About the Author

RACHEL BURTON has been making up stories since she first learned to talk. After many false starts she finally made one up that was worth writing down.

After graduating with a degree in Classics and another in English, she didn’t really know what to do when she grew up. She has worked as a waitress, a paralegal and a yoga teacher.

She has spent most of her life between Cambridge and London but now lives in Yorkshire with her husband and three cats. The main loves of her life are The Beatles and very tall romantic heroes.

Find her on Twitter & Instagram as @bookish_yogi or search Facebook for Rachel Burton Author. She is always happy to talk books, writing, music, cats and how the weather in Yorkshire is rubbish. She is mostly dreaming of her next holiday…

Praise for The Pieces of You and Me

‘A beautiful story of second-chance love between two perfectly imperfect characters. Rachel writes with such emotional honesty, it leaves me lost for words.’

Sarah Bennett

‘Once again Rachel Burton has blown me away with a poignant romance entwined in the battles of the real world … A down to earth and wonderfully uplifting story of love and second chances.’

Lauren North

‘Once again Rachel Burton writes a beautifully moving, poignant and wistful romance.’

Victoria Cooke

‘Achingly beautiful and tender. Rachel sublimely blends heartbreak and happiness in the pursuit of discovering “what if…?” Simply gorgeous.’

Pernille Hughes

More Praise for Rachel Burton

‘Beautifully written and achingly honest’

Jenny Ashcroft on The Things We Need to Say

‘A gloriously romantic tale of family secrets’

Rachael Lucas on The Many Colours of Us

Also by Rachel Burton

The Many Colours of Us

The Things We Need to Say

The Pieces of You and Me
BY RACHEL BURTON

HQ

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2019

Copyright © Rachel Burton 2019

Rachel Burton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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, downloaded, 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.

E-book Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008284527

Version: 2019-01-23

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Author

Praise for The Pieces of You and Me

More Praise for Rachel Burton

Also by Rachel Burton

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Author’s Note

June 2017

Chapter 1: Jess

Chapter 2: Jess

Chapter 3: Rupert

Chapter 4: Jess

Chapter 5: Jess

Chapter 6: Rupert

July 2017

Chapter 7: Jess

Chapter 8: Jess

Chapter 9: Rupert

Chapter 10: Jess

Chapter 11: Jess

Chapter 12: Jess

Chapter 13: Rupert

Chapter 14: Jess

Chapter 15: Rupert

Chapter 16: Jess

Chapter 17: Jess

Chapter 18: Jess

Chapter 19: Rupert

Chapter 20: Jess

Chapter 21: Rupert

Chapter 22: Jess

September 2017

Chapter 23: Rupert

Chapter 24: Jess

Chapter 25: Jess

January 2018

Chapter 26: Rupert

Chapter 27: Jess

Chapter 28: Jess

Chapter 29: Jess

Chapter 30: Rupert

February 2018

Chapter 31: Jess

Chapter 32: Rupert

March 2018

Chapter 33: Jess

Chapter 34: Rupert

Chapter 35: Jess

Chapter 36: Rupert

Chapter 37: Jess

Chapter 38: Rupert

Chapter 39: Jess

September 2018

Acknowledgements

Turn the Page for an Extract From The Things We Need to Say…

HQ Letter

Keep Reading …

About the Publisher

For everyone who has ever wondered ‘What If …?’

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E.) is a long-term (chronic), fluctuating, neurological condition that causes symptoms affecting many body systems, more commonly the nervous and immune systems. M.E. affects an estimated 250,000 people in the UK, and around 17 million people worldwide.

With so many different and fluctuating symptoms, no two people’s experience of the illness are ever quite the same. To tell Jess and Rupert’s story I have drawn on my own experience of living with M.E. for the last twenty years, along with the stories of the kind people who I have spoken to over the years (with permission).

For more information go to the Action for M.E. website – https://www.actionforme.org.uk/

JUNE 2017

1
JESS

It was his laugh that I recognised first. That low rumble was as familiar to me as my own, even after nearly a decade. I was at the bar talking to Gemma when I heard it. I froze, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up. I watched as recognition dawned on Gemma’s face too. As she looked towards the space behind me, her eyes widened and her perfect eyebrows arched in surprise. She put her cocktail down on the bar beside her and slipped off her stool.

‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ I asked quietly.

She nodded.

‘We need to go,’ I said. But even before the words left my mouth, Gemma was halfway across the pub, and more than halfway to drunk if her swaying was anything to go by.

‘Oi, Tremayne,’ she shouted. ‘Long time no see.’

I must have turned around at the same time as he looked up. When our eyes met, I felt twenty-one again. I hadn’t seen Rupert Tremayne for ten years.

‘Gemma,’ he said, holding out a hand to steady her, smiling as he took in the tacky plastic veil and L-plates she was wearing. ‘I’m assuming by your natty attire that this is your hen night and you’ve found some poor fool to marry you.’ If he was surprised to see us, he didn’t show it. He acted as though he’d only been gone for a week, not a decade.

As he leant down to kiss her on the cheek, his eyes caught mine again. I knew then that I couldn’t avoid this, that I couldn’t avoid him. My stomach was twisting itself into knots of anxiety as he walked past Gemma, towards me. I felt as though the whole pub was watching us.

He stood in front of me, a foot taller than I was, looking down into my eyes. His blond hair was still a little bit too long, greying at the temples; the collar of his jacket was turned up. He looked the same but different – as though he had become slightly worn over the years. But his eyes were still the eyes of the boy I used to know. He didn’t speak, and my mind went blank, my mouth dry. Neither of us knew what to say.

‘Jessie,’ he said eventually. I couldn’t tell whether he was pleased I was there or not. Nobody had called me Jessie since he left.

‘I thought you were in America,’ I replied quietly, remembering the last time I saw him – walking away from me at Heathrow airport, leaving me with that strange sense of lightness on the ring finger of my left hand.

‘I came back,’ he said.

Gemma and Caitlin appeared then. They both seemed delighted to see Rupert. They’d known him almost as long as they’d known me – until he left.

‘Come on,’ Gemma said to him, pulling at his arm. ‘Your friends are joining us for drinking games.’ He was still staring at me and I saw the corner of his mouth twitch at Gemma’s exuberance. He never was the sort of person to play drinking games.

Gemma, Caitlin and I had known each other for nearly twenty years – twice as long as he’d been away. We met on the first day at our all-girls private school and we clung together for safety. They called us ‘new money’ because our school fees weren’t paid for by family wealth left over the generations – we didn’t have trust funds. Truth be told, we didn’t fit in at all, but at least we had each other. My school fees were paid out of the money my grandmother left when she died, Caitlin’s by her father’s accountancy business and Gemma’s … well, none of us were really sure where Gemma’s family got their money from – not then at least.

Rupert and his friends joined our table, squeezing together in an already crowded pub. We never got around to any kind of game, drinking or otherwise, because as soon as we were all settled everybody started talking at once, trying to get to know each other, trying to understand how each of us fitted into the jigsaw of Gemma’s hen weekend. I couldn’t concentrate on anything other than the sensation of Rupert’s leg against mine. I felt like a teenager again, transported back to the long summer holidays we used to spend together in Cambridge when he was home from boarding school. It felt as though he had never been away.

I wondered how many years it had been since we were last all together, sitting around a pub table.

I listened as Rupert answered Gemma’s barrage of questions; I learned that he lectured in political history at York University, that he came back from America for this job. He didn’t tell me directly why he was here, but he knew I was listening.

Later, in the pub toilets, Gemma cornered me. Her eyes weren’t quite focused, her lipstick was smudged and her speech a little slurred.

‘He’s single, you know,’ she said.

‘Who is?’ I asked.

‘Rupert bloody Tremayne,’ she replied as she leaned over the washbasin towards the mirror to straighten her fake veil and fix her lipstick. ‘Who else?’

I didn’t say anything.

‘You’re welcome,’ she said.

‘For what?’

‘For finding out if he’s single or not,’ she went on. ‘He’s been single for years, since before he left America – which means things never worked out with Camilla after all.’

‘It’s none of my business whether he’s single or not,’ I said.

‘Oh come on, Jess, you know you never got over him. This is your chance to get under him again.’

‘Gem, I know you’re over the moon about getting married and I’m delighted for you, but it doesn’t mean that you get to matchmake. Even if I am the last one left on the shelf.’ I smiled. After Caitlin got married the same year that she qualified as a nurse, Gemma and I had always had a running joke about who would be the first of us to get married. I was living with Dan then, so we always assumed it would be me. It’s funny how things work out. I never thought being the last one to get married would bother me as much as it did.

We had turned thirty the previous year and not long afterwards Mike asked Gemma to marry him. Now we were thirty-one, Gemma’s wedding just a few weeks away, and I couldn’t deny that something had shifted – a feeling that I’d forgotten something, or something was missing. I wanted what Gemma had, what Caitlin had. I denied it of course, because I never thought it mattered to me. Since the day Rupert Tremayne walked away from me I hadn’t believed I cared. It turned out it mattered a lot – I was just too scared to admit it.

Gemma leaned towards me with a wink. ‘You must have seen the way he’s looking at you,’ she whispered. ‘It’s still there, isn’t it? That spark between you two?’

I didn’t say anything, unwilling to admit how seeing him again after all these years was making me feel.

‘Come on,’ Gemma said, heading back towards the bar again. ‘Once more unto the breach.’

‘Can you give me a minute?’ I asked. ‘I’ll be out soon.

Being near him again was bringing it all back, his thigh pressing against mine, the way he held his pint glass, the way he smiled. I didn’t want it brought back. I couldn’t face it.

Because Gemma was right – I never did get over him.

2
JESS

When I came back into the bar, Gemma was trying to organise everybody to go to a nightclub with her. This was the most disorganised hen weekend I’d ever been to. Usually every minute of every day is micromanaged, from private Pilates lessons to shooting parties. But Gemma wasn’t one for timetables and agendas. She had announced that she wanted a weekend in York and off we all went without a plan, accompanied by some of her work colleagues. At least it took the pressure off Caitlin and me to organise anything specific.

I pulled Gemma to one side.

‘If you’re all moving on, I’m going to go back to the hotel,’ I said quietly. I didn’t want anyone else to know, to bring up the past, to fuss. I watched her brow furrow, her face suddenly serious and sober.

‘Are you feeling ill again?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want …’

‘I’m fine, honestly,’ I interrupted. ‘Just tired that’s all.’

‘Where are you staying?’ I heard Rupert ask. I wondered how long he’d been standing there, how much of the conversation he’d heard.

‘The posh hotel near York Minster,’ Gemma replied. I didn’t think it was any of Rupert’s business where I was staying.

‘It’s called the Minster,’ Rupert deadpanned, trying not to smile.

‘That’s the one!’

‘I’ll walk you back,’ he said, turning to me.

‘I’m fine. I can walk back to the hotel on my own.’

‘I know you can,’ he said, quietly. ‘But I’d like to walk with you.’

My stomach flipped.

‘I’d rather he walked with you too,’ Gemma said. ‘So that’s settled.’ As Gemma wandered off to organise a taxi, her veil slipping to one side again, he caught my eye and raised his eyebrows.

‘That’s settled.’ Rupert smiled.

‘I suppose it is,’ I replied. Gemma always was the bossy one.

‘Shall we?’ he asked, gesturing towards the door. As we began to walk away from the pub, he was so close to me I wanted to reach out and touch him, to draw him towards me, but I knew I shouldn’t. As if he could read my mind he held out his arm to me and I slipped my hand into the crook of his elbow. It felt so natural, exactly the way we’d walked together years ago. I’m not sure who pulled who closer, but it felt as though neither of us could resist the warmth of each other’s bodies. It felt as though we’d been waiting ten years for this moment.

‘It’s been a long time, Jessie,’ he said quietly.

‘Ten years in September,’ I replied. I wasn’t going to tell him that I knew the exact number of months, days, even hours since I’d watched him walk away from me at Heathrow on that unusually hot morning. ‘How long have you been back?’ I asked instead, before I was dragged back to that summer. I wasn’t ready to talk about the past yet.

‘Nearly three years.’

‘And you never got in touch?’ I asked.

He stopped walking then, so suddenly that a group of drunk students almost fell over us. One of them recognised him and started calling his name but he didn’t acknowledge them. Instead, he looked down at me, his gaze so intense it almost made me want to look away.

‘I didn’t think you’d want me to,’ he said.

I didn’t know how to reply to that. While Rupert had always been in the back of my mind, I had never really considered what it would be like to have him back in my life. But now all I could think of was the last three years and how we could have been seeing each other every day.

‘Besides,’ he said, looking away and starting to walk again. ‘You’re a hard woman to track down.’

That was true. And for him to know that meant he must have looked, probably more than once. I didn’t have social media or a website or a blog. There were no photos of me online. You wouldn’t find a thing – unless you knew who to look for, of course. Typing in ‘Jessica Clarke’ wouldn’t turn up much on me – that I knew.

The reason you won’t find me online is because I write for a living under a secret pen name. If you search for that name, you’ll find all sorts of things but none of them link back to me. I’ve been careful about that. I don’t even have a personal Facebook account anymore.

‘You could have looked for me,’ he said when he realised I wasn’t going to rise to the bait and tell him why I was so hard to track down. ‘I’m all over the internet.’

Again, true. His academic success was known near and far, but I’d stopped looking years ago. I didn’t think I’d typed ‘Dr Rupert Tremayne’ into a search engine since my first book was published.

‘How’s your mum?’ he asked instead, changing the subject.

‘She’s good,’ I replied, glad to be on more neutral territory. ‘She’s just published her tenth poetry collection, which is weirder than ever. I see her every day.’ I left out the fact that I see her every day because I live with her. ‘She sold up in Cambridge not long after Dad died and bought a flat in Highgate.’ Neither of us acknowledged that Dad had died just before Rupert left, but the words hung in the air between us.

‘It must be nice to have her close by,’ he said. He didn’t say anything about my dad. I used to think that Dad’s death was the catalyst for Rupert leaving. I used to think that if Dad had survived everything would have stayed the same. But I know now that life doesn’t work that way – nothing lasts forever. Even if Rupert had stayed, how would we have survived after everything that happened? Was that why his father sent him away? To protect him? Was that the real reason he went? I wanted to say something but I didn’t know how. Maybe it didn’t matter anymore.

‘And your mum and dad?’ I asked instead. ‘How are they?’

‘The same. Still in the house in Cambridge, still not really getting on.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Mel’s a doctor now though, lives in Sydney.’

I nodded, not really caring where his sister was or what she was doing. I barely knew Melissa – she was only three years older than us but it felt as though she came from a different planet. I don’t think I spoke more than a handful of words with her in all the time I knew her. I do remember the conversation I overheard her having with Rupert just before he left though.

We turned the corner in silence, neither of us knowing what else to say. Nothing could change the past and perhaps there wasn’t anything that could bring us back together again either. Perhaps you only got one shot in life, and if you messed it up – which we did, spectacularly – you didn’t get another.

York Minster was in front of us suddenly – the Gothic cathedral could be seen from all over the city and looked spectacular, especially at night, illuminated against the darkness.

‘I’ve seen it nearly every day for the last three years,’ Rupert said, staring up at its splendour. ‘And it still takes my breath away.’

I didn’t say anything. I just stood and watched him as he looked at the Minster. I wondered if this was just a one-off meeting, a moment in time when our paths crossed temporarily, or if it was something more. And I wondered if we were standing here outside the Minster to put off making that decision.

We crossed the road and stood outside my hotel. He let go of my arm and placed his hands on my shoulders. I looked up at him – I could hear him breathing.

‘I hope everything worked out well for you,’ he said.

‘You too,’ I replied. It felt like an inadequate response but I didn’t know how to tell him that nothing had worked out how I’d expected it to or that I struggled every single day but that despite all of that everything had turned out better than I could have imagined. Apart from one thing.

He shrugged ruefully and looked as though he was going to say something else, but he stopped, his hands still on my shoulders.

‘It’s been amazing to see you, Jessie,’ he said. It sounded final as though at any moment our paths would unravel and we’d each go our separate ways again. I wanted to bottle this moment and keep it forever.

And then he lowered his hands and smiled again before turning around. For the second time in my life I watched Rupert Tremayne walk away from me.

He hadn’t said goodbye and I tried not to think too much about how that made me feel. I’d spent ten years wondering what it would be like to see him again. I hadn’t expected such disappointment.

3
RUPERT

He had dreamed of bumping into her again for years, of being given a second chance. He had always imagined them picking up where they left off, his life suddenly more joyful and fulfilled because of her presence. But when that second chance had presented itself to him he’d been overcome by fear – fear that she hadn’t been thinking about him, fear that she wouldn’t still be interested ten years down the line; what sane woman would? He had come across as awkward and aloof, and then he’d just walked away without a word, without asking for her number, without even saying goodbye.

It had been nothing like he had imagined and he wondered if that was why he had never tried harder to find her, knowing deep down that if he did, it would leave him disappointed.

Rupert bent down to clip his dog’s lead on to his harness. He’d never really considered himself a dog person until Captain came into his life. He didn’t know how he would have coped with the loneliness he felt in York without Captain.

It was a cold day for June, even for Yorkshire. The sky was blue but the wind blowing off the river made him long for the hot summers of Massachusetts. Jess was all he’d been able to think about since he’d realised who she was in the pub the previous evening. That and what a terrible impression he must have made on her. She had looked so glamorous and he had been dressed in scruffy jeans and an old jumper. At least he’d moved on from the football shirts of his youth.

He’d known she was at the bar long before she’d spotted him. He’d been sitting in his usual corner with a couple of colleagues – another uneventful Saturday night at the end of another uneventful week. There were times when Rupert wondered if his life was just passing him by, if work had completely taken over and all he would be remembered for were a few dry academic books that nobody read. Even his parents didn’t seem interested in his career anymore.

‘Here’s trouble!’ Rupert’s friend, Chris, had said to him with a wink and a nudge as the hen party arrived in the pub. He’d felt the energy change around him and it was Gemma he recognised first, her laugh, her exuberance – she’d always been a perfect counterfoil to Jess’s quiet homebody demeanour. It had taken him a moment to recognise the slim brunette with the red lipstick and the green eyes. It couldn’t be her, could it? But then she’d smiled at something Gemma had said and he had known. Nobody else could light up a room with their smile like that.

His initial instinct had been to run. He’d been waiting years for this opportunity, but how could he see it through? Real life was never like your imagination. What if she was dismissive? What if she was still angry? Worse, what if she didn’t recognise him?

He’d realised that Chris was still talking to him and he’d forced himself to look away from her. He had smiled tightly, a smile that could be interpreted as disapproval of this gaggle of drunk women who had disturbed his Saturday night. And then Chris had said something that had made him laugh – he couldn’t even remember what it was now – and when he had looked up Gemma was staring at him, her eyebrows raised. He’d seen Jess whisper something to her and the next thing he had known, Gemma was calling him over.

He should have run when he had the chance.

‘You know them?’ Chris had asked eagerly. Poor single Chris – always looking for the woman who would change his life. Rupert hadn’t replied. He had already been talking to Gemma, teasing her about her hen night outfit as though they’d seen each other yesterday. All his awareness had been on Jess though, just as it ever was.

He’d managed to avoid talking to her directly for most of the evening, answering the questions Gemma shot at him instead as he’d felt the press of Jess’s thigh against his and tried to ignore how that made him feel. Later, while Jess was in the loo, he’d answered more personal questions from Gemma. He had found himself asking a few questions as well. He’d wondered if Jess was avoiding him.

When Gemma had insisted that he walk Jess back to the hotel, his stomach fizzed. It had felt as though it was his one chance. But he had blown that chance. When she’d slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, when he’d pulled her closer, it had felt as though a decade had slipped away, as though they were back where they started and he had never boarded that flight to America all those years ago. So why had he gone and walked away from her again?

Possibly because he wouldn’t have known which version of the truth to tell her – because she was bound to want to know why he was back. He hadn’t been sure if he could lie to her and he hadn’t been sure if he could tell her the truth.

As Rupert opened his front door and allowed Captain to drag him out on his morning walk, he told himself that walking away again had been the best thing he could have done, for both of them.

4
JESS

‘Are you angry with me?’ my mother asked.

‘Of course I’m not angry with you, Mum,’ I replied. ‘I am wondering why you didn’t tell me though.’

We were in the garden of my mother’s flat in Highgate. She had moved out of Cambridge after I graduated from university, after my father died, moving to London to be nearer to me. We always had a need to be near each other since Dad died; Mum had been an only child too and she wanted to keep what family she had close. It had worked out well for both of us in the end.

My mother, Caro Jefferson, was a poet. She lived quietly on her not-insubstantial royalties and my father’s even less insubstantial life insurance payout. She got involved with community projects in Highgate, wrote for the local magazine, helped organise the costumes for the pantomime, that kind of thing. She was happy there – who wouldn’t be? Highgate is beautiful.

It felt as though we’d looked at a thousand flats in north London before we came across this one, but as soon as we saw it, Mum knew it was the right one. I had started working at The Ham & High then – the newspaper for Hampstead and Highgate – and was living with Dan on Kentish Town Road. Mum’s flat was just far enough away for me to not feel Mum was on top of me, but near enough for us to go round whenever we were hungry. Cadet journalists and inexperienced photographers don’t earn very much.

Mum’s flat was the lower ground floor of a converted Georgian terrace. The flat itself was a little dark but the French doors in the kitchen opened out onto a beautiful garden where Mum could indulge in her other great love – breeding roses.

We were in her rose garden the morning after I got back from York, Mum pruning away as I sat nearby enjoying the early morning sun. I’d been hesitatingly telling her about seeing Rupert again. She’d known he was back in the UK but hadn’t told me.

‘I hadn’t wanted to upset you, darling,’ Mum said as she delicately pruned her precious roses. ‘It took you so long to get over him, I thought it was best left in the past.’

‘I’m surprised,’ I replied. ‘A romantic like you. I’d have thought you would have been scheming to get us back together!’ I grinned at her, but her face was serious.

‘There’s nothing romantic about what happened. Have you any idea what it felt like to watch you hurting like that?’

What could I say to that? My mother thought it had taken a long time for me to get over Rupert. I know now that I never did.

‘How did you know he was back?’ I asked.

‘His mother told me. We’re still in touch – I think she probably hears from me more often than she hears from her son though. They were never a close family, were they? He always seemed to prefer our house to his.’

A memory flashed in my head then of us doing our homework at my mum’s big kitchen table together, heads down over our books, kicking each other with our toes under the table. I hadn’t realised that Mum still kept in touch with Rupert’s parents. She returned to Cambridge now and again, but I hadn’t been back since she moved to London. I’d avoided Cambridge since Rupert left.

‘His sister is a doctor now,’ I said. ‘She lives in Sydney.’

Mum nodded. She already knew that too.

‘How did you feel about seeing him again?’ she asked. It was impossible not to notice the look of concern on her face. I knew she was worried about me. Mum knew better than anyone how ill I had been and she had been concerned about me going on Gemma’s hen weekend at all, thinking it might be too much for me. When I had first got ill, I’d left my job at the newspaper and moved into Mum’s spare room. I’d never got around to moving out again. I hadn’t been able to summon up the energy if I’m honest, so I turned the spare room into a bedroom-cum-study and I started writing a book about Ancient Greece, not knowing where it would take me at the time.

I didn’t know how I felt about seeing Rupert again. Part of me was regretting not talking to him more, not asking for a phone number or if he wanted to meet for a coffee before I went back to London. But part of me thought there was too much pain and heartache, too much left unsaid, to simply pick up where we left off.

‘It was lovely to see him,’ I said, not really answering Mum’s question at all.

‘I sense a but,’ my mother replied, putting down her secateurs and coming to sit next to me. She tilted her head up towards the sun and pushed her sunglasses up her nose. Sometimes she looked like a film star.

‘I never expected to see him again,’ I said. ‘I’d finally stopped thinking about him. It was a shock.’

Mum reached over to pat my hand. ‘Of course it was a shock,’ she said. ‘Did you talk about seeing each other again?’

I shook my head.

‘Why not?’ she asked.

‘There was so much I felt I couldn’t tell him,’ I replied. ‘About what happened, about how ill I was, about Dan, about still living here with you.’

‘Living with your mother is nothing to be ashamed about. Why did you feel you couldn’t tell him?’

Mum had a habit of always getting straight to the point.

‘He’s achieved so much,’ I replied. ‘He’s top of his field and I’ve achieved virtually nothing. We both had so much potential …’

‘You’ve had two books published,’ my mother interrupted. ‘Both of which sold well, and you’ve just signed a contract for two more.’

I knew I was making excuses and pretending that it hadn’t felt right seeing Rupert again. The truth was I hadn’t had the courage to take the opportunity and neither had he. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t been thinking about him constantly since I’d seen him, thinking about the past, about what could have been.

*

Later, when I was lying in bed unable to sleep, I found my eyes wandering in the dark to the top of the wardrobe where I could just make out the shapes of the two plastic boxes up there. One box contained all the diaries and journals I’d kept since I was seven years old, the other was full of photographs. Everything that was in those two boxes was so tied up with Rupert, with my father and with everything that happened the summer after we graduated that I hadn’t been able to bring myself to look at them for years.

Until tonight.

I turned on the bedside light and got out of bed, dragging a chair over to the wardrobe so I could stand on it and pull the boxes off. It was a struggle to do it quietly but I didn’t want to wake Mum. I didn’t want her asking questions.

I could still remember the long hot summer of 2003 when Rupert and I were seventeen, the summer I first met Dan. I could still remember the sound of Gemma and Caitlin bickering and the sensation of the sun on my skin as Rupert, Dan, Camilla and I lay by the river. I could still feel the coolness of the water as we swam lazily in the river in the afternoons and the feeling of Rupert’s hand in mine. I could still remember the way Camilla used to look at him, the way she would touch his arm or his knee when she talked to him.

Camilla and I were at school together, but we were never close. Sometimes she’d turn up with Gemma and Caitlin; sometimes she’d seek us out on her own. I knew it wasn’t me she came to see though – I knew it was Rupert and I was glad of Dan that summer. He was Rupert’s friend but he always felt like my ally. I can still remember the sense of inevitability I felt when he and I went to London together and Rupert and Camilla stayed in Cambridge.

So many memories, but the one thing I could never remember, no matter how hard I tried, was the sound of my father’s voice. However tightly I had tried to hold on to it, it had faded over the years.

My memories, like most nostalgia trips, were rose-tinted. I’d almost forgotten how angry I used to feel whenever Camilla touched Rupert. That underlying sense of jealousy and rivalry that I felt back then had melted into adulthood and an understanding of the complexities of life, of the shades of grey – teenagers seem to have an almost over developed sense of black and white, of right and wrong.

It seemed that things hadn’t worked out between Rupert and Camilla after all but I wasn’t sure that changed anything. The past has gone and the years in between have been too long and too full of difficulties for the reunion Gemma seemed to think Rupert and I deserved.

Haven’t they?

I sat down on the floor next to the boxes and pushed the one with the photographs away. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I opened the box containing the journals and found the first one and I started reading.

… A few days after we turned seven, my grandmother died.

At her funeral I cried big fat tears. I hated that I couldn’t stop them from falling in front of everyone. I hated that I couldn’t be stronger for my mum. You stood beside me in your school uniform, your jaw set stoically – a baby version of the way you set your jaw later whenever anyone disagreed with you.

You refused to go to school that morning, insisting on being at the funeral, on being with me even though your parents didn’t want you to. They told you that you were too young to go but you said you were twelve hours older than me and you came anyway. Halfway through the service, when I thought my tears would never stop and Dad had run out of tissues, I felt your hand slip into mine, hot and sticky and reminding me that you were there. Everything would always be all right as long as you were there. You may only have been twelve hours older than me but you always understood the world better than I ever did.

We were born twelve hours apart – you at 6 p.m. and me the following morning – in the same hospital, our mothers recovering in beds next to each other, an odd but lifelong friendship developing from that initial bond. You were early and I was late, which was the pattern that continued for the rest of our lives. You were always waiting for me to catch up with you.

Our parents’ houses stood back to back and our mothers’ friendship transferred to us. We grew up together, in one another’s pockets. We made a hole in the back fence so we could cut through into each other’s gardens instead of walking around the block to the front door. We wandered in and out of each other’s houses as though we owned the whole street. We did everything together from the moment we were born.

Our first day of school seemed less daunting because we had each other. We were always in trouble for talking, or for reading some book or other that we weren’t meant to be reading, both of us so ahead of the rest of the class even then. Sometimes, when they made us work in pairs, the teachers would separate us, make us work with other people. But you were always looking over your shoulder, making sure I was OK.

When you were six you punched the boy who used to bully me. You got in a lot of trouble for that. Afterwards you told me you were going to marry me one day, and always look after me. You were the only six-year-old I’ve ever known who tried to stick to that promise.

The autumn after my grandmother died we were sent off to separate schools, hothousing us in single-sex environments, prepping us for the ‘great things’ our parents had planned for our futures. I missed you desperately. I was so used to you then that I missed the testosterone in my every day, even if I wasn’t really aware that’s what it was that I was missing. Every evening when we got home we ripped off our expensive school uniforms and pulled on the dirty, scruffy clothes we preferred wearing to sit in my mother’s apple orchard, catching up on our days, daydreaming.

And then, when we were eleven, the unthinkable happened.

They took you away from me …

5
JESS

‘Don’t be mad at me,’ Gemma said in the voice of someone who had done something that would make me mad.

The two of us were lying on our backs listening to soothing music as two beauty therapists performed a procedure known as Billion Dollar Brows on us.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What have you done other than make me undergo this torture?’ I wasn’t sure I was a Billion Dollar Brow sort of person. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d set foot in a beauty salon. It must have been over six years ago and I was sure eyebrows had been much less complicated back then.

‘You’ll thank me for it,’ Gemma said.

‘For what? The eyebrows or whatever else it is you’ve done?’

‘You’ll thank me for both in the end,’ she said.

‘Gemma, what have you done?’

‘I invited Rupert to my wedding and he’s RSVP’d yes,’ she replied very quickly, the words tumbling out of her mouth.

‘You’ve what?’ I felt my stomach lurch at the thought of it. After spending the last few nights going through my old diaries, reading through my memories of Rupert as a child, a teenager, our first kiss and everything that happened afterwards, I had been trying not to think about him at all. I had been failing spectacularly but seeing him at Gemma’s wedding wasn’t going to help. I’d worked so hard at moving on that this felt like a setback.

Except the part that felt like a second chance.

‘He’s coming to the wedding,’ Gemma said. ‘And he’ll dance with you and realise what a terrible mistake he made and …’

‘Gemma, stop,’ I said. ‘Stop getting carried away. If you’ve invited him because he’s an old friend and you’d like him to be there then that’s fine.’ I was being much more reasonable than I felt, mostly due to the presence of the two eyebrow technicians. ‘But if you think there’s going to be some great reunion, you’re mistaken.’

‘I just want us all to be together again,’ she said. ‘Well, except Camilla of course.’

‘And Dan,’ I replied, wondering what he was doing these days. Gemma didn’t say anything.

‘When did you invite Rupert?’ I asked, changing the subject.

‘I sent an invitation to his department at the university. He replied with his address and telephone number, if you’d like them.’

I was tempted. More than tempted. I wanted her to put the number into my phone so I could call him the minute I got out of the beauty salon. But I ignored that feeling, took a deep breath and tried not to think about the fact that in just over a week I’d be seeing him again.

‘I’m sorry,’ Gemma said when I didn’t respond. ‘I wanted to do something nice for you. You were always meant to get married first – you know that.’

I didn’t know what to say to that because it was true. It should have been me first. It should have been me ten years ago. Rupert and I should be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary instead of being forced into some awkward situation at Gemma’s wedding. We could have had a house together; we could have had a family. I could have avoided Dan and never got ill. I could have been happy for the last decade instead of wasting my time thinking about what might have been.

‘It’s OK,’ I said.

‘So you don’t mind?’

I sighed. Gemma and Rupert had always got along well. They had the same sense of humour, even though Rupert’s was far more restrained. They spent years as teenagers ribbing each other and I knew that she had missed him when he left. He was one of the few people who stuck by her, who didn’t try and encourage her to go to university when she hadn’t wanted to.

‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘But don’t try and matchmake. Just leave it OK?’

‘I told you he was single, didn’t I?’ she carried on regardless. ‘And his first question was whether you were seeing anyone.’

‘Really?’ I asked, despite myself.

‘Yes, he seemed quite keen to know that.’

My heart skipped at the thought of that, although I tried to put it out of my mind.

‘Look, Gemma,’ I said. ‘It’ll be lovely to see Rupert again at the wedding, but it doesn’t mean we’re getting back together. It was a long time ago and we’re different people now.’

‘I’ll sit him next to your mum,’ Gemma said, ignoring me. ‘She can write a poem about it all.’

‘What do you think?’ the eyebrow technician asked suddenly, holding a mirror above my face. It took me a moment to recognise myself. I looked ghastly and had to bite my lip to stop myself saying so. I could hear Gemma gushing about her amazing new eyebrows in the background, so I forced a smile and told the therapist that they were perfect. I actually wanted to cry. I was still so pale and thin, and the sudden encroachment of dark oppressive brows just didn’t look right. Brows like this suited women like Gemma, with her tanned skin and good bone structure. On me it looked like a five-year-old had got into her mother’s make-up bag.

I managed to keep quiet as we paid and left the salon. I didn’t want Gemma to realise how upset I was but she knew me too well.

‘Shall we go for a coffee?’ she asked.

I made a non-committal noise. All I wanted to do was go home and scrub my forehead for the rest of the evening until I looked less ridiculous.

‘Jess, what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ I replied in an attempt to sound breezy.

‘Don’t lie to me, Jess. What’s wrong?’

I sighed. ‘I look like Noel bloody Gallagher,’ I said. It was ridiculous to be this upset about eyebrows, but honestly, they looked dreadful.

Gemma started laughing to herself and headed off down the street. I followed her, brushing my fringe down in an attempt to hide my brows.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I know it was meant to be a treat but I hate them. They don’t suit me like they suit you.’

Gemma looked at me then, still smiling. ‘They’re fine,’ she said. ‘They always look a bit alarming when you first have them done, but they’ll fade and you’ll thank me when you see the wedding photos.’

‘Will I?’

‘Eyebrows are the windows to the soul,’ she said.

‘I thought that was eyes?’

‘Window frames then.’ She laughed, linking her arm through mine. I’ve always wondered what it must be like to feel as carelessly happy as Gemma.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and get that coffee.’

… The day you left for boarding school I didn’t want to let you go. We stood outside your house, your father’s car packed up with your things, my arms wrapped around your waist, your chin on the top of my head. Even at eleven you were head and shoulders taller than me.

‘Come along, Rupert, please,’ your father said. I could hear the irritation in his voice. He was always impatient when I was around. Maybe he was impatient when I wasn’t around too, but I did feel that his impatience was reserved especially for me.

You pulled away, pushing your glasses up your nose and looking at me. I remember your eyes seemed bluer than ever that afternoon.

‘I’m still here, Jessie,’ you said. ‘Whenever you need me.’ But I knew I wouldn’t see you until the Christmas holidays and when you’re eleven the distance between September and Christmas seems enormous, insurmountable, impassable.

You got into the back of the car and your father pulled away, off to your expensive new school in London. It felt like you were going forever. It felt as though it was the end. You looked out of the rear window as the car turned out of the bottom of the road and you waved briefly. I felt as though I’d never see you again.

But life carried on much as it always had, even though you weren’t there. I moved up into the Senior Building of my all-girls school and I made friends who helped me keep my mind off you, who helped to fill the gaping hole you’d left behind.

Caitlin and Gemma were the only girls like me at school – my grandmother had high ideas about my education, but I don’t think she’d thought through how hard it would be for me to fit in. Caitlin and Gemma and I were ordinary – we didn’t have trust funds or long limbs and blonde hair and our fathers weren’t ‘something in the City’.

But they always saw me for who I was rather than as ‘Rupert Tremayne’s friend’ …

6
RUPERT

Even though in the end she hadn’t believed him, it had always been Jess. From the day he asked her to marry him in the school playground he knew. Admittedly, he didn’t really know what it was that he knew when he was six, but it was a feeling; a sense of the way things were meant to be. Even years later, after he’d left her standing at the departure gate at Heathrow airport, he had still known. None of the women he’d tried to lose himself in at Harvard could compare, not even Camilla – especially not Camilla. He’d always wanted them to be Jess and they never could be. He’d stopped dating completely in the end.

He could clearly remember the day he first realised his feelings for Jess had slipped from best friends to something more, something much more. It was the Christmas holidays before their GCSEs. Something about Jess had changed that winter; it felt as though she was sliding away from him. She was starting to have a life that he wasn’t a part of and she talked about the parties she had been to and the boys Gemma and Caitlin had giggled over, the boys they had kissed.

‘Did you kiss anyone?’ he’d asked, unable to hide the jealousy from his voice.

She’d shaken her head. ‘Not this time,’ she’d said with a grin.

He had wanted to kiss her then, but he hadn’t had the courage to do anything except think about what that would be like and it had taken him until the following summer to admit what was happening – that they couldn’t just be friends anymore.

He’d always thought he’d asked her too soon, that she hadn’t been ready for a relationship when she was sixteen. But she had known as well as he had that they had both reached the point of no turning back.

Over the last week, since seeing Jess again, Rupert had had to stop himself from tracking her down. He knew Gemma worked at Kew. It would be easy enough to call her, to find out where Jess was, what her phone number was. Gemma had seemed quite keen to push the two of them back together, had even told him Jess was single. What harm could there be in asking Jess if she wanted to meet for a coffee next time he was in London?

But he had pushed her before, when they were sixteen, and again, when they were twenty-one, when they were both lost in the grief of losing Jess’s father. He didn’t want to be that person again and Jess had made no move to get in touch with him. He tried to remind himself that walking away from her outside her hotel had been the right thing to do.

When the thick gold-embossed envelope appeared in his pigeonhole at work it had felt like a lifeline. Gemma had invited him to her wedding after all. He had thought she’d been joking when she mentioned it in the pub. He hadn’t needed to call her in the end because Gemma had given him a second chance. He knew this would be the last chance he would get. It was now or never.

JULY 2017

7
JESS

I woke up on the morning of Gemma’s wedding feeling as though I’d been hit by a truck. Not today, I thought. Please not today.

Five years previously I had come down with glandular fever. I’d known other people who had had it, I knew that it could take weeks, even months, to recover, but for me something had gone wrong. The virus had triggered something else in my body, something worse, and had left me sick and weak for years. Up until a year or so ago I would wake up most mornings feeling like this – every bone in my body aching, my glands swollen, my head pounding. I knew when I stood up I would be dizzy and that everything I did, from cleaning my teeth to brushing my hair, would be exhausting; that every movement would feel as though I was walking through jam.

Over the years, the bad days became less frequent and I was able to live a more normal life – if going to bed at 9 p.m. and barely drinking or socialising could be considered a normal life for a woman my age. My thirtieth birthday party ended at 6 p.m. and the strongest substance imbibed by me was Earl Grey tea.

These days I still got tired easily and, towards the end of the day, the bone-aching weariness would return. But as long as I took my painkillers and my other medication I could usually manage most situations.

I lay in bed racking my brains, trying to work out what I’d done to trigger a flare-up like this. I knew the run-up to Gemma’s wedding – the endless hair and beauty trials, the rehearsal dinner, the dress fittings and the stress of the last-minute arrangements – would be exhausting, but I’d tried to get early nights, tried not to drink and tried to do the things that I knew helped me. Yet, despite my efforts the wheels had fallen off on the one day I needed them more than ever.

The only thing I could think of was that London was enjoying a brief heatwave and, although I loved the summer time, the heat could be a trigger for my symptoms – especially in an old hotel without air conditioning, when I hadn’t slept well.

I wasn’t going to admit, even to myself, that I hadn’t been sleeping well recently because I’d been up late night after night reading my old journals, poring over the box of photos, lost in memories of the past. And I wasn’t going to admit that my insomnia had increased along with my anxiety at seeing Rupert again today. My stomach churned with a mix of dread and excitement at the thought.

I took some deep breaths and tried to remember the times I’d had to battle flare-ups like this before – like when the deadline for my second novel was looming, or Gemma’s engagement party. I’d got up, taken my meds and got on with the day. As I sat up in bed, swinging my legs over the side and reaching for my medication bag, I tried not to remember the consequences of those times I’d battled through, tried not to remember how they had left me depleted for weeks.

By the time Caitlin knocked on my hotel room door to collect me, I was showered and dressed and ready to go and get my hair and make-up done.

I watched Caitlin’s face fall as I opened the door.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked.

I forced a smile. ‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Honestly, it’s just been a long time since you saw me without make-up on!’

She looked at me for a minute, scrutinising me.

‘If you need anything today just ask me, won’t you?’ she said.

I opened my mouth to tell her again that I was fine, but I knew I couldn’t lie to her. Caitlin knew me too well.

‘Just ask,’ she repeated, and I nodded. ‘Now come on,’ she went on. ‘We can’t leave the bride-to-be waiting any longer. She’s phoned me three times this morning already. Has she phoned you?’

‘I switched my phone off.’ I grinned.

‘Sensible girl,’ she said, taking my arm and leading me off to the bridal suite.

*

An hour and a half later we sat in Gemma’s room surrounded by the detritus left behind when three women get ready for a wedding. The hair and make-up people had left and the photographer, who had been taking photographs of us getting ready, had gone off to take some photos of Mike and his best man.

I’d scrubbed up well considering how bad I felt – the make-up artist had her work cut out with me, but she’d worked magic. Even I couldn’t tell how bad I looked underneath when I saw my reflection and the dark blue of the bridesmaid’s dress brought out the green in my eyes. I almost looked healthy, and my ridiculous Billion Dollar Brows had calmed down just as Gemma had promised they would.

Gemma sighed audibly.

‘Cold feet, Gem?’ Caitlin joked.

‘Dad,’ Gemma said quietly. ‘James walking me down the aisle just won’t be the same. I wish he could be here.’

Neither Caitlin nor I said anything. Neither of us knew what to say. Neither of us had ever known what to say since the day, just over a decade ago, just before Rupert left, when Gemma’s father had been arrested for corporate espionage and fraud. It turned out that’s how he paid her school fees, amongst other things. Neither of us knew if Gemma had ever visited him in prison and we didn’t know if she’d seen him since he got parole and went to live in another part of the country. We never talked about Gemma’s father and we didn’t even know if he knew she was getting married. Her brother was giving her away today and we left it at that.

‘And soon we’ll all be married,’ Gemma went on, sounding rather maudlin. ‘Old matrons who never get to see each other often enough.’

‘We don’t get to see each other often enough now,’ Caitlin said.

‘And I still won’t be married,’ I disagreed. ‘I’m not even dating anyone.’

‘Oh, but you will be after today,’ Gemma said. ‘As soon as you see Rupert the two of you will fall madly in love again, and then you won’t even be in London anymore.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ I replied. ‘I’ll always be in London.’

‘No, you won’t,’ she said. ‘You’ll marry him and then you’ll move to York and we’ll exchange Christmas cards once a year with a circular letter inside full of lies and exaggerations about how brilliant our lives are and how wonderful our children are and—’

‘For God’s sake,’ I interrupted this depressing dialogue. ‘What on earth are you talking about? It’s you who invited him to the wedding anyway.’

‘Cold feet, Gem?’ Caitlin said again, with a grin.

Gemma was saved from replying by a knock on the door. She tried to jump up to open it but the full skirt of her wedding dress prevented her, so I went instead. My mum and James were standing outside.

‘It’s nearly time,’ Mum said, as I stood aside to let them in. James went over to his sister to make a fuss of her and Mum took me to one side.

‘Rupert’s here,’ she whispered. She’d been almost as excited about him coming to the wedding as Gemma had been. ‘He looks ever so handsome. He hasn’t changed much, has he?’

Something inside me unravelled. I’d been looking forward to seeing him again more than I was prepared to admit and part of me had wondered if he would turn up. I smiled my first genuine smile of the morning.

‘Are you OK?’ she asked. ‘You don’t look very well.’ The make-up wasn’t fooling Mum, clearly.

‘I just slept badly,’ I said. ‘It’s so hot.’

Mum looked at me as though she didn’t believe me and pulled me gently into the corridor away from everyone else.

‘I know you’ve not been sleeping properly since Gemma’s hen do,’ she said. ‘I can hear you still up when I go to the loo in the night. I’m worried about you. Tell me what’s going on.’

I sighed and looked away from her. ‘Memories,’ I said. ‘Seeing him again has just brought everything back. I can’t stop thinking about that summer, about Dad …’ As I trailed off I felt her fingers brush against my cheek and I turned to look at her again. I saw her blink back the tears that always came whenever anyone mentioned my father. I wondered if she would ever get over him, if she would ever move on. Mum and I were the same, both waiting together for our lives to start again.

‘Maybe it’s a good thing,’ she said quietly. ‘Maybe it’s time to open your heart again.’

I shook my head. ‘Too much has happened,’ I said. ‘Too much has changed.’

‘Don’t burn your bridges, Jess. Try not to think about the past or the future today; try to enjoy yourself. Drink champagne, laugh, dance with Rupert.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You and Rupert were always inseparable,’ she interrupted. ‘Maybe you both need that again.’

I opened my mouth to speak, to contradict her, but I knew that in a way she was right, that part of me did wonder what it would be like to spend the day with him again. Part of me was curious as to where it would lead – the part of me that regretted not swapping numbers with him in York, that hadn’t wanted to watch him walk away.

‘Just see what happens,’ Mum said. ‘Just for today.’

‘OK,’ I replied. ‘Just for today.’

… The summer that we turned twelve was the first birthday we hadn’t spent together, the first time we hadn’t had a joint party. We had a short, awkward phone conversation and you sent me a card with a cat on the front of it.

By that summer I’d begun to grow used to you not being around. Even though you’d been home for Christmas and Easter I felt as though I’d hardly seen you – your parents were always taking you off for extra tutoring or educational trips. I’d started to spend more time with the kids who lived on our block, just like we had when we were younger, even though we all went to different schools now. Growing up on those streets that backed onto Midsummer Common, onto the River Cam, having all known each other since before we could remember, was a common denominator. We hung around together even though we weren’t really sure if we liked each other anymore. I don’t think I was the only one who missed you though.

That afternoon in July we were all playing a rather undisciplined game of rounders on the Common. I’d been consigned to deep field as usual – always hopeless at sports. I had a headache and was considering going home. I heard you before I saw you, the squeal of your bike brakes, the skid as your back wheel flipped round towards me, cutting me off from everybody else.

And there you were suddenly. Home. Standing in front of me in your Arsenal away shirt. It was summer, and the holidays felt as though they could go on forever. There was no way they could keep us apart all summer. You smiled that smile that gave me butterflies, even though it was another four years before I realised why. You’d grown again, already well on your way to six foot – your bike was too small for you, your jeans too short. You’d exchanged your glasses for contact lenses, tired of being called the Milky Bar Kid by the boys at school.

You were there.

‘Hop on,’ you said. And just like that the rest of the world stopped existing, as it always did when we were together. I jumped on the back of your bike and we flew across Cambridge, screaming with joy. Summer began that afternoon.

As teenagers we only saw each other in the school holidays and the older we got, the more things felt as though they were changing. I had my own friends – people you didn’t really know, who you only met sporadically. You never really talked about boarding school, never really told me about any friends you’d made there. It was almost as though you thought the time we spent apart didn’t really exist.

But I was still in Cambridge and the life I had when you weren’t there merged with the life I had whenever you came back. Caitlin and Gemma slowly filled up the gaps you had left behind, and we became as close as you and I had been. The three of us would wander around town together, trying on and discarding every outfit in River Island, sitting for hours in Burger King, whispering secrets to each other as we shared cups of coffee and, after we turned fourteen, filling up the little tin foil ashtrays with the butts of our Silk Cut cigarettes that Gemma, who looked the oldest of all of us, would buy. I thought, when you came home that summer, that you would disapprove of my new habit until I saw the packet of Marlboro in your shirt pocket.

When you were home you always seemed so alone. Your school friends, if you had any, miles away and your old friends distanced from you by your being away. We forget so quickly as teenagers. We are resilient, moving on to the next group of friends, the next adventure so easily. Sometimes I’d see you, playing football on the Common with the boys from our street. You and John were thick as thieves still – you always would be – but there was something about you then that made you seem aloof, as though you’d been left behind.

No, not left behind. Rupert Tremayne was never left behind. You were always light years ahead of all of us.

Every evening you would squeeze through the gap in the fence that divided off the bottoms of our gardens, the gap we’d made as children, to spend time with me. We’d lie on our backs in Mum’s apple orchard and watch the sky change colour. We’d wish upon a star and smoke cigarette after cigarette – swallowing half packets of peppermints before we went home, foolishly believing that would stop our parents finding out we smoked.

Sometimes your fingers would find mine and you’d hold my hand like you did at my grandmother’s funeral.

‘I’m still here,’ you’d say. ‘Even though I’m miles away, I’m always yours, Jessie.’

But everything felt different, as though a chasm was opening up between us. I wondered if things would have been different had you been born a girl or I a boy – would that have helped us maintain our sibling-like closeness? The onset of puberty had highlighted the differences between us, fascinating us as much as it scared us. I started to wonder what would become of us, where we could possibly go from here. I started to wonder how I would feel when you eventually told me about your first girlfriend. I started to wonder how quickly you would forget me then. Because it seemed obvious to me the summer we turned fifteen that it was only a matter of time before you got a girlfriend. The willowy, blonde trust-fund girls at my school had had their eyes on you for years.

There was nothing I could do to stop it. I was so sure of our fate when I was fifteen. I had always thought nothing could come between us, but then as we started our slow progression from childhood to adulthood, I was beginning to see that one day, something would …

8
JESS

Kew Gardens is probably the most beautiful place in London to get married. I couldn’t believe Gemma was having her wedding here after organising so many for other people. And I couldn’t believe I wasn’t going to be well enough to enjoy it. I don’t know how I made it through the wedding ceremony.

As if she knew how I was feeling, Caitlin put an arm carefully and quietly around my waist as Gemma and Mike said their vows – if it hadn’t been for that I think I would have passed out. Thanks to her, I don’t think anyone noticed. She had a word with the photographer too, who did all the photos that I was needed for as quickly as possible.

‘Why don’t you go and talk to Rupert,’ Caitlin said. ‘No harm in catching up if you feel well enough?’

I hesitated for a moment, unsure of myself, remembering what Mum had said to me – to just take today as it comes, enjoy myself. I smiled at Caitlin and walked away from her towards Rupert.

I’d seen him during the ceremony, standing next to Mum. He was wearing a grey suit and purple tie, a white shirt with a matching buttonhole. Mum had been right – he did look handsome. I’d only seen him in a suit once before, at his graduation, and I was suddenly hit by a sensation of how much time had passed, of how much of each other’s lives we’d missed. He’d caught my eye as Gemma and Mike were signing the register and winked at me. My stomach had flipped over.

Rupert was sitting on a bench outside the Orangery and I sat down next to him. Kew looked so beautiful in the summer light and I thought about how lucky we were to be able to enjoy Gemma’s wedding here, how lucky she was to work in the most beautiful place in London. While Caitlin had been busy working her way up the nursing ranks to Junior Sister and I had been a cadet journalist, Gemma had surprised us all. After flunking out of her A levels, she’d managed to scrape through a management course before moving to London. She worked at various hotels before landing a job in the Operations team at Kew Gardens. Ten years later and she was Operations Manager, in charge of all the events at Kew from live music festivals to weddings, including her own.

We sat on the bench and Rupert talked while I listened. He had just come back from a conference in America and was excited about it. I thought he hadn’t noticed that I’d left the talking to him but just before we went into the Orangery, where we would be eating, he asked me if I was all right, his hand gently finding mine.

‘I’m tired,’ I said. ‘I didn’t sleep well last night – it’s been so hot.’ He looked at me oddly. ‘How are you?’ I asked, noticing dark smudges under his eyes that hadn’t been there the last time I saw him.

‘Jet-lagged,’ he said. ‘But not too tired to dance later, if you’d do me the honour.’ He grinned at his own formality and I noticed a blush colour his cheekbones, just as it had done when we were teenagers.

‘That would be lovely,’ I said.

‘I’ll see you after the dinner then,’ he said, dropping my hand. It felt empty when he let it go.

I spent most of the meal watching Mum and Rupert out of the corner of my eye, wondering what she was talking to him about, wondering what she was telling him. They were both laughing too much for it to be anything serious.

I started to feel better as the day went on and when Rupert walked over to me after Gemma and Mike’s first dance, taking my hand to lead me onto the dance floor, I felt happy for the first time in a long time. Dancing with Rupert felt significant somehow, for both of us. As we danced, his hand on the small of my back and my arms around his neck, it felt like something that was meant to be.

When the song finished Rupert looked at me, his hand still on my back, drawing me close to him.

‘Shall we get some fresh air?’ he asked.

I nodded, my mouth suddenly too dry to speak. Caitlin caught my eye as we walked past, raising her eyebrows. ‘OK?’ she mouthed. I nodded once.

We walked away from the Orangery towards the Waterlily House. Twilight was just starting to disappear behind the horizon and the shadow of Kew Palace loomed behind us. I remembered all the times that I’d sat behind the Orangery with Gemma, drinking tea and sharing pieces of cake whilst she was on her lunch break. We’d talked about everything behind the Orangery over the years – from Rupert leaving and Dan arriving to the first time she met Mike and the day she got engaged. It felt as though everything was coming full circle here tonight.

I had missed visiting Kew Gardens when I was ill and had tried to go once a week as soon as I had been able to again. It was a long journey from Highgate to Kew but it was worth it for an afternoon in the Botanical Gardens. There had always been something magical about this place.

We sat on the first bench we came to, side by side, our thighs touching as they had done in the pub in York.

‘I used to look for your by-line in the Observer,’ he said, the corners of his mouth turning up.

I told him I was a freelance writer, that my articles rarely had a by-line. I told him that working on a paper hadn’t suited me.

‘Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?’ he asked then.

‘Nothing,’ I replied. I’d been enjoying myself. I hadn’t thought anything was wrong.

He sighed, leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees.

‘You’ve been ill, haven’t you?’ he said.

I didn’t reply. I hadn’t thought that this was the reason he’d brought me outside. I wondered for a moment if Mum had said something.

He turned his head to look at me. ‘You’re so pale, Jessie, and so tired all the time. I’ve seen the way Gemma and Caitlin worry about you – even on her own hen night Gemma was concerned about you. What’s going on?’

Even after all these years he still knew me as well as I knew myself. I couldn’t lie to him, but I couldn’t tell him either. I couldn’t stand the questions, the cynicism. I couldn’t bear it if Rupert turned out to be one of those people who didn’t believe me. So I told him half the story.

‘I had glandular fever a few years ago,’ I said. ‘It took a long time to clear up, much longer than normal and it left me exhausted and not really able to work.’ I stopped, unable to work out the look on his face.

‘Is that why you went freelance?’ he asked.

‘I’m doing much better now,’ I replied, not really answering his question, not sure if I was trying to convince him or myself.

‘Glandular fever,’ he repeated slowly to himself. ‘But you’re OK now? Honestly?’

I nodded. ‘Honestly. I still get tired easily and Gemma hasn’t been the easiest bride to handle.’

‘I can imagine.’ He smiled.

‘She’s worn me out.’

He laughed softly and looked away again sitting back up, leaning against the back of the bench.

‘There is something else,’ I said.

He didn’t reply, waiting instead for me to speak.

‘I told you Mum lived near me but that’s not true. I live with her. I moved in with her when I got sick and I haven’t moved out yet. I know that’s a bit sad …’ I wasn’t sure why I was so embarrassed about it.

‘It’s not sad, Jessie, it’s lovely.’ As he looked at me, I remembered the fractured relationship he always had with his family, how much time he spent with my mum and dad and how he had always wished he could be closer to his own parents. I was lucky and sometimes it’s hard to see ourselves from other people’s perspectives. Sometimes it’s hard to forget about how things used to be and concentrate on how they are now.

I let my gaze linger on his profile, the line of his nose, the fall of his hair, the shadow of his stubble. How much had he changed? What did he see when he looked at me? He was the same but different, as though he was carrying a heavy weight that hadn’t been there ten years before. We all carried baggage that hadn’t been there a decade ago though; it was what we were like underneath it all that counted. Did any of us ever change?

9
RUPERT

She looked so beautiful when he saw her walking down the aisle in front of Gemma at the wedding ceremony. He couldn’t believe he was lucky enough to have been given this second chance.

But he had known there was something wrong; she hadn’t seemed as pleased to see him again as he had to see her. And later, outside the Orangery, she had seemed distant as though she hadn’t heard what he was saying.

He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her for years. Being here at the wedding with her felt like a daydream. It didn’t seem real. Caro had kept him occupied during the wedding, full of jokes and stories and anecdotes from his childhood that he had forgotten, blanked from his mind during the lonely years he’d spent at Harvard; but he was delighted to remember, now that he was back here amongst people who he had used to love, people who he had forgotten to love.

When Jess had danced with him after dinner to Stevie Wonder’s ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ he felt that it was a turning point, a significant moment in his life – like the day he first kissed her on the bench by the River Cam or the day he asked her to marry him. He wanted those days back and he was determined that this weekend he was going to make that happen, determined that he was going to take a risk.

But he knew there was something wrong and when he asked her to get some fresh air with him he wanted to find out what it was, to help her if he could. But he was still sure that she wasn’t telling him the whole story.

When he turned to look at her again, she was staring at him. When their eyes met he felt the wave of heat that had washed over him when he saw her in the pub in York. He didn’t know what to say or do. He wanted the easy banter of their youth to return, the secret smiles, the in-jokes. He wanted it not to feel awkward. But it did. Ten years had passed and there was nothing he could do to bring them back, to turn back the clock. They used to know everything about one another, but they knew nothing now about the people they had each become. Part of him wanted to tell her everything but another part of him wanted to hold back, as she was holding back from him.

‘What tempted you back to England?’ she asked, breaking the silence that hung between them. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you would ever have wanted to leave Harvard?’

‘I missed England,’ he replied. ‘I was lonely out there, I never really fitted in and I just wanted to come home.’ It sounded like a poor explanation even to him.

‘But York?’ she persisted. ‘Why didn’t you just go back to Cambridge?’

He looked away from her. ‘It was a good opportunity,’ he said.

‘A long way from the Arsenal stadium though,’ she joked, nudging him gently, reminding him of the obsession he had shared with her father. Her light-heartedness sounded forced to him, as though she knew he had just lied to her.

‘Nearer than Harvard was,’ he replied. ‘The first thing I did when I got back to England was a tour of the Emirates Stadium.’

She smiled next to him. ‘I wonder what Dad would have made of it?’

Jess’s father, Ed Clarke, had been everything to Rupert, everything that his own father had never been. It was Ed who taught him to play football, to stay loyal to Arsenal even during the bad seasons. Ed had taught him to swim, to fly a kite and Ed had always encouraged his wild side, his freedom. Rupert’s father never seemed to believe in kids being allowed to be free.

As Rupert got older it was Ed who bought him his first legal pint on his eighteenth birthday – even though he knew Rupert had had his fair share of illegal pints before that – and it was Ed who Rupert met up with in the week to watch the football with in the pub, after Jess had moved to London. They would sit in the corner, always at the same table, and chat amiably as they watched the match.

‘For what it’s worth,’ Ed had said one night. ‘I think you made the right decision about staying in Cambridge and not going to one of those Ivy League universities. I think you’ll be much happier here. I think you spent enough time away at school.’

Rupert had smiled. Ed always seemed to know him so well. ‘I’m glad I stayed too,’ he said. ‘Dad doesn’t always know what’s right for me.’

‘He’s doing his best,’ Ed had said as Rupert had scowled. ‘Us parents have such high hopes for our kids, such big dreams, and eventually we have to give those dreams up and trust our kids to make the right decision.’

‘I guess you and Caro are better at that than my parents,’ Rupert had said. It had always been Ed and Caro he went to when he was angry with his father, and it had always been them who had helped him calm down, helped him think more rationally. He hadn’t known then what he would have done without them.

One night during Rupert’s second year at university, Jess had come home early for the weekend and surprised them in the pub. Rupert had watched Ed’s face light up when Jess walked in and the three of them had spent the evening together, the football forgotten. It felt almost ridiculous to remember now that it had been one of the best nights of Rupert’s life – a simple evening where he could forget lectures and seminars, studies and exams, just for a few hours. He had felt as though he was part of something important, surrounded by love. He had felt as though he had seen a glimpse of his future that night, but that future had been pulled away from him when Ed died.

There was so much he wanted to say to Jess now about the summer her father had died, but he didn’t know where to start.

‘I can’t believe you’re here,’ he said instead. ‘Do you ever wonder what would have happened if things had been different, if we’d kept in touch, if …’

‘But we didn’t,’ she interrupted. Her tone sounded harsh, far removed from the gentle nostalgia of a moment ago. ‘Those things did happen and our lives went in different directions. It felt as though we weren’t part of each other anymore.’

‘And yet here we are again,’ he said quietly, turning towards her, trailing his fingers gently over her bare shoulder. She shivered and he took off his jacket, wrapping it around her.

‘I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you,’ he said.

10
JESS

As he said it his fingers found mine. When he squeezed my hand, I was back at my grandmother’s funeral remembering how I used to think we’d always be together. His jacket felt heavy on my shoulders, his presence next to me almost intoxicating. He had walked away from me the summer after my father died. There had been a time when I never thought I’d forgive him for that.

And yet, here we were.

‘I can’t stop thinking about you either,’ I said, not letting go of his hand.

‘Tell me something I couldn’t possibly know,’ he said.

I smiled. This was a game we used to play as children. When he came home from boarding school for the holidays we’d tell each other things we couldn’t possibly know because we’d been so far apart for so long. But there was so much to tell him this time that he couldn’t possibly know, and I didn’t know where to start. There were things I didn’t want him to know.

I felt his hand shift slightly in mine, his thumb tracing my knuckles. There was something I could tell him, something I could trust him with.

‘Have you ever heard of the author CJ Rose?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘I loved both of those books and I can’t wait for the next one. They reminded me of you actually.’

‘In what way?’

‘The fact that they’re set in Ancient Greece.’ I’d loved Classics since I was a child and read my degree in it. It’s why I chose to set my books in the fourth century BC. ‘But you’re meant to be telling me something I couldn’t possibly know, not quiz me about what books I like.’

‘Have you ever wondered who CJ Rose is?’ I asked.

‘Doesn’t everyone wonder who CJ Rose is?’ he said. He sat up straighter then, looking at me. ‘Oh, do you know?’ he said, excited for the gossip I might impart. ‘Tell me!’

‘Do you remember my middle name?’

‘Of course I do, it’s Rose …’ He stopped for a minute. ‘Jessie?’

I grinned. I couldn’t help myself. While I loved the subterfuge and didn’t really want anyone to know who I was, I also loved it when people found out.

‘Jessie, are you CJ Rose?’

‘Yup!’

‘So this is what you meant by freelance writing?’

‘I came up with the idea when I was sick. It took forever to write that first one but I got there in the end.’

‘My God, Jessie, that’s incredible! Wasn’t the second one shortlisted for an award?’

‘It was,’ I replied. ‘I’m hoping the third book will win one.’

He let go of my hand then and wrapped his arm around my shoulders, pulling me towards him. It felt good to be so close to him after all these years, as though we were two jigsaw pieces fitting back together again.

‘You have to promise you won’t tell anyone,’ I said pulling away from him, panicking suddenly.

‘I promise,’ he said, placing his hand on his chest. ‘Cross my heart.’

‘Thank you.’

‘But why is it so important?’ he asked. ‘It’s such a huge achievement, why don’t you want anyone to know?’

‘The people who matter know,’ I replied. I wasn’t ready to answer his question. I wasn’t ready to tell him that when my agent initially showed an interest in the first book, I was too ill to leave the house and that I’d written the second book before she and I finally met in person. When a publisher first made a tentative offer on the book, my agent had the idea to put it out under a pen name so I didn’t feel pressured to do interviews or book signings. Over the last three years CJ Rose had become quite the enigma. I sometimes wondered if it was the mystery that sold the books rather than the writing.

Rupert smiled at me. ‘Does that mean I’m someone who matters?’ he asked.

And then the ice was broken and the awkwardness seemed to disappear. We sat on the bench and talked and talked while the twilight turned to night around us and the sounds of Gemma’s wedding reception continued in the background. He asked about my books and I told him how I came up with the idea of a detective novel set in Ancient Greece one rainy Sunday afternoon in Highgate and how, once I started thinking about it, I couldn’t stop. I told him about my agent and how she’d signed me on the strength of my first three chapters and I told him about the long agonising wait for a publisher. We laughed to discover that our books were published by different imprints of the same publisher. All these years and neither of us had known.

We talked about people we used to know in Cambridge and what they were doing now. I told him about Caitlin’s family and Gemma’s husband and he told me that his best friend John was still in Cambridge, married with three children and a job in IT that Rupert didn’t understand; that they met for a beer whenever Rupert went back to visit his parents, which I guessed wasn’t very often. He didn’t talk about his parents at all.

‘Tell me something I couldn’t possibly know,’ I said.

He paused for a moment. ‘Mine’s nowhere near as good as yours,’ he said.

‘Tell me anyway.’

‘Do you remember Dan Kelly?’

I felt my stomach drop. What could he possibly know about Dan Kelly?

‘Of course I remember him,’ I said.

‘Well, did you know that he’s a regular photographer for National Geographic now? That camera that always hung around his neck came in useful in the end.’

‘That’s amazing! Good for him,’ I replied. I had a strange need to stand up for Dan. There was a bitterness in the way Rupert spoke and I wasn’t sure why. I knew Dan had never heard from Rupert again after he left for America – it was as though Rupert had severed connection with everyone when he boarded that plane – but I’d never known if he and Dan had fallen out before he left.

‘So you didn’t know?’

I shook my head. But of course I already knew – I knew he’d gone to India on an assignment for National Geographic five years ago. I was there when he got the gig. I was there when he told me he was going to turn it down to stay in London to look after me. And I was there when he left – it was me who persuaded him to go.

‘Did you and Dan not stay in touch?’ Rupert asked.

‘For a while,’ I replied. It wasn’t quite a lie.

‘I guess everything changed after Ed died,’ he said, finally acknowledging my father’s death.

I’d forgotten that Rupert called my father Ed. As I recall he was the only person who ever got away with it. Even Mum called him Edward. But Rupert was the son my dad never had, just as Dad was the father Rupert wished he’d had. I had never given enough thought, over the years, to how much Dad’s death affected Rupert; that perhaps he only left because he couldn’t cope with staying.

‘We should go back inside,’ I said. ‘People will wonder where we’ve got to.’

Rupert seemed to snap out of the reverie he was in then. He turned to me and grinned.

‘Really?’ he said.

‘I’m meant to be here for Gemma, not catching up with old flames!’

‘Old flames?’ he replied, raising an eyebrow. ‘Is that what I am?’

‘I don’t know what you are, Rupert,’ I said quietly. ‘I never expected to see you again.’

We stood up then, an awkward silence descending where there had been nostalgic chat. Rupert looked at his watch.

‘I should probably leave if I’m going to catch the last train,’ he said.

‘You’re not staying?’ I felt strangely disappointed at this.

He shook his head. ‘I never expected this either, Jessie,’ he said. ‘But I hope you’ll let me see you again.’

‘I don’t know …’ I began. I didn’t know why I was reluctant. There was so much that we hadn’t said.

‘Can we swap numbers this time at least?’ he asked. ‘Just in case.’

I smiled and nodded as he reached towards me to take his phone out of the pocket of his jacket that still hung from my shoulders. I gave him my number and he tapped it into his phone. Then he typed something else and I heard my phone beep from inside the clutch bag that still rested on the arm of the bench we’d been sitting on.

‘Now you have my number too,’ he said.

I reached for my bag but he touched my arm.

‘Read it later,’ he said. ‘And I’ll leave it up to you to call. I hope you do, but if you don’t want to for any reason, I understand.’

I slipped his jacket off my shoulders and handed it back to him. ‘You’re sure you can’t stay any longer?’ I asked.

He slung his jacket over his arm and glanced away from me. ‘I should go,’ he said.

When he looked back at me, when his eyes met mine, I felt myself slipping – hovering undecidedly. He used to be everything I ever wanted. I knew now that kind of contentment could never be laid at the feet of another person, but was Mum right? Was he still someone I wanted to spend time with?

As he looked at me he closed the gap between us, his hand on my lower back, drawing me towards him. He was so close, just as he used to be.

‘Jessie,’ he whispered. He bent his head towards me, his lips so close I could feel the warmth of his breath. ‘Have you ever wondered “what if?”’

My breath caught in my throat. Part of me wanted to turn away but I couldn’t. Because I had wondered ‘what if?’ – I’d been wondering for the best part of a decade. I’d been wondering as I tried to forget Rupert. I’d even been wondering as I fell in love with someone else. I’d never thought that Rupert had wondered ‘what if?’ as well.

But here he was standing with me in his arms and even though I knew that neither of us were being honest with each other, that both of us had stories to tell, I couldn’t turn away.

When his lips found mine, it felt as though time stood still for a moment, as though the last decade hadn’t happened and we were standing by the River Cam, the centre of each other’s worlds again. As he kissed me, I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close, kissing him back. It felt as though nothing had changed. I was kissing Rupert Tremayne and it was glorious.

… The summer after our GCSEs everything changed. When you came home that July you were taller again, nearly 6’3”, broader in the shoulders. You’d started shaving. You felt more man than boy. You felt as though you’d outgrown me, as though you’d left me behind. I didn’t understand why this new version of you suddenly made me feel so strange. It was as though I was scared of who you were becoming.

The Saturday evening after you got back from school, I found you waiting for me when I came home. You were sitting on the steps of my house reading a battered paperback, which you stuck in your pocket when I appeared.

We walked over the bridge towards the Common, towards the Fort St George, the pub we knew we’d get served in as long as we sat in the garden. You held my hand and asked me how I was. From the outside I don’t suppose we looked any different from the two kids who used to play football here before GCSEs and boarding schools. But from the inside everything felt so different. Your hand almost burned in mine and your eyes flicked towards me constantly, as though you were checking I was still there. You had always been so sure of yourself, but you weren’t that night.

I thought I’d worked out what was going on before you turned me away from the pub. A group of people we’d known our whole lives were sitting outside but as soon as you saw them you changed direction.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ you said. It wasn’t like you to put a walk before a pint.

We walked along the river by the side of the houseboats. We sat on the bench we used to sit on with my dad sometimes, the bench he always sat on when he let us swim in the river. You didn’t let go of my hand. Sometimes it felt as though you’d been holding my hand since my grandmother’s funeral. I never wanted to let you go but I was so sure that what you were going to say would mean that I would have to let go forever.

‘Everything feels different, doesn’t it?’ you asked. You didn’t look at me; you looked out across the river. ‘I think we’re growing up.’

‘I knew this would happen,’ I replied quietly. I wanted to take my hand away, but you were holding on too tightly.

You turned to look at me, your eyes meeting mine.

‘You knew what would happen?’ you asked. You looked panic-stricken. Part of me was glad that you were hurting too.

‘I knew you’d meet someone first. I knew you’d get a girlfriend.’ I looked away again, feeling childish. ‘You’re so good-looking and clever.’ I could hear the whine in my voice. I hated it. You still didn’t let go of my hand and when I looked at you again you were smiling. How could you smile when you knew my heart must be breaking?

‘Who is she?’ I demanded. ‘Do I know her?’ Please don’t let it be one of the girls from school. Please don’t let it be Camilla.

You touched my chin then, turning my head gently towards you. You’d stopped smiling.

‘She’s you,’ you said so quietly I could hardly hear you. ‘She’s you, I hope.’

It took me too long to realise what you meant. We sat there, on that bench, by that familiar stretch of river where we’d swum as children, by the stretch of Common where my dad taught us to fly a kite. I didn’t say anything. I knew it was my turn to speak but I felt as if the memories were falling in on me, weighing me down. I wanted to be a kid again. I wasn’t sure that I liked growing up after all.

‘I love you, Jessie,’ you said. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re my best friend, you always have been, but now we’re older it just feels different.’

‘You want me to be your girlfriend?’ I asked. It sounded such a childishly simple explanation for the complex emotions I was feeling at that moment. It felt like the time you asked me to marry you in the playground.

‘Yes,’ you said. ‘I want you to be my girlfriend. I’ve wanted nothing else for months. I was just waiting.’

‘Waiting for what?’

‘Until we were both sixteen,’ you said, blushing slightly. I suddenly realised how serious you were.

I felt as though I was at a crossroads. I didn’t feel ready to be anybody’s girlfriend yet. I was scared that this would change everything forever, and we would never get back what we used to have. But I also knew that we’d already outgrown what we used to have and that if I said ‘no’ now it would hurt you so much you’d walk away, and I’d never see you again. Looking back on that moment I never really felt as though I had a choice. That moment had been fated since we were born.

‘Jessie?’ you said, your face a question, and I nodded. I wanted to say yes, that it had always been yes, but all I could do was nod.

And then you kissed me. It was clumsy and awkward; there was too much tongue and you tasted of toothpaste and cigarettes, and something else that was almost animal. But it felt like the best thing that had ever happened. A wave of warmth washed over my body as you pulled away from me, smiling.

‘I think we need more practice,’ you said. You looked so happy and relaxed suddenly and I realised that I couldn’t remember the last time I saw you relax. I thought it was the pressure your parents put you under to achieve so highly, but suddenly I wondered if it was something else causing you so much distress. How long had you been holding all of this in? How long had you been waiting for me?

I don’t know how long we stayed there on that bench that evening practising kissing, finding the ways that we worked together. It didn’t take long to get the hang of it – we always knew how well we fitted, like jigsaw pieces clicking into place. We both lost track of time, and the next thing we knew was the thump of a pair of hands landing on our shoulders, the sound of your mates whistling at us.

‘So this is where you are,’ John said, grinning at us. ‘We’ve been waiting for you in the pub for ages.’ Nobody said anything about the kiss then. I knew though, that they’d wait until later, until I wasn’t there, to rib you about it. Everyone started to walk away from us except John.

‘Are you coming to this party then?’ he asked. I didn’t know anything about a party. I was always the last to find out anything. I suspected, since you hadn’t mentioned it, that you had no intention of going anyway. You hated parties.

You’d known John almost as long as you’d known me, and I saw a look pass between you, one of understanding, the conclusion to a conversation that I wasn’t party to. I had the feeling that you and he had already spoken about this, that finding us kissing hadn’t come as much of a surprise to him.

‘Maybe we’ll catch you up,’ you said. John, not usually so easily dissuaded, nodded and walked away, everybody else following.

You draped one arm around my shoulders then, and pulled me towards you. With your other hand you got your cigarettes out of your pocket, knocking two out of the packet and lighting them, handing one to me. I rested my head on your chest as I had done a million times before but again it was different. I could hear your heart beat, feel your breathing and the warmth of your body, and it all felt so different to the last time we sat here smoking at Easter. How could three months change so much?

‘Do you want to go to this party?’ you asked after a while.

‘Whose party is it?’

‘You know,’ you replied, dropping your cigarette on the floor and scrubbing it out underneath your boot, ‘I have no idea.’ We giggled together, both knowing full well we weren’t going to the party.

‘Shall we go back to mine?’ you asked instead. ‘There’s beer and Mum and Dad are still in France.’

I looked up at you. ‘If we go back to yours can we keep practising kissing?’

‘Do you think we need more practice?’ you asked.

‘Lots,’ I replied …

11
JESS

‘Where’s lover boy?’ Gemma asked the next morning when I came down to breakfast at the hotel we were all staying in. I hadn’t been expecting to see her there. I’d presumed she’d be having breakfast in bed with her new husband.

‘Where’s Mike?’ I asked.

She waved a hand at me, gesturing for me to sit down, and poured me a cup of coffee. ‘Oh, he’s sleeping off his hangover, which is even worse than mine. Don’t worry about him. Now tell me everything.’

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