All About Us: Escape with the bestselling, most gorgeously romantic debut love story of 2020!

by Tom Ellen

  ‘You’re joking?’ She purses her lips in mock-outrage. ‘So why did you pretend you hadn’t seen it?’

  ‘Because you wanted to see it. And I wanted to see you.’

  She sighs and leans into me, linking her arm through mine. ‘So underhanded. So deceitful.’

  ‘So romantic would be another way of looking at it.’

  ‘True,’ she says. ‘True.’

  We sit for a while in silence, watching the boats drift by lazily on the river. And even though I’m not speaking, my heart is galloping like mad, because that first-date story has set something running, and my mind is suddenly alive with memories of all these fun, silly, happy times in our relationship that I honestly haven’t thought about in years. Ever since Mum died, it’s like all these moments have wilted away, as if they never even existed. And now, sitting here on this bench – feeling that strange warm glow spread right to the tips of my fingers – it’s like a door reopening. It’s like light flooding back in.

  Daphne tucks a stray curl behind her ear and smiles up at me. Without thinking, I say: ‘I love you, Daff.’

  Because here, in this moment, it feels true. It is true. I love her so much. But what am I supposed to do? I know how we’ll be ten years from now – bitter, unhappy, arguing the whole time. So how can we be right for each other? When it comes down to it, aren’t we just as wrong as Harv and Liv?

  ‘I love you too,’ she says, nuzzling into my shoulder.

  ‘Daff, can I ask you something?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Why do you put up with me?’ She laughs at that, but I keep going. ‘No, I mean, seriously. I’ve been such a dick lately, about all the book stuff. Or maybe I’ve been a dick the whole time we’ve known each other. But either way—’

  She tilts her chin up and kisses me gently on the mouth. ‘You haven’t been a dick …’ she kisses me again, ‘the whole time.’ She tastes of cranberries and chocolate and cinnamon, and it’s a delicious combination. ‘The thing is, Ben,’ she says, ‘I’m in love with you. And don’t get me wrong: I’m not happy about it. I’d rather be in love with someone who was less of a twat. But unfortunately I don’t have much choice in the matter. I fell in love with you, and now you’re stuck with me whether you like it or not.’

  Later – much later – we’re lying in bed, in Daff’s tiny shared flat in Balham.

  She’s on her side, snoring lightly, and I’m snuggled right up against her warm bare back, my naked body curved neatly around hers.

  And still that sentence keeps running over and over in my brain. I fell in love with you, and now you’re stuck with me whether you like it or not. I can’t get it out of my head. The firework of happiness that shot through me when she said it. I remember something else, too; something Mum said during that Monopoly game yesterday. All that matters right now is: do you make each other happy?

  Right now, I feel the happiest I’ve felt in a very, very long time. I honestly think Daff does, too.

  All I wanted to do tonight was to make up for what happened on this evening first time around. To change my memory of it from a grim, shameful one to a good one. And I think I’ve done that. But I never planned to end the day like this.

  I never imagined that after the long, rumbling Tube journey south, Daff would close her bedroom door and kiss me so passionately, so hungrily. And that I would feel my whole body pulse with excitement because I knew exactly what was going to happen next …

  I can’t even remember the last time we had sex back in 2020. And whenever it was, it definitely wasn’t like this. I forgot we could be like this together. I forgot that we fit so perfectly, that I can lose myself so completely in the moment with her.

  And now she’s lying fast asleep beside me, and I can feel exhaustion weighing down on me too. There’s no clock on her wall, and my phone is somewhere in the jumble of clothes on the floor, so I have no idea how much longer I have here. But it must be nearly midnight by now.

  At any second I’ll find myself somewhere else, on some other date. Maybe I’ll even be back in 2020.

  But God, I wish I could stay here. Just for one more day.

  I nuzzle further into Daff’s neck, and she murmurs softly. For her, it will be like this night never happened.

  But as I lie here next to her, I know that I’ll never forget it.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Dear Ben,

  (That felt quite formal, didn’t it? ‘Dear Ben’. But then this whole writing-a-letter thing is weirdly formal anyway. So what the hell, I’m sticking with it. I’m owning it. DEAR BEN.)

  I know we said no messaging and no speaking over these next few months, but we never said anything about no letter-writing. And we definitely didn’t say anything about no Christmas cards. And since this is very obviously a Christmas card (see reindeer picture on front), that means I’m not technically breaking any rules, am I?

  So: Merry Christmas! I hope this actually gets to you in time for Christmas Day. As I write, it is December 17th in New York, so SURELY that’s enough time, even if the entire French postal service is on strike. Which – let’s be honest – they probably are.

  How is Paris, anyway? Is your French still sub-GCSE level? Have you figured out when to say ‘tu’ and when to say ‘vous’? Everything is OK my end. I am basically a native New Yorker these days – I live solely on pretzels and always shout ‘I’M WALKING HERE!’ every time I step into a road. But no, seriously, it is fun. The work is hard, but it’s really interesting and I’m getting to meet lots of new people. I definitely think it was the right thing to come here.

  I really hope you’re OK out there. I hate to think of you all alone on Christmas Day. I hope you’re doing something fun.

  I don’t know why I’m writing, really. I suppose it’s just to say that I miss you. A lot, actually. But I still think it’s a good thing that we’re spending this time apart. I keep thinking about what you said after Jamila’s wedding. It really freaked me out, because we’ve been together nearly ten years now and I guess I thought we wanted the same things in the long run.

  But maybe we don’t. I know that sounds horrible, but

  I stop reading then, and lay the card back down on the table. I’m not sure I need to reread the whole thing. I’m not sure I’m up to it.

  Instead, I sip my bitter machine-made coffee and stare out over the rusty iron railing of the tiny eighth-floor balcony.

  Opposite me, squatting solemnly under the cold, cloudless blue sky, are the huge white domed towers of the Saint-Sulpice church. The bells inside them are ringing loudly again now, sending clouds of pigeons fluttering out of the trees below.

  It was those same bells that exploded around me an hour ago, as I sat up to see that Daff had disappeared, and I was definitely not in Balham any more.

  My stomach lurched sickeningly when I realised where I was – when I was – but maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind, I always knew this might be one of the moments I would revisit. Even though I won’t actually see Daff today – there’s currently about three thousand miles and the Atlantic Ocean between us – what’s about to happen changed everything.

  I pick up my coffee cup and lean over the railing, looking down on the square below. From up here on the eighth floor of number 39 Rue Étienne Marcel, the whole of Paris sprawls out in front of me, its spires and chimneys and iron roofs looking postcard-perfect. Down in Place Saint-Sulpice, tourists wrapped in long coats and thick scarves are milling about cheerfully around the edge of the huge three-tiered fountain, or taking selfies in front of the giant Christmas tree behind it.

  Four years have flown by in the blink of an eye, and now I’m here: 25 December 2014. A day I’ve spent the past six years trying to forget, sometimes because of burning regret, other times because I feel guilty at how much I enjoyed it.

  Last night is still so clear in my head. I just wanted one more day there, in that reality. But no: from the happiest moment I can remember with Daphne in a long, long time, I’ve
been dumped here, right into the thick of one of our worst, bleakest, most desperate periods. A period in which – technically – we weren’t even together.

  I swallow the last grainy dregs of coffee, and look back down at the card. One sentence jumps straight out at me, making my skin prickle with guilt: I hate to think of you all alone on Christmas Day.

  Whatever I was on this day originally, I definitely wasn’t alone.

  I pick the card up and step back inside the tiny, freezing apartment. The bare parquet floorboards squeal irritably beneath my feet, and I can hear muffled yells from the married couple upstairs. I wonder what it is about the French language that makes even bickering sound eloquent.

  I slump back down onto the iron-framed single bed and stare up at the ceiling. And all I can think is: what the hell am I doing here?

  First time around, the answer to that question was pretty straightforward. That stupid argument after Jamila’s wedding.

  It happened a few months before today, in August 2014. Daff and I were both a bit pissed, coming back from the reception on the Tube, and she made some innocuous comment about ‘when we get married …’ And without thinking, I blurted out the truth: I wasn’t sure I’d ever want to.

  It seems mad now that we’d never had that conversation before. But even though we’d been going out nearly a decade by then, we were still only twenty-eight. We were still so young.

  The argument was all my fault, as usual, because I didn’t explain myself properly. I just grunted and shrugged and said I didn’t really see what the point of getting married was. ‘It’s a waste of money … It’s just a piece of paper’ – all that sort of rubbish. Because the real reason felt too stupid and childish to admit: that ever since my dad left, marriage had been clearly marked as A Bad Thing in my head.

  I’d lost count of the times I’d come back from school to find Mum sobbing at the kitchen table, or overheard her crying on the phone to her friends at night, and thought to myself: I’m never getting married.

  I guess deep down, I was terrified it would flick some invisible switch inside me. That the minute a ring was on my finger, I would turn into a cheat, just like my dad had.

  But of course, I didn’t tell Daff any of that: I thought it would make me sound weird and screwed-up and weak. So instead, I clammed up. I let her think it was about her, rather than me and my parents and my stupid, muddled brain.

  Basically, I took her for granted, just like I always do. And then, a month or so later, she told me about New York – how she’d been offered the chance to spend six months working in her agency’s Manhattan office – and suggested that maybe we should use that time to ‘take a break’. Not split up, exactly, but not stay together, either. Just spend some time apart, with no contact, and have a think about what we really wanted.

  So that’s what I was supposed to be doing here. Thinking. Not making a mistake that still keeps me awake at night six years later.

  But then … was it a mistake? The watch-seller told me to think about why I’m revisiting these particular moments. Over the past couple of years, as things have gone from bad to worse between me and Daphne, I’ve thought about this one a lot. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I’d stayed in Paris, instead of running straight back to London …

  With comically perfect timing, the intercom screams out by the door. I sit bolt upright in bed, and my stomach begins to squirm. She’s here.

  I get up and walk across the flat, the floorboards complaining noisily beneath me again. I pick up the little plastic phone by the door, and a female voice speaks.

  ‘Joyeux Noël! Are you ready to go?’

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I am not, as it turns out, ready to go. In fact, I am nowhere near.

  I am wearing only a hoodie and a pair of Queens Park Rangers pyjama bottoms. And my heart is suddenly hammering so hard I can feel it in my legs.

  ‘Joyeux Noël!’ I splutter into the intercom. And then: ‘Er … Can you just give me ten minutes?’

  ‘OK,’ she says. ‘I’ll be in that café across from the church.’

  I open the wardrobe and start pulling on clothes, my chest clenched with the anticipation of what’s to come. What am I supposed to do here? It’s not like I can change what originally happened. So what is the point of coming back – just to remind me what might have been? To set me on a path I’ve often wished I could’ve explored further?

  By the time I’m fully dressed, these questions are still pinballing around my brain, resolutely unanswered. I give my face a sizeable cold-water splash, and then sprint down the eight creaky flights of stairs. I shoulder-barge the huge courtyard door, and step out into the freezing fresh air. The Saint-Sulpice church bells are at it again, singing out into the clear blue sky, sending another flock of pigeons spiralling upwards towards the summit of the giant Christmas tree. The stark, cold sunlight bounces off the crunchy brown carpet of leaves on the ground. The whole square looks idyllic.

  And then, across the street, sitting at an outside table sipping something warm, I spot her.

  She’s wearing a long, stylish dark brown coat, and a scarf that’s almost completely obscured by her thick chin-length hair. It’s a blonde version of that bob Audrey Tautou had in Amélie, and it suddenly strikes me as perhaps the Frenchest hairstyle in existence.

  The waiter approaches her and she smiles up at him. Dark eyebrows, dirty-blonde hair and deep-red lips: dramatic flashes of colour on her otherwise pale heart-shaped face.

  For a second, I think about just turning and walking away. I don’t know what to do.

  But then she spots me, and beckons me over, just like she did at Marek’s wedding. And before I know it, I’m at the table.

  ‘Hey, Alice.’

  ‘Hey!’

  She stands and offers me her cheek to kiss. The scent of her perfume wraps itself around me like a flowery headlock. ‘Ça va?’ She nods behind me, at my apartment block. ‘Ben, I can’t believe you live right on the square. You know this is, like, one of the poshest parts of Paris?’

  ‘I know …’

  ‘How did you find this place?’

  ‘My mum,’ I tell her. ‘It’s her friend’s flat. A very loaded friend. He’s away for four months, so I’m house-sitting.’

  Alice raises an eyebrow. ‘Bloody hell, you’re so lucky.’

  She’s right, really: I was. This whole Paris thing was Mum’s idea in the first place. She didn’t react well to the news that Daphne and I were taking a break (‘That girl’s the best bloody thing that’s ever happened to you’ were her exact words). And so, when this Saint-Sulpice flat-sitting opportunity came up, she practically insisted I take it. It would be a breath of fresh air, she said: a chance to properly clear my head and come to my senses, instead of rattling around our London flat on my own while Daphne was off in New York.

  It seemed like a good idea. And since I was freshly unemployed at the time – Thump having folded, unceremoniously, in April – I even got it into my head that I could live out a clichéd writer-in-Paris fantasy here: spend four months having another crack at penning something that was actually publishable.

  That was the plan, then: write a masterpiece while reevaluating my relationship. Simple. But then I bumped into Alice, and that simple plan became much more complicated.

  She sips her hot chocolate, and reaches into her bag for a packet of Gauloises. At uni, she only ever smoked roll-ups, and I remember being quite impressed at how sophisticated – how French – she seemed to have become.

  ‘So,’ she says, lighting a long, thin cigarette. ‘Are we doing today in English or in French? You did say you needed to practise. On pourrait au moins essayer?’

  ‘Erm … Je …’ I give up instantly. This whole situation is confusing and surreal enough in my native language. There’s no way I can possibly stagger through this minefield of a day in French. ‘Sorry … can we just stick with English for the moment?’

  She sighs in mock disappointment.
‘Honestly, Benjamin. Call yourself a Parisian?’

  I can’t help laughing. ‘Not really, no.’

  ‘Well, you’ve only been here three months, I suppose,’ she says, ashing her cigarette. ‘Give it time.’

  ‘You’ve been here, what … two years now?’

  She wrinkles her brow. ‘A year and a half. I told you last week.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry. You did.’

  She takes another long drag on her cigarette as she looks at me. ‘I still can’t believe you’re here, Ben. That we’re here together, on Christmas Day. It’s mad.’

  As I meet her eyes, I feel a flicker of the excitement I felt on this day originally. ‘Yeah. It really is.’

  It was four days earlier that I’d bumped into her. I was sitting outside another café in the Marais, trying to cure my crippling writer’s block by taking my laptop out of the apartment for once. But all I could focus on were the irritated glares the waiter was throwing me, possibly due to the fact that I’d only ordered one small coffee in four hours. I was on the brink of calling it a day, snapping my MacBook shut and heading home, when I heard a familiar voice from across the street.

  ‘No way … Ben!’

  I looked over, and there she was. Alice from uni.

  I hadn’t seen her since we’d left York in 2008. We’d been so close during that first term, but once I started seeing Daphne, we’d gradually drifted further and further apart. By third year, we would barely even exchange a nod if we passed each other on campus.

  But the truth is: I still thought about her. As the years passed, I checked in on her Facebook from time to time – which was pretty pointless, really, as she barely ever posted. I’d seen she was working for some big-time marketing company, but she hadn’t mentioned anything online about living in Paris. So when I saw her across that street, grinning from ear to ear and looking even hotter than I remembered, the shock quickly gave way to heart-pounding excitement.

  I guess it was partly because I was having such an awful time at that point. I was missing Daphne like mad and getting zero work done, in a city where I knew literally no one. I was lonely and confused and miserable, and suddenly here was a friendly face I hadn’t seen in years.