‘I never should have married James,’ she said. ‘I knew it wasn’t right. I knew I didn’t love him. Not like I should have loved him. But everything else was – seemed – perfect, so I ignored it. It was the biggest mistake I ever made. If you think you could be happy with Rob – and I know you do – you shouldn’t risk losing him because you’re scared.’
‘I’m not scared,’ Piper said.
‘It’s braver to risk it than to avoid it, you know. I know you think you’re protecting yourself. But you can protect yourself too well. And end up with nothing.’
‘Christ,’ Piper said. She stared down at Buster, pushing her hand into his fur.
‘No, listen. I went through the same thing you did. I know we’ve never really talked about it. I get that you probably don’t want to talk about it now, but you know I understand, right? And if you ever do want to talk—’
‘I don’t,’ Piper said.
‘Okay. And you don’t want to talk about me and Matt either?’
‘No. But I’m pissed off.’
‘I get that,’ Holly said. ‘I don’t blame you.’
Chapter Thirty-Five
Piper woke up in the night and turned over to find Holly on the other side of Connie’s bed. She was on her side facing Piper, fast asleep. Piper watched her for a while in the dim light from the streetlamp outside. She was really still. Piper shuffled across the bed, leaning closer, until she was confident her sister was in fact breathing and she could go back to sleep.
‘You awake?’ Holly asked what seemed like minutes later.
‘What time is it?’ Piper groaned, throwing her arm over her eyes.
She felt the mattress move as Holly presumably reached for her phone. ‘Eight.’
‘I’d better take Buster out.’ She sat up and stretched. ‘They’d have phoned us in the night, right? If she’d died.’
‘I don’t know,’ Holly said. ‘I’ll phone now.’
Piper got up, took her clothes out of the dryer, got dressed and fed Buster, the sound of her sister’s voice in the other room, on the phone to the hospital, making her stomach churn.
‘She’s awake,’ Holly said, coming through to the lounge. ‘They said she’s doing well. She asked for you.’
Piper’s eyes filled again and she grabbed Holly’s arm, pulling her into a hug. ‘Oh my god.’
‘I know,’ Holly said. ‘Want to go and see her when you get back from taking Buster out?’
At the sound of his name, Buster whimpered and wriggled on the spot.
‘I’ll book a cab,’ Holly said.
* * *
Piper bought a latte in Starbucks and walked down to the beach, crunching over the shells. While Buster ran around her in ever-increasing circles, occasionally stopping to bark at a seagull or chase another dog’s ball, Piper stared out to sea. Connie was alive. She was going to be okay. And Piper had hugged Holly without even thinking about it. She couldn’t even remember when they’d stopped hugging. Or why. It was ridiculous really.
Once she’d finished her coffee, she turned back up the beach, yelling for Buster to join her. By the time she got to the prom, he let her snap his lead back on and started tugging her towards home.
‘Not that way,’ she told him, steering him in the opposite direction. ‘Not yet.’
* * *
‘Hey,’ Rob said when he opened the door. ‘And Buster too.’
Buster darted between Rob’s legs and immediately started whirling and wriggling.
‘Dude, seriously?’ Piper said. ‘You’ve literally just been.’
Rob grabbed the dog and half-ran across his living room, sliding open the balcony door and depositing Buster outside.
‘I am so sorry,’ Piper said, as they both watched Buster pee on Rob’s tiled floor. ‘I didn’t think he’d have any left in him.’
Once he was done, Buster darted past the two of them back into the flat and jumped up on the sofa.
‘Yeah, you make yourself at home,’ Rob told him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Piper said again.
‘It’s not a problem,’ Rob said. ‘I always thought my sofa needed that wet dog smell.’
‘Not about that,’ Piper said. ‘But also about that, obviously. I meant about the other night. For leaving like that.’
‘For leaving like that and then ignoring my texts?’ Rob said.
Piper shook her head and, to her embarrassment, started to cry. ‘Connie had a stroke.’
Chapter Thirty-Six
‘I had a thing,’ Connie said, gesturing with her good hand, the one that hadn’t been curled into a fist by the stroke. ‘A mini stroke thing. They call it a… something. Tee something.’
‘TIA,’ Holly said. She was sitting next to Connie’s bed, opposite Piper.
‘I didn’t tell you girls because I didn’t want you to worry. And I didn’t want to think about it.’
Her speech was slow and slurred, but nowhere near as bad as Piper had been expecting. The nurse who had met them in the hallway had said Connie was as strong as an ox – she’d woken up first thing and immediately demanded tea and breakfast and for someone to call ‘her girls’.
‘You did tell me,’ Piper said, frowning.
‘Did I?’ Connie said. ‘Well I didn’t mean to.’
Piper didn’t think this was a TIA at all. She’d done some googling and she was pretty sure this was an actual stroke. But the staff wouldn’t tell her anything, telling her to ask her aunt, and Connie seemed determined to pretend it was nothing serious. Piper could accept that. For now at least.
‘How’s Buster?’ Connie asked, straining as she tried to shuffle up against her pillows.
While Piper told her aunt about Buster disgracing himself at Rob’s earlier, Holly stood up, helped Connie to lean forward, rearranged her pillows, and then lowered her back down. Connie smiled at her, gratefully.
‘You look just the same,’ she told her. ‘I’ve missed your face.’
Piper watched Holly’s face crumple a little, but then she composed herself. ‘I’m sorry. I let things get on top of me a bit. But I’m sorting it all out now.’
Connie patted her hand. ‘You’re a good girl.’
She took a sip of her tea and Piper watched some of it dribble out of the corner of her mouth and run down her neck to the neckline of her pale blue nighty. Holly reached over and dabbed it with a tissue.
‘You don’t have to keep coming,’ Connie told Piper, her eyes closed. ‘I’m alright.’
‘Of course we’re going to keep coming,’ Piper said. ‘Have they said how long you’re going to be in?’
‘I don’t think so. But it’s expensive. All the taxis.’
‘Rob brought us,’ Holly said.
Connie opened her eyes and looked straight at Piper. ‘He’s a good lad, that one. You should keep him.’
Piper swallowed and nodded.
‘And he likes big girls?’ She blinked.
‘He likes me,’ Piper said.
‘That’s good,’ Connie said and closed her eyes again.
* * *
‘Do you think Rob would drop me at the station?’ Holly asked in the lift on the way back down.
‘I’m sure he will, yeah.’
‘I wish I could stay,’ Holly said. ‘But I’ve just got so much shit to sort out at home.’
‘I think I’m going to stay the rest of the week,’ Piper said. ‘Work said to take as much time as I need, so…’
‘That’s good.’
The lift doors opened and they stepped out and to the side, out of the way, but neither of them made a move towards the coffee shop where they knew Rob was waiting.
‘When did we stop talking?’ Holly said.
‘I don’t know. I was thinking about that too.’
‘It was before Mum and Dad though, right?’
Piper nodded. ‘But that didn’t help.’
‘No. It was weird. I remembered this morning how I used to get into your bed in the night.’
&
nbsp; ‘What, after you got into my bed in the night?’ Piper smiled.
‘Yeah. I don’t even remember getting up. I never did when we were kids either.’
‘It wasn’t just you,’ Piper said. ‘I did it too.’
Holly leaned back against the wall and then jerked upright again, glancing back over her shoulder.
‘I think the walls are probably clean,’ Piper said.
‘Ugh, I know. It’s just hospitals. They give me the heebs.’
Piper laughed. ‘Right?’
‘We should go and find Rob. I need to get my train.’
As they walked to the cafe, Holly said, ‘I woke up in the night and you were so still I had to check you were still breathing.’
Piper stopped walking – she heard someone tut behind her – and stared at her sister. ‘I did the same thing!’
‘You did not!’
‘I did! I almost poked you. But I thought you’d be pissed off if I woke you up.’
Holly grinned. ‘I would’ve been. But oh my god. We’re both so fucked up.’
Piper bumped her sister with her shoulder. ‘I think we’re doing okay.’
* * *
After they’d dropped Holly at the station, Piper suggested she and Rob go out for lunch. They headed back up the motorway, ‘One More Night’ by Phil Collins blaring out of the tinny speakers, while Piper laughed and tried not to sing along.
‘Do you know where you want to go?’ Rob asked, as they passed the allotments where they’d ridden his aunt’s horse.
Piper craned her neck to look down on them, but she couldn’t see much apart from plastic sheeting and sheds.
‘Surprise me,’ she said.
‘So… the big Tesco?’
‘I meant a good surprise.’ She hid her smile against the window.
The next song was, inevitably, ‘Mr Brightside’ and this time Piper didn’t even consider not singing along. Rob drummed on the steering wheel and opened both front windows to let the cool air rush into the car.
‘I don’t know what it is about that song,’ he said once it was over and they’d pulled off the motorway. ‘It used to remind me of all of us on the prom, titting about. Then the reunion.’ He glanced at her and then back at the road. ‘And now this. In the car. With you.’
‘It’s a good song,’ she said.
Rob had driven through West Kirby and was heading up the hill towards… Piper wasn’t sure where.
‘Where are we going?’
‘There’s this place my dad used to take me,’ Rob said. ‘A pub. On the river. I’ve tried to find it before and missed it completely, but I think I can find it…’
They drove through Caldy, Thurstaston, Heswall, singing a lot and talking a little. But Piper mostly looked out of the window.
‘We used to come here with my parents when we were little,’ she said. ‘We’d drive around and look at the big houses, pick the one we’d live in when we were rich.’
‘Yeah?’
‘At one point, my dad would always say, “That’s Paul McCartney’s house.” It was always a different house.’
Rob laughed. ‘We saw him in the pub once. On Christmas Eve. He was sitting there with friends, drinking and laughing like a normal person. I mean, he is a normal person, I guess. But I just kept thinking, “That’s Paul McCartney. From The Beatles.” I was scared to go to the loo in case he came in and I said something inappropriate or tried to hug him or something.’
‘Must be so weird to be that famous. People just going “Holy shit” when they see you. That’s what I used to think I wanted. To go to London and just become super famous. I used to interview myself in my head, all that.’
‘What did you want to do?’ Rob asked. He’d slowed down now and was peering through the windscreen, presumably looking for a sign.
‘Have you not got a sat nav?’ Piper asked.
‘No. Used to. But I kept looking at it instead of the road. I was on a roundabout once and I looked at the screen and there was my car, going round the roundabout. And I was thinking, “Hey, look! My car! Going round a roundabout!” and I crashed into the car in front.’
‘You did not!’
‘I did. I’m an idiot. Oh hey, there’s the turn-off.’
He pulled off to the right down a wide road sloping down to the river, with bungalows on either side. He turned and turned again, down lanes with fields on one side, smaller, white-painted houses on the other, past a car park and finally down a bumpy track.
‘How does anyone ever find this place?’ Piper asked.
‘No idea,’ Rob said. ‘But see that house there?’ He pointed out of his window to a mock Tudor mansion half hidden behind tall gates.
‘Yeah?’
‘Paul McCartney lives there.’
Piper let out a bark of laughter and Rob grinned at her as he turned off the road and into the restaurant’s car park.
* * *
‘I love your body,’ Rob said later, back at his flat, his mouth somewhere around Piper’s ribcage.
‘Pfft.’
Rob crawled up the bed, leaning over her to look at her face. ‘Did you just say “pfft”?’
Piper shook her head, closing her eyes. ‘I didn’t mean to. It just came out.’
‘You don’t believe I love your body? Because I feel like I’ve been quite clear…’ He kissed her shoulder. ‘About…’ The dip of her throat. ‘How…’ The top of a breast. ‘Much…’ The curve of her belly.
‘Okay okay,’ Piper said, curling away from his mouth.
‘I wasn’t finished,’ Rob said, pulling her back towards him and mouthing down her side in the direction of her hip.
‘I do believe it,’ she said. ‘Sort of. Mostly.’
Rob stopped kissing and touching and moved back up to lie next to her, his eyebrows furrowed.
‘I don’t understand. I mean, I’ve read your blog. You’re so confident. And you know you’re completely fucking gorgeous, right?’
Piper shook her head again. Embarrassingly, her eyes were pricking with tears.
‘You called me chubby.’ She hadn’t actually meant to say that.
‘What? When?’
Piper kept her eyes closed. ‘Years ago. When we were kids. When I got stuck up that tree and—’
The bed was shaking. The bed was shaking because Rob was laughing, his face pressed into her neck.
‘Oh what the fuck?!’ Piper said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Rob said. ‘Have you seriously been holding that against me all this time?’
Piper opened her eyes and stared at the white ceiling for a second before rolling onto her side to face him.
‘Yes.’
His face became serious the instant he saw that she was serious.
‘Piper. Fuck. I didn’t—’
‘I know you didn’t. I know that. But you don’t understand how that felt for me. You were the only one who never treated me like the fat girl. For ages, I sort of felt like you didn’t know. As if you hadn’t noticed. I used to sometimes let myself think that you liked me and then I’d honestly think “oh but it’s because he doesn’t know I’m fat”. Which I know is ridiculous because you were right there. I knew you could see me! But that’s how I felt. Everyone else made little comments. Or I caught them looking at me and I knew what they were thinking. But that never happened with you. Until that day.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Rob said. ‘I don’t even remember exactly what I said—’
Piper smiled. ‘Yeah. But I do. I always have. You said, “I like chubby girls better anyway.”’
‘Oh god,’ Rob said. ‘That. That was dickhead me’s idea of a compliment. I wanted you to know that I liked you—’
‘Anyway,’ Piper interrupted. ‘You wanted me to know that you liked me anyway. Even though I was fat.’
‘No,’ Rob said, his forehead furrowing. ‘That’s not it. I don’t think? Even then I liked it. I liked how you looked. I used to think about touching you and how soft you’d feel.’
<
br /> Piper dipped her head, the crown against his chest. ‘You did not.’
He stroked the back of her neck. ‘I did. Remember when I got off with Claire?’
‘Vividly,’ Piper said drily.
‘I kept thinking about how it would have been better with you.’
‘Because she had tiny tits.’
Rob laughed. ‘Not just that. But yeah, also that.’
Piper straightened up to look at him. ‘Have you slept with other fat women?’
He grimaced. ‘We’re having this conversation?’
‘Apparently.’
‘Yes. I’ve slept with other fat women. And thin women. I’ve slept with women of various shapes and sizes.’
‘Bigger than me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Who?’
‘I mean, you don’t know her,’ Rob said.
Piper rolled her eyes. ‘Describe her to me.’
‘It was one night. On a teacher training course in a really shitty hotel. We all went out and got drunk. She was funny and sexy and an amazing dancer.’
‘Like Fat Monica.’
‘Who the fuck is Fat Monica?’
‘Sorry. Friends. Forgot. Carry on.’
‘That was it. We slept together. We didn’t keep in touch.’
‘What was her name?’
‘Rachel.’
‘Are you taking the piss?’
‘No! That was her name!’
‘Okay. Tell me about the one in Ibiza. With the stupid name. Flounder.’
Rob laughed. ‘Belle.’
‘Sure.’
‘She was thin.’
‘How thin?’
‘Christ, I don’t know! I’m not in the habit of asking women I sleep with for their measurements or BMI or whatever. Why does it matter?’
Piper shook her head. ‘I’m sorry. It doesn’t. I just—’
‘I want you. I think you’re incredibly hot and sexy. I love your body whether you believe me or not. And I’m sorry that dickhead teen me made you feel like shit for even a second, let alone for, like, fifteen years.’
The Invitation_The perfect laugh-out-loud romantic comedy Page 18
