them they’d collapsed on the stairs, ripping at each other’s jackets, buttons and belts. His fingers were in her hair, then tilting her chin so his lips could run around her neck, his teeth gently biting her earlobes. Her mouth desperately searched out his and their lips locked as they fumbled out of their clothes. With their tongues still heatedly circling each others’ Will kicked off his shoes so he could wriggle out of his jeans, while Jayne reached behind her and unlocked her bra. Will gasped and pushed her breasts together. He buried his face in between them and they both laughed.
‘We could actually go upstairs?’ He murmured into her chest.
‘No, let’s stay here. I’ve never made love on the stairs before.’
‘Are we about to make love ?’
‘It certainly looks that way. Now stop talking.’
Chapter 5 (#uc5f6e201-e9fe-5802-96b4-0a8e48becffd)
Jayne backed away and looked suspiciously at the beige-green sludge that Will was offering to her on an outstretched spoon. ‘Try this.’
‘What is it?’ she said gingerly, edging a little closer, but still not fully entering into the spirit of the game.
‘Elderflower and pear chutney. I don’t know if I’ve got the right amount of juniper berries in it or not. What do you think?’
Cautiously she allowed the tip of the spoon to touch her lips, ‘Oh my days, Will, that’s amazing,’ she opened her mouth wide so he could put the whole spoon in. ‘You need to do something about the aesthetics, though, because it looks like snot.’
‘Thanks for that, sweetheart, beautifully put. I might put that on the label as its tagline – Looks like phlegm but tastes delicious.’
‘There’s something to be said for honesty in advertising. Can I have another spoonful?’ she said leaning in.
‘No. You’re procrastinating, go to parents’ evening.’
‘Don’t make me,’ she whined, laying her head on his shoulder. ‘I can’t cope with the angry stage mums no doubt already forming a line to abuse me for not picking their kids for the main parts in the play. Can’t I stay here and eat chutney all evening with you? Please?’
He kissed her on the top of her head, momentarily flattening the wild black ringlets that fizzed out at right angles in every direction. He gave her bottom a playful swat. ‘Go. Go and be charming, be beguiling, and lie through your teeth as to why their cherished offspring didn’t make the cut. I, meanwhile, am going to attempt to master a pumpkin, orange and chilli marmalade. I may save you some if you’re good.’ He started humming the same jaunty tune he always did when he was concocting culinary brilliance. ‘Call me if you’re done by ten and I’ll come and join you in the pub.’
Despite her procrastinations, which she reasoned were completely understandable – who wouldn’t want to spend their evening perched on a kitchen stool being spoon-fed tenderly invented recipes from the love of their life – Jayne actually quite enjoyed parents’ evenings. Admittedly nothing really prepared her for one parent a couple of years ago sticking their iPhone into her face saying ‘Can you say again for the tape how Mia can improve her comprehension skills?’ Or the dad who kept rolling his eyes and making quack-quack movements with his hands whenever his wife was talking – she could tell he was a real keeper.
The hubbub of noise emanating from the hall could be heard from the adjacent staff room, which was packed with every member from each faculty. Jayne nodded, waved and smiled her way through the throng to the kettle, where Abi stood waiting for her, two mugs of extra-strong Nescafé in her hands. She handed Jayne the one saying ‘Keep Calm, It’s Almost Summer’. They’d joined the school at the same time almost ten years ago, both of them fresh from finishing their PGCEs, sporting wide Bambi-eyes and proudly clutching their meticulously filled-in and highlighted lesson plans with noticeably shaking hands. Fast-forward a decade and the hopefulness that they had then was still there, despite an unhealthy dose of hard-earned cynicism trying its best to erode it.
Abi blew across the top of her coffee and said, ‘So what’s it to be this time?’
‘I was thinking about that on the way over here. I think Queen.’
‘As in your son is one?’
Jayne laughed and spilt a bit of coffee on her shirt, ‘Oh no! Quick give me a tissue!’ She arranged her scarf over the damp patch of brown and shrugged, ‘That’ll do. Right, what’s mine?’ They’d devised this game to get them through the early years of parents’ evenings to keep the terror at bay and it had become a rather un-PC ritual they did every term now.
‘Eiffel Tower.’
‘Bugger off. I can’t just drop in the words Eiffel Tower when I’m talking about year eight English. Make it an easier one.
‘Okay … what about ice skating?’
‘Wow, you’re on fire tonight. Okay, fine. Ice skating.’
They took their seats at adjacent tables in the hall and, despite the parents all having booked their allotted ten minutes with each teacher, there was already a jostling crowd gathering in front of both of them.
A few parents in, Jayne remembered the task in hand. ‘Right then, okay, well, Sophie did very well on the Anne Frank project, some very insightful creative writing on the diary excerpts, which gained her a B+, which was excellent.’
‘Why didn’t she get an A?’
‘Well, I like to think that grading projects is like judging an ice-skating competition,’ Jayne heard a muffled snort from the next table, ‘every technical aspect has its own mark and there are floating marks for added flair and flourishes, so in that respect, B+ was the end result. So all in all, very good effort.’
Bidding a weary farewell to the last parents, the two teachers sat back in their chairs, mentally exhausted. ‘Jeez, how many different ways can you cover up the fact that you haven’t got the faintest idea who their child is?’
Abi’s acerbic comments delivered with her singsong Irish accent made Jayne laugh every time. The first time they’d met was the interview day for the new intake of NQTs. Abi had run into the crowded classroom late, the door slamming behind her, punctuating her arrival, her dishevelled hair piled high on her head with a colourful scarf wrapped around it. She’d hurried to the empty seat next to Jayne and after a time whispered, ‘I’m going for the art job – please tell me you’re not or I can’t be your friend.’
‘You’re safe, and so is our friendship,’ Jayne whispered, ‘I’m English.’
‘That’s unfortunate, but you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself,’ she had muttered back, without a hint of sarcasm.
Jayne had tried hard to suppress a giggle and failed. ‘Is something funny?’ barked the deputy head who was in the middle of her surprisingly unwelcoming welcome speech. Abi had surreptitiously winked at Jayne after they’d shaken their heads in unison and Jayne knew that wasn’t the last time this barmy woman from County Mayo would get her in trouble.
In the summer holiday after their terrifying first year had ended, she’d taken Jayne back to Ireland to decompress for a few weeks. Her family were from this gorgeous little town on the banks of the River Carrowbeg called Westport that was bathed in the shadow of the Croagh Patrick Mountain. It was so beautiful that a big-shot Hollywood director visiting Ireland to discover his ancestry had decreed it was the perfect setting for his upcoming rom-com, which even before the first scene was filmed was already being hailed as the hit of the following summer.
Abi had told Jayne on the ferry over that the whole town, ‘nay, the whole county, was excited beyond belief to have this happen, then a week into filming they realised it was the biggest load of ball-ache that ever was.’ But on the flipside, her parents, who were born and bred in Mayo, had rented out their two spare rooms to movie extras and had made enough to finally leave Ireland for the first time and go on a cruise around the Greek Islands. ‘Every cloud, Abigail, is sewn with a lining of silver thread,’ her mother had poetically said at the time.
It was the perfect way to unwind after three terms of permanent heart palpitations. They had spent their days sleeping, eating breakfasts cooked by the mother Jayne wished she’d had and drinking unfancy coffee on the riverfront promenade. Their evenings invariably ended up with them seven sheets to the wind singing in the lively Matt Malloy’s in the town centre. Everyone knew Abi, welcoming her back to the town with a hearty wave or heartfelt hug, and as a friend of hers – albeit an English one – Jayne wasn’t denied the odd embrace either.
‘It would have been so fabulous to grow up here, where everyone looks out for one another,’ Jayne had said wistfully one afternoon as they sat on a bench overlooking the river, eating little pots of ice cream, that had flecks of real vanilla seeds in it, none of your supermarket own-brand impersonal white tub for the County Mayo folks.
‘Aye, it’s alright when you’re being good, but as soon as you decide you want a bit of fun, your mam knows about it before you’ve even done anything.’ As brilliantly timed evidence, the butcher from the shop opposite stood in his doorway and shouted across the road, ‘Abigail Sheeran, can ye tell ya mammy we’ve got some lovely steaks in for your da’s supper?’
Abi had raised her hand and nodded her assent, before turning to Jayne and muttering, ‘Exactly how many days until we bugger off back to London’s wonderful anonymity, where nobody cares what the hell you’re having for your dinner?’
Jayne had leaned her head back on the bench, closed her eyes and allowed the warm afternoon sun to bathe her face, ‘Seriously, enjoy it, if we’d have gone to my mum’s we’d be sitting in the dark with the curtains closed to avoid either the landlord collecting rent or cajoled into joining a séance or something.’
Jayne smiled at the memory of that summer as she watched Abi gather up her papers on her desk and stuff them into her large straw bag.
‘Why are you grinning like an idiot?’ Abi said accusingly, looking up.
‘Nothing, nothing at all. Right, are we going for a drink?’ Jayne paused, ‘Will said he might join us …’
‘What? How’s he going to do that if he’s not real?’ Abi was convinced that Will was a figment of Jayne’s imagination, carefully crafted so she didn’t have to go on any more soul-murdering blind dates with men that she described as ‘perfect apart from [insert interchangeable disgusting trait here]’.
Jayne didn’t know why she’d delayed introducing Will to any of her friends, and both him and they were starting to question her motives. She supposed the truth was, because she’d never really had a boyfriend before, she had no idea how to share him. Rachel imagined that it all stemmed back to the two of them pitching themselves against the world, and with Will, Jayne had fallen into the same default setting. She didn’t quite know exactly how being part of a couple could transfer to being part of a couple in a crowd of people.
It had been six months and so far she’d sidestepped the inevitable introductions, but he’d recently brought up the subject of them moving in together – albeit carefully shrouded in a discussion about ‘unnecessary outgoings’. He’d even casually mentioned that he’d been thinking that a three bedroom flat was too big for a man on his own … he might have to bring in two lodgers … oh hang on … He’d delivered this speech in a nonchalantly informal non-rehearsed way, that smacked completely of someone who had very much rehearsed it, very formally, in front of a mirror. Jayne hadn’t really answered yet, just giving nonchalant nods and saying that she’d talk to Rachel, whilst inside she was screaming ‘Hell to the Yes!’
‘I thought I told you Abi, he’s real, but just invisible.’
‘Aye, so you did. So the only way we’ll know he’s there is if he pees on the floor and we see a puddle?’
‘Exactly. So you’re very lucky you’re not wearing your expensive LK Bennett heels this evening as they’d be absolutely ruined by my boyfriend’s wee.’ Jayne tried to dodge the register of parents’ names that Abi had deftly rolled up and was aiming at her best friend’s head. ‘Come on then, the Pitcher & Piano?’
Soaking from the rain outside, Abi and Jayne both stood in the doorway of the pub, shaking themselves like wet Labradors, when Abi looked up and whispered, ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Jayne, three o’clock.’
Jayne was bent over the welcome mat scrunching her hair up, ‘What?’ she shouted.
Abi started talking out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Look at your three o’clock, he’s like Colin Farrell mixed with David Gandy, and oh Jesus, he’s waving. Jayne, I love you with all my heart, I do, but if he asks to buy me a drink, you have to bugger off quickly.’
Jayne straightened up and looked to where Abi was staring. ‘Stop perving, you moron, that’s Will.’
There was already an opened bottle of wine and three glasses on the table and he stood up as they walked over, ‘Hey baby,’ he leant over and kissed Jayne on the lips, then turned and put out his hand and said with his eyes twinkling mischievously, ‘You must be Abi. I was starting to think that you were pretend. Either that, or Jayne was having an affair every time she said she was going out with you.’
Abi pumped his hand up and down and grinned, ‘It was the latter, I’m afraid, but I managed to persuade her to give the other fella up and to give you a chance.’
The women started to regale Will with the highlights of the evening, and one bottle turned into two, which turned into three. And then he excused himself and headed to the loos. As soon as he was barely out of earshot, Abi spun round, ‘You’re kidding me? Now I know why you’ve hidden him away. Jeez, Jayne, I’m speechless, what an awesome guy. Marry him. Marry him now, and have babies that look like supermodels, but healthier versions. Oh my God, he’s amazing, and so funny, and lovely, and he’s totally besotted with you, he can’t take his eyes off you.’ She shook her head, ‘Wow, I’m speechless.’
‘So you keep saying, which is odd considering the amount you’re talking. Oi, enough with the hitting!’
‘Girls, girls, take it outside,’ Will said with a smile as he moved the table a bit so he could squeeze back onto his bench. ‘You’re meant to be respectable members of society, moulding our young, inspiring youthful minds.’
‘That is exactly what we’re supposed to do, Will, you’re right,’ Abi nodded, ‘but instead I spend most of my time washing paint off walls and placating tearful life models because my very immature A-level class think it’s okay to laugh and point and shout out, ‘you’ve got a tiny wiener.’ Little bastards. Anyway, Jayne tells me you run your own deli? That’s got to be fun?’
‘Yeah, I really love it,’ he replied, picking up a Budweiser beer mat and flipping it idly between his fingers, ‘I was a chef and didn’t really get much of a chance to experiment much and make what I wanted to make, so this way I can potter around in our kitchen and thankfully people seem to like it and want to buy it, although I don’t know if I’ll ever get rich selling five-quid pots of chutney.’
Even though most people would think that his devastating dimples were reason enough for Jayne’s infatuation, this was the side of Will that she loved – his modesty and complete lack of arrogance. He even seemed completely oblivious to the second-takes he commanded wherever he went, but she always spotted them and then basked in the envious staring that happened every time he kissed her or held her hand.
Rachel had asked her quite a few times if it bothered her, the reaction he got from women. The first time Rachel had seen it for herself was in a dry-cleaners, of all places – not that they were in the habit of accompanying him to do his laundry, that would be weird – but they were walking down Richmond High Street to get a coffee and he popped into the dry-cleaners to pick up a few shirts and came out all chuffed when the fawning woman behind the counter waived his bill. He couldn’t understand why, thinking that it must be ‘free-cleaning Friday’ or something ridiculous like that, and then Rachel, ever the diplomat, said, ‘it’s because she thinks you’re smoking.’
‘Smoking what?’ he’d even asked naively, before he had realised what she meant and blushed furiously. He’d ironed his shirts himself ever since.
‘Do you do catering as well?’ Abi leant in, her chin on her palm, pretending to be interested in the finer points of deli-management.
‘Nah, I did think about it, but it’s just me at the moment and that would mean taking someone else on, and I can’t do that until it makes more money, which ironically, I can’t do until I take someone else on, so I’m a little bit buggered either way. Jayne suggested hosting a couple of book clubs a week, and that’s become really popular, so I do the catering for those, but that’s just plates of nibbles really.’
‘We also put a little stand in the deli recently with second- hand books on, where you leave one and take one, so it’s sort of like an informal lending library,’ Jayne added, ‘It just encourages people to spend a bit longer in the shop and have something to eat with their coffee.’
‘Except the only people to really use it are us and that homeless bloke that sits outside the station who comes in every week to get a book for free.’
‘Richard?’ Jayne replied, ‘He does love his science fiction. Bless him.’
‘But in answer to your question, I do sell hampers and stuff for Christmas, you know with some handmade biscuits, cheeses and chutneys, they’re always a nice little earner, and I was thinking about doing Valentine’s hampers, so you can pick up a little basket of stuff, with maybe a bottle of bubbly in it too and go straight to the river or the park for a picnic.’
‘Awww, that’s lovely – is that what you’re going to do for me?’ Jayne asked.
‘No, darling, that’s what you’re going to do for me.’
‘Dammit,’ Jayne thumped the table sighing melodramatically, ‘I’ve just put a deposit on a troop of singing dwarves who paint themselves blue and pretend to be smurfs. Do you not want that? I wish you’d said, it cost me a fortune.’
‘No, that sounds much better than a crappy romantic picnic, champagne is so last year anyway, whereas dwarves never go out of fashion.’ He put his arm around Jayne’s neck and pulled her close to him before planting a kiss on her forehead.
Jayne grinned as Abi gave a low whistle and said, ‘Wow, you two really are made for each other. You’re both bonkers.’
Chapter 6 (#uc5f6e201-e9fe-5802-96b4-0a8e48becffd)
Rachel held her hair-straighteners in mid-air, steam curling softly upwards. ‘He wants us to move in with him?’ She paused. ‘Both of us?’
‘Yes, as lodgers. Sort of. He’s got two spare rooms and is a bit short of cash, and thought we might prefer to live in Richmond rather than Twickenham – the commute’s shorter for both of us and the deli’s downstairs so we’d always have food, and he can cook for us, so no more nasty kebabs, and I stay round there most of the time anyway, and I don’t want you to be lonely here by yourself, and … and … I sort of love him. Sort of.’
Rachel started running her GHDs through the length of her bob again, and then smiled at their reflections in the mirror. ‘That sounds bloody lovely. Say yes.’
Two weeks later the sisters sat in the middle of their living room with a screw-top bottle of wine, surveying the emptiness that surrounded them. They’d spent most of the day painstakingly peeling blu-tac off the walls where a map of the world and some Jack Vetriano prints had once been. Their drawers and cupboards had been squashed into brown boxes labelled STUFF R and STUFF J and yet neither of them was in any hurry to lock the door for the last time.
This flat had been the place of their dreams once; the refuge that they’d talked about since their early teens. It was more than just a place to live for them; it was a symbol of their success. Whenever Jayne had passed a new shop with the signage being hoisted up outside, she’d always pictured the hope of the new owners, the moment when they would gather their family and friends outside on the day of opening and proudly unveil the shop front, switching on the lights to delighted ahhs and oohs, to backslapping and chinks of plastic glasses and short speeches about dreams being fulfilled and new beginnings. This poky flat above a takeaway was that place for the Brady twins. On the day they moved in, they’d sat in exactly the same position on the floor, surrounded by very similar boxes, with another screw-top bottle of wine, elatedly rejoicing their escape from a future of no potential.
Moving to Will’s home was a mere postcode upgrade for Rachel, but for Jayne it was huge. Much like those faith-filled shopkeepers who only had a vague plan and blind optimism to help them sleep at night, she mentally ricocheted between gung-ho whooping at her good fortune and rocking back and forth, head in hands, wondering whether she was making a monumental mistake.
It wasn’t that she doubted Will in any way – she knew he was pretty darn perfect from that first cider-swilling afternoon in the park when they were fifteen, but she couldn’t help feeling that things like this didn’t happen to people like her. Surely it would only be a matter of time before the bubble burst, or the other shoe dropped, or some equally baffling phrase that describes the moment it all goes wrong.
But while Jayne waited for that to happen, they had some shopping to do. And that’s how the three new housemates found themselves in Ikea on a Friday night negotiating over how many tea lights is too many and what they were going to put in the hundreds of box photo frames that were stacked in the trolley. Family photos were overruled by all of them on the reasoning of not wanting to be reminded of their genetic origins – through shame and the desire to forget them for the girls, while Will was content keeping his own photos in his memory box under his bed. He didn’t need to walk past pictures of his parents in the hallway every day to know they were with him. So the consensus was to leave much of the décor up to Rachel, who was describing a jigsaw effect she wanted to create by painting a huge abstract, and cutting it up into rectangles that fitted into each individual frame, ‘art that reminds us to look at the big picture,’ she’d said, or something like that.
‘And a peace lily, we definitely need one of them.’ Will said as he wedged a rather sorry-looking plant into the gap between a new toilet brush and a set of six wooden hangers.
‘How the mighty have fallen.’ Rachel yawned, automatically picking up a white wicker basket and tossing it in. ‘It’s Friday night, people. Friday night. I hope this isn’t an indicator of what life with you will be like, Will, because, truth be told, I don’t think I can cope with this level of hedonism.’
‘I wanted to warn you quite how close to the edge I live, but neither of you would have believed me.’ Will put his hand on top of Jayne’s as she steered the trolley past the woks. ‘And if you both behave, I may well treat you to a £3 plate of Swedish meatballs.’
Later that night Will and Jayne were sprawled on his old leather sofa – which was now beautifully adorned with vibrant throws – and Rachel was slumped in a newly acquired Fatboy beanbag when Jayne judged the moment to be right to casually mention that she was heading down to Devon to see their granny the following Saturday and would anyone like to join her. By anyone she meant both of them. By would they like to join her, she meant they would join her. From the stunned silence that ensued you would have thought she’d said, ‘so I was thinking of draping myself in a Union Jack and going camping in the mountainous region between Pakistan and Afghanistan – is anyone keen on tagging along?’
Will purposely didn’t move his eyes from the television, he had very little inclination to revisit the place where his last days with his mum were played out. ‘Um … next weekend? Saturday’s my busiest day in the shop, um … sorry, sweetheart, you know I’d love to otherwise.’
‘It’s okay, I thought of that and Abi said she wouldn’t mind holding the fort for the day.’
‘Oh. Well the pricing system’s quite complicated and the till is a bastard to work if you don’t know how.’ He shrugged apologetically, ‘Sorry, darling.’
‘She’s coming round on Wednesday after work so you can show her how it all works. Next excuse?’ Jayne turned to Rachel, ‘Oi, sharer of the womb, you’re very quiet over there.’
‘Why the hell do you want to go back down there again? Weren’t you only there a few weeks ago?’
‘It was nearly a year ago and Granny sounded a bit quiet on the phone earlier, so I just thought us all going down would cheer her up, and she always asks what you’re up to, and she hasn’t met Will yet, and I thought it might be nice.’
‘Nice? Don’t get me wrong, Granny’s a sweetheart, but I Skype her every week. I don’t feel the need to physically be breathing the same air as her to fully bond.’
‘So I’m going alone, then.’ Jayne looked from her boyfriend to her sister, ‘By myself. Unaccompanied. Flying solo. Bereft of company. Deserted. Abandoned–’
‘Oh for the love of all that’s holy, I’ll come if that will shut you up!’ Rachel growled. ‘Will, you’re coming too. No arguments. If I’ve got to do this, you’re not getting out of it.’
‘Won’t it take ages to get down there?’ Will asked.
‘Three hours or so, or we could stay over somewhere – make a weekend of it?’ Jayne said.
Rachel and Will both chimed a resounding, ‘No!’ completely in sync.
Despite Jayne putting on re-runs of Doc Martin to get them all in the mood for a spot of South West fun and games, a bleak depression had descended over the spruced-up lounge, which even the fourteen new Summer Fruits-scented candles couldn’t disguise.
Today in Talk Devon we are discussing the frightening topic of a new wave of seagulls that are plaguing the seafronts of South Devon, and having a devastating effect on the profits of beachfront ice-cream sellers. We have Keith on the line from Salcombe. Keith, are you there …?
Will idly flicked the volume down on the radio.
‘What are you doing?’ Jayne yelped, reaching for the dial, ‘I want to hear about the killer gulls.’
‘You can talk the girl out of Devon, but you can’t take Devon out of the girl,’ laughed Will. ‘It’s great, though, a whole phone-in for debating ice cream-loving birds. I would say it’s a slow-news day, but I guess this is headline-making stuff down here.’
‘Don’t come over all townie on us Will Scarlet, you were a Devon boy for a while too, don’t forget.’
As the car took the exit at Newton Abbot and began the all-too-familiar descent along the coastal road towards Pine Grove Residential Home for the Elderly, it was as though someone had pressed the mute button – the mood in the car changed from jovial and jocular to silent and reflective. Rachel and Jayne were staring out of the windows, taking in the familiar sights that they’d grown up with – the sea to their right, the numerous B&Bs to their left, with comedy names like Dunromin and ambitious ones like Water’s Edge.
Small shabby hotels with paint peeling and no-smoking stickers in the windows along with AA rosettes from the 1980s and sad sun-faded signs that permanently said ‘vacancies’ flashed past. Boards outside advertised en-suites and colour TVs, the height of decadence once, and still perhaps a source of misplaced pride for the host. Occasionally you’d get a better class of bed and breakfast, one that deigned to call itself a ‘boutique hotel’. These had wi-fi and individually decorated rooms, which were sometimes even themed, because apparently there are people who want to pay money to come to the English Riviera and stay in a suite called Out of Africa. ‘Cheaper than Kenya and not as far,’ one sign read.
Growing up in a seaside town was a strange experience, Jayne thought. Your town is almost like a timeshare – wholly yours for the crappy part of the year and handed over to coach-trippers as soon as the sun shines. They always felt slightly superior to the grockles – as they called them then – watching them squealing while paddling their pasty white legs in the sea or queuing up for overpriced aniseed balls and fizzy cola bottles in the pick-n-mix at The Pavilion in Torquay. Getting their children’s faces captured in pastels by the resident artist sitting on the steps, who worked in Lidl during the winter months. It’s funny how a holidaymaker’s experience of the town you’ve lived all your life in is so different to your reality. Not once in eighteen years did Jayne buy a pick-n-mix bag of sweets, or get her portrait done.
Pine Grove was an imposing, lavender-clad manor house that had once been a beautiful private home before the owners realised in the 1990s that they had wildly underestimated the upkeep costs of such a grand property and sold it to some eager-eyed developers for bulging pots of cash. Home now to twenty of the area’s most affluent pensioners, it was considered The Place to end your days. Morbidly, much excitement was felt among families on the waiting list whenever news of a resident’s demise hit the grapevine.
Helen Brady, the twins’ grandmother, was the daughter of a wealthy fishing family that owned twenty of the area’s trawlers. After her father’s death in the Second World War, her new husband, Tom, took over the business. He’d been one of the ‘lucky’ ones, making that coveted return journey from France, albeit not as complete, physically or mentally, as he had been when he’d left just days after their wedding. He’d suffered the indignity of having tiny shards of shrapnel embed themselves in his thigh and groin, making him, at the age of twenty, in all likelihood infertile. Helen had borne the news with characteristic fortitude. Twenty years later, just as she was coming to terms with early signs of the menopause, the family doctor had told her the news that she was, in fact, expecting a baby.
Helen and Tom had enjoyed a privileged life in Torquay, living in a large villa that boasted expansive views across the whole of Tor Bay. But even though Helen had never intimated such a thing – she wouldn’t – her granddaughters knew that it must have come as something of a shock when her eighteen-year-old daughter interrupted her quiet idyll by introducing a pair of screaming babies into the equation.
Thankfully their grandparents had stoically risen to the challenge of being the only dependable constant in their drama-filled world. Ever ready to practise spellings, subtly prise off stained uniforms to quietly launder them, listen to their pre-pubescent witterings and whimsy and shoulder their teenage angst with good grace and the benefit of experience and learned lessons. Rachel and Jayne had loved standing on the bench at the end of their garden, hair thick with sea salt being whipped around their shining faces, passing their grandfather’s heavy leather binoculars back and forth between them, excitedly spotting dolphins and feeding the gulls that dipped and swooped over the cliff.
As she had got older and, sadly, alone, Helen had become more introspective, pensively reflecting on the childhood the twins could have enjoyed had she and Tom insisted on raising them, and not given Catherine – Crystal – the benefit of the doubt, again, and again. But hindsight was a wonderful, and quietly destructive, thing.
‘Darlings!’ Her warm, plummy tones greeted the trio as soon as they walked out into the gardens, where she was sitting watching some of the other inmates, guests, how would you describe them? Jayne wondered, enjoy a sedate game of croquet. ‘And this must be the handsome Will I’ve been hearing so much about.’ She started to rise out of her chair, knuckles whitening on the arms, when Rachel and Jayne rushed to push her back down.
‘Granny, sit down.’ Rachel eloquently ordered.
Helen let a little laugh escape, ‘Yes, Sir. How was the trip darlings, was it okay? You must be famished, let me ask them to get a tray of something together.’ She started looking around for one of the staff and raised her veined hand slightly to attract their attention as they sat down on the bench alongside her. ‘I’m so thrilled you came all this way from London. I’m very honoured! Now Will, Jayne and Rachel have told me that you are something of an entrepreneur?’
He smiled and dipped his head slightly, ‘I’m afraid you’ve been duped, Mrs Brady.’
‘Please, call me Helen,’ she interrupted.
‘Helen. I’ve got a very small Italian delicatessen in Richmond selling hams and cheese, that sort of thing, hardly Dragons Den material.’
‘And he makes the most delicious chutneys, Granny. We’ve actually brought you a hamper of things – we’ll get it out of the car in a minute.’
‘How wonderful! You needn’t have brought me anything, though; just seeing you down here is such a joy. Now, tell me, Rachel, have you finished that restaurant you were doing at the airport? The drawings you showed me on Skype looked marvellous. What a wonderful way to start your holiday, having supper in a place like that, have you seen it Jayne? Ask to see her sketches, it looks fabulous.’
The rest of the afternoon passed amiably. Helen proved with every sentence that her memory was as sharp as it had ever been; in fact she had no reason to be in a residential home apart from it being an antidote to her loneliness. One of the things Helen had found most difficult to accept about old age was the sad truth that her best days were behind her. She had spent her whole life assuming that tomorrow would be better than today. That this time next year what she was striving for in this moment would be fulfilled and the ambitious prophecies that kept her awake at night would materialise. That one day she would eat dinner from a street cart in Seoul and see the Northern Lights. She would watch Tosca in the Sydney Opera House and hop on a tram on San Francisco’s California Street. Yet, as she attended the funerals of her parents, her siblings, her husband, she began to reach the startlingly bleak conclusion that she’d had her time. For someone like Helen, whose eyes still danced, this was a horrible realisation.
Jayne was tuned into every nuance of her grandmother’s interaction with Will, silently willing her to love him. She knew this was unnecessary; the mutual adoration society had been launched the minute they met.
Helen had actually remembered meeting him back when he was fifteen. Jayne and Rachel had brought him up to visit her and Tom and camp in their back garden one warm July evening. Will had been given a tent by one of his dad’s friends and even if the three teens had put their pitiful money together they couldn’t stretch to paying the exorbitant peak-season ground rent at one of the hundreds of campsites littering Torbay’s coastline, so they pitched it in Helen and Tom’s garden. Helen had even bought them a small disposable barbecue for them to cook some sausages and marshmallows on, while looking endearingly at her granddaughters’ newfound maturity. Nothing says ‘I’m a grown-up’ more than turning raw food into edible food over a naked flame. Jayne had completely forgotten about this memory until Helen brought it up.
‘It was so funny, your grandpa kept watch on and off during the night from an upstairs window and was incensed when he saw you, Will, crawling out of the tent and spending a penny on his petunias.’
Will’s hand shot to his mouth, blushing redder than Jayne had ever seen him, as he stammered, ‘I can only offer my heartfelt apologies, Mrs Brady, Helen, what can I say? I was fifteen, stupid and had a very weak bladder.’
‘Oh, no need to apologise, it’s made me smile quite a number of times since, thinking about it. Now look, as much as I love having you here, it’s nearly tea time and you need to push off if you’re going to be in London before dark.’ Helen had this thing about getting to places ‘before dark’. It might have been the Blitz mentality of nightfall being quite literal. She added quietly, ‘Now, have you seen your mother lately?’
‘No. And we’re not going to now, either.’ Rachel replied before Jayne could interject with a more diplomatic response.
‘I think you should stop in. She’s a little … different recently.’
‘Different how?’ Jayne asked at the exact-same moment Rachel said, ‘Whatever.’
‘Just pop in for ten minutes. It’s on your way back to the motorway anyway. For an old lady?’ They all gave her hugs, and she squeezed Will’s hand, ‘Marvellous to meet you, you seem every bit as fine as Jayne said. Now look after my girls, they’re rather special.’
‘I know, and I will. Lovely to meet you Mrs.… Helen.’
Ten minutes later the Ford Focus they’d borrowed from Will’s friends Duncan and Erica for the day was swerving along the coast again, its windows down, with them all laughing about Helen’s fabulous eccentricities when Rachel shrieked, ‘Hell no! We’re not going to Crystal’s, Jayne. I said I’d only come if we just went to Gran’s; I’m not going to Crystal’s. Stop the car. Will, stop the goddamn car!’
They swerved into a bus stop and Rachel started clawing at the handle, desperately trying to open the child-locked door. Jayne swivelled around in her seat and said, in what she hoped was a soothing tone, ‘Rachel, she’s our mother, just say hi and then we’ll go. Seriously, two minutes tops. In and out. We’re almost there, anyway. We can’t come all this way and not even have a cup of tea with her.’
‘Well, I’m not coming in,’ Rachel replied sullenly, crossing her arms and pouting, ‘I’m staying in the car.’
As they pulled up onto the driveway, a stunned silence filled the car as they each took in the beautiful freshly cut lawn, completely devoid of overgrown yellowing weeds and thistles. Planted borders lay where previously only discarded fag butts had been and gently cascading flowers in hanging baskets framed the newly painted front door. They parked behind a shiny silver Mercedes with a disabled badge in its window. ‘Has she moved, do you think?’ Will asked finally.
‘She must have done. I’ll just go and see.’ As Jayne got out of the car, she reasoned that it wouldn’t be entirely out of character for Crystal to have legged it without telling anyone. When they were five she dropped them off at Helen’s for the night with their teddy bears and Strawberry Shortcake pyjamas and picked them up four months later with a tan and a smattering of Spanish by way of explanation as to her whereabouts for a whole season.
Jayne walked up the driveway and surreptitiously peered in through the kitchen window as she passed it. It had been less than a year since she’d last popped in for a quick coffee with her mother, on her last visit to Helen, and nothing had changed then, but this time everything seemed different. Gone were the crusty dishes that perpetually lived in the sink, and a pristine white Shaker-style kitchen had replaced their grubby cream-and-brown one. A recycling bucket lay next to the front door; in it were empty Granola boxes and plastic smoothie bottles, evidence of a different class of consumer to the cheap wine-swigging previous owner. She rang the bell and turned back to the car, where Will and Rachel were leaning forward in their seats staring and shook her head and shrugged, as if to say, ‘your guess is as good as mine’.
The door was opened by an elderly man, probably in his early eighties, slightly stooped but otherwise sprightly, ‘Hello, hello! How can I help you, young lady?’
‘I’m really sorry to bother you, but my mother used to live here, until recently, and I just wondered if you knew where she went, or if you have a forwarding address for her?’
‘Oh my, are you Jayne or Rachel?’ he boomed cheerfully.
‘Um, Jayne?’
‘Your mother is going to be delighted to see you back in one piece!’ He went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted up, ‘Come down, Jayne is here!’ Turning back to where Jayne stood uncertain and more than a little stunned, he enthusiastically beckoned, ushering her into the living room. ‘Come in, come in.’
She had no idea what was going on, who this man was, or why this house sort of looked like her old one, but after a 60 Minute Makeover. Behind the reproduction Victorian fireplace was a wall covered in a beautiful cornflower-blue-and-cream wallpaper, the type that depicts French scenes – she could never remember the name of it, toile something she thought, Rachel would know – depicting historic country life, delicate sketches of peasants shovelling hay into carts and flocks of geese about to take flight. When she and Rachel lived there with Crystal a broken three-bar electric fire was surrounded by a nasty 1970s brickwork fireplace, Jayne couldn’t even remember what colour the lounge walls were, a sort of nicotine shade, she imagined.
‘When did you land?’ he asked affably.
‘Um … land?’
‘Yes! Is this a short trip back to the UK, or are you back for longer? I don’t suppose you can say too much about it, eh?’ He tapped the side of his nose, ‘Mum’s the word, sorry, no more questions, I don’t want you to have to kill me!’ he chuckled.
‘Darling! How wonderful to see you! I can’t believe it!’ Crystal swept into the living room, but, much like the surroundings, she’d been the recipient of a drastic transformation. Her bleached platinum hair had been replaced by a sleek dark-blonde feathery cut, her make-up was still substantial but looked like it had at least been put on with a selection of task-appropriate brushes rather than a garden trowel. She was wearing some sort of emerald silk kaftan that shimmered slightly as the light caught it and made a faint rustle as she walked. As she enveloped Jayne in a big hug, possibly her very first from her, she was shrouded in a cloud of Issey Miyake. What the hell? On Jayne’s last visit a year ago she’d opened the door a couple of inches, which was as much as the chain would allow, dressed in a stained dressing gown, her hair comically sticking out as if in mid-electrocution, eyes bleary and breath honking of stale cigarettes and last night’s bar bill.
Jayne peered at her, disbelieving, ‘Crystal?’
‘Oh hush, darling, you know I hate it when you call me that!’ She squeezed her shoulders just a tiny bit too hard, ‘This is such a wonderful surprise. Now, darling, sit down and tell your mummy everything!’ Mummy? Jayne looked back at the old man, who was rocking back on his heels, hands in his cardigan pockets, smiling at what looked, for all intents and purposes, like a touching mother-daughter reunion. For a split second Jayne thought that she was either being secretly filmed by a Saturday-night TV show and Ant and Dec were going to spring out from behind one of the new linen drapes that were dusting the floor, or she’d stumbled into some kind of parallel universe. Crystal tapped the sofa seat next to her, ‘Come on, Jayney, and don’t leave anything out!’
‘Um … Rachel and my boyfriend, Will, are in the car … I should go and fetch them.’
Crystal clapped her hands together in delight, ‘Oh my goodness, my Rachy’s here too! And you have a boyfriend? You never said!’ Jayne didn’t quite know during which make- believe conversation she was meant to have relayed this information, seeing as they hadn’t spoken since her last visit, but decided to play along to whatever was going on in her mother’s head.
‘Um, yes, Will, sorry about not mentioning it before, I … er … wanted it to be a surprise. I’ll, um, go get them in, then, shall I?’
‘The more the merrier!’ Crystal and the old man chorused.
During her deliberately slow walk to the car she tried to understand what had just gone on before she tried to articulate it to the two people who knew her best in the world. And what she came up with was: ‘Mum’s gone loop the loop, you better come in.’
Rachel’s arms crossed defiantly, ‘I’ve already told you, I’m not setting foot in that house.’
‘Believe me, Rach, you’re going to want to see this. I think she’s got some sort of dementia, and there’s this old guy, who might be her carer or something, and the house looks like it belongs in Country Living. I don’t know what’s going on, but you have to come in.’
‘Dementia?’ Will slammed his door, ‘does she recognise you?’
‘Yes, but she wants me to call her Mummy and sit on the sofa and, you know, talk to her.’
‘Is she pissed?’
‘No, that’s the weird thing, she seems completely sober. It’s like she’s got a wholesome twin we never knew about and they’ve swapped lives.’
‘Okay, okay, this I have to see.’ Rachel begrudgingly got out of the car and all three of them trooped into the house.
‘Rachel!’ A flash of emerald and a swoosh of silk and suddenly Crystal was hugging a stiffened Rachel, whose arms remained resolutely at her side, one of Crystal’s arms then loosened, drawing Jayne into the embrace too. ‘My babies, my babies are back!’
Rachel mouthed ‘What the fuck?’ over their mother’s head, and Jayne gave a little shrug back. Will was loitering by the door taking in the whole scene; he told them afterwards that he was trying to work out how to take his phone out with no one noticing and start filming the scene in case they needed to use it as evidence to have her sectioned.
Briefly breaking away from her daughters when she spotted Will, Crystal visibly straightened and purred seductively, ‘and who is this?’
In an act that can only be described as pure territorialism, in fact, Jayne couldn’t have been more blatant had she peed in a circle around him, she darted to his side, grabbed his hand and said, ‘Crystal, er, Mum, this is Will, my, er, boyfriend.’
Crystal looked at him, then at Jayne, then back at him in sheer disbelief, her mouth slightly ajar, eyes narrowed, if she had the ability to raise one eyebrow, this would have been the moment that skill would have been used for. ‘Well you’re not the only one to bag yourself a hunk,’ she slowly walked over to the fireplace and slipped her arm around the old man’s waist, who seemed to be leaning against the mantel for support, and said, ‘Darlings, I want you to meet someone rather special to me, my gorgeous Stanley.’ They then kissed in the way only old people can, Stanley with his dry, wrinkled lips pursed together, eyes closed, their mother taking this show of affection to an entirely unnecessary level by putting her hand on his chino-clad bottom.
‘Jesus Christ, Crystal. You’ll give the old man a heart attack,’ muttered Rachel with a disgusted sigh.
‘I think that’s the point,’ Will whispered and flinched as Jayne poked him in the ribs.
‘So, who’s for tea?’ Stanley asked brightly, clapping his hands together.
Before his words had even finished forming, Rachel snapped back, ‘We can’t stay.’
‘I think we can manage a quick cuppa,’ Jayne widened her eyes at Rachel and Will before following Stanley into the kitchen to help. She still hadn’t got a hold of the situation unfolding. There was this arthritic pensioner who Jayne charitably thought seemed very nice, there was her mother, who’d quite clearly been possessed, and this house that resembled the one where they grew up only by the number on the front door. Stanley clattered some Denby cups and saucers onto a tray.
Growing up, all their crockery had the emblem of Little Chef on their bases, which had been slipped into Crystal’s bag when she’d done her first and only shift there. Remnants of those six hours she’d spent employed had been scattered liberally around the house – including salt-and-pepper shakers, a clock, batteries and an extension lead. She would have taken the electrical appliances that had been attached to the lead as well had she brought a bigger bag to work that day. ‘Rookie error’ she’d described it at the time.
Jayne filled up the kettle and started making inane comments about how nice the garden was looking, and was Stanley a keen horticulturist – the type of questions that old people love, but you never thought when you were younger would actually ever come out of your mouth.
‘I do enjoy going round the garden centre, I must admit, choosing what should be planted, although the days when I can bend down, fingers sifting soil, have long gone, I’m afraid. But Crystal’s found this young chap who’s ever so nice, to come round a few times a week and tend to it when I’m out. He’s a bit slow on the old weeding front. Sometimes when he’s been here for an hour or so I don’t really know what he’s done, but Crystal tells me he’s been ever so busy, so I don’t really like to probe.’
He raised his voice over the noise of the boiling kettle. ‘I’ve been so lucky finding Crystal.’
‘Um, how did you two meet again?’
‘Well, she found me, actually, my wife had just passed – we’d been together for fifty-two years – and a little article came out in the Torbay Gazette about Beryl. She was once the Mayoress, you see, so they wrote this lovely piece about her and Crystal wrote to me after that, giving her condolences and passing on a message that Beryl had for me from the other side. She’s terribly gifted, your mother, and we struck up a friendship. She’s like a breath of fresh air to me, so loving, and she could see that I was rambling around in that big old house by myself, seeing Beryl in every room, so when she suggested selling it and moving here with her and using the money to make our own little palace, I thought, what a lucky chap I am!’
Jayne opened the large American-style double-door fridge under the pretext of getting the milk out, but she took the opportunity while her back was turned to close her eyes and take a deep, steadying breath without him seeing. As she closed the fridge door a photograph that was tacked to the front of it with magnets caught her eye. It was a picture of two female soldiers in camouflage gear, grinning through their war paint at the lens, long rifles and cumbersome backpacks slung on their shoulders. ‘Are these your grandchildren, Stanley?’ Jayne asked, thinking it best to try to show the old man any ill will they had was not aimed in his direction. She admired his sentimentality and patriotism, proudly displaying his granddaughters.
He chuckled, ‘That camouflage paint certainly does a good job if you can’t even recognise yourself! That’s the photo of you and Rachel you sent your Mum from Iraq. She didn’t want to put it up, though, official secrets act or something, she said, but like I said to her, Crystal dear, I think Al Qaeda have better things to do than keep an eye on houses in Paignton for clues, I think we’ll be okay! Do any of you take sugar?’
Jayne was stunned; she’d clearly underestimated the depths to which her mother could sink to. ‘Um, yes. Please, one for Will and me. Rachel will just have black. Um, Stanley, what else did my mum say about our, um, time in, er, Iraq?’
‘Oh don’t worry about me, my love, all your secrets are safe with me.’ He mimed zipping up his mouth, locking it at the corner and slipping the imaginary key into his breast pocket. ‘What you girls are doing for our little country, it’s admirable. I was a year too young to fight the Germans, more’s the pity, and so I have nothing but awe for you two.’ His eyes started to look a little watery, ‘We’re just both thrilled that you came today. I know that you only get leave every few years, which is why you couldn’t make our wedding, so this is a really lovely surprise.’
Wedding? ‘We’re really big on surprises in our family.’ Jayne flashed him a smile that hovered between sympathy and commiseration. ‘Shall I carry the tray in? It looks heavy.’
As they walked into the living room the atmosphere was dripping with vitriol. Unpleasantries had obviously been exchanged and the three of them were sitting in stony silence. Will and Rachel, who shared a sofa, were staring at the floor in front of them, while Crystal was flicking the screen on a jewelled iPhone that she tossed under a cushion before flashing Stanley and Jayne a wide smile that ended at the corners of her lips. Will stood up and Jayne thought he was going to take the tray from her, but instead he said, ‘You know what, Jayne, I don’t think we’ve got time for tea, I think we better hit the road.’
Rachel rapidly jumped to her feet, ‘Absolutely, come on, Jayne.’ They both bundled her out of the door, leaving a bewildered Stanley standing in the middle of the lounge holding a teapot and Crystal idly lounging, Cleopatra-style, on her chaise longue, giving a cursory wave to their departing backs.
‘What the hell was that all about?’ Jayne snapped angrily as soon as they reached the newly crazy-paved driveway, ‘that was so rude – Stanley had made tea.’
‘Darling, seriously, it’s much better for us to go now.’ Will slammed the passenger door on Jayne as soon as she’d sat down. ‘Your mother’s not right in the head, and I wanted us to go before she upset you.’
‘Why, what did she say?’ Jayne caught Will flashing warning eyes at Rachel in the rear-view mirror.
‘Nothing in particular, she was just a bit off.’
‘She’s been a bit off all our lives – that’s no reason to just up and leave! I think we should go back in there to apologise!’
‘Jayne, listen to Will, and Will start the sodding engine.’
‘Guys, what’s going on? What did she say?’ Jayne turned around in her seat to look at her sister as the car reversed down the driveway at top speed, ‘Jesus, Rach, I can take it, I’m a big girl, what did she say?’
Rachel sighed and Jayne was sure she detected a note of uncharacteristic embarrassment in her voice, ‘She asked Will how much you were paying him to pretend to be your boyfriend.’
‘What?’
‘She thought I was a gigolo,’ Will added, rolling his eyes to emphasise the lunacy of this suggestion.
‘That’s not entirely idiotic – if I pimped you out we could seriously earn a fortune. None of this teaching and chutney-making, we could make big bucks.’
‘Jayne, you don’t get it. She was serious. She said that there’s no way that you could pull someone like Will, so you must have hired him to impress her. She started naming figures that you’d paid him.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Will snapped, and reached over to put his hand on Jayne’s thigh, ‘she was probably high on something, Jayne, take no notice. You’re gorgeous and fabulous and worth ten of me.’
‘But she needs to know what Crystal said. You don’t need to protect her, Will.’
‘Rachel’s right, it’s okay.’ Jayne shrugged. His reticence was sweet, but unnecessary as far as her mother was concerned. She wouldn’t be surprised at anything Crystal had to say. Her mother’s lack of diplomacy and social niceties didn’t surprise her at all, but Crystal had probably merely said what most people were thinking. She’d seen the double-takes of people in the street whenever they walked by holding hands; that moment that lasted a split second too long between her saying, ‘let me introduce my boyfriend’ and the polite but baffled responses.
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