We Were On a Break
Lindsey Kelk
Is it a break? Or is it a blip?‘You’ve just had a holiday,’ I pointed out, trying not to yawn. ‘Wasn’t that enough of a break?’‘I don’t mean that kind of break.’There’s nothing worse than the last day of holiday. Oh wait, there is. When what should have been a proposal turns into a break, Liv and Adam find themselves on opposite sides of the life they had mapped out.Friends and family all think they’re crazy; Liv throws herself into work – animals are so much simpler than humans – and Adam tries to get himself out of the hole he’s dug.But as the short break becomes a chasm, can they find a way back to each other? Most importantly, do they want to?
Copyright (#uadc231fc-d253-51b5-8486-94961251f189)
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by Harper 2016
Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2016
Cover image © CSA-Printstock
Cover design © Jessica Lacy Anderson
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Lindsey Kelk asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of 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.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780007582426
Ebook Edition © January 2017 ISBN: 9780008175610
Version: 2017-08-23
Dedication (#uadc231fc-d253-51b5-8486-94961251f189)
Dear Della, Terri and Kevin,
What’s worse, looking jealous or crazy?
That’s what I thought, thanks.
Love, Lindsey & Beyoncé
Table of Contents
Cover (#u8ac2ef65-7be4-5f28-bc5e-8be4721bd2c2)
Title Page (#u11449a19-a22d-5691-b779-31e5cc5aeb02)
Copyright (#ua199e8ed-c99b-5cfc-8da3-0e4932bd3b09)
Dedication (#u245f1ba9-1394-52a3-a119-08de8823e620)
Chapter 1 (#u682fd9fe-9fa8-551a-9663-14a281da5a0a)
Chapter 2 (#uca91c08f-7558-5576-b458-79bbe4e4c9a5)
Chapter 3 (#ub36a2c6f-7c98-5cb7-95df-24844396793a)
Chapter 4 (#u74ab8f07-e577-5fda-a500-f041debea1cf)
Chapter 5 (#ubecdd0d8-8b58-540e-b9cf-ba2363d95fb2)
Chapter 6 (#u3a07c9fc-37c7-5500-94a6-ed10b92d5021)
Chapter 7 (#ufff236a4-8a38-595f-87b0-a471ed872d79)
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)
Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)
Keep Reading … (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
Also by Lindsey Kelk (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
1 (#uadc231fc-d253-51b5-8486-94961251f189)
It really doesn’t matter how brilliant your life is, the last day of your holiday is always depressing. I’m talking Monday dread plus post-Christmas blues multiplied by a maxed-out credit card with the added bonus of knowing there are at least another twelve holidayless months stretching out in front of you before you’ll be able to get away again. Unless you’re Beyoncé. I imagine nothing other than dinner with Kanye is quite that depressing if you’re Beyoncé, but for the rest of us, the last day of a holiday is right up there with doing your taxes, getting a bikini wax and that time you went to the fridge for your favourite bar of chocolate and found out someone had already eaten it.
Kneeling on the sofa, I rested my chin on my forearms and stared out the window. Bright blue skies bled into dark blue seas with flashes of pink and purple smeared through the middle to let me know that night-time was on its way. The sun was literally setting on my vacay and it just wasn’t on. I had a tan, seventeen insect bites, a suitcase full of tat I didn’t need – but I still didn’t have the one thing I’d been waiting for which could only mean one thing.
Tonight was the night.
‘Liv?’
‘Adam?’
‘Is it me or can you see my knob through these trousers?’
Not exactly the question I was waiting for him to ask.
I craned my neck to see six feet four inches of blond boyfriend framed by the bedroom doorway, thrusting his crotch in my general direction with a vexed expression on his face.
Hmm. He was wearing his Best Trousers. My heart started to beat a little bit faster.
‘I don’t think so?’ I said, squinting at the general area. You could sort of see it, but only if you were looking for it and, really, how many people were strolling around Tulum on a Monday night, staring at my boyfriend’s crotch? I hoped it wasn’t that many. ‘I can’t see anything.’
‘“I can’t see anything” isn’t exactly what I want to hear when you’re looking down there.’ Adam bent his knees slightly and bounced up and down in front of the mirror. ‘You sure there isn’t, you know, an outline? I forgot how thin these trousers are.’
‘You look nice,’ I reassured him with a smile while he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and checked his reflection at every angle. ‘I like those trousers.’
‘I’m going to get changed,’ he said, more to himself than me. ‘I can’t put anything in these pockets. And you can totally see my knob.’
‘What do you need to put in your pockets?’ I asked, the attractive high pitch of desperation squeaking into my voice. ‘I can put your wallet in my bag.’
‘My phone?’ Adam muttered, giving the mirror one last thrust then pottering back into the bedroom. ‘Stuff?’
‘Stuff?’
I glanced down as my own phone buzzed on the windowsill.
‘You know,’ he called from the other room. ‘Stuff.’
‘Oh, OK,’ I replied, nodding as I opened the text message. ‘Stuff.’
HAS HE DONE IT YET?????????
Cassie had sent me the same text thirty-six times in the last fourteen days. Anyone would think she was the one whose blood pressure had been hovering around stroke-inducing levels every day for the last two weeks. And that wasn’t an exaggeration, I’d been checking, such were the perks of a background in medicine.
No, I tapped out as quickly as my little fingers would allow, not yet. I added three sad faces just in case she wasn’t sure how I was feeling and then a unicorn, just because. There’s always room for a unicorn.
Three little dots thrummed across the bottom of the screen while Adam sang an off-key Rihanna song to himself in the bedroom.
Maybe he’s nervous? Cassie suggested. Give him an in.
I looked up from my phone just in time to see our very large, very hairy neighbour in nothing but a pair of tiny trunks walk right by my window and raise his hand in a polite hello. There were downsides to staying in a cottage on the beach. They certainly hadn’t shown him on the website. Waving back quickly, I stood up and leaned against the arm of the settee, shaking out the creases in my long skirt.
Give him an in?
That was easier said than done. Maybe I could start a casual conversation on the way to dinner with ‘Did you know nine out of ten boyfriends that want to live to see another day propose to their girlfriends on holiday?’ Or perhaps ‘Hey Adam, the third finger on my left hand is cold; do you have anything sparkly I could borrow to warm it up?’
Working on it, I replied, despondent.
No emojis this time.
Truth be told, we’d had a lovely holiday but it would have been considerably lovelier if I hadn’t been constantly waiting for Adam to drop the P bomb. Nothing kills the mood like waiting for a proposal that never comes. And I want to be clear, it’s not as though I’ve been sat around the house for the last three years, draped across a fainting couch and waiting for him to swoop in with the promise of a yearly allowance of a hundred pounds and a new topcoat every winter. The chance would have been a fine thing. When you’re the only local vet in a five-village radius, you spend most of your time in surgery with your hand up a Chihuahua or in your bed, fast asleep. After you’ve washed your hands, of course. Ideally, at the end of a dog-bothering day, all I wanted was to be up to my eyeballs in a Real Housewives marathon and two-thirds of a bottle of rosé with Adam by my side. Marriage hadn’t really crossed my mind. There were so many other things I still had to accomplish, I wanted to travel, I wanted to start drinking whisky, I wanted to finish watching the last series of Doctor Who before the new one started.
However, things had changed. Supposedly, Adam had told his brother he was going to propose in Mexico, then his brother had told his wife, who just so happened to be my best friend. Of course, everyone knew Cass couldn’t keep a secret and it only took half a bottle of Pinot Grigio before she was bursting to tell me everything, and now here I was at the end of our trip, still unengaged. I had been told there was a ring, I had been told the ring was coming in Mexico – and now I wanted the bloody ring. I was Gollum, only with slightly better hair.
‘Ready?’ Adam re-emerged from the bedroom, best trousers replaced by regular jeans, paired with a nice, but hardly special, shirt.
I looked at him and wondered. Why would you tell someone you were going to propose to your girlfriend and then not do it?
‘Ready,’ I replied with a curtsey, dropping my phone in my bag, out of sight and hopefully out of mind.
He frowned for a moment, giving my ensemble the once-over before fastening and then unfastening his top button. ‘Is that what you’re wearing?’
‘What’s wrong with it?’ I stood up and let my long, floaty white dress drift down to the floor. ‘I love this dress.’
It was a great dress. It was loose around my backside, tight around my boobs and, most importantly, I could eat in it without feeling like I was wearing my nana’s girdle. It had also cost an obscene amount of money but Cassie had assured me it was The Dress and I’d put it on my credit card without thinking about the damage. That was until the bill came. He had better propose – I needed a joint income to pay for this bugger.
‘Makes me feel a bit of a scruff, that’s all. Are you sure you’re all right to walk in those shoes?’
‘I could run a marathon in these shoes.’ I picked up a foot to inspect my three-inch heels. Maybe a marathon was pushing it. ‘We’re not walking that far, are we?’
‘Google Maps says it’s ten minutes,’ he replied, patting himself down then sticking his thumbs in his jeans pockets like a Topman-clad cowboy and all the while his eyes were still on my sandals. ‘You can do ten minutes?’
I nodded and made a disgusted noise in the back of my throat. Of course ten minutes were doable. Generally I was of the opinion that no good could come of strapping tiny stilts to your feet after a particularly nasty incident involving a spiral staircase in a club called Oceana during Freshers’ Week. More than a decade may have passed but if you’d spent your first semester of university on crutches, you’d be wary of anything higher than a kitten heel as well.
‘I really do like that dress,’ Adam said, crossing the room to rest his arms on my shoulders. I shuffled my feet apart and pulled him in closer until we were nose to nose. ‘Is it new?’
‘Quite new,’ I replied, hoping there were no follow up questions. Adam hated spending a lot of money on clothes, hence only one pair of Nice Trousers.
‘It’s like a proper lady dress.’ He nuzzled his face into my hair, pressing his lips against the nook where my neck met my shoulder. I shivered from head to toe. ‘It might be the nicest thing I’ve ever seen you wear.’
‘Just checking that’s a compliment,’ I whispered as he slid his hands around my waist and a flush bloomed in my cheeks. Adam was no slouch in the bedroom department at the best of times but on holiday it wasn’t just the bedroom that got him going. The living room, the bathroom, the beach, the toilets at a restaurant we could never go back to … Not that I was complaining. The restaurant manager maybe, but not me.
I ran my hands down his broad back and rested them on his hips. ‘Perhaps we should stay in tonight?’
‘No, we’re going to the restaurant.’ Adam checked his watch then dropped me like a bag of burning dog shit and backed away, jostling the front of his jeans to dispel the beginnings of a boner. ‘And we need to leave now or we’re going to be late.’
‘Adam, we’re in Mexico. Nothing has happened at the time it was supposed to happen since we got here,’ I said, brushing my blonde hair forward to cover the stubble rash on my throat and delicately draping my dress back down over my thighs. ‘What’s the rush?’
‘They were really funny about it when I made the reservation. It’s supposed to be dead fancy,’ he insisted as he checked his reflection and smoothed down his eyebrows. What a weirdo. ‘Plenty of time for doing it when we get back.’
My boyfriend was such a romantic.
‘Dead fancy,’ I repeated. Dead fancy sounded like the kind of place where you would propose to your girlfriend, or at least the kind of place that would have proper toilets and honestly, either of those things would have been welcomed at this point in the trip.
Following him outside, I nabbed a quick glance in the mirror as we went. Hair looked good, make-up looked good, but nothing I could do about my sunburned nose except filter it into oblivion. I was as ready as I’d ever be.
The next time we walked through that door, we would be engaged.
Or I’d have stabbed Adam through the heart with a spatula. Or a teaspoon. Or whatever was handy, really; I was a resourceful girl.
‘Do we really have to go home tomorrow?’ Liv skipped along beside me as I tried to slow down.
‘Aren’t you ready?’ I squeezed her hand and smiled, hoping that my palm wasn’t as sweaty as I imagined it was. ‘I’m gagging for a proper cup of tea.’
‘Yeah, this is just awful,’ she replied, waving at the white sand and screensaver-worthy sunset. ‘I’d trade it all for a cup of Tetley.’
‘You know what I mean,’ I said, looking at the time on my watch. We were definitely going to be late. ‘Come on, let’s pick up the pace.’
‘We have definitely been walking for more than ten minutes,’ she said in a tight voice, a few minutes later. ‘How much further is it?’
‘Not far?’
A dark look crossed her face as she gripped my hand hard and attempted to match my long stride. A word of advice: if you’re over six feet tall and you end up going out with someone under five-five, you will never not be frustrated with how slowly they walk.
‘I will miss the sunsets,’ I admitted as she walked on beside me in silence. I wrapped my right arm around her red shoulders, keeping one eye on the time. ‘The sunsets are good.’
‘The sunsets are good?’ Liv repeated, one eyebrow raised. ‘If it weren’t for the cat, I wouldn’t be going back at all. We’ve got everything we need right here. Sun, sea, sand and surprisingly good internet service? I’m in no rush to go home.’
As casual as possible, I ran a hand over my hip, checking for the telltale bump in the tiny pocket. I was certain she’d found it back in the cottage when she was packing up my clothes, but if she had, she was doing a fine job of pretending and there was no way she could fake something like that: she was a terrible liar.
‘Loads going on when we get back though …’ She carried on talking, twisting the ends of her hair in her fingers. ‘Are you excited to get started on the bar?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Nervous?’
‘Nah.’
I was so nervous I was bricking it. Just before we left, a friend of a friend of a friend had set me up with a guy who was opening a bar in London and needed someone to design and build the interiors. Since he had next to no budget and I was looking for a project, we’d managed to come to a financially dubious but still exciting accord. But it was still my first major project and there were a million things that could go wrong. Was my estimate right? Was my timeframe realistic? Was I even capable of pulling something like this off without it looking utterly crap? But Liv didn’t need to know how worried I was. Men shitting themselves over their big break wasn’t exactly a turn on for most women to the best of my knowledge.
‘It’ll be amazing,’ she said, with an assured nod I couldn’t return. ‘And there’s my dad’s sixty-fifth coming up, Gus’s christening, your birthday, my birthday …’
I made a noncommittal noise, trying to hold her hand, remember if I’d had a response to my last email from Jim, the guy who owned the bar, and open Google Maps to check where this bloody restaurant was supposed to be. All I could see was beach, beach, and more beach. We’d already been walking forever and I certainly couldn’t see a five-star restaurant with sunset views and a ridiculously-expensive-to-hire string quartet hiding anywhere nearby.
‘Things have been mental at the surgery, it feels like everyone on earth just adopted ten dogs and they’ve all got ear infections or worms or something else disgusting—’
‘Liv?’ I interrupted.
‘Yes?’ she looked up at me with big blue eyes, all smudgy with make-up but in a good way.
‘No.’
There was nothing like a woman talking about putting her hand up a dog’s backside to put you in the mood for a romantic proposal – not.
‘Sorry,’ she opened her mouth to say something else and then clamped it shut, staring out to sea. She didn’t look happy.
‘Liv?’
‘Yeah?’
‘What do you think Daniel Craig is doing right now?’ I asked.
She turned round, shielding her eyes from the sun and gave me a look.
‘The actor or the cat?’
‘The cat.’
‘Eating, sleeping or having a shit,’ she replied, pulling on my hand as she began to lag. ‘That’s more or less all he does these days.’
‘What do you think Daniel Craig the actor is doing right now?’
‘Eating, sleeping or having a shit? That’s more or less all he does these days.’
‘Weirdo,’ I laughed, flapping my elbows slightly as I tried to find a phone signal and hoped there wasn’t a massive sweat stain on the back of my shirt. Should have worn an undershirt. Should have put deodorant on my back. Should have done a lot of things.
Liv pressed her lips together into a thin smile. ‘You’re a weirdo.’
‘Yeah, but that’s why you love me.’ I choked on the words as the map came up. We were nowhere near the restaurant – it was a ten-minute drive away, not a ten-minute walk.
‘I knew there had to be a reason,’ she said, trying to subtly pull a strand of hair out of her lip gloss. ‘Are you excited about the christening?’
‘I can’t believe my brother is a dad,’ I replied, still staring at my phone. ‘He wasn’t even allowed to bring the school guinea pig home during the holidays and now he’s got a baby.’
Recalculating the route, I looked down at Liv, wincing with every step she took.
‘Anyway, it really has been the best holiday ever,’ she said slowly. ‘I can’t imagine anything nicer.’
‘Yeah, incredible,’ I agreed, a cold sweat running down my back. How could I have messed this up? ‘Total once-in-a-lifetime thing.’
‘And I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather be with, yeti.’ She looked up and gave me the smallest, sweetest smile and I thought I was going to be sick. In a good way. Sort of. ‘Ever.’
Oh god, I was actually going to be sick. Everything had been planned so carefully, right down to the smallest detail, and I had cocked up the directions. Maybe it was a sign. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to propose after all.
‘You obviously haven’t given it enough thought,’ I said, forcing out a laugh to distract from the fact I was dying inside. ‘You’re saying you’d rather be on holiday with me than Channing Tatum?’
‘Why Channing Tatum?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘He’s good looking, isn’t he? All buff and that. And he can dance. Women love men who can dance.’
‘You can’t dance – and I love you,’ she said, curling her fingers tightly around mine. ‘And I’d definitely pick you over Channing Tatum.’
‘Really?’
‘You’ve got better hair,’ she nodded thoughtfully. ‘And I couldn’t do that to his wife. She seems lovely.’
I’d been so worried about what to wear, about getting the music right, the menu right, about fixing my massive Teen Wolf eyebrows, I’d completely messed up our timing. We were supposed to get to the restaurant in time to watch the sun go down. At this rate, it would be the middle of the night before we got there.
‘Really, though,’ Liv started with a crack in her voice and my stomach turned over again. ‘I don’t want to be with anyone other than you, Adam. There’s no one else for me, ever.’
I let go of her hand and wiped my sweaty palms on the back of my jeans.
‘Yeah, better the devil you know,’ I said, my tongue tripping over my words. ‘It’s like Star Wars. You’ve got the original trilogy and they’re great, but then George Lucas says he’s going to make new films and you get all excited but you end up with The Phantom Menace.’
Liv knitted her perfectly groomed eyebrows together. I always hoped our children would have her eyebrows.
‘You’ve lost me.’
‘I’m saying, our relationship is like the original Star Wars,’ I explained. ‘So I can’t dump you in case I end up with The Phantom Menace.’
The sun had already started to slip away over the horizon but it was not difficult to make out my girlfriend’s expression. She didn’t look nearly as pleased with the analogy as I was.
‘What I’m saying is …’ I rubbed my palms together then took her hand back in mine. ‘You’re A New Hope. That’s good! And it’s better to stick with you because who knows if the next girl is going to be a Force Awakens or a Phantom Menace.’
‘If I were you, I’d probably just stop talking.’ She looked around the deserted beach, clearly confused. ‘Yeti, where is the restaurant?’
‘So, there’s a small chance I was looking at the driving directions when I said it was ten minutes away,’ I replied, reviewing the map. ‘It’s further than I thought?’
‘How much further?’ she asked, a noticeable hobble in her walk.
I bloody well knew those shoes of hers would be trouble.
‘The good news is, we’ve already been walking for twenty minutes,’ I replied with a tentative smile. ‘And it’s only fifty minutes away altogether.’
‘Fifty minutes!’
Liv stopped dead in her tracks, looking at me as though I’d just told her she had to walk the rest of the way barefoot, over hot coals.
‘I can’t walk another half an hour in these shoes.’ As she leaned forward, her blonde hair fell in front of her face, showing off her long neck as she messed around with the miniscule gold buckles. I hated those shoes but I loved that neck. I wanted to kiss it. But this really was not the time. ‘My foot is killing me.’
I bloody knew it.
‘Well, take your shoes off and we’ll walk on the sand,’ I suggested, looking at the uneven path that ran down the side of the beach. Even my leathery Hobbit feet wouldn’t fancy that much.
‘I can’t,’ she said, wincing as she removed her left shoe. ‘My foot is a bit of a mess.’
‘Oh my god, there’s a hole in your foot!’ I made an involuntary gipping sound as she pulled the shoe away to reveal what must have been a particularly nasty blister about fifteen minutes ago. ‘Why didn’t you say something?’
‘You were in such a rush.’ She leaned against the low tidal wall and poked gently at the weeping mess formerly known as her foot. ‘I didn’t want to be late.’
‘I told you not to wear those shoes,’ I said, mad at her foot, mad at Google and possibly, very slightly mad at myself.
‘You also told me the restaurant was ten minutes away,’ she snapped back. ‘I can’t help it.’
I checked my phone one more time before taking another look at Liv’s gammy foot. It was utterly disgusting but I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
‘If we walk around the beach, we’ll be there in ten minutes,’ I said, enlarging the map to make sure of my short cut. ‘Then we can clean that mess up there.’
‘There’s no way I’m walking down the beach,’ she said, folding her arms across her chest. ‘It’s filthy. Do you want me to get an infection in my foot? Do you want me to get septicaemia?’
No, I almost shouted, I want to bloody propose to you! Instead, I took a calming breath, put my phone away and smiled.
‘Have you got a plaster?’
‘Of course I haven’t got a bloody plaster!’ she exploded. ‘Why would I have a plaster?’
‘Because you’re a vet?’ I suggested. ‘Don’t you carry that sort of thing?’
‘What, in case we pass an Alsatian with a splinter?’
I turned my back on her and looked out at the setting sun, the last sliver hovering over the sea, and fingered the ring in my pocket. We were supposed to be there by now. We were supposed to be drinking champagne, surrounded by white roses and enjoying all the other amazing things I’d paid an arm and a leg for Pablo the events manager to organize in The Arse End of Nowhere, Mexico. I should have been the one down on one knee with a ring in my hand, instead Liv was crouching on the floor and tending to an open wound.
‘Maybe we should go back to the hotel,’ I suggested weakly as the sun drowned itself in the ocean. ‘It’s dark; it’s late. We’re not going to get there on time.’
‘You want to go back?’ she asked, hesitating over every word. ‘You don’t want to go to dinner?’
‘Well, I don’t want to sit here,’ I replied. ‘What would you suggest?’
Do it now, hissed the little voice in my head. Do it now, do it while she’s not expecting it.
‘Fine,’ Liv pursed her lips and stood up, limping along to the edge of the path. ‘We’ll just go back.’
That’s right. For some reason, the voice sounded an awful lot like my big brother. Go back to the hotel, don’t propose, wait for Liv to leave you then you can die alone with a massive beard, tissue boxes on your feet instead of shoes and hundreds of bottles full of your own wee to keep you and your eighteen cats company.
‘Fuck it,’ I murmured, fishing around in my pocket for the ring and bending down. Slowly. I really needed to see someone about my back.
‘There’s a taxi!’
Before I could stop her, Liv hopped off the path and into the street, flagging down a white car with a red stripe down the side. It screeched to a halt at her side. I watched her, the headlights of the car lighting up her flowing white dress as it swirled around her slender legs, her hair flying out behind her. She was beautiful. She was clever and caring, she made me laugh, she took care of me even when I didn’t know I needed taking care of and she always watched Star Trek Next Gen with me, even if we’d seen it a dozen times before. Olivia Addison was perfect.
And I couldn’t even get her to a bloody restaurant on time.
‘I can’t,’ I realized, staring at my grandmother’s engagement ring. ‘I can’t do it.’
‘Adam?’
It was too late, Liv was already inside the taxi, staring back at me. ‘What are you doing?’
It felt as though everything inside me had stopped working, like even my organs were waiting to see what came next before they bothered to carry on keeping me alive. Her eyes widened and she blinked at the sight of me kneeling on the dusty street.
‘Fastening my shoelace,’ I replied, dropping the ring on the floor and covering it with my shoe. ‘Sorry.’
Better start saving up my tissue boxes and adopting those cats, I thought, as I stood up, stashed the ring back in my pocket and forced one foot in front of the other to join her in the back seat of the taxi. You couldn’t just walk into an RSPCA and take eighteen. Could you? Surely there was a limit.
The taxi driver pulled out into the speeding traffic, turning the radio up full blast and soundtracking my misery with a song I had loved until that moment. Now I was going to have to hunt down Mumford and all of his sons and murder them all to death.
Liv stared out the window with her shoes in her lap as I closed my eyes, trying to work out just how I’d managed to get everything so wrong. Slipping my finger into the tiny pocket of my jeans, I traced the setting of the sapphire in my grandmother’s engagement ring and squeezed the bridge of my nose, trying not to cry.
Well. That went well.
2 (#uadc231fc-d253-51b5-8486-94961251f189)
‘Have you got everything?’
‘Yeah,’ Adam replied, looking back over his shoulder. ‘I think so.’
‘Did you check all the drawers?’ I asked. ‘The little ones in the nightstand?’
‘I’ll double check,’ he said, disappearing back into the bedroom.
The second we got back to the cottage, Adam had retired to the bathroom, claiming an upset stomach and didn’t reappear until I’d given up any hope of a romantic proposal and swapped my beautiful white dress for my Garfield pyjamas. The whole evening had been a complete waste of make-up. Neither of us had slept a wink but neither of us was prepared to admit anything was wrong. Adam kept saying he still felt unwell, even though he’d managed to put away all the beer left in the fridge after I’d gone to bed, and I was only just keeping my shit together.
‘Are you not taking all this sun cream?’ he shouted, waving half-empty bottles of Ambre Solaire in the air. ‘There’s loads left.’
‘I couldn’t fit it in my case,’ I said as I heaved said case out of the front door and onto the deck, waving at our very early taxi driver. ‘Leave it.’
‘But there’s more than half left in one of them.’ He appeared in the living room with the three bottles in his hands. ‘Why didn’t you use one up instead of starting all three?’
‘Why didn’t you use any sunscreen the entire fortnight?’ I replied. ‘They’re all different. SPF 50 for the first week, 30 for the second and 15 for my legs.’
‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ he muttered, opening his suitcase and jamming the bottles inside. ‘Such a waste of money.’
‘It’s sunscreen, it doesn’t matter, we can buy more. And it’s going to explode all over your sodding case if you keep shoving it in like that.’
He looked up, defiance all over his broad features.
‘No, it won’t.’
I raised an eyebrow and shrugged. ‘Fine.’
‘You’re not right about everything you know.’ He yanked the zip closed and pushed past me, chucking the case through the door. ‘It’s such a waste of money.’
‘Arsehole,’ I muttered under my breath. ‘I’m totally right.’
He stood on the deck, staring at his phone as I locked the cottage door behind us. I’d already checked out when Adam went for his morning swim. Because like I said, he wasn’t feeling well.
‘All right?’ I asked as he began to type madly, all fingers and thumbs with his phone. His hands were so big, they even dwarfed his iPhone 6. ‘Is something wrong?’
He shook his head without taking his eyes off the screen. ‘I need to call someone, I won’t be a minute. It’s not a problem.’
I stared at him as he strode across the beach but kept my mouth closed for fear of accidentally screaming ‘Where is my riiiiiing?’ right in his face. Instead, I nodded and wheeled my suitcase over to the waiting taxi while he paced up and down the sand, shouting at someone in Spanish. For someone whose only opinion on weddings before finding out about Adam’s supposed proposal was that if it wasn’t an open-bar reception, I wasn’t going, I was beginning to worry I’d lost my mind.
‘No!’ Adam barked in his laboured accent. ‘Eso no es lo que acordamos.’
It was strange to see him so close to losing his temper. Generally speaking, my boyfriend was so laidback and offensively agreeable that I once went round to his house to find Jehovah’s Witnesses trying to come up with an excuse to leave.
‘Who was that?’ I asked, intensely casual as he clambered into the back of the taxi beside me.
‘No one,’ he replied, clicking in his seatbelt and turning towards the window. ‘Nothing.’
Oh good, I thought, smiling beatifically. I was going to have to kill him.
‘No one,’ I repeated. ‘Right.’
He looked back at me for a moment, seemingly on the verge of telling me something.
‘Really,’ he said with fifty per cent less huff. ‘No one. The manager of that restaurant wanting to know why we missed our reservation.’
He was such a terrible liar.
‘OK.’ I kept my eyes on the horizon as we sped away from our beautiful cottage, in the beautiful resort by the beautiful beach, and realized I had wasted two weeks waiting for a proposal that wasn’t going to happen. ‘OK, then.’
‘Yeah,’ Adam replied, shifting back towards the window. ‘Everything’s fine, don’t worry about it.’
Because that was definitely a sensible thing to say to a woman, wasn’t it?
‘Here, give me that.’
Adam held out his hands for my suitcase as I jostled it up onto the headrest of the seat in front of me, hair stuck to my sweaty forehead.
‘It’s all right,’ I said with a tired but determined smile. ‘I can do it.’
‘I know you can,’ he replied, lifting the case out of my hands easily and sliding it neatly into the overhead locker before kissing me on the top of the head. ‘Just let me help.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, hurling my handbag onto my seat. He shrugged agreeably, staring at his ticket as I curled up in my uncomfortable seat.
‘Oh.’
‘Oh?’ I looked up to see Adam staring at his ticket. ‘What’s wrong? Are we not sat together?’
‘We are,’ he said, jamming his ticket into the back pocket of his jeans. ‘But you’re in the window seat.’
I looked out of the tiny porthole at the steaming tarmac below and saw three men in orange hi-vis vests chucking suitcases onto a conveyor belt. I watched as one fell off, bouncing along the floor before one of the men came over to kick it all the way back to the conveyor belt to try again.
‘Did you want the window?’ I looked out at my little square of sky reluctantly. ‘We can swap?’
‘No, I don’t mind,’ he wrestled his man bag from across his chest and dropped it in the aisle seat. ‘It’s just, you had the window on the way out.’
‘You can have the window,’ I told him, nursing my handbag. ‘You sit here and I’ll sit in the middle.’
‘I said I don’t mind.’
It was funny, because he certainly looked like he minded. He looked like he minded a lot of things but since he’d been almost silent ever since we got in the taxi it was impossible to know what was going on in his head. I had read every single gossip magazine the airport had to offer while he paced up and down the terminal, shouting at the supposed restaurant owner in broken Spanish. It had been a long three hours. I wasn’t a woman renowned for her patience when it came to human beings and the thought of a twelve-hour flight back to the UK was not helping me be my most sensitive self. If he wasn’t going to explain what was going on and the rubbish app I’d quickly downloaded to translate him couldn’t explain either, I was just going to have to pretend it wasn’t happening.
‘Uh, I think I’m sitting next to you guys.’ A young woman with an American accent waved her hand awkwardly behind Adam’s immense shoulders. ‘22C?’
‘Oh, hi.’ I gave her a manic smile and nudged my boyfriend in the thigh. ‘Adam, can you move your bag.’
‘I’m Maura,’ she said, slipping travel-sickness bands onto her wrists and sliding assorted medications and sick bags into her seatback pocket. ‘I’ll probably sleep the whole flight, so if you need to get by to use the bathroom, just like, climb over me.’
‘No problem, I’m Olivia, Liv,’ I replied, pointing at myself before gesturing at the six-foot-four human partition standing between us. ‘This is Adam.’
‘We’re not supposed to change seats before take off.’ He grabbed his bag from Maura’s seat without acknowledging her and hugged it like a sulky toddler. She sat down, cheek to cheek against his backside. ‘But whatever. You sit in the window, I’ll sit in the middle. Again.’
I looked up at him, all tanned and sullen, and hoped against hope that my ring was wedged right up his arse.
‘Why can’t we change seats before take off?’ I asked, watching as Maura in 22C swallowed a handful of little white pills without so much as a sip of water. Total pro.
He sat down in the middle seat with a heavy thump. ‘Because if we blow up during take off, they might not be able to identify the bodies so they need to know where everyone was to distribute the remains.’
Maura in 22C froze.
‘I think it’s actually something to do with weight distribution,’ I replied loudly. ‘And I don’t think it really matters that much, let’s just swap.’
‘No, that’s helicopters,’ Adam corrected, still cuddling his backpack. ‘With planes it’s in case all the bodies get burned up beyond recognition, then they can bury the right remains in the right—’
‘Just swap with me.’ I stood up and hoisted him to his feet while Maura in 22C began to cry. ‘And for god’s sake, shut up.’
‘What?’ he asked, wide-eyed and completely oblivious to my neighbour shaking silently as she stared at the safety card through red eyes. ‘What did I do?’
‘Nothing,’ I muttered, hiding behind my hair. ‘Sit down.’
Adam kicked his bag under the seat in front and pulled his hood over his head, smiling for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long.
‘Liv.’
From deep inside a dream about going out for ice cream with Brad, Ange and all the kids, I felt a stiff poke in my shoulder.
‘Liv? Liv.’
Why? Why would he wake me up when it took me so long to fall asleep?
‘Liv.’ Adam tapped my shoulder over and over again. ‘Are you awake?’
‘No,’ I replied without opening my eyes. ‘I’m really not.’
‘I’m bored.’
I cracked open one eye to find his face so close to mine that everything but his freckles was a blur.
‘Talk to me,’ he pulled the strings on his red jumper so that the hood cinched in tightly around his face until just his eyes and nose were showing, the strain showing on his stupid, handsome face. ‘We’ve still got ages.’
‘I know, that’s why I was asleep,’ I said, swiping at his hood. ‘Can you take that down? You look like Little Red Riding twat.’
‘You love it.’ Adam tied the strings in an elaborate bow underneath his chin. ‘I look amazing. I’m the amazing red-hooded yeti.’
‘If you say so,’ I replied with a yawn. ‘And I’m not just saying that because you’ve got food in your hand.’
Abi had been the one to christen him ‘yeti’ when we first met. She always labelled our dates, refusing to acknowledge their real names until the relationships had been established. Adam came to be known as the yeti because none of us really believed it was possible for an eligible, handsome man over the age of thirty to move to our village with his family and therefore she considered his kind to be as rare as the abominable snowman. With his sandy blond hair, longer and shaggier than it was now, yeti worked, and yeti had stuck.
‘Open your mouth,’ he ordered, opening a packet of M&Ms. ‘I bet I can do it in one.’
Somewhere far, far away, I felt my grandmother spinning in her grave. Somewhere closer, I heard Maura in 22C let out a stuck-pig snore.
‘You’re not throwing sweets at my face on a plane,’ I said quietly, holding up a hand in front of my face. ‘Stop it.’
‘You know I can do it,’ Adam repeated, readying a blue M&M. ‘Open your mouth.’
With lips pursed tighter than the average cat’s arse, I shook my head, still mad about being woken up and slowly remembering all the other reasons I was upset with him. Last night’s weirdness, the airport phone calls and, oh yeah, the complete and utter lack of a bloody proposal.
‘Fine, whatever,’ he muttered, emptying half the bag directly into his mouth, slumping back down in his seat and producing a tiny can of Coke from his backpack. ‘Sorry, Mum.’
‘Excuse me?’ I turned so sharply a curtain of my own sun-bleached blonde hair slapped me in the face. ‘What did you call me?’
‘Nothing,’ he replied with a smirk. ‘Mum.’
‘Oh, be quiet,’ I replied, mostly peeved because he was right. It was happening more and more often, I would open my mouth and my mother’s voice would come out instead. I had Motherettes. ‘That’s so not funny.’
‘Oh, it’s so not funny?’ He let down my tray table without asking and placed his can in the little indentation without a napkin underneath. ‘I hate when you talk to me like a child, you’re not my mother, you know.’
‘Thank god,’ I quipped without thinking.
The smirk wiped itself off his face.
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’
I should have known better, I really should. I knew I wasn’t allowed to make comments about his mum, ever, no matter what he felt like saying about mine. It was the number one unwritten, unspoken rule of dating a mummy’s boy. Never make a joke about his mother, ever.
‘Nothing.’ I picked up his drink and snapped my table back in place to cross my legs without hitting my knees. ‘Is your tray broken or something?’
‘At least my mum’s fun,’ he muttered, nipping the can out of my hand and glugging. ‘At least my parents aren’t boring.’
‘Don’t start.’ I closed my eyes and tried to think of happy things like my friends and my cat and advent calendars and Tom Hardy and the Topshop summer sale. Nothing was really that wrong, it was just the enclosed space and the lack of sleep and the night before and … oh god, I really was going to kill someone. At least Maura was completely unconscious so there wouldn’t be any witnesses.
‘I can’t be arsed with you right now.’
‘Me?’ Adam replied, incredulous. ‘What have I done?’
‘Other than all those weird phone calls? And the moody silences?’ Once I’d started, I couldn’t stop myself and an unpleasant feeling began to fizz up in my chest. ‘Or, I don’t know, completely ruining the last night of our holiday?’
‘I didn’t feel well,’ he protested. The strings of his hoodie were still tied in a neat bow under his chin and it was all I could do not to choke him with them. ‘You couldn’t walk in those stupid shoes anyway; you would have ended up moaning all night. You should be grateful.’
‘I would not have moaned.’ My foot was still throbbing underneath the four layers of plasters. Ten minutes away, my arse. ‘You were the one who said it was ten minutes. And can you please take that hood off when I’m trying to talk to you?’
Adam yanked the hood down, his hair springing up around his face, all fluffy and dry from the recycled plane air. He looked like a furious Pomeranian and it was very hard to take him seriously.
‘So, I made a mistake.’ He chugged his drink and crumpled the can like a slightly less impressive Incredible Hulk. He was, in fairness, almost as green. Adam was not a good flier. ‘I’m sorry I’m not perfect all the time like you. And it wouldn’t matter if you hadn’t been wearing those stupid shoes in the first place.’
‘I’m not perfect,’ I said, brushing my hair behind my ears as my eyes began to burn. It was just the dry air. My eyes were watering because I’d gone to sleep in my contact lenses. I definitely wasn’t crying. ‘I’m just not stupid.’
I felt Maura seize up at the side of me, not nearly as unconscious as I had originally thought.
A condescending sigh escaped his mouth and he flipped his hood back up over his head, pulling it down over his eyes.
‘That’s me, so stupid. Not like Professor Liv. I’ll shut up before I say anything else that offends you.’
I didn’t know what to do. We never argued, ever. Well, there was that one time he’d deleted the Downton Abbey finale off my Sky+ but he’d replaced it with the DVD and all was forgiven. What was I supposed to do? Let him calm down, I told myself. Take Elsa’s advice and let it go. That would be the clever thing to do.
‘Arsehole.’
I closed my eyes the second it was out, ashamed. Elsa would never call her boyfriend an arsehole – Olaf, maybe, but never Elsa.
‘I’m an arsehole?’
Adam yanked the hood down and turned in his seat to give me his full attention.
‘I’m an arsehole?’ he repeated.
I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Oh brilliant, now I couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘You’ve been acting like a mentalist for two weeks,’ he said in an angry whisper that woke anyone still sleeping in a three-row radius. ‘Whining, sulking, constantly complaining and I’m the arsehole.’
‘When was I whining? What have I complained about?’ I replied, trying to keep my rage to an appropriate volume level. My grandmother would have come back to life just to die again if she’d seen us arguing in public. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘“What are we doing today, Adam? Where are we going tonight, Adam? Adam, I need a drink. Adam, it’s so hot. Why don’t you carry me, Adam? Why didn’t we hire a donkey, Adam?”’
‘I was only joking about you carrying me,’ I replied, flushed. ‘And obviously I didn’t really want to hire a donkey. You’re totally exaggerating.’
Admittedly, I had googled the donkey thing when a girl rode one past us halfway up a mountain but apparently you had to buy it outright and I knew my credit card limit wouldn’t stretch to it. Not after that bloody stupid frock. For the most part, any questioning on my part was because I was anxious about the supposed proposal, but I could hardly tell him that.
‘I’m very sorry the Mayans didn’t build their ancient civilization closer to the hotel,’ Adam seethed. ‘What a bunch of selfish fuckers.’
‘It was hot and I was thirsty,’ I glanced around the plane and everyone quickly looked away. ‘But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t having a good time. Don’t make out like all I did was complain.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you enjoyed yourself,’ he said, either oblivious to or unconcerned by the scene he was creating. ‘You love complaining, you complain constantly.’
‘I do not.’ At least, no more than any other self-respecting Englishwoman. ‘I tell you when I’m upset about something, that’s not the same thing.’
‘Then you must be constantly upset. Liv, how do you cope?’ Adam said, sharpening his spine and wrapping his arms around himself, pulling himself further and further away from me, severing every point of physical contact. ‘Nothing’s ever good enough for you, is it?’
‘What are you talking about?’ I was so incredibly angry I could barely see, and worst of all, I was almost certainly about to cry. ‘You’ve totally lost me.’
‘Mexico’s not good enough, my family’s not good enough, I’m not good enough,’ he carried on ranting in a mad whisper, banging his elbows on the armrests and his head hitting the ceiling as he threw himself around in his seat like an overgrown toddler. ‘Nothing’s ever good enough.’
I stared at my boyfriend and he fannied around with his seatbelt, yanking on the strap trying to extend it, only succeeding in restraining himself even more tightly. Not a terrible idea, as things were. It was so out of character. Adam never lost his temper. Something was definitely wrong.
‘Adam,’ I laid my hand on his arm to calm him, trying to ignore the prying eyes up and down the plane and be the bigger person. ‘What’s wrong?’
He shook his head and pulled away. My hand hovered in midair for a moment and I literally didn’t know what to do. What had happened? How had we gone from kissing in the cottage to shouting at each other on a plane?
‘What’s wrong with me?’ he asked with a laugh. ‘Amazing. There’s nothing wrong with me, what’s wrong with you?’
Without waiting for an answer, he pulled his phone out of the seatback pocket and opened up one of his games, completely ignoring the stunned expressions on me, Maura in 22C and everyone in row 23. Nothing I wanted to say could be helpful, nothing I was feeling made sense. All I could do now was sit quietly for the next five and a half hours and hope we were flying through the Mexican equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle.
Dabbing the corners of my eyes with my sleeve, I stared straight ahead, burning with embarrassment, confusion and most of all, the unshakeable feeling that I had done something wrong only I didn’t know what. And if he hadn’t apologized by the time we landed, I could always push him down the escalators at Heathrow and say it was an accident.
We spent the rest of the flight in silence, listening to Maura’s choked sobs every time the plane shook, followed by another wordless hour in customs and nearly two more driving home. I was half awake, half asleep, delirious from jet lag and unwelcome tears. I didn’t care about the ring at all any more, all I wanted to know was why Adam was so incredibly angry.
A sharp left turn jolted me wide awake as we pulled off the main road and into the village. Enough was enough, I thought, rubbing my eyes and blinking at the clock on his dash. Perhaps the holiday wasn’t going to end in a proposal but there was no way it was going to end like this.
‘Here already?’
Adam nodded as we pelted down the country roads.
‘I wonder what’s gone on while we’ve been away,’ I said, my voice so croaky I could barely hear it myself. ‘Dad was supposed to be getting the surgery painted. I hope he got the colours I suggested.’
Adam stared straight ahead.
‘I bet Gus has grown,’ I went on. ‘He gets bigger every time I see him. I think he’s going to be tall like you and your dad. I bet he’ll be bigger than Chris by the time he’s seven. Definitely going to be a heartbreaker, like your mum said.’
I stole a sideways glance at my boyfriend. Nothing.
‘It’s a long way from Tulum, isn’t it?’ I clucked as we flew past the supermarket my dad swore he would never shop at until he found out he could get a free coffee every time he went in. The little village Co-op had closed within six months, it never stood a chance. ‘Makes you think.’
About what, I wasn’t sure.
Another left turn took us off the high street and down the little lane that led to the surgery.
‘We’re going to mine?’ I asked, sounding like I’d sandpapered my throat on the way home.
We never stayed at mine because Adam hated staying at mine. Mine being a tiny one-bedroom flat above the veterinary surgery as opposed to Adam’s three-bedroom house with a great big garden and no attached neighbours. Adam claimed the flat was haunted by the Ghosts of Pets Past and their late-night howling kept him awake but I had an inkling it was more to do with the fact he didn’t like being away from his fancy coffee maker and king-size bed. Out of the three years we’d been together, I could count the number of nights we’d spent together in my flat on one hand. Most of my things were over at Adam’s but since my parents were oddly old-fashioned about these things, I had never officially moved in. I slept at mine once, maybe twice, a week, if my evening surgery ran late or Abi demanded a sleepover but really, it was little more than an unnecessarily well-furnished storage locker.
Adam’s Land Rover crunched along the gravel outside the surgery and the motion-activated security lights shone accusingly into my eyes. Exhausted and frustrated, all I wanted was to go to bed. Maybe a couple of hours of decent kip would help, things always got blown out of proportion outside of daylight hours and everyone knew things seemed worse when you were tired. I opened the passenger side door and stumbled out onto the drive – Adam’s car really wasn’t made for a short arse like me. Retrieving my suitcase from the boot, I was staggering down the path with my suitcase, halfway to the front door, keys in hand before I realized Adam was still in the car. Still wearing his seatbelt. Still gripping the steering wheel as though the car might tear away all on its own.
‘Are you planning on sleeping out here?’ I asked, the sharp edges of my house keys cutting into my fingers. ‘It’s a bit cold for a camp-out.’
‘No,’ he replied, eyes straight ahead. ‘I’m going home.’
I took a deep, calming breath.
‘Adam,’ I said as softly as I could. ‘Come inside—’
‘I need to sort some stuff out,’ he cut me off, nodding once at his windshield. Even though he was looking in my general direction, his eyes didn’t quite meet mine. ‘I need a break, Liv.’
‘Well, you’ve just had a holiday,’ I pointed out, trying not to yawn. ‘That was a two-week break.’
‘I don’t mean that kind of break,’ he tailed off with a huffing noise and then turned the key in the ignition. ‘I need a break from this, a break from us.’
The security light blinked out above me, leaving me in disorienting darkness for too long a moment. The only thing I could make out was Adam’s profile, etched in orange light from his glowing dashboard.
‘What?’
My handbag slid off my shoulder, landed on my foot and then hit the ground, its contents spilling all over the floor. Inside the surgery I heard a few drowsy barks and whimpers as the security light flashed back into life, dazzling me with its angry white light.
‘I’m tired, Liv,’ he muttered, gunning the engine. ‘I’m going home and I’ll talk to you later.’
Without any further explanation, he reversed quickly and peeled out of the driveway, showering me with gravel as he went. Stunned, I reached down to grab my handbag and felt an unexpected tear roll out of my dry eye and off the end of my nose. Inside the bag, my phone was flashing with a text message. It was Cassie, up for a three a.m. feed.
ARE YOU ENGAGED???? DID HE DO IT??????
‘No,’ I whispered to my phone, tears falling freely down my face as I knelt on the floor. ‘I’m just knackered, miserable and desperate for a wee.’
The sharp stones of the driveway dug into my knees, and underneath all the plasters my foot was screaming but I couldn’t feel any of it. I couldn’t feel anything at all. Swiping the back of my hand across my face, I scooped all my things back into my handbag then dragged my suitcase through the gravel, up to the door of my little flat, alone.
3 (#uadc231fc-d253-51b5-8486-94961251f189)
‘Morning, Nutsack.’
There was nothing like waking up to a phone call from my brother to ruin a perfectly good Tuesday before it had even begun.
‘You there or did the kidnappers answer your phone?’ he said when I didn’t reply. He laughed at his own joke, still waiting for a response. ‘If this is the kidnappers, we don’t want him back. Do what you’ve got to do.’
‘Very funny, Chris.’ I yawned loudly, grinding my fists into my eyes. Why was I asleep on the settee? Why was I still wearing my coat? Why did I have a horrible feeling that I’d ruined my life?
Oh.
Yeah.
I stretched out the crick in my neck and squinted at the devastation in my living room, suitcase dumped open by the door, jumper thrown across the floor, duty free bottle of whiskey left open, knocked over by a flying shoe and emptied out onto my rug.
‘What do you want?’
‘Nothing you want to tell me, little brother?’ he asked. ‘Nothing you’d like to share before I see it plastered all over social media?’
‘Nope.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
I stretched as far as I could without getting up and dug around in the suitcase for the little square box I’d been carrying around for three months. It wasn’t there.
‘You didn’t do it?’
‘I really don’t want to talk about it,’ I assured him, panic rising. Where was the ring? ‘What do you want?’
‘Whatever you say, dude,’ he replied, letting go far more easily than I had anticipated. ‘Dad needs a lift to the supermarket and I can’t take him. Can you pick him up?’
‘I just got off a plane.’ I lay back down, head spinning from my ill-advised three a.m. nightcap and felt something digging into my hip. It was the ring box, nestling in between the sofa cushions. ‘Why can’t you take him?’
‘Because I’ve got a job, Adam, and I’m on my way into the office. You can’t tell I’m in the car at all, can you? I got this new Bluetooth hook up for the Jag and it’s so clear I—’
‘Can’t you take the day off?’ I interrupted, picking up the ring box and letting the sharp corners dig into my palm. ‘I thought you were your own boss.’
‘No such thing as a day off when you run your own company,’ he scoffed. ‘I’ve barely had a minute to myself in the last month. Honestly, I’m out for a morning and my number two doesn’t know whether to shit or wind his watch. I’ve employed idiots, Adam, it’s a miracle we’re even still going, let alone doing so well. I’ve got to go in today, we’re pitching for this—’
‘I’ll take him,’ I said quickly. I didn’t have the stomach for another Chris Floyd lecture on how Very Important he was. ‘I’ll be there in an hour; let me have a shower and I’ll go over.’
‘OK, I’ll let him know,’ Chris replied cheerfully. ‘So, what went wrong? Did you not have a good time? Cass is dying to hear all about it.’
‘Yeah, something like that,’ I said, rubbing my temples. ‘I’d better go.’
‘Well, I hope you’re planning to be more talkative tomorrow night. You’re both still coming round for dinner, aren’t you?’
‘Uh, I don’t know,’ I said, sitting up and faking a cough. I’d forgotten, I always forgot. Liv managed our social calendar. I was in charge of making sure she ate solid food and she was in charge of making sure I entered the outside world. It had been a good system until now. ‘I’ve not been feeling brilliant. I don’t want to come if I’ve got a cold. You know, the baby.’
‘Oh yeah,’ he replied. ‘I suppose not. You pick it up on holiday?’
‘On the plane, I think,’ I went for another cough, trying to get a bit more of a hack into it and putting Chris on speaker while I checked my emails and messages. ‘Been feeling shit all night.’
At least that part wasn’t a lie.
‘Well, let me know, twatfink,’ Chris said. ‘Cass was going to cook some ridiculously complicated Chinese thing that takes ten years to make. If you’re not going to come, for fuck’s sake text me tonight or I’ll never hear the end of it.’
‘Tell her we’d be just as happy with a takeaway,’ I replied, scanning one of half a dozen emails from Pablo the restaurant manager who seemed dead set on screwing me out of all my money for the non-event of a proposal. How could not showing up and eating dinner be costing me more money than actually going to the restaurant? I definitely hadn’t told him to organize a firework display. Had I? ‘I’ll bring a pizza or something, the woman just had a baby.’
‘Yeah, but you know how she is,’ he said with half a sigh. ‘She wants to do something nice and, you know, I thought we’d be celebrating.’
I did know how she was, and I thought we’d be celebrating too. The ring box was not supposed to be in my hand right now, or at least the contents weren’t. Actually, I wasn’t sure where the box went once the ring was on her finger. Did she keep the box? Did I? Did we throw it in the sea in a glorious celebration of love and the giddy assumption that it would never, ever come off her hand ever again?
‘Don’t let her mess about cooking.’ I stuck my left big toe into the ankle of my left sock, wriggling it down over my heel. ‘I’ll text you later, but right now I feel like shite. I really don’t think we’ll be coming over.’
‘OK, let me know, I’ve got to go, almost at work.’
‘Yeah, I get it,’ I said, tackling the second sock, so much easier now the first one was off. ‘I’m honoured you found the time to call to ask me to do you a favour in the first place.’
‘You should be,’ he said. ‘Now go and get Dad before he eats one of the dogs. Love to Liv.’
Kicking my socks across the wooden floor, I let my phone slip between the sofa cushions and held the ring box in the palm of my hand. Such an inconspicuous little thing. For something so small, it felt very heavy.
‘Adam, what did you do?’ I wondered aloud while Jim Beam tap-danced on my temples. My mouth was dry and my eyes were sore and every part of me ached. ‘What did you do?’
It was all a bit of a blur and for that I was thankful. I remembered losing it on the plane, driving home in silence and then an argument at her front door although exactly what had been said was a mystery. And after that … nothing. I couldn’t hold my ale at the best of times but Jim Beam and jet lag were an evil combination and I knew I wasn’t in a rush to call her for the details.
Very carefully, I stood up and placed the ring box carefully inside a tall ceramic vase on the mantelpiece. Somewhere it couldn’t escape, somewhere I couldn’t see it.
Stretching, I picked up the almost-empty whiskey bottle and set it on the coffee table, gagging at the stench of booze coming from the rug. I was a mess.
‘Shower first, Dad second,’ I told my greyish-green reflection. ‘Grovel to Liv third.’
I had a feeling the last one could take a while.
‘You’re shitting me?’
‘I shit you not.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Because I’d make this up? Can you hand me the thermometer?’
David, my nurse and work-husband, picked up the requested instrument without taking his narrowed brown eyes off me. Bruiser, a French bulldog who couldn’t stop passing foul gas, kept his huge green eyes on the thermometer.
I really hadn’t slept after Adam dropped me off and, instead, I tossed and turned for a couple of hours before changing out of my pyjamas and into my scrubs. I’d done the rounds, checked on our overnight patients and called all their owners before David even got to work. As far as I could tell, nothing majorly dramatic had happened while I was away, other than my dad being called out to tend to an epileptic guinea pig in the middle of the night a week last Friday.
‘Adam didn’t propose?’ David wrapped his rubber-gloved hands around the unwilling pup. ‘Hold still, Bruiser, it’ll all be over in a minute.’
‘That’s what he says to all the boys,’ I whispered to Bruiser as I lubed up the probe.
‘Honestly, I’m not telling you anything ever again,’ he replied with an affected toss of his head. ‘It was one time and I didn’t care for it one bit. I went to public school, Liv – everyone was doing it.’
Even when I was sleep-deprived, jet-lagged and desperately trying to convince myself nothing was wrong, David could still make me smile.
‘Don’t change the subject. What the cocking hell happened?’
‘Not only did Adam not propose,’ I said, watching the numbers jump around on the little digital monitor while Bruiser the Farting Dog made a horrible high-pitched noise I had not missed in the slightest. ‘He went completely mental on the last evening, we had this really weird fight on the plane, then he dropped me off at mine at three o’clock this morning and announced he needed a break.’
He lowered his chin and raised an eyebrow. ‘A break?’
‘Temperature’s normal,’ I nodded. ‘A break. Isn’t that weird?’
‘Let me get this straight …’ David gave Bruiser a well-earned scratch behind the ear before turning his full attentions to me. ‘You went all the way to Mexico to get engaged and instead you came home dumped?’
I looked up sharply to see a confused look on my friend’s face.
‘He didn’t dump me, he said he needed a break,’ I said, nudging my wonky blonde topknot with my wrist. ‘That’s not what I said.’
‘OK, then what happened to the proposal?’ He swabbed Bruiser’s behind before carefully carrying him back into the blanket-lined cage behind him. ‘I thought this was a done deal? I missed out on so many pastry-eating opportunities so you could look skinny in the engagement pictures.’
‘And for that I apologize,’ I said, peeling off my latex gloves. ‘I have no explanation. Maybe he never was going to propose. It’s nearly three months since Cass told me about the ring. The ring I’m not even supposed to know about, remember?’
‘You mean, maybe he bought the ring then realized he didn’t want to marry you but he didn’t want to break up with you before the holiday because he’d already paid for it, so he waited for you to get back?’
Both Bruiser and I gasped in unison.
‘You are a very mean man,’ I told him as the idea squirrelled itself away into my brain. What had been said could never be unsaid. ‘This is why you haven’t got a girlfriend.’
David, resplendent in Dalmatian print scrubs he had ordered in from the States, stared at me from across the room. ‘I haven’t got a girlfriend because I’m too awesome for one woman,’ he assured me. ‘And because Abi still won’t put out.’
‘Abi will never put out for you,’ I tossed my gloves into the bin but felt nothing as they swished into the basket the first time. Things were really bad. ‘And Adam did not break up with me. We had an argument, he needed a good night’s sleep. That’s all that happened.’
He fixed me with a sympathetic smile.
‘As a man and as your friend,’ he replied. ‘It’s my duty to tell you you’re being really stupid right now.’
A wave of jet lag and nausea washed over me. I probably should have eaten something other than half a packet of Jammy Dodgers before coming down to work.
‘And you’re being really unpleasant,’ I said. ‘You’re not getting your present now. Shut up.’
‘I’m only trying to help,’ he said, shrugging as though I was the one who was being unreasonable. ‘I mean, you’re not engaged, are you?’
I turned on the cold tap and held my hands under the water, trying to wake myself up. He had said he was tired and that we’d talk later and that he needed a break from us. Did he really mean he wanted to break up?
I turned off the tap slowly, waiting for another, more rational explanation to present itself.
‘You really think he’s dumped me?’ I asked, the prospect hitting me like a sound slap. ‘He meant a break-up break?’
‘This is going to come as something of a shock given that I constantly anticipate your every need,’ David replied, ‘but I’m not actually a mind reader. I don’t know what he’s thinking, Liv, any more than you do. I thought this proposal was a done deal; I was just waiting for you to ask me to be your bridesdude.’
‘So did I,’ I replied, still reeling from the possibility I might have been dumped without even realizing it. ‘But just so you know, I wasn’t planning on bridesdudes.’
‘You’re so cruel,’ David said as I flipped blindly through Bruiser’s chart to cover my hot face. ‘To be honest, Liv, I’d blame Cass for this whole thing. If she hadn’t told you about the ring, you wouldn’t have been so stressed before you went away.’
‘She knows I hate surprises,’ I couldn’t help defend Cass but in my heart of hearts, I agreed with him. My relaxing holiday had been ruined before it had started. ‘It’s stupid, I wasn’t even thinking about getting engaged until this all kicked off. Oh god, David, did he dump me?’
He looked up at the buzzing fluorescent light in the ceiling that Dad was supposed to get fixed while I was away and shrugged.
‘I don’t know, Livvy,’ he said. ‘Men can be shits. Last time I had to break up with a girl, I asked my neighbour to answer my phone and shout at her in Japanese until she stopped calling. Have you tried to call him this morning?’
‘No?’ I replied, still stunned. ‘When he said he’d talk to me later, I assumed I would talk to him later. I didn’t know I’d been bloody dumped, did I?’
‘So you took one part of his conversation literally but not the other?’ He bent over, nose to nose with Bruiser. ‘Women.’
Bruiser growled in agreement. Then farted.
‘Not women, Adam,’ I corrected as David reeled backwards into the sink. He really was noxious, the poor pup. ‘He’s the one who’s being a knob. Who would dump their girlfriend like that? You need to be clear about those kinds of things, you need to be specific. There is no room for ambiguity in a dumping!’
I grabbed hold of the stainless steel examination table and replayed the entire incident. Had he said break-up and not break? Had I misheard? It was possible; I was so tired. But why? Why would he do that? All the stress and hurt and uncertainty bubbled back up inside me. Bruiser gave a quiet growl and licked my hand. Even the flatulent dog felt sorry for me.
‘Liv.’ Fanning the air in front of his face, David leaned against the back door and crossed his black-and-white spotted arms in front of him. ‘Pick up the bloody phone. You won’t know what’s going on until you talk to him.’
Stupid David and his stupid common sense.
‘I’ll do it after my next appointment,’ I said, stretching my naked fingers out wide and pressing into the cold metal of the table. I was not going to lose it at work, I just wasn’t. ‘It’s Zoe Gustar isn’t it? I could do with some pug time.’
‘Are you sure?’ he asked with a furrowed brow. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m sure you’re right and this is just a big misunderstanding.’
‘It’s fine,’ I said, my hands shaking. ‘Really, I’m fine.’
‘I’ll talk to Zoe and the pug,’ he said, snatching up the clipboard from the table. ‘Go and call him now. You’re not going to be good for anything until you do.’
‘OK,’ I said, nodding as I opened the door that led to the back passages of the surgery, taking the used instruments with me. ‘I appreciate it.’
‘You’ll figure this out,’ David said, patting me on the topknot as I went. ‘And I’m glad to have you back.’
‘Yeah,’ I agreed with enthusiasm I did not feel as I closed the exam room door behind me. ‘Me too.’
There really was nothing like sticking a thermometer up a dog’s arse then finding out you’d been stealth-dumped to let you know your holiday was over.
4 (#uadc231fc-d253-51b5-8486-94961251f189)
‘And apparently that will blow up a microwave.’
Dad pulled two boxes of cereal from the shelf and held them both at arm’s length, considering the packaging over the top of his glasses.
‘I don’t understand why you were trying to microwave yoghurt in the first place,’ I said, taking the Frosties out of his hand and putting them right back on the shelf. ‘How bored were you?’
‘Have you ever cooked yoghurt? Maybe it’s delicious.’ He handed me the Coco Pops without a fight and resignedly replaced them with a box of muesli. ‘I thought it might be a bit like Ready Brek.’
I looked at his all organic, sugar-free selections and tossed the box of Coco Pops back in the trolley. ‘Make sure they’re gone before Mum gets home.’
‘Oh, they will be,’ he said, leaning heavily on the trolley, his walking stick wedged in his shopping bag and resting up against his shoulder like a flagpole missing its flag. ‘Maybe you and Chris can come round tonight and help me finish them. Or we could even order a pizza. It’s bin day tomorrow, your mother would never know.’
‘Pizza?’ I asked in a doubtful tone. ‘I thought you weren’t allowed dairy or gluten any more?’
‘Or meat,’ he added. ‘Let’s get a pepperoni pizza.’
‘I don’t know if I can do tonight,’ I said, walking ahead. ‘I’ve got some stuff on.’
‘Oh. OK,’ he shuffled forward, a martyred smile on his face. ‘Your mum’ll be back tomorrow night. Would have been nice to have a boys’ night but, of course, I know you two are very busy.’
I picked up a packet of Weetabix. We were all out and I knew Liv would want to get back on her healthy eating kick now we were back from holidays. Right after she’d given me the kicking I was almost certain I deserved.
‘Has she had a good time?’ I asked, also remembering I had told Liv I wanted to take a break at three o’clock in the morning and I put the Weetabix back, swallowing down the dark feeling in the pit of my stomach. ‘It was a yoga retreat, wasn’t it?’
‘Yoga retreat and a sugar detox,’ he corrected, turning a corner and staring wistfully at a packet of chocolate Hobnobs. ‘And something to do with mindfulness.’
‘Intense.’ I raised my eyebrows at my dad in his freshly pressed shirt and trousers with a crease so sharp they could have sliced bread. Not that he was allowed to eat bread. Mum’s middle-aged interest in all things healthy had completely passed him by, but Coco Pop bans aside, they both seemed to be adjusting to her new path with relative ease. Probably because Mum didn’t know he was sneaking down the café for a bacon sandwich every other morning when he went out to get the paper. That was the thing about villages: too small for secrets. I’d seen him, hiding in the back behind his Telegraph, brown sauce all over his mush.
‘That’s the one,’ he nodded. ‘Are you sure you can’t do tonight? I mean, Chris has got his own business and a new baby but he said he could find half an hour or so. Early doors? Four-ish?’
Sighing, I picked up the Hobnobs and put them in the trolley next to the Coco Pops.
‘If Chris can make it, I suppose I can.’
‘He’s a good lad,’ Dad said with a nod. ‘He’s got a pitch, you know.’
‘I do know,’ I replied, folding the sleeves of my jumper over my knuckles. ‘He mentioned it. Twice.’
‘He’s doing so well.’ He smiled brightly at a furious-looking woman in a tabard and kept talking. ‘And little Gus, what a pumpkin. Healthy as an ox, he is.’
‘Total pumpkin,’ I agreed, unsure as to whether or not that was a good thing but Dad had been a doctor before he retired so I assumed positive things.
‘You should get some babysitting in,’ Dad advised. ‘Before it’s your turn.’
‘Yeah,’ I replied, focusing on the nutritional table on the back of a jar of Horlicks.
Ever since that fateful night Friday night at Sadie Jenkins’ house party in Year Twelve, me and my mates had spent almost every waking second trying to work out how to have sex as often as possible without knocking anyone up. Sex good, babies bad. Now they were popping up all over the place and I never knew how I was supposed to react. When Cassie first got pregnant, Chris was a wreck, hiding in the back of his garage and singing Oasis songs to himself while he played with his original, mint condition 1992 Game Boy. Now he was posting topless black-and-white pictures of himself on Facebook, holding the baby in the air like he was the FA Cup. As Liv pointed out, it was all very Athena poster and not in a good way. Chris was not a man who should be appearing shirtless in the world.
‘All right, out with it,’ Dad demanded as we headed for the toilet paper aisle. ‘You haven’t said a word about your holiday and quite frankly, Adam, I can’t remember a time you’ve had less to say for yourself since you went through puberty. Is something the matter?’
I shook my head and grabbed a twelve-pack of Andrex.
‘Nope.’
‘Your mum doesn’t like those ones.’ He fished them back out of the trolley and put them straight back on the shelf. ‘Ever since they put the dogs on the paper. She says it makes her uncomfortable.’
‘Fair.’ I swapped for an overpriced, unbleached organic, recycled brand and waited for Dad’s approval, which was given in a slow nod. ‘I’m just tired, we got in late.’
‘But you had a nice time?’ he asked. ‘And Liv’s well?’
‘We had a brilliant time the whole two weeks,’ I said. Not technically a lie, it didn’t really go to shit until the last night. ‘Liv’s fine.’
‘And she won’t mind me borrowing you tonight?’ He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, smiling brightly. ‘Pizza, Coco Pops and a bit of Newsnight?’
‘How could any woman begrudge any man pizza, Coco Pops and Kirsty Wark?’ I replied. ‘Other than Mum, obviously.’
‘Sugar is more addictive than cocaine,’ he said wisely. ‘And meat is murder. And I’m sure there’s something about pizza but I can’t think of it right now and, to be frank, I don’t care to. I’ve earned the right to a slice of pizza once in a while.’
Couldn’t argue with the man.
‘When do you think she’ll pack this all in?’
‘I’m not sure she will.’ He tapped his fingers on the top of his walking stick while contemplating the different types of wet wipes. ‘She’s stuck to this a lot longer than she did the ballroom dancing or the pottery.’
‘Any joy on selling the kiln?’
‘Not a lot of demand for a second-hand kiln round here,’ Dad replied. ‘And you never know, she might take an interest again.’
‘You’re a saint,’ I said, thinking of all the oddly shaped bowls and redundant ashtrays filling up my kitchen cupboards. Mum’s hobbies must have cost them a small fortune. Almost as much as a half-completed law degree, suggested the little voice in my head that sounded an awful lot like my brother. ‘I don’t know how you cope sometimes.’
‘I knew what I was getting into when I married your mother,’ he said with a little shrug. ‘The only thing she’s ever stuck to for more than six months is me, so I can’t really complain. I know it’s different nowadays but I won’t say I wasn’t glad when Chris tied the knot. It changes things. You’ll understand when you get married.’
‘Yeah,’ I shivered involuntarily, not sure if I was more afraid of going over to apologize or the thought that she might not want to see me in the first place. ‘Maybe you’re right.’
There was, after all, a first time for everything.
I’ve never been a smoker but there were times when the idea of popping out for a cigarette sounded so great. Hiding at the back of the surgery and checking Instagram was not relaxing. All those photos of other people’s holidays, overdrawn-lip selfies and artfully shot pasta might have been easier to stomach with a lungful of nicotine. Every time I scrolled through, I thought of an old framed photo of my granddad hanging in my parents’ living room. He was standing in the surgery in his operating gown, enjoying a pipe with his colleagues immediately after performing his first successful spinal surgery on an Alsatian. I’m not saying it was the healthiest thing for my granddad or the dog, but everyone in the picture looked incredibly relaxed and every single one of them was puffing away. Here I was, squinting at a smudged phone screen, looking at what one-quarter of Little Mix had for breakfast and my anxiety levels were off the charts.
For sixteen minutes I’d been pretending I was about to call Adam and in those sixteen minutes, I’d done a full lap of my social media channels and checked three different websites to make sure it wasn’t Mercury retrograde. I wasn’t usually someone who was lost for words but it was one thing knowing how to say ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Stevens, your hamster didn’t make it’ without hesitating but quite another to call your boyfriend when all you had to work with was ‘So, I was just wondering, did you by any chance dump me at three o’clock this morning?’
‘Liv?’
I looked up to see Adam right there in front of me, same red hooded sweatshirt as the night before, a different, more sheepish expression on his face.
‘Hello,’ he said.
Well, at least he’d saved me a phone call.
‘You look knackered.’ There was a sad-looking bunch of pink roses in his right hand and he was hanging onto them for dear life. ‘Busy morning?’
‘Very,’ I replied. ‘And, you know, I didn’t get a lot of sleep.’
‘Oh, yeah,’ he looked down at the flowers in his hand and blew out a big, heavy breath. ‘These are for you.’
He stretched as far as his long arms would reach, only taking two extra steps towards me when he was absolutely certain they were necessary.
‘Thanks,’ I said, trying not to notice the remains of the price sticker he hadn’t quite managed to remove. There were a bunch of Sainsbury’s bags in the back of his car and my stomach rumbled loudly. Would it be impolite to trade the flowers for a loaf of bread? ‘They’re pretty.’
They weren’t.
‘Least I could do,’ Adam’s words were stilted and uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry about last night, I don’t know what was going on in my head, I must have gone mental from the flight.’
‘You mean about the break thing?’ I asked, concentrating on the bouquet of flowers. Even though he was here to apologize and take it back, having David’s theory proven right hurt. Really hurt. Hurt like I’d been kicked in the stomach by a donkey. That really had happened once and donkeys do not mess about.
‘Um, yes?’ He dug his hands in his pockets, looked at his feet for a moment then peeped back up to see whether or not he was forgiven. ‘Sorry.’
He was not.
‘You’re sorry?’ I asked. He had dumped me. There had been a dumping and I didn’t even know. Standing there, in the car park, phone in one hand, crappy supermarket flowers in the other, I was so close to meltdown. Anything I said or did would be wrong. If I cried I would feel foolish, if I shouted, he would shout back, and if I punched him in the throat, well, in theory I could go to prison but really shouldn’t I get some kind of prize? I didn’t know which was worse, to be angry, crazy or heartbroken, because, in that moment, I was all of the above.
‘Yeah, I’m sorry.’ He gave me a small, handsome smile and lifted his head a little bit more. ‘Uh, so, I know we were supposed to go round to Chris and Cassie’s tonight but Mum’s away and Dad asked if me and Chris would go round there, so I think we’re going to do that instead. Me and Chris, I mean.’
My grip tightened around the stems of the roses and I thanked the supermarket overlords for removing the thorns.
‘What?’
For some bizarre reason, I couldn’t quite seem to get over the part where my boyfriend had dumped me and then magically changed his mind overnight. Turned out it was incredibly hard to forgive something in the past when you had only just found out it happened in the first place. I wasn’t a saint, I wasn’t Beyoncé, more’s the bloody pity.
‘Me and Chris are going to my dad’s for tea,’ he repeated, a smile fully realized on his face, his body easy and relaxed all while a tiny version of me ran around circles in circles inside my brain, screaming at the top of her lungs and drowning out my thought process. ‘So dinner at their house is off. Didn’t Cassie call you?’
That was all he had to say? Sorry I broke up with you, I’m going to my dad’s for tea, here are some shit supermarket flowers now let’s pretend it never happened, cool, OK, bye?
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, resting the flowers on the wall and rubbing my shiny, sunburned face with both hands. ‘I think I’ve missed something. What exactly happened last night? What exactly happened in Mexico?’
A wave of tension swept over my boyfriend and he rocked backwards on his heels, tugging on the strings of his hoodie and pushing out his bottom lip.
‘I don’t know,’ he said, kicking the gravel with the toe of his Converse and squeezing his shoulders up around his ears. He did the same thing when I found out he’d eaten all my Jaffa Cakes so at least I was certain he knew how serious this was. ‘It was stupid, I wasn’t thinking. I was just tired, Liv.’
‘Well, it came from somewhere,’ I pointed out, still processing. ‘You must have meant it at the time.’
I could feel my face getting hot, not just hurt, not just angry but consumed by feelings I’d paid no mind to in years. Adam had never made me feel anything other than safe, loved and, very occasionally, mildly irritated but that was only when he shoved Penguin wrappers down the side of the settee. All I wanted to do was go back to bed, pull the covers over my head and pretend this wasn’t happening. Instead I had to resolve it like a grown-up then explain to a sixty-two-year-old man that his cat’s neon pink furballs and the fact he kept forcing it to wear neon pink hand-knitted jumpers were related.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. Even though he didn’t look nearly as shit as I did, I could tell by the bags under his eyes he hadn’t got a lot of sleep. As was right and proper. ‘I was pissed off. All that shit on the plane and then you wouldn’t stop talking and I needed some space to calm down.’
All that shit on the plane? Like that was my fault?
‘I was only upset because you were being weird all Monday night,’ I reminded him, sending the heat in my face to fuel the fire in my belly. Rage was better than tears: angry, I could work with. Tired and emotional, I could not. ‘And I’m not the one who caused a scene on the plane.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said stiffly. ‘What else do you want me to say?’
‘And now you don’t need space?’ I asked, still processing as I spoke. It wasn’t fair, he’d had a whole morning to think about this and I had been blindsided. If anyone needed space, it was me.
‘Oi, Liv, Mr Harries is here—’ David stuck his head out of the door, took one look at Adam, one look at me and slammed it shut again. ‘Never mind,’ he shouted through the letterbox, ‘I’ll sort it.’
‘Look, I said I’m sorry,’ Adam said, ignoring David’s interruption. ‘I don’t understand why you’re so pissed off.’
‘I’m so pissed off because at three o’clock this morning you apparently broke up with me,’ I explained, beating the flowers in the palm of my hand until there was a carpet of baby pink petals under my feet. ‘And now you want me to pretend it never happened. It was only nine hours ago, Adam. What is going on? You’ve changed your mind now? Nine hours was a long enough break, was it? I. Just. Don’t. Understand.’
‘Maybe it wasn’t long enough.’ I could tell he was annoyed now. Clearly he thought his five-quid apology flowers were going to be enough. ‘If you’re going to be like this, maybe I could use a bit more time.’
‘Fine!’ I shouted.
‘Fine!’ he shouted back.
For a moment, we stood in silence in the car park, neither one of us moving or speaking and I was unsure whether to carry on arguing or run and hide. Adam clenched and unclenched his hands and I could see the same options spinning around in his eyes, like a human fruit machine.
I would not speak first, I would not speak first, I would not speak first …
‘So what?’ he said eventually. ‘What do you want?’
Less than three days ago my answer would have been ‘to get engaged’; now I didn’t have a clue what to tell him.
‘You’re the one who wanted something,’ I reminded him, bitterly pleased he had been the one to break the awkward silence. At some point, our conversation had turned into a competition I was desperate to win, even though I didn’t really know what that meant. ‘You can’t say you want to break up one minute and pretend everything is all right the next without some sort of explanation.’
He straightened himself up to his full height, towering over me as he nodded, either because he agreed or he was trying to convince himself that he did, I wasn’t sure.
‘Fine,’ he said again. ‘I mean, yes. A bit of space might be a good idea, you’re right.’
It was such an Adam thing to do, turn the situation around to make it seem like it was my idea in the first place. But there was no point making this worse than it already was by pointing that out. I rolled my eyes, turning back towards the surgery so that he wouldn’t see. David’s head was just visible through the frosted-glass pane in the door, and I realized he was listening to everything through the letterbox.
‘I’ve got to get back to work,’ I said, pointing behind me with my battered bouquet. ‘I really can’t get into this now.’
Or possibly ever.
‘Fine,’ he replied. So help me god, if he said ‘fine’ one more time … ‘I’ll talk to you later.’
‘When?’ I asked. ‘Specifically?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. For the first time since he’d shown up, he actually looked like he was in pain. Without warning, all my fire and brimstone burned away, leaving nothing but a stick figure, holding onto a bunch of broken flowers with a lump in my throat. ‘But I will call you.’
‘OK.’
My gaze settled on his shoes and I couldn’t even look at him. I didn’t think I’d ever felt so unsure around him and that included the time I got so drunk, the second time I stayed over at his house that I puked into his pillowcase.
He automatically stepped towards me for a kiss but stopped just before he reached me. My shoulders seized as he pressed his lips against my cheek instead.
‘See you later, Liv.’
I watched as he climbed into the car and drove away, shopping bags bouncing around in the back seat.
‘You all right?’ David asked behind me, opening the door slowly. ‘Want me to tell Mr Harries to stop being such a daft twat and send him home?’
‘No.’ I turned on my heel, handing him my flowers, taking a deep breath. Not yet, not yet, not yet. ‘I think doing that myself might actually make me feel a bit better. There’s only an hour of surgery left, I’ll be OK.’
‘Sainsbury’s?’ he turned the bouquet over in his hands and gave it a disapproving sniff. ‘Even I know better than that. Shall I put them in water?’
‘Water or the bin, I don’t really care as long as I don’t have to look at them.’
‘Excellent choice.’ David closed the door behind us as I strode back into the surgery. ‘Glad to see you’re OK. I heard some of it. What a tosspot.’
‘Not now,’ I said, taking out my topknot, winding it up and wrapping the elastic band around my hair so securely, I looked like one of the Real Housewives. All of the Real Housewives. ‘Give me a minute and then send in Mr Harries, please?’
I swallowed hard and the edges of my vision began to blur. Not yet, I told myself, not until I was alone.
‘Whatever you say, doc,’ he said, unconvinced. ‘I might pop upstairs and put a bottle of wine in the fridge as well. Just in case we fancy an after work bevvy.’
‘Make it two,’ I called after him. ‘Dinner and dessert.’
‘That’s why you’re the boss,’ he said, shooting me the double guns. ‘You’re so wise.’
I watched as he sauntered off down the hallway, holding my flowers to his chest like Miss World. Despite being considerably younger than me, and one hundred per cent more male, he was usually right about most things, but in this instance I wasn’t so sure. I certainly didn’t feel very wise. I closed the back door to the examination room and made sure the other door that opened into the waiting room was securely latched. Safely locked away, I lay back on the steel examination table and popped my stethoscope around my neck, bouncing the weight of the drum in the palm of my hand until I calmed down. I loved my stethoscope so much, sometimes I put it on with my pyjamas while I was watching telly but today it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t sure if anything was.
‘What is happening?’ I whispered, staring up at the flickering fluorescent tube above me.
Two fat tears slid out the corners of my eyes, ran over my temples and into my hair. Had I spent so much time fretting over when he was going to propose, I’d missed the signs of an impending break-up? This wasn’t my first rodeo; I’d been the dumper and the dumped in my thirty years on this planet but I hadn’t seen this coming. Adam and me weren’t supposed to break up, ever. He was mine and I was his, why would I have looked for signs?
Was this why he was so anxious on Monday night? Not because he was going to propose but because he knew he was going to break up with me when we got home. Another warm tear plopped out of my left eye and made a beeline for my inner ear, making me shiver. But then he’d changed his mind. Probably got home to an empty bed and realized it was easier to keep me around than to find someone new. Probably couldn’t be bothered to work out which DVDs were mine and return them.
I laid the drum of my stethoscope on top of my chest and listened for my heartbeat. It was still going which was something of an achievement in itself.
‘Hello?’
The handle of the waiting-room door turned and the door knocked against the latch. Sitting up, I wobbled for a moment, almost falling off the table before catching myself, wiping my face and giving a loud, satisfying sniff.
‘Just a moment,’ I called through the door as I splashed my face with cold water. ‘I’m almost ready, Mr Harries.’
Just three more appointments, just one more hour to get through.
With a deep breath that stuck in my throat, I pushed myself out of my mind and opened the door. A sandy-haired older gentleman carrying a long-haired black cat in a shopping bag held up his hand politely as he walked in. The cat was wearing a hand-knitted jumper with a picture of what I took to be Olaf from Frozen emblazoned on the back.
‘Mr Harries, I thought we’d talked about getting rid of Jeremy’s woolly jumpers?’ I said as gently as possible, turning away to dab my runny nose with my sleeve. ‘They’re what’s causing all the hairballs.’
‘But he loves them,’ Mr Harries protested. ‘What am I supposed to do?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, sharing a despairing glance with poor Jeremy. ‘I really don’t know.’
5 (#uadc231fc-d253-51b5-8486-94961251f189)
‘And that’s how I blew up the microwave,’ Dad finished his story with pride. ‘It was only a small fire and I put it right out, no problems. Scorched the curtain a bit but you can’t tell unless you look.’
‘It was time we replaced that microwave anyway,’ Chris said, waving his hand as he laid down his decree. ‘I’ll get you a new one, a better one. Mine’s brilliant, does everything except wipe your arse. Amazing.’
‘You could get a gold-plated microwave that shits unicorn droppings, it’ll still blow up if you put metal in it,’ I pointed out.
‘I still can’t understand why you were trying to heat up a yoghurt.’
’I wanted to know what would happen,’ Dad replied. ‘Now I do.’
‘You should sue them,’ Chris went on. ‘It should say on it that you’re not supposed to microwave yoghurt pots.’
‘You can’t sue the manufacturers for human error,’ I said. ‘I think you just need to be more careful, Dad.’
‘And I think you shouldn’t take legal advice from a law school dropout.’ Chris twisted around in Mum’s favourite armchair to give me the full benefit of his smug, older-brother expression. ‘I’ll get a new microwave sent over before Mum gets back. She’ll never know.’
‘She doesn’t use it any more anyway.’ Dad merrily ignored the pair of us, having done a wonderful job of developing selective hearing over the years. ‘I’ll tell her I got rid of it because of the radiation. She’ll be made up.’
‘I’ll get you a good one,’ Chris said, already looking at microwaves on his phone. ‘Can’t have you and Mum getting into accidents. We probably ought to replace the whole kitchen.’
‘We’re not senile quite yet,’ Dad said, pushing himself up to his feet as the doorbell rang. ‘You don’t need to put a catch on the toilet to stop me falling in.’
‘He was dicking about with a microwave, not trying to burn the house down,’ I whispered after he left the room. ‘Stop patronizing him, they don’t want a new kitchen.’
‘Calm down, Ad.’ Chris popped the top on a bottle of beer, wrinkling his nose at my provided beverages. He only drank craft ales so I’d brought Bud Light with Lime. It was the little things that got you through the difficult days. ‘You shouldn’t feel inferior because I’m in a position to help them out.’
‘If they wanted a new kitchen, they’d buy a new kitchen,’ I replied, turning my phone over to check the time. Between the night on the settee, the Mexican jet lag and whatever the hell had happened with Liv, I was dying on my arse.
‘And if I want to help my parents out, I will,’ he replied with serial killer calm. ‘Maybe if they hadn’t spent half their savings on paying for the barrister’s qualification you jacked in a year before you finished, they might have bought themselves a new kitchen before now. Or at least had a lawyer son who could afford to buy one for them.’
‘Oh, fuck off.’ I burrowed backwards, praying for the settee to swallow me whole ‘They don’t want a new kitchen, Chris.’
‘You’re very touchy this evening.’ He leaned forward over his designer denim-covered knees and fixed me with a smile. ‘Anything to do with the distinct lack of a post-Mexico engagement?’
‘Nope,’ I replied, sipping my beer with great difficulty. It really did taste like piss. ‘And I don’t want to talk about that here.’
‘She say no?’
‘Fairly certain I just said I didn’t want to talk about it.’
‘Shame that,’ Chris said with a deep, satisfied sigh. ‘Especially since Cassie was on the phone to Liv when I left. What’s all this about a break?’
When my brother started going out with Liv’s best friend, I was wary. He’d come to Long Harrington for my birthday and Liv had thrown me a party and warned Cassie and Abigail, her two best friends, not to touch him with a ten-foot pole. Abi listened, Cass did not. Chris had always been a bit of a shit with the ladies – well, a shit in general – but that had been even more of a worry than usual. I didn’t want to get in trouble with Liv when he inevitably broke her best friend’s heart. We hadn’t been going out that long and my brother had never been able to keep it in his pants for more than three months at a time and, try as I might, I could not see a scenario in which his relationship went well for me. What I couldn’t have predicted was Chris falling head over heels in love with Cass, leaving London and buying a house in the village after three months, proposing after six, then getting married and knocking out a baby less than a year later. Whatever magical spell Cassie had worked on my brother had worked and he was a new man. At least for her, anyway. Where the rest of the world was concerned he was still a total prick.
‘What did she say?’ I asked, taking another sip of my disgusting drink. Hoisted by my own lime-flavoured petard. I was happy it had worked out but it was massively annoying that he always seemed to know what was going on in my life before I did. Cassie and Liv were constantly texting each other, updating one another on every last little thing that went on. I’d tried to read their texts but since I couldn’t speak emoji I couldn’t understand most of it anyway.
‘I can’t believe you brought this piss; I don’t know if it’s cat’s, gnat’s or rat’s but I’m not drinking it.’ He took one more drink then put the half-full bottle on the fireplace. ‘She said you and Liv had some sort of barney and now you’re taking a break. What’s going on? I thought you had it all planned.’
‘I did,’ I said, fixing my eyes on a photo of the village millpond that Dad had taken when me and Chris were kids and visiting our grandparents. ‘And then I didn’t and now we’re sort of on a break.’
My brother fixed me with an unimpressed gaze.
‘That’s it?’
‘That’s it,’ I confirmed. ‘And I don’t want Dad to know, so don’t say anything.’
‘If I’m honest …’ Chris stood up and strode across the living room to the reusable Waitrose bag on the table. He wasn’t quite as tall as me but he was still pushing six foot. Add to that the same blond hair and blue eyes and there was no mistaking we were brothers. Unfortunately. ‘I never saw it working out with you and Liv.’
‘What?’
‘Eh …’ He pulled a six-pack of Samuel Smith ales out of the bag. ‘I’m not saying she’s not pretty but she’s not properly hot, is she? And you know you look like you could be brother and sister, don’t you? It’s all a bit too master race for my liking.’
‘Liv is hot!’ I couldn’t decide if he was trying to make me feel better about my situation or if he was just being Chris. ‘Liv’s really hot. And we do not look like brother and sister.’
‘You do a bit though,’ Chris said, pouring one of his special beers into a pint glass and returning to his chair without offering one to me. ‘I’ve seen her look all right, bare materials are there, but she doesn’t really try, does she? Always got her hair up, never got any make-up on. And I don’t think I’ve seen her out of jeans more than what, twice?’
‘I like her hair up.’ I settled on him just being himself. He’d been acting up ever since he arrived, barking about his big deal at work and talking about the baby like he was the second coming of Kanye. ‘And she looks good in jeans. You’re talking shit.’
‘And I’ve always thought it’s weird, her being a vet. Doesn’t it bother you, her stuck in a surgery all day?’
‘Where would you rather have her?’ I asked. ‘Chained to the kitchen sink, baking me a pie?’
‘Hardly,’ he said, sinking back into his seat. ‘You know I like an ambitious woman but the thought of her hand up a cow’s arse all day makes me gip.’
‘Cassie was a vet,’ I reminded him. ‘That’s how she and Liv know each other. From vet school. Where they both trained to be vets.’
He shrugged. ‘Yeah, but Cass doesn’t put her hands up anything’s guts for a living. She’s a science teacher now.’
‘I think it’s brilliant Liv’s a vet,’ I replied. And it was true. I’d gone out with a fair number of girls before her and none of them had such cool careers. Dating a yoga instructor sounds like it would be fun until she’s dragging you out of bed at five a.m. for sunrise sun salutations and refusing to eat, well, anything. ‘She helps animals, she helps people, she has a stethoscope. And it’s good money.’
‘It’d have to be given she’s shacking up with a dropout,’ he replied. I wondered how upset Dad would be if I glassed him. I probably shouldn’t – we’d never get the Bud Lime smell out of the carpet. ‘Only kidding. I know you’ve got a job.’
It was the air quotes around the word ‘job’ that pushed me over the edge.
‘We can’t all be a technowiz,’ I declared, banging my bottle down hard. ‘I wish I’d thought to start an app that delivers condoms and rolling papers to students for three times the price of the corner shop.’
‘Yeah, you really do.’ There was an edge to his voice that hadn’t been there before. ‘That app paid for my house. Remind me how you got yours again? Oh, that’s right, it’s Granddad’s house and Mum and Dad gave it to you.’
‘They tried to give me the wrong pizza.’ Dad walked slowly back into the room, weighed down by a pile of Domino’s boxes, just as I was about to leap across the room and choke my brother with our great-grandmother’s handcrafted quilt. ‘He had to call the shop to check. I wonder how many people don’t check what they’ve been given before the driver leaves? Can you imagine ordering a pepperoni and ending up with tuna? I’d be devastated.’
‘If Liv’s so hot and so brilliant, why are you on a break instead of engaged?’ Chris asked while Dad fannied around in the kitchen with plates and the world’s biggest wad of kitchen roll. ‘You’re not making any sense, little brother. She’s had enough of you playing carpenter and packed you in for someone with a proper job, hasn’t she?’
‘It was a mutual agreement,’ I replied, swigging my pissy beer. ‘No one has packed anyone in, we’re taking a break, working out some stuff.’
I didn’t even know if that was true, but since I’d spent all afternoon literally passed out, face down in my workshop from jet lag, I hadn’t had much time to think about it.
‘Now leave it. I don’t want Mum and Dad to know until we’ve sorted it out.’
‘Getting married a big commitment,’ he said loudly, with an added cluck for emphasis. Chris Floyd, the world’s greatest authority on relationships. ‘It’s a lot to take on.’
‘What’s that?’ Dad asked, gleefully presenting us both with two slices of forbidden pizza.
‘Marriage,’ Chris said. I shot him a warning look but he went on regardless. ‘I was just telling Adam it’s not something to be entered into lightly.’
‘True enough,’ Dad agreed before taking a bite and closing his eyes, enraptured. ‘Is there something you want to tell me, son?’
‘He’s going to propose,’ Chris answered before I could. ‘Aren’t you, Ad?’ He smiled at me across the room and mouthed the word ‘what?’ before stuffing his mouth with pizza.
Dad’s eyes opened up wide and I couldn’t think of a time I’d seen him happier. Pizza, his boys, and important family gossip Mum hadn’t heard first. He was living the paternal dream.
‘That’s bloody marvellous news, that is,’ he said, setting down his plate and hurling himself across the settee to give me a hug. Dad had become quite the hugger in his old age. ‘You know your mother and I love Olivia. Do you have an idea when you’re going to ask her? Have you asked her dad for permission yet?’
‘No.’ I chewed and chewed and chewed on the same mouthful of pizza but I couldn’t seem to swallow. ‘I haven’t decided anything yet. Probably best not to say anything to Mum until I’ve, you know, worked out all the details.’
‘Surprised you didn’t do it on holiday,’ he said, dumping himself back in his chair and nibbling at his leftover crust. ‘That would have been nice.’
‘Oh yeah.’ Chris looked at Dad as though he was a genius. ‘Why didn’t you think of that, Adam? Why didn’t you propose on holiday?’
‘Anyone want any more pizza?’ I asked, getting up and loading my plate with greasy, sausage-laden Domino’s before helping myself to one of Chris’s expensive beers. ‘Beer, Dad?’
‘Oh sod it, I will have one,’ Dad said, holding out his hand for the freshly opened bottle. ‘We’ll be dry again tomorrow. Your mum poured all my booze down the drain.’
‘I’m sure she’ll let you bend the rules to toast the happy couple,’ Chris said as Dad happily glugged his beer. ‘As soon as you do it, let me know, Ad. I’ve got a bottle of vintage Bollinger from the year you were born. Cost me a grand but it’s perfect for a celebration, don’t you think, Dad?’
The senior Floyd beamed around the room at the fruit of his loins.
‘I know it’s cheesy but I am glad the two of you have stayed such good friends,’ he said. ‘It’s so sad when siblings grow apart. You’re making an old man very happy.’
‘I can’t imagine the world without him,’ I said, raising my bottle and giving my brother the filthiest look I could muster. ‘I’ve tried but I can’t.’
Chris nodded, his cheeks flushing from the booze and the pizza and the general adulation while Dad carried on putting away his pizza, gazing at his children in such a perfect state of joy I couldn’t help but think Mum had wasted her money on a two-week yoga retreat. Forcing my pizza down my throat with a mouthful of beer, I stared at the wall and waited for someone else to change the subject. Now I was really buggered. There was no way my dad could keep schtum about this and there was absolutely no way Mum would leave me alone until I fessed up about what was going on. Meaning I really should make an effort to work out what that was before she got home.
‘You all right, Adam?’ Dad asked, red sauce all round his mouth. ‘You look a bit peaky.’
‘Right as rain,’ I assured him, raising my pizza up high as Chris stifled a laugh. ‘Never been better. Never been better.’
If only Liv were as easy to placate as my dad, I thought to myself as he carried on munching until his plate was clear. I knew I should have taken her a pizza instead of flowers.
6 (#uadc231fc-d253-51b5-8486-94961251f189)
Thursday night drinks at the local pub had been a tradition for Abi and me well before our eighteenth birthday but in honour of my relationship implosion, we took the unorthodox move of bringing it forward to Wednesday. It was necessary. After Adam left and I finished up all my appointments, I sent David home early and spent the rest of the afternoon hysterically crying in a corner of the surgery while all the doggy in-patients howled along in sympathy. It was like a really terrible deleted scene from Lady and the Tramp. Without going into the details, I summoned my girls to the pub and steeled my liver in preparation.
‘Evening all.’ Abi shuffled into our regular corner of the Blue Bell, setting a bottle of white wine on the table. Her chin-length brown hair was half up, half down, secured by endless hair grips and her accidental cool girl glasses were so smudged it was a wonder she could even see. ‘I’ve had a shit day, let’s get smashed.’
I shuffled along the seat to make room, banging my knees on the underneath of the table as I went. Booths were the devil’s invention; it was impossible to get in or out of one without laddering a pair of tights and yet we always sat here. It was hard to break a habit after more than a decade.
‘What happened?’ I asked, pouring for everyone, my hand still shaking.
‘My lab assistant broke a very expensive piece of equipment, buggered three months’ worth of test results and I really don’t want to talk about it,’ she said as Cass picked up the bottle I had just put down and filled it up to the top. Cass and I had already talked. ‘Liv, you’re back, yay. You look nice.’
‘No, I don’t,’ I replied, my eyes dry and sore from all the horrible, horrible crying. ‘I look like shit. I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep since Sunday and an Alsatian had explosive diarrhoea all over the examination room when I tried to give him a rectal exam and – well, we’ll get to the rest.’
‘Good tan though,’ she said with a shrug. ‘Go on, then, what’s the big news that couldn’t possibly wait until tomorrow?’
It was only as she sank half a bottle of wine in one swallow that I realized she was expecting me to announce my engagement.
‘Nothing major,’ I said as Cass, who had already heard the story at least a dozen times since I arrived at the pub, held my hand under the table. ‘Me and Adam broke up.’
Abi picked up her glass, emptied the second half of her glass and put it back down. ‘Well, my dishwasher’s been on the blink for a week, so, you know, we’re all going through stuff right now.’
Determined not to cry in the Bell, I covered my face with my hair and snorted a half laugh, half sob as she bundled me up in a hug. Apart from a brief flirtation with Impulse Vanilla Kisses in Year Seven, Abi never wore perfume, so her hugs always smelled the same. Burying my face in her armpit was almost enough to push me over the edge.
‘He didn’t break up with you,’ Cass said, stroking my back. ‘You’re on a break, that’s not the same thing. Don’t freak out.’
‘I love how you know more about this than I do,’ I said, sniffling as I extricated myself from Abi’s hug. She stroked loose strands of my topknot back into place. ‘Feels a lot like a break-up, Cass. I mean, it’s six thirty on a Wednesday night, there are two open bottles of wine on the table and my friends are telling me not to freak out. That doesn’t paint a scene of everything being hunky-dory, does it?’
‘I didn’t tell you not to freak out,’ Abi said, refilling her glass as I leaned forward to sip from mine without taking it from the table. ‘I’d definitely be freaking out if I were you.’
‘Not helping,’ Cass said with narrowed eyes. ‘Adam told Chris it’s just a break. Chris thinks he’s got cold feet, that’s all, nothing to panic about. Everything will be back to normal by the weekend when he’s calmed down.’
‘Liv, what happened?’ Abi’s phone was flashing with a picture of a half-naked man with ridiculous muscles. She frowned and cancelled the call. ‘I thought you were coming back engaged. I’ve spent all day practising my excited face for when you ask me to be your bridesmaid.’
‘What makes you think I’d ask you to be my bridesmaid?’ I asked, sliding my glass back and forth across the table. ‘And more importantly, who was on the phone? Are you shagging Fabio?’
‘He’s no one. I was warming him up as a wedding date, but if you’re not getting married any time soon, I don’t need to answer that call.’ She tossed her phone into her bag then hid it underneath the table. ‘Seriously now, what’s going on?’
‘Technically Cass is right, we’re on a break,’ I explained, turning over my own phone to check for messages. Nothing. ‘All holiday, Adam kept going on about this amazing restaurant in town, how he’d heard it was so great but we couldn’t get a reservation until the last night, and so obviously, I’m thinking he’s going to propose then. But there we were, on our way out, and then I don’t even know what happened. One minute we’re walking down the beach on our way to a fancy night out, and the next thing I know, we’re in a taxi on our way home. No swanky restaurant, no proposal, not even any last-night-of-a-holiday shag. It was all very confusing.’
‘Chris said Adam said he wants to work out some stuff,’ Cassie said, twisting the wine bottle to check the label. I wasn’t sure what she was expecting to see: the Bell had two kinds of wine, red and white. We were drinking the white. It was not good. ‘He definitely said you hadn’t broken up.’
‘Chris said that or Adam said that?’ Abi looked distinctly unimpressed.
‘Adam said it to Chris, who then said it to me,’ she clarified, stroking the ends of her sleek, black ponytail. Everything about Cassie Huang was sleek. The word most commonly used to describe her was ‘willowy’ which I especially enjoyed hearing from my mum who had generally referred to her own teenage daughter as ‘sturdy’. And she wondered why I’d gone on the Haribo and Diet Pepsi plan in the first year of university.
‘They had an early dinner at his dad’s house. I saw Chris for, like, ten seconds before I came out.’
‘Sounds like a real keeper,’ Abi said. She’d never been one to mince her words, Abi subscribed to the philosophy of calling a spade a spade. Or a wanker if she deemed it more appropriate.
‘Chris says it’s totally normal,’ Cass declared as they continued to argue over me. It was fine, I was perfectly happy to keep quiet and drink my wine. And their wine. And everyone else on the planet’s wine. ‘Chris says all men go back and forth before they pop the question, even if you don’t know it. Steve Harvey basically says the exact same thing in Think Like a Man.’
Abi gave her a stern look. Abi didn’t care for Cass’s reliance on self-help manuals. Abi really only believed in truly relying on herself. ‘Could you tell Chris to tell Adam that when he has made his mind up do you think he could find the time to tell Liv himself rather than have her wait for it to trickle through you and his brother first?’
‘I’m only telling you what Chris told me,’ she said, her phone fluttering across the table, buzzing against the almost-empty bottle. ‘Speak of the devil, I’ll be back in a minute.’
I half-stood, half-shuffled out of the booth until she could squeeze past, smiling at Mrs Moore, the landlady, as Cass dashed for the door. She smiled back, giving me the once-over as she passed. She’d been serving me since I ordered my first Malibu and Coke at fifteen. If she didn’t like what she saw, she only had herself to blame.
‘Liv, I’m so sorry.’ Abi straightened my collar as I sat back down, her huge green eyes full of concern and just a hint of murderous rage. ‘How are you really?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, raising a hand to wave at Melanie Brookes, my mum’s neighbour, mother of two children and owner of three rabbits and a diabetic cat. There had been a dog as well at one point but he got into a cupboard and ate an Easter egg and there really wasn’t anything anyone could have done about that. ‘I feel sick when I think about it. I just really want Cass to be right, I really want this to be a wobble. Because if it’s not, I don’t know what I’ll do.’
Abigail Levinson and I had been friends ever since her dad brought her puppy into the surgery when we were both eleven. I was hanging out there, looking for animals to bother, when a little, skinny, dark-haired girl with Coke-bottle glasses and what I thought was a super cool Mickey Mouse T-shirt walked through the door. She sat down beside me as our respective fathers disappeared into the examination room, looked me in the eye and whispered, in her most serious voice, that the dog was not going to make it. I held her hand in silence until both dads reappeared with the dog who, despite my new friend’s most assured diagnosis, bounded out towards us, happy, healthy and a hundred per cent alive.
After they left, my dad explained Abi had been watching too much Blue Peter and took it upon herself to try to clean her dog’s teeth with her electric toothbrush and an entire tube of Colgate. In the interest of the dog surviving the summer, Dad took her on as his second junior intern (we were only allowed to clean out kennels and feed the cats but we felt terribly important) and we’d been joined at the hip ever since. After we graduated, she’d stayed on at uni to do her PhD and now she was such a super shit-hot veterinary research scientist. Even I didn’t really understand what she did and I was an actual vet. While I was taking pieces of Lego out of the Youngs’ Labrador’s stomach, Abi was curing cancer. Dog cancer, but still, it was impressive. She was Superwoman as far as I was concerned.
‘Sod what Adam wants.’ Abi tucked her short brown hair behind her ears and drew her eyebrows together behind her glasses, still Coke-bottle thick but considerably more stylish than they had been when we were kids. ‘What do you want?’
I looked at her blankly.
‘You, Olivia, what do you want?’ she asked. ‘You do know who I’m talking about? Short, split ends, fiddles with animals for a living?’
‘I haven’t got split ends,’ I muttered, pinching together an inch of hair and holding it up to the light. ‘I don’t want to break up. I want everything back how it was.’
‘Why?’
‘What?’
‘Why do you want things back how they were?’ she asked. ‘It should be an easy question.’
‘I don’t know,’ I confessed, busying myself by peeling the label from the wine bottle. ‘This wasn’t my idea. Leave me alone, I’m sad.’
‘Your idea or not, someone needs to set some boundaries before this gets messy,’ she said in the nicest voice she could manage. ‘And that should be you. He doesn’t get to dictate this entire situation, Liv, even if you are going to be back together tomorrow. You need to think about you a little bit. First he decided you were going to get engaged; now he’s decided he wants a break. You need to know what you want.’
‘I want to know what you want,’ I said, nudging her in the shoulder and taking a sip.
‘For you to be happy,’ she replied. ‘And for Mini Eggs to be available all year round.’
‘I don’t want to break up with him,’ I said, slowly pulling on the label, trying to move it in one piece. Life without Adam didn’t seem like an actual possible thing. ‘I can’t even process the thought of it. If he says he needs space, I should just give him space. This seems like a classic rubber band situation to me, don’t you think?’
‘You know I won’t answer that,’ Abi replied, cursing our best friend’s name as the wine bottle label ripped in two. ‘One, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus is a shit present, and two, it’s full of shit advice. Cassie should be shot for giving it to you in the first place.’
‘Sorry, it was Chris.’ Cass bounced back into the booth and grabbed her glass. I shuffled around, glad of her interruption. ‘Gus was crying but he was just hungry. I’m going to head back soon, I don’t like leaving him alone for too long.’
‘Chris or the baby?’ I asked Cass.
‘Liv, don’t be mean,’ Abi admonished. ‘Surely you don’t expect Chris, a grown man, to be able to take care of his own child for more than forty-five minutes at a time?’
‘It’s not the same as asking him to record Gogglebox,’ Cass replied tartly. ‘Gus gets fussy when I’m not there at night. Sometimes he won’t settle.’
‘Chris or the baby?’ I asked Abi.
‘We should meet at mine some time,’ she said, throwing cardboard coasters in our general direction. ‘Then I won’t have to run off so early. Plus, we’ve got much better wine. You two have to come over more often, Gus barely even knows his Aunt Abi.’
‘He doesn’t know anyone, Cass, he’s five months old.’ Abi swirled her wine, coating her glass and taking a sniff. ‘And I’ve Stockholm Syndrome’d myself on this wine. Whenever I drink wine anywhere else, my brain doesn’t recognize it as the same substance.’
‘That would be because all other wine is good,’ Cass explained. ‘And this is very bad.’
‘Cass only drinks the finest wines, these day,’ I explained, ignoring the look on her face and topping off her glass. ‘Cass married up.’
No one was going to say it but our weekly meet-ups had been much more like monthly meet-ups over the last year or so. I understood sitting around a dank old pub was hardly the most alluring idea to a pregnant woman but Cass had started making her excuses well before Gus was so much as a twinkle in Chris’s eye and I hadn’t realized how long it had been since we were all in the same place until I really needed to be there. I glanced over at Abi and wondered how many times I’d cancelled on her to hang out with Adam instead.
‘If you didn’t want me to marry your boyfriend’s brother, you shouldn’t have introduced me to him,’ she said, knocking back her drink and sticking out her tongue. ‘It’s your fault.’
‘It’s true,’ Abi agreed. ‘You should have introduced him to me first so I could bone him then never speak to him again. I’m much better at alienating the opposite sex than Cass.’
‘You just haven’t met the right man,’ Cass said, making me splutter into my wine glass. Having a baby had made her brave. ‘You work too hard and you don’t give relationships a chance.’
‘You’re so right,’ Abi framed her face with her hands and blinked her big, anime eyes. ‘Teach me everything you know, oh wise married one, help me be like you.’
‘I’m going home,’ Cass said, ignoring our loud, squawking pleas for her to stay. ‘I know, it’s early but I’m knackered and I want to put Gus to bed. You should think yourself lucky I’m here at all. If my grandmother had her way, I’d still be housebound. She thinks I bring evil spirits back into the house every time I go outside.’
‘That’s not a very nice way to describe me and Liv,’ Abi said, shaking her head.
‘Isn’t your nan from Reading?’ I asked, slapping Abi’s leg.
‘She’s being ridiculous,’ Cass nodded, opening a text and smiling to herself before showing the two of us. It was a photo of Gus and Chris in the bath and the bubbles weren’t covering nearly as much as I would like. ‘Mum said she wasn’t like this at all when I was born but she’s gone crazy with all the old Chinese traditions this time. She doesn’t even like Chris holding him. Apparently, I wasn’t supposed to get out of bed for the first month at all.’
‘Can I stay in bed for a month if I have a baby with a Chinese father?’ Abi suddenly perked up while I made the expected cooing noises. Gus was a cute baby, if you were into babies. ‘Do you have any single cousins? Uncles? Would your mum lend me your dad for an hour or so?’
Ignoring Abi, Cass gave me a hug before shuffling out of the booth.
‘Don’t get too upset about this, Livvy, it’s going to be fine,’ she promised. ‘Let Adam have his mad half hour and I bet you anything, you’ll be back together with a ring on your finger before the end of the year.’
‘Maybe,’ I said, scratching at an indeterminate green stain on the hem of my shirt. Hmm. Gross. ‘But do me a favour? Please don’t go home and tell Chris everything we just talked about? It’s not like I don’t appreciate you trying to help but I don’t want him reporting back to Adam.’
‘I won’t say a word,’ she said, a look of surprise on her face. ‘You know I wouldn’t.’
‘Because you’ve done such a good job of keeping secrets so far?’ Abi pointed out. ‘You’re the one who told Liv about the ring, you’re the one who told her he was going to propose in Mexico, and all you’ve done tonight is spill what Adam has told Chris about this situation.’
‘Sisters before misters.’ Cass brushed off the indisputable accusations and rolled her eyes. ‘I tell you what he says but I don’t tell him what you say. Promise you won’t sit here all night and get upset.’
‘Brownie guide promise,’ I said, holding up three fingers.
‘Wrong hand,’ Abi whispered.
‘Whatever,’ I muttered, burying my face in my wine glass. ‘Bye, Cass.’
‘Bye Cass,’ Abi said, stretching out for her own hug. ‘Say hello to Chris for me.’
No matter how much they bickered, they loved each other really.
‘I honestly don’t know what to believe,’ I said as the door swung shut on Cass and Abi poured the remnants of her wine into my glass. ‘Chris is such an arse to Adam most of the time. Why would he pour his heart out to him?’
‘Because he’s his brother,’ Abi replied. ‘You’re an only child, chick, you don’t get it. You hate each other one day, you’re giving them a kidney the next.’
‘You gave your brother a kidney?’
‘Clearly not,’ she said, patting me on the top of the head. ‘I was making a point. I just mean, that’s how it is with siblings.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I poked my finger through a tiny hole in the velvet seat covering. This place really was starting to look tired. ‘Chris is always such a bully, always making fun of Adam for leaving law school then going on about how well his own company is doing.’
‘Probably just insecure,’ Abi rationalized. ‘Does Adam have a bigger dong?’
‘I really haven’t thought about it.’ I washed away the very thought of Chris’s penis with a mouthful of wine. ‘Adam’s taller, he’s definitely better looking and he’s a hundred per cent cleverer. I don’t know what Cass was thinking, I really don’t.’
‘She was thinking she’d marry a rich dude and get her parents off her back,’ she replied. ‘Let’s be honest about it, all Cass ever wanted was to get married, have a kid and not worry about anything else, ever again. Now she’s got that, so good for her.’
I pushed my finger all the way inside the seat until the tiny hole wasn’t so tiny any more.
‘Bit harsh,’ I said. Abi’s expression suggested she stood by her assessment. ‘Cass is more old-fashioned than we are. She does love him, I think. And he definitely loves her.’
Abi picked up the second bottle of wine and refilled her glass. Abi had an iron constitution, nothing could put her down, but I was a complete lightweight. One very full glass in and I was already light-headed. I held my hand over my glass before she could give me a refill.
‘I can’t,’ I said sadly. There was nothing I would have liked more than to fall into a white wine coma as soon as I got home. ‘Tomorrow is spay and neuter day, probably shouldn’t have a hangover because I’m going to end up doing all the surgeries. Dad’s been really off it lately.’
‘Is he OK?’ Abi asked. ‘I can’t believe he’s going to be sixty-five, it doesn’t seem like two minutes since his fiftieth birthday.’
‘I think he’s OK,’ I nodded, without wondering whether or not it was true. I had too much else on my mind to spare any space for my dad’s commitment to the surgery, or lack thereof. ‘He hasn’t been around much but that suits me. I deal with the patients and he deals with the paperwork. I’d rather not see him while I’m upset, though. You know how my parents are.’
‘There has to be a happy medium between your family’s stiff upper lip and Cassie’s self-help library,’ she replied. ‘You know, like me!’
‘I don’t know how the human race has survived this long,’ I said, clinking my glass against hers. ‘Relationships are so difficult. It’s a miracle that both mine and Adam’s parents are still together. You’d think that would be enough for him to seal the deal – who has two sets of parents who are still together in one relationship these days?’
‘Did I tell you my dad’s on about going off travelling again? Without Karen?’ she asked with a pinched expression.
‘Is this divorce number three?’
‘Four.’ She paused as Bill Stockton walked past, throwing a wink in her direction. ‘You’re probably forgetting Lisa. A bit like he did.’
I watched Bill cross the bar and take a seat with his friends. He looked back at Abi and then quickly shifted his gaze to somewhere vaguely over our heads when he realized I was watching.
‘Um, what’s going on with you and Bill?’ I asked, looking back at my friend to see her almost as red-faced as he was. ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’
‘No,’ she said quickly. ‘There’s nothing I want to tell you.’
We lived in a small village, not as small as it used to be but if you wanted to actually leave your house of an evening, there weren’t very many options. We had one supermarket, one chip shop-slash-greasy spoon and two pubs, meaning it was more or less impossible to keep any kind of secret here for more than fifteen minutes. Abi and Bill had been a thing when we were in the sixth form for almost a year but then Bill got off with Caroline Higgins round the back of the sports centre and Abi vowed never to talk to him again. As far as I knew, she had stayed true to her word for the last thirteen years but from the looks on both of their faces, they’d done more than talk to each other while I was away.
‘When there’s something to tell you, I’ll tell you,’ Abi informed me. I picked up my wine, unable to keep the smile from my face but didn’t push it any further. There was no point trying with Abs, she’d tell when she was ready. ‘Promise me you’ll think about what you want out of this break, not just sit around waiting for Adam to make his mind up.’
‘I promise,’ I declared, giving the Brownie salute another go. ‘I will.’
‘That’s still the wrong hand,’ Abi sighed. ‘I’m glad you’re not operating on my dog tomorrow.’
Two hours later I hung my keys on the hook at the bottom of the stairs and collapsed onto my settee. A three-legged tortoiseshell cat unfurled himself from the armchair by the window and meowed loudly.
‘Hello, Daniel Craig,’ I said, reaching down to scratch underneath his chin before he leapt up onto my stomach, his little paws digging into my boobs as he walked up and down my torso, trying to decide where he wanted to settle.
‘It’s nice to be missed,’ I muttered, pulling my phone out of my coat pocket. I should have taken it off before I lay down, I realized, as Daniel made himself comfortable, right on top of my bladder. I should have gone to the loo as well.
It felt so strange to be ending the day without Adam around. If I spent the night in my flat, it was usually because I’d worked so late I was so tired, I passed out the instant I walked through the door. Now I was here because here was the only place I had to be. It felt so wrong. I wanted to collapse on the sofa with my head in his lap while he stroked my hair and we told each other tales of our day. I wanted to turn down his offer of a glass of wine or a chocolate biscuit only for him to bring it anyway and tell me we deserved it because we worked so hard, even if we hadn’t worked that hard at all. I wanted to hear him, to touch him, to make him laugh. Not knowing when I would see him again made things even worse, I was trapped, slightly tipsy, in relationship limbo – was there a worse place to be?
‘Do you think your dad misses me?’ I asked the cat.
Daniel opened one bright, sea-green eye and then slowly closed it again. I held my phone up in front of my sulky face with both hands.
‘I’ll take that as a no, then.’
Abs was right. I needed to set some ground rules with Adam before I went insane. Telling me we’d talk without putting a specific date in the diary had already driven me over my two glasses of wine on a school night limit, I refused to let this evening end with my face covered in the emergency bar of Galaxy I kept in the back of the fridge.
‘I’ll send him an email,’ I told Daniel Craig, who was happily purring himself to sleep on my belly. ‘I won’t be a dick about it, I’ll just send him an email to let him know what I think and then I’m going to turn off my phone and go to bed.’
Daniel raised his head, meowed loudly and then went back to the serious business of sleeping. I took that to mean he supported my actions.
‘Hey Adam …’ I tapped out the message. ‘No, too casual. Just “Adam”, no “Hey”.’
I corrected the message, squinting at the bright screen above my nose and started again. ‘Adam. Hope you’re OK.’
Daniel yawned.
‘Do we hope he’s OK?’ I asked.
He did not reply.
‘Hope you’re OK. Wanted to clarify some stuff RE: the break. Agree it’s a good idea to think about things but would appreciate some sort of timeframe.’
I stared at the message for a moment. Was I writing to my boyfriend or my bank manager?
‘An email is ridiculous,’ I decided. ‘I’m going to text him. He is still my boyfriend after all. I think.’
Opening my messages, I scrolled down to Adam’s name, finally finding it all the way down at the bottom of my inbox. Usually, we texted constantly, stupid links, sweet messages and there was a certain gif of a St Bernard slapping a man in the face that we’d sent back and forth at least a hundred times but now he was underneath Abi, Cass, David, my mum, my dad, my hairdresser and that man who came round to the surgery trying to sell me pirated DVDs. It felt wrong.
‘Hey,’ I began, poised to write something brief, friendly, clear, to the point, unambiguous and constructive.
Then I hiccupped and deleted it.
‘How is it possible,’ I said, staring at the blank white screen, ‘that I cannot think of anything to say to a man I have talked to every day for the last three years?’
There were a million things to talk about in this world. The weather, the price of bananas, Jon Snow theories, but when it came to Adam, I had less than nothing. I didn’t want to be too formal but I couldn’t be too casual. If I was too jokey he might think I wasn’t upset, but if I was super serious it didn’t feel right. On Monday he was asking my opinion on whether or not I could see his penis through his trousers and by Wednesday I couldn’t say so much as a simple hello.
Leaving my phone on the floor, I sat up slowly and moved Daniel Craig to a cushion at the end of the settee. After one displeased yowl, he rolled over, showing me his belly and tossing his head from side to side. I shrugged myself out of my coat and tickled him until he reared up and nipped my wrist with his sharp little teeth. Cats were so fickle.
‘Just like your dad,’ I told him, staring at my phone and willing him to respond. But I got nothing.
‘Oh, sod him,’ I announced loudly to the living room. ‘Abi’s right. I’m not going to sit here and feel shit while he gives me the silent treatment. As of right now, I will not feel sorry for myself, I am taking control of this situation.’
The cat looked at me, seemingly supportive for a creature that had just bitten me hard enough to draw blood, and waited for me to do something.
‘Only I do feel a bit sorry for myself,’ I admitted quietly.
Adam was everywhere and I didn’t just mean in the framed photos on the wall. I saw him building the cat bed he’d bought for Daniel, puffing up the cushions on the settee before we lay down for a solid night of Netflix. One of my dining chairs was still in the corner of the room from where I’d made him sit and think about what he’d done when he deleted the Downton Christmas special off my Sky+ box in August. I dropped my head between my knees, already regretting that last glass of wine, and saw the unwelcome corner of a secret bridal magazine peeking out from underneath the settee. I pulled it out slowly, the Post-it notes I’d stuck on my favourite dresses rustling.
‘Maybe I feel really sorry for myself,’ I said out loud, turning the pages of the magazine slowly, running my fingers over the beautiful gowns. DC stretched out his back leg until it was touching my knee. He got it.
‘And maybe I could open the Galaxy and just have a little bit.’
Daniel yawned again, cocked his one remaining back leg over his head and began his nightly cat bath.
‘I’ll take that as a yes then,’ I said, heading straight for the fridge, determined not to end another night in tears. I’d never cried so much in one day and that included the time me, Abi and Cass watched Beaches, The Notebook and Titanic all in the same day when we were supposed to be studying. ‘I’d love it if you could stop licking your bum when I’m talking to you. The human Daniel Craig would never do that.’
Or at least I assumed he wouldn’t, but if I’d learned nothing else from the last few days, I at least knew you shouldn’t make assumptions about anything in life.
7 (#ulink_b5e77cd1-8011-51fe-9879-f61dff6e369f)
‘What do you think of this one?’
I held the jacket up in the air, waving it around to get Tom’s attention.
‘Nice,’ he replied, hands shoved deep inside his jacket pockets. ‘Blue.’
‘Yeah.’ I considered the shirt again. It was blue. Too blue? I hung it back on the rail and flicked through the alternatives. ‘Hmm.’
It was Saturday and I’d driven down to London for the day, desperate to get out of the village. Three days of radio silence from Liv was deafening, and with every passing second Long Harrington felt as though it was closing in on me. As far as I could see, I was the one who was owed an apology. Yes, I’d been out of order when I dropped her off at home but I’d apologized, I’d brought flowers, I’d done all the things I was supposed to do. Whether her silent treatment was punishment or she was truly angry with me, I did not know but if I knew one thing about women, it was that until she picked up the phone, all I could do was steer well clear.
Thursday and Friday I’d been able to concentrate on work, finalizing designs with the owners, literally forcing myself to sit in my workshop until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, but by Saturday I couldn’t stand it any longer. I needed a break from my break.
‘Got a big occasion coming up?’ Tom asked. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a suit outside of a wedding or a funeral.’
I shuddered involuntarily at the ‘W’ word.
‘No,’ I said, frowning at the suit section. He was right. I hardly ever wore a suit. ‘Just looking. I’m broke.’
And after several terse exchanges and threats of Mexican lawsuits from Pablo the events organizer, that was true. I was fairly certain his case wouldn’t hold up but there was a chance I’d want to go back to the country without having to worry he was waiting at the airport to break my legs.
‘Right, well, do you want to look later?’ Tom leaned against a display case full of cuff links, jumping back to his feet when he realized it wouldn’t take his weight. ‘I’m dying of thirst over here.’
‘Can I help you?’
A tiny redhead with a name badge appeared at my elbow, a deliberate pout on her pretty face. ‘Looking for anything in particular?’
‘No,’ I picked up another jacket and immediately put it back down, ‘not really.’
‘Thanks,’ Tom added on my behalf. ‘He’s not sure what he’s looking for.’
‘I could help if you like?’ the girl offered. I tried to check her name badge without looking at her chest but since she was wearing an insanely low-cut T-shirt and had pinned her badge directly at cleavage level that was near enough impossible. Rebecca. Her name was Rebecca and she had a fine pair.
‘If it’s a suit you’re after, I’d definitely go with something slim fitting, single-breasted. Maybe a dark charcoal or a midnight blue rather than a black? We’ve got some really nice options for taller guys actually. You would look so amazing in a Paul Smith or – oh, there’s a new Tom Ford suit just in that would really just hug your shoulders.’
‘There you go, Ad,’ Tom said elbowing me in the ribs. ‘You need a Tom Ford to hug your shoulders.’
‘I don’t wear suits all that often,’ I told the sales assistant as she looked me up and down slowly before picking two shirts up and throwing them over her arm. ‘I’m just looking.’
‘I would really like to see you in the Tom Ford,’ she insisted, stroking the lapel in a manner that suggested what she would actually like to see was me out of a Tom Ford suit. ‘What do you think?’
‘I would also really like to see him in the Tom Ford,’ Tom agreed, utterly gleeful. ‘But you know, he never listens to me.’
‘Oh.’ Rebecca’s eyes widened for an instant and her face relaxed into a wide smile. ‘Oh. Well, he should listen. I love your shoes.’
‘Thanks.’ Tom looked down at his brown leather lace-ups and then back at the girl with a goofy smile on his face. ‘They’re my favourites.’
‘I don’t have a lot of call for suits,’ I told her, keen to get out of the shop and into the pub. I wasn’t sure what had possessed me in the first place. I hated shopping. ‘I’m a carpenter.’
‘Just like Jesus!’
‘Yeah,’ I said, glancing back at Tom who was struggling to hold himself together. ‘Only, you know, not.’
She cocked her head to one side and pulled a comically sad expression. ‘It’s such a shame,’ she reached out a hand and squeezed my forearm. ‘Everyone needs a suit, you know. Even if you’re not wearing it while you’re working, you need one for best. Don’t you agree?’
‘One hundred per cent,’ Tom nodded, flipping the arm of a shirt hanging beside him back and forth. He was starting to get bored, I could tell. The pub really was calling.
‘Maybe if you tried a suit on, you’d see how amazingly sexy you look and we could convert you,’ Rebecca said. ‘What do we think?’
Tom failed to stifle a laugh while I shuffled on the spot, staring at her long, pointed bright-blue fingernails. ‘I think you should try one on,’ he said. ‘I definitely want to see how amazingly sexy you look.’
‘There you go, your better half has spoken,’ Rebecca said, clapping happily. ‘You’re so lucky to have such a fashion forward boyfriend. Let’s start with the Tom Ford.’
‘Actually, we have somewhere to be and we’re running late.’ Tom stood up straight, the smile vanishing from his face. ‘Come on, Ad.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, throwing Rebecca and her blue nails a wave as I chased my friend out of the store. ‘Thank you.’
‘At least she said you were the better half,’ I said, catching up with Tom as he marched down the high street as fast as his legs would carry him. ‘I know for a fact you’ve been called worse.’
‘What made her think we were gay?’ Tom complained, adding an out of character swagger to his stride. ‘It’s that haircut. You need a haircut.’
‘Maybe it’s your “favourite shoes”,’ I suggested. ‘You could not have sounded more camp.’
‘They are my favourite shoes,’ he replied, defensive. ‘Maddie bought them me for my birthday. They’re Church’s.’
I looked at him and didn’t say a word.
‘They’re nice shoes,’ he muttered. ‘Shut up.’
Minutes later, we were in the pub with two pints, two packets of crisps, and the Arsenal game Tom had made vaguely interested noises about playing on a screen above the bar.
‘They are nice shoes,’ he said again, sticking out one leg to admire his lace-ups. ‘I wear them all the time, they’re not gay.’
‘She didn’t think we were gay because of your shoes,’ I said, opening my crisps with a satisfying pop. ‘But I don’t think it helped when you called me amazingly sexy.’
‘Brad Pitt, George Clooney and then you,’ he replied, stacking his hands one above the other over the table. ‘And then probably David Beckham. He’s a good-looking bastard.’
‘I am better looking than David Beckham,’ I confirmed with a thoughtful nod. ‘That’s fair. George Clooney though? Really?’
‘I’m a mug for a silver fox,’ Tom said, craning his neck to check the score.
‘Just as well.’ I pretended to squint at his temples while inhaling salt and vinegar crisps five at a time. ‘Going a bit at the temples there, son.’
‘I am not.’ He looked back at the TV, brushing his hair when he thought I wasn’t looking. ‘I’m not sure what we were doing in that ridiculous shop in the first place. Have you come into some money or something?’
‘Just looking,’ I replied, wincing at a particularly nasty tackle. ‘Bored with everything in the wardrobe and I haven’t bought any new clothes for ages.’
‘I know I’m supposed to hate shopping,’ Tom scooted his chair closer to the table, as though he were about to impart a great secret, ‘but I actually really like it. Maddie won’t even go with me any more, we have to go our separate ways as soon as we step foot into Selfridges.’
‘And you wonder why she thought you were gay,’ I said, brushing crisp crumbs off my jeans and accepting the punch in the arm as due course. ‘I’m joking, I’m joking. I don’t hate shopping, I don’t have the time or, quite frankly, the money.’
‘How are things going with work?’ he asked. He tore open his packet of crisps as I folded my empty bag into a neat square and wedged it underneath the condiment holder. ‘Not that busy?’
‘Busy enough,’ I replied. ‘But there’s only so much I can do on my own and I can’t afford to pay anyone else full-time. I’m doing the interior design and build for a new bar not that far from here, actually. We can have a look on the way back to the car if you want?’
‘Yeah, cool,’ Tom said. ‘You going to be down here working on it then?’
I nodded.
‘In a few weeks. I’m building everything in my workshop up at home but I’ll be coming down to install it, obviously. It’s going to be cool – the sign’s up already, Camp Bell on Norville Street? It’s a brother and sister who own it.’
‘I think I’ve seen it.’ He winced at a nasty tackle on the TV. ‘You should come and stay next time you’re down here. I’m really glad it’s working out for you, Ad. You’d have been miserable if you’d stuck with the law.’
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