by Lia Louis
‘OK, and what else?’ presses Ed.
‘And a van or something to hire once I’m up there,’ I say, ‘and a hotel for me to stay in and a train there because I doubt my car will make it and – well, I might need help so I’m trying to find out from Candice if there’s a wedding planner up there, or an assistant that might be around and––’
‘Whoa, whoa,’ says Ed, putting his beer down on the coffee table and plonking himself back next to me on the sofa. ‘I can help. When is it again?’
‘September twenty-eighth, but I’d leave the day before.’
Ed nods, scrolling down his phone, his hand raking through his curls. ‘I’m working,’ he says, ‘but I finish at twelve on the twenty-seventh, so I could – meet you up there, maybe? Sleep on the train.’
‘No, no, that’s mad, I can’t ask you to do that. You’d be exhausted, Ed, after a bloody night shift. Don’t you remember Dorset? That mini break. You hallucinated on the train.’
Ed shrugs, laughs. He’s been out in the sun, his skin, golden, but two smudges of almost-red like war paint on his cheekbones. Too much sunshine from those beers he went out for with work, I bet.
‘Was a laugh though, wasn’t it? Me thinking Denzel Washington was in the train bog.’
I laugh. ‘And you thought there was a finger in your sandwich, but it was just a roll of wafer-thin ham.’
Ed laughs throatily, throws an arm behind me, stretching on the back of the sofa. ‘See. Fun. And it’ll be nice, hanging out in Edinburgh with you. A hotel.’ He smiles then, green eyes glinting.
‘To work,’ I say.
‘To work,’ he mocks. Then he leans and I turn my face, and he kisses my cheek. This keeps happening. He keeps leaning in, and I think I want to – a big part of me wants to – but I turn away, give him my cheek, or make a joke, or talk about bollocks, like some weird article I read on BuzzFeed or the price of eggs in Tesco compared to Waitrose. The other day, we were both sitting on the sofa watching TV and his hand found mine, and I was surprised in that moment, how right it felt for me to take it, squeeze it, feel his fingers slip between mine, rest heavy and familiar in my lap. We’ve slipped into a bit of a routine, enough that I even told Mum and Charlie about it yesterday.
Mum hadn’t been as delighted as I expected her to be, and Charlie had looked up from her appointments book and her skin had turned the colour of clay.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked, and she’d retracted, like a little crab, looked down at her lap, hurt. I’d told her everything then, that I was afraid she might tell me it’s a bad idea and that it felt so natural, so comfortable and easy, and I wasn’t ready to hear it.
‘But are you sure this isn’t convenience for him, Elle?’ she’d asked. ‘I mean, it seems it to me. He comes back, and you’re here waiting. His old life. It must be nice for him, just to come back and slip back into it.’ But I told her that it was nice for me too, to slip back into things. Into Ed, my warm blanket, my everything-I-ever-knew. ‘We were together a long time,’ I’d said, like Sam and Jenna, I wanted to say but didn’t.
Her brow furrowed and eventually, she nodded. ‘I guess I was just hopeful for Sam. It’s like a little love story me and Theo have been watching from afar or something.’ And I felt my heart fall to my arse then as the I like Sam question mark scribble drifted through my mind like a plane spelling words in the sky.
‘What’s happening with your mum?’ Ed asks now, leaning and grabbing a handful of peanuts from an ugly paint-splodged bowl on the table. I don’t think I like being here, in this flat, and I think it’s because it belongs to some fifty-something medic who’s currently in Dubai with his twenty-something wife. It feels like a stranger’s home. It’s all white and chrome and misguided décor choices. Something he looked at and thought ‘this says cool and young and hip’ when it actually says, ‘I am a present-day Austin Powers.’
‘Dilly’ll be home with her. He gets home about lunch time.’
‘So, she does still need people around then?’
I shrug, but my shoulders stiffen up by my ears, like plaster setting. ‘You know she does.’
‘Just – you say she’s getting better.’
‘She is,’ I say. ‘In some ways. But …’
‘You still have to arrange a babysitter.’ Ed sighs, leans back on the sofa. ‘Nell, you know how I feel about this, that it shouldn’t be up to you to––’
‘She isn’t well, Ed.’
‘Then she needs the help.’
And we slip straight back there, as easily as we slipped into our routine – like a scratch in a record that the needle can’t help but get wedged on. Ed’s views on how I live my life, how Mum lives hers. I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out at first. We’ve had this conversation so many times. It was the source of so many of our arguments, and the subject of Mum and me, it’s even more loaded now. It’s what came between us in the end. It’s why we broke up.
‘She has to want the help,’ I say carefully, but my words are clipped, with sharp edges.
‘And maybe she would if you – you know, withdrew yours.’
I scoff, lean away from him. ‘Oh, because that’s what we do to people who aren’t well, is it? Withdraw the help. This, from a doctor––’
‘Nell, I’m not saying neglect her.’ He laughs now, as if I’ve been ridiculous, as if I’ve got the wrong end of the stick, and holds my hand. ‘I’m saying … you know what I’m saying.’
‘I know,’ I sigh. ‘But you can’t just switch anxiety and panic and fear off. I know that. You know I do.’ You’d have known too, if you’d come home to visit me back then, I think, tore yourself away from the endless parties and gallons of cheap university beer for longer than a single weekend where you just sighed and looked helplessly at me, like I was a car that wouldn’t start.
‘But she’s had her life, Nell,’ he says, ‘and she travelled, and she did all the things she wanted to do and – you could’ve …’
‘I know,’ I say again. Yes, Ed, I could’ve done anything. I could have gone to America with you. We could’ve had it all. I could’ve been the Noelle you wanted to start a new life with, away from here, so desperately. Then it tumbles from my lips.
‘Why did you come back?’
Ed cocks his head, gives me that classic, infamous sideways wince, eyes narrow. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, why would you come back here? Really? You wanted to get away so badly, you wanted a new life somewhere different––’
‘I – I got the job offer, Nell.’
‘Did you meet anyone over there?’
Ed freezes, eyes round and unblinking. That look again. The look he gave me when I asked him about Daisy’s camera. Pity, worry … something he’s holding back. Then he takes a deep breath, the way someone does when preparing to sing, or to say something important. ‘Nell, I don’t want to lie––’
‘So you did. You did meet someone.’
Ed takes another deep breath and looks at me. ‘I did.’
I freeze – a movie still. A lump gathers in my throat, and I just look at him. It’s not like I expected him to never look at anyone else ever again. Of course not. But hearing about it for the first time, knowing he’s kissed someone else, touched someone else, used all those funny Ed anecdotes that used to make me cry tears of laughter, that felt like they were only for me, on someone else – it stings a little, like vinegar in a wound.
‘But nobody worth talking about,’ he says, then he takes my hand in both of his.
‘Really?’
‘Nah. Just random dates.’
I think of the woman with the auburn curls, how much I obsessed over her. And yet, apparently, she is nobody worth talking about. I lost so much sleep over her, in the beginning. Sat stewing, with sadness and jealousy so powerful, I practically pulsated with it. ‘Nell, what is this all about?’
I look at him and shake my head, feel myself deflate, like a pierced pool toy. ‘I don’t know. I’m j
ust – I feel confused.’
‘About?’
Race cars screech like hornets around a track on the TV screen, around and around, faster and faster, at dizzying speed.
‘Everything. This. You and me. About what it is.’
Ed rubs a thumb along the back of my hand, tracing the bumps of my knuckles. ‘Why does it need to be anything?’ he asks softly. ‘Why can’t we just … let it be what it is.’
‘And what is that?’
‘Catching up. Turning back the clock a bit. That’s not a crime, is it?’
‘Right.’
Ed moves a hand, strokes the side of my cheek. ‘Aren’t you glad I’m here?’ he whispers.
And I nod.
‘Because I am,’ he says, and when he leans, I let him this time. I let the warm flesh of his familiar lips press against mine and I melt into it. I have missed him. I have missed this security, the life we had – the life we almost had. And isn’t it something we all want, from time to time, to turn back the clock?
Chapter Twenty-Three
Three weeks pass in a blur. I see Ed a lot for takeaways and walks through town after his shifts, and I enjoy being totally caught up in the wedding whirlwind. I watch YouTube videos about preserving wedding flowers and timings of bouquets, from water to bride, I call the hotel to double-check they definitely have a cool, dark room for me to work in, contact the flower supplier up in Edinburgh. I even got a call from Candice’s hotel’s wedding planner and I flushed with fizzy excitement as she talked. I’m a wedding florist! I’ve felt like shouting in random people’s faces, as I worked, as I ran my usual boring errands, feeling like I have springs in my shoes. At this moment, I am designing the flowers for someone’s wedding and everyone is treating me as though I am the actual real deal! Me!
‘You are the real deal,’ said Charlie yesterday as she sat at my kitchen table, thumbing the leaves of yet another ‘dummy run’ bouquet. ‘I mean, look at this. If I tried to make this, it would look like I wiped Petal’s arse with it then whacked Theo over the head with it. You are good at this, Elle. Beyond good. Believe me.’ And for the first time in my life, I’ve let myself believe her. Maybe I can do this. Maybe I can expand my world a little, chase dreams like loose balloons, like other people do. And I don’t know how it would work, but ever since I’ve said yes to Candice and Steve, everything and anything has felt possible. A spark of something has flickered to life deep down in my gut, and it won’t go out.
‘You can do your own flowers.’ Charlie had grinned then. ‘When you and Sam get married.’
‘I am not marrying Sam,’ I’d replied, and she’d leant over and kissed my cheek.
‘Tell that to Theo. He is convinced,’ and I couldn’t help but grin back at her. My Charlie, smiling, cheeks like red, rosy apples. She’s getting there. Her meds have kicked in and her mum and dad have stepped up and promised to take Petal every Friday so she and Theo can have a date night – or sleep. Which is exactly what they’ve done for the first two. She spent thirty quid on organic ingredients in Waitrose last Friday, printouts of Deliciously Ella recipes poking out of her handbag, but in the end they were asleep by eight, with bellies full of Nutella on toast. The next morning, she’d sent me a photo of Petal, all gummy and wide-eyed. I cried when the text that followed said ‘My girl. Missed her.’
Today I’m back at Frank’s and when I go to let myself in, the door swoops open before my spare key even hits the lock.
‘You have worked wonders,’ says Sam, standing in the doorway. He’s sun-kissed and smiley and when he holds my shoulders with large, warm hands, I feel like my heart is going to shoot out of my body and explode, like a dirty great firework above us both. I wasn’t expecting to see him. I don’t feel prepared, although I’m not even sure what I mean by that. He’s a person, after all, not a bloody science exam. ‘You’re a genius,’ he says.
‘Well, hello to you too.’ I laugh, and heat creeps up my spine. ‘You really think so?’
‘For sure,’ says Sam, and he steps aside to let me in. ‘And it smells different in here – like, I dunno – is it … lavender?’
‘Lavender disinfectant. Only the most luxurious of scents for Have-a-Go Frank.’
Sam groans, pulls his mouth into a grimace. ‘Is he still being an ass?’ he asks out of the side of his mouth.
‘Oh, one hundred per cent,’ I whisper, as I follow him inside, the heat of the flat hitting me the way it does when you step off a plane into a hot country. ‘Hates me. Despises me. And perhaps, also the world, so I try not to take it too personally.’
‘If it helps, I think he secretly likes you.’
‘Sure he does.’
‘Trust me, Gallagher.’ Sam shoots a look over his shoulder at me – his dark eyes dancing with the secret inside joke of my now evolved nickname, and I feel like my kneecaps might disintegrate. ‘But hey, come through to the kitchen. I have something for you.’
‘For me?’
We walk through the flat together. Sam looks good. Again. And I wish I had worn something different from the baggy over-sized t-shirt and leggings I slung on in a rush this morning while Mum called for me from the bedroom, unable to reach her left slipper. He’s wearing a white t-shirt, his arms muscular at the seams, and he smells of – ugh, I don’t know, but that gorgeous Sam smell. Showers and fresh laundry and sun on skin. ‘I wish you’d just snog Sam,’ Charlie had said after I told her about Ed and me kissing. ‘And you keep saying you don’t like him like that, but I have to say, dude, I don’t believe you.’ And as I look at him now, golden and handsome and tall, I sort of wish I could too. No, no, no, must keep remembering Jenna. Must keep remembering Jenna and Ed and screwed up bloody phone numbers left on smelly hospital benches.
‘Hi, Frank,’ I call, as we pass the living room.
‘Hello,’ he answers, and although he says it as if he has a revolver at his temple, I feel a sense of victory.
‘Well, would you look at that,’ I whisper. ‘One nil to Noelle Butterby.’
Sam gives a deep chuckle, and steps into the kitchen. ‘Told you.’ Then he bends, rifles through a large hessian shopping bag on the floor, and when he stands, he’s holding a huge bunch of freesias wrapped in peanut-brown paper. They are beautiful. Gorgeous and coral-reef pink, petals open as if ready to sing. ‘For you,’ he says.
‘For me? Why – what for?’
‘The old man’s a jackass,’ he says dryly, ‘and you’ve done an incredible job and so quickly. And I was thinking about what you were saying about gut feeling and trusting your instincts and then I passed these, and – I don’t know. Gut instinct said I should take them …’
I open my mouth to speak, but it stretches into a wide spontaneous smile. ‘Do you know – they actually do symbolise trust?’ I say, and as I hear myself say it, goosebumps pepper my arms.
‘Seriously?’
‘Yup. And they’re my favourites. First flowers I managed to grow from bulbs.’ I don’t need a mirror to know that my face is totally ablaze with heat. Less Crayfish Face, more Lobstered to Fuck. ‘Thank you. Seriously, Sam, you didn’t need to do this––’
‘No, I know I didn’t but – well, I figured you’re always the one that gives the flowers, so …’ He trails off, reaches up to push his hand through his hair, his hand resting at the back of his neck.
‘Thank you,’ I say again, and he smiles softly. ‘Will you keep them in water for me?’
‘Sure,’ he says, and as he starts to fill the empty sink, water sploshing onto the ridges of the draining board, my heart opens in my chest, like a box burst wide, sending sunbeams up and around my body.
Charlie says she doesn’t believe me when I say I don’t like Sam. And I don’t think I believe me either. That question mark fades like smoke, to nothing.
Two hours later, Sam gets back from popping into town, and we take a break on the balcony of Frank’s flat. It’s a warm, late August day, the sky is the colour of the ocean, the clouds above like swirls of cream i
n coffee. There’s nothing up here, besides the sound of Frank’s television and the distant chinking and mumbling of other people’s homes through open windows.
‘How’re you doing over there?’ asks Sam.
‘Ish.’ I say, gripping the back of a garden chair and sitting down. ‘Can I say ish?’
‘You can say ish,’ laughs Sam. He leans against the railings and the concrete of the adjoining wall in the corner, a tanned forearm resting on the metal rail. Then he produces two paper bags from behind his back. ‘Left or right hand?’
‘What?’
‘This is pasty roulette.’
‘You got pasties?’
‘I got pasties,’ he says.
I can’t stop the grin from spreading across my face. I lean forward, try to grab at a bag, see what’s in what, but he retracts the bags closer to him. ‘Come on,’ he teases. ‘Play ball.’
‘Fine. Left.’
He hands it to me, a square white paper bag, and I open it up. ‘Still none the wiser,’ I say. ‘So, do I have to bite it to find out?’
‘Yup.’
And so I do, conscious of not spilling it all down my chin and looking up at him like he’s caught me in the middle of a country fair eating competition. ‘Oh my God. A classic. I got the classic pasty. Cornish. Perfection.’
‘Ah, shit,’ says Sam, opening the greasy white paper of his own bag. ‘That means I have the wild chicken curry option.’
