It Had To Be You: An absolutely laugh-out-loud romance novel

by Keris Stainton

  He’s got a mole at the base of his throat and I can see a mark just under his jaw where I think he’s cut himself shaving. He’s got nice hands too – he’s fiddling with his mug as he talks. His fingernails are neat and clean. And he’s stopped talking.

  ‘Wow,’ I say. ‘That’s amazing.’ I have no idea what the conclusion of the story was, but luckily ‘amazing’ works for good and bad outcomes.

  ‘Right?’ He drinks some of his coffee. ‘I don’t know how they thought they were going to get away with it.’

  I nod. I try to think of an interesting story Tom’s told me. Something about VAT? But nothing springs to mind. Instead, I say, ‘Your parents must be proud.’

  He nods eagerly. ‘They really are. But they’d be proud of me for literally anything. My mum still says “well done” if I do a poo when I’m home.’

  A laugh bursts out of me and he grins, pleased with himself.

  ‘I can’t believe I said that,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’

  I shake my head. It’s not as if I want to encourage poo chat, but that was funny.

  ‘What do you do again?’ he asks me, picking up his spoon and poking the chocolate sprinkles down into his coffee. ‘Sorry, I know you said.’

  ‘Bargain book shop,’ I tell him. ‘Bookland.’

  ‘Ah yeah, course. Do you like it?’

  I nod. ‘It’s good, yeah. I mean, the pay’s not great, but I get to work with my friend Henry. And we can read the books when it’s quiet. I used to spend loads of money on books, so it saves me a fortune.’

  ‘I don’t really read much,’ he says, finally picking up his coffee and taking a sip. ‘I never have time.’

  ‘Oh, I read all the time,’ I say, ignoring the flicker in my chest. ‘I read walking down the street sometimes.’

  He laughs and I love the way it crinkles his eyes. ‘Do you really?’

  ‘Sometimes. Not very often. Too many hazards, you know?’

  ‘I can’t even remember the last time I read a book,’ he says, his forehead crinkling.

  ‘Really?’ I say, slightly too loudly, before I can stop myself.

  ‘I think, maybe… at school. There was one we read that was OK. Was it called… How to Kill a Mockingbird?’

  I smile. ‘It’s just To Kill a Mockingbird. I did it at school too. Did you like it?’

  ‘It was OK. I was confused ’cos there weren’t even any mockingbirds in it.’

  I think he’s joking. He’s smiling, so I’m pretty sure he is. I laugh, just in case. (And then remember Amy Poehler’s advice that if you don’t think something’s funny, you don’t have to laugh. I need to work on that.)

  There’s a short silence, while I desperately try to think of something to say. I was going to ask him about books – that seemed like a natural progression from talking about the bookshop, but if he doesn’t read, then I’m stumped.

  ‘The shop’s not that busy most of the time,’ I say, eventually. ‘We compete on PopMaster every morning. We’ve got a chart and everything.’

  ‘What’s PopMaster?’ He takes another sip of his coffee, still looking at me over the rim. He’s got great eyes.

  ‘PopMaster? It’s a music quiz on Radio 2 in the mornings. Have you never heard it?’

  He shakes his head. ‘I listen to Radio 1. I love Nick Grimshaw.’

  ‘Yeah?’ I say. ‘My friend Freya likes him. But we always have Radio 2 on in the shop – head office rules.’

  There’s another short silence, and I wonder if I should ask him about TV, but then he notices that I’ve finished my coffee and says, ‘Can I get you another?’

  ‘That would be great,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’

  He gets up to head for the counter and a tiny, paranoid part of me expects him to keep walking, right out of here and my life. But that’s not going to happen, is it. Because he’s literally the man of my dreams. Well… dream.

  Chapter Nine

  I’m in the park. The sun’s shining, but there’s a cool breeze that makes me feel relaxed and loose, like I could run around and cartwheel over the grass. I see Dan walking towards me from the other side of the park and instead of running across the grass, I walk towards him.

  He smiles at me and happiness bubbles up inside me. When we reach each other, we don’t speak, we just turn and sit down on the bench. He stretches his legs out in front and tips his head back. I’m holding a book in my hands. He’s got a takeaway coffee in his. I look at the sun in his eyes and the shadows of leaves playing over his face and I know I’m going to kiss him.

  And then I wake up.

  * * *

  For a while now, we’ve all been going downstairs for brunch most Sundays. The terrace underneath our flat has a barber’s, a launderette, a letting agency, one shop that changes every few months – currently a sports accessories shop selling ‘bush craft equipment’ – and, on the corner, Mr C’s. The cafe is actually called Constantinou, but we call it Mr C’s, even though Mr C doesn’t work there so much any more – Mrs C seems to do pretty much everything. She’s behind the counter today and waves excitedly at us when we walk in.

  ‘Good morning to you!’ she calls, smiling so widely that her eyes disappear completely. She points to a long table in the window and calls out, ‘One minute, OK?’

  We sit down, me and Freya with our backs to the window, Adam and Celine opposite and Henry at the end. He immediately reaches for the menu, even though he always has the full English.

  ‘I’m fucking starved,’ Adam says, leaning back and rubbing his stomach.

  ‘You’re always starved,’ Celine says, but affectionately. And then she leans over and rests her head on his shoulder. I look at Henry out of the corner of my eye, but he’s still studying the menu.

  ‘So happy to see you all!’ Mrs C says, arriving at the end of the table. She’s still shouting even though she’s standing right next to us. ‘Cheeky boy.’ She pinches Adam’s cheek and he beams at her.

  ‘Full English for you, yes?’ she says to Henry and he nods. ‘And everyone?’

  We all place our orders and Mrs C heads off to the kitchen, stopping to chat to various other customers on the way. I love this place. Mr and Mrs C have owned it for about forty years and have fought off various chains and developers wanting to take it over. It’s no frills, with a black and white tiled floor, red and white vinyl table cloths, and wood panelling on the walls, but the food is good and Mrs C is lovely and almost always gives us something extra to take home with us.

  ‘Not seeing the boyfriend today?’ Celine asks me, putting her phone screen-down on the table.

  ‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ I say instantly. ‘We’ve only been for coffee.’

  ‘But it went well, yeah? You like him?’

  ‘It was good,’ I say.

  And it was. It wasn’t exactly what I was expecting, but I think my expectations may have been unreasonable. Yes, I’ve been dreaming about him for years, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to have an instant connection, does it? It could totally be more of a slow burn thing. He was lovely and we got on well, that’s the most important thing.

  ‘Seeing him again?’ Celine asks. She’s already picked her phone back up and she’s looking down at it as she asks me.

  ‘I should think so,’ I tell her.

  ‘What about you, Henry?’ Adam asks him. ‘Any prospects? Got a woman you’ve been hiding away from us?’

  Henry shakes his head, smiling. ‘No, no secret woman.’

  ‘You sure?’ Adam says. ‘There hasn’t been anyone for a while, has there?’

  Henry goes pink. ‘Not since Caroline, no.’

  ‘She did a real number on you, that’s why,’ Freya says. ‘You need to get back on the horse.’

  ‘Don’t fuck a horse,’ Adam says. ‘I read about some guy doing that. Didn’t end well. Actually it was hilarious. Google it, Cel.’

  ‘I’m not Googling that,’ Celine says, putting her phone down again.

  Henry rolls his eyes. ‘Thanks
for your concern, but I’m fine.’

  ‘You don’t want me to fix you up with anyone?’ Celine asks. ‘There’s a girl in my office I think you’d like—’

  ‘Who?’ Adam interrupts, reaching over for her phone.

  ‘Mel.’

  ‘Oh Christ, no.’ Adam shakes his head at Henry. ‘He can do better than Mel.’

  ‘She’s nice,’ Celine says. ‘She speaks Spanish.’

  ‘Oh well then. I didn’t know about the Spanish.’ Adam rolls his eyes. ‘That totally makes up for the smell.’

  ‘She doesn’t smell!’

  ‘She does. She smells like burnt chocolate and Camden Market.’

  Celine rolls her eyes. ‘That’s her perfume. Angel.’

  ‘Oh, I love Angel,’ I say. ‘It doesn’t suit me though.’

  ‘It doesn’t bloody suit her either,’ Adam says, looking down at Celine’s phone.

  A few seconds pass and then Freya says, ‘You’re not asking about me then? Is that ’cos you’re homophobic?’ She puts her head on one side and does her martyr face.

  ‘No, it’s because I know that if you have something to tell, you’ll tell us without anyone having to ask,’ Adam says. ‘I can’t find that horse thing.’ He passes Celine her phone.

  ‘Oh my god,’ Celine says, looking at the screen. ‘Look what you’ve done to my search history!’

  Adam grins at her and then at Freya. ‘Go on then. Who’s the unlucky lady?’

  Freya sticks her tongue out at him. ‘She’s called Georgie. I met her through work. We went for coffee and it was gooooood.’

  ‘The coffee?’ Celine asks.

  ‘The date. But also the coffee. Tiny little place in Covent Garden, behind—’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been there,’ Celine says. She’s a coffee connoisseur. ‘It is good.’

  ‘So did she let you roast her beans?’ Adam asks Freya. ‘Froth her milk? Dunk your biscotti?’ He drops his head back, closing his eyes, his face scrunched in concentration. ‘Yeah, that’s it. I’m out.’

  ‘Thank fuck for that,’ Celine says dryly.

  ‘Of course she did,’ Freya says. ‘I’m irresistible.’

  We all roll our eyes and Henry flicks a sugar sachet at her.

  * * *

  Mr and Mrs C both bring our food over at the same time. Mr C is small, skinny, smiley, but with a permanently bewildered expression. He’s hardly got any hair left, but what he has sticks directly out from his head in tufts. He wears small round glasses that are always slightly steamed up and says hello to each of us individually as he puts the plates down. His English isn’t as good as his wife’s, but he remembers all of our names and says ‘Good bacon!’ to Henry.

  Once we all have our food, and Mrs C has delivered our drinks, Mr C turns and kisses her on the cheek and she giggles, pushing him away, before rolling her eyes at us.

  ‘He’s cheeky!’

  He beams at her and they head back to the kitchen together, his hand on the small of her back, though I doubt she can feel it ’cos she’s wearing a jumper and a cardigan under her apron.

  ‘That’s what I want,’ I say, smiling dopily.

  ‘An old Greek man?’ Freya says, already cutting into her sausage. ‘Bet there’s loads in, like, Athens.’

  I laugh. ‘No. True love.’

  ‘How do you know it’s true love?’ Celine says. ‘For all we know, they might be miserable. He might beat her. She might beat him. They might not have had sex since 1956.’

  ‘Don’t say that!’ I yelp, shaking black pepper over my scrambled eggs. ‘You can tell just by looking at them how happy they are!’

  ‘I don’t think you can,’ Freya says, holding her fork up. ‘Celine’s right – they seem happy, but you never know what really goes on in relationships.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, cutting into my own bacon. ‘Well then I want a relationship like that one looks. I want The One and to be together forever.’

  ‘I don’t believe in The One,’ Freya says, at the same time as Adam says, ‘Why would you just want one?’

  ‘Seriously?’ Celine asks him, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘Obviously you’re my one, my precious,’ he says, extending the ‘s’ to make her laugh, which she does. ‘I have already sowed my oats and now I don’t need anyone else. But Bea hasn’t sown her oats, has she?’ He holds his fork out towards me.

  ‘Nope,’ I say. ‘No oats sown.’

  ‘Ahhh,’ Freya says. ‘Now I am on board with the Dan thing.’

  ‘You weren’t before?’ Celine says without looking up from her phone. She’s still poking at her breakfast with the fork in her other hand.

  Freya glances at me and I frown back at her – I don’t want her to mention the dream thing in front of Adam and Celine. They don’t know about it and I’d like to keep it that way. I know Celine would think I was an absolute dick for believing in it. We watched The Notebook one night and she kept laughing at the sad bits.

  ‘Yeah. I guess,’ Freya says. ‘But what I mean is, even if it doesn’t work out, he’s an oat. And Bea needs an oat.’

  ‘More than one oat, I’d say,’ Adam says.

  ‘Thinnest of thin ice,’ Celine says, poking him with her elbow.

  ‘For Bea. Not for me,’ he says, resting his chin on her shoulder. ‘You know you’re the only one for me.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Celine says, but she tips her head so her face brushes against Adam’s.

  I glance at Henry and he’s staring at them with an odd look on his face. I can’t quite work out what it is.

  ‘You OK?’ I ask him.

  He nods, shoving a forkful of black pudding in his mouth.

  I look around the table at my friends – Adam squirting too much ketchup on his food, Celine checking her phone every five seconds, Henry with a bit of egg yolk drying in the corner of his mouth, and Freya trying to get Mrs C’s attention so she can order another coffee and I know I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.

  Chapter Ten

  I don’t really know why I never had a boyfriend before Anthony. It just never happened. I went to an all girls’ school, and I do tend to use that as a reason/excuse, but other girls at my school had boyfriends. Some of them even got pregnant. But I had no idea where they were meeting these boys.

  I went to a club once with a friend – not a close friend, I can’t quite remember how we ended up going – and she told me I was too self-conscious, that I should relax and enjoy myself and wait for the boys to come to me. But as hard as I tried to relax, they just never came. They came for her. She left me on my own while she went off dancing and at the end of the night, when the lights came on, she was sitting in some guy’s lap, her tongue so far down his throat I couldn’t quite tell where he ended and she started.

  A boy kissed me once at a house party, but I didn’t know him and he didn’t linger. It was like a drive-by groping. He ran up to me where I was standing, leaning against the wall, and grabbed my boob as he stuck his tongue directly in my mouth. He tasted like Jägermeister and smelled like Lynx. I never saw him again. No idea who he even was. Apart from an arsehole.

  One of the reasons I wanted to move to London was that I thought I would be a different person here. I thought that when I got here I could somehow (miraculously) become the kind of girl boys flocked to. I knew something was going to be different because I knew London was where I was going to meet the man in my dream. I knew Anthony wasn’t him, but the way we met was so romantic and at first he was so great that I actually stopped thinking about the Dream Man for a bit, and I didn’t even have the dream for a few weeks. But then when Anthony… did what he did, it came back. And that’s when I started going to the park.

  I’d been to the park before I ever had the dream. Me, Mum and Matt had come to London not long before she met Tom. She came to visit a friend from university who she’d lost touch with and had found on Facebook. The friend was divorced too and living alone with her rescue Staffy and Mum wanted to see her and show me and Matt London
.

  The friend, Angela, lived in a new build flat near the library. The flat was lovely, but she complained about the neighbours constantly and she and Mum got drunk on red wine every single night. One morning when they were both hungover and didn’t want to get out of bed, Matt and I went out on our own and walked down to Tesco to get bacon and bread, teabags and milk. On the way back, we stopped at the park and fed some of the bread to a couple of pigeons and a squirrel. It was a hot day and I lay on my stomach on the grass, arm outstretched with bread for the squirrel, the sun warming my back.

  Matt lay down next to me and we both watched in silence as the squirrel approached, snatched the bread and darted up a tree. It was one of the happiest times I had with my brother and I used to think about it a lot. Actually, I realise now, I stopped thinking about it when I started having the dream. The park that had been ‘the park by Angela’s’, ‘the park where we fed the squirrel’ became ‘the park in my dream’ and I didn’t even notice.

  It’s kind of what happened with me and Matt too. We used to talk – when we were both at home at the same time we’d stay up after Mum and Tom had gone to bed and watch something stupid on TV – South Park or Celebrity Juice, something Mum would never put on – and catch up on each other’s lives. But then he met Lydia and stopped coming home so much. I called him a few times and left messages, but we were never really the kind of siblings who talked on the phone much. Now we only see each other at Christmas, and it’s never just the two of us – he always brings Lydia – and he doesn’t really feel like my brother any more, more like a slightly awkward and formal work colleague. It’s a shame really.

  So when I started planning to move to London, I knew exactly where I wanted to live. I told Mum it was because I’d liked the area when we visited Angela, but it wasn’t that. It was the park. And I know it sounds completely ridiculous to move somewhere because of a dream, but it was the one thing I felt like I knew, that I felt secure about, could count on. Moving to London was the scariest thing I’d ever done, have ever done, but the dream made me feel like something was waiting for me there. Here.