you would be the way to sort it out, but apparently it was. So thanks.’
Before I could launch into legitimate sobs, I opened the bedroom door, slammed it shut behind me and ran downstairs. Mum and Brian were drinking Sunday morning coffee in the kitchen in complete silence.
‘I think me and you need to have a talk, young lady,’ Mum said, cool as a cucumber.
‘I do not agree,’ I replied, slipping my feet into my Primark ballet pumps. ‘Brian, can you please run me to the station?’
‘Course I can, love,’ he said, coffee on the table, car keys appearing from his jeans pocket. ‘Come on.’
‘Don’t you dare walk out of this house, madam.’ Mum sounded shocked. It was fair. It was, after all, the first time in my entire life that I’d answered her back or not done as I was told. Fairly impressive at twenty-eight. ‘You sit down at this table and tell me what exactly is going on with you or you don’t come back to this house ever again.’
‘I’ll leave my keys with Brian then,’ I shouted as I passed through the front door. Probably a bit rash. I probably wasn’t thinking entirely straight. Or walking straight just yet.
‘Oh dear God, it’s drugs, isn’t it? I knew it. All those late nights in the office, never having any money, fired for “no reason”. What is it? Heroin? Are you doing the heroin?’ She was shouting just loud enough for the neighbours to have that on Facebook in the next ten minutes.
‘Yes, Mum,’ I replied as calm as you like. ‘I’m doing all of the heroin. Track marks up and down my arms, can’t get enough of the stuff. It’s aces.’
Marching towards the door, all I wanted was to be out of that house.
‘Tess Sigourney Brookes, you come back here this instant.’ My mum did not sound amused.
I didn’t turn round. I didn’t reply. I just got in the car.
‘Sorry to be a pain in the arse, Brian.’ I gave my lovely stepdad an apologetic smile as I buckled my seatbelt. ‘Just not having a very good week.’
‘Happens to the best of us, love,’ he said as he started the engine and backed out of the driveway. ‘Happens to the best of us.’
When I finally arrived back home, the flat was gloriously empty. The battery was flat on my phone and I’d left the charger at my mum’s, so there was very little to do but have a bath, wash away every trace of Charlie Wilder and collapse on the settee with a big bag of Wotsits. Or four big bags of Wotsits.
A week ago, I’d been prepping for my first day in my big new job. Seven days on, I had no job, I had no prospects, I’d shagged Charlie, I’d fallen out with Charlie, and I was relatively certain my mum had a bit of a bag on with me. I had excelled myself. An entire decade’s worth of drama in one week.
‘Sometimes things need shaking up,’ I’d told the rubber duck in the bath. ‘You’ve got to test the limits sometimes.’
He didn’t reply. He was getting a real attitude.
I was deep into my third episode of Come Dine With Me when I heard someone hammering on the front door.
‘Yay, Vanessa,’ I whispered, pulling my stripy blanket up under my chin.
‘Tess, are you in there?’
Not Vanessa. Charlie.
It was too late to run into my room and hide under the bed, so I did the next best thing I could think of. Pull the blanket over my head and shout, ‘No.’
But when I pulled the blanket down over my eyes, I saw a tall, creased-looking boy in the corner of my living room. All six feet three inches looking sad and stooped. My ovaries wanted to leap out of my body and never let him go.
‘Your mum gave me your spare key.’ He held it up before tossing it to me. ‘I didn’t think you’d let me in.’
‘I wouldn’t have,’ I replied, wishing I was wearing anything other than a giant Eeyore sleep shirt and a scrunchie. ‘So you can go now.’
‘I need to talk to you.’ He stepped towards the sofa with caution, staying as far away from me as it was possible to be, and rubbed at his eyebrow as he sat down. I curled up into a not-so-tiny ball and pouted. ‘I need to say I’m sorry.’
‘Yes, you do,’ I acknowledged. ‘So say it and then piss off.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘And you’re still here.’
Charlie took a deep breath in and stared at his feet. I pulled my knees up over my nose and peered at him over my blanket. This was horrible.
‘Do you remember the first time you talked to me?’ he asked. ‘Not in a seminar or anything, but the first time we properly had a conversation?’
‘Yes.’ Of course I bloody remembered, arsehole.
‘It was the Christmas party in the union, and you and Amy were wearing those stupid matching fairy outfits and all of the lads from my floor had a bet on which of them could get off with the two of you first.’
Oh, university. Hallowed halls of learning.
‘And then we were at the bar at the same time and you were not sober,’ he said with a smile. ‘And you asked if I’d done the reading for our media studies class, and I said I never did the reading for the media studies class, and you looked horrified.’
‘I was a very straight student,’ I muttered.
‘And then we were just chatting, and that girl I was seeing came up and kissed me.’
‘Sarah Luffman.’ Sarah bloody Luffman. I still wouldn’t accept her Facebook friend request to this day.
‘Sarah, yeah. Of course you remember.’ He rested his hands on his knees as though he was bracing himself. ‘Anyway, she came up and kissed me and I saw your face fall. You looked, like, properly heartbroken. And I didn’t know why, but it made me so sad because all night, all I’d been thinking about was kissing you.’
‘Because of the bet?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he shook his head. ‘Because I thought you were beautiful.’
Oh.
I wondered if it would be appropriate to ask him to wait while I went and changed. This conversation could not take place while I was wearing something I had bought for a tenner from the Disney store in the January sale.
‘But when I looked again, you were gone. And the next time I saw you, my flatmate told me you were going out with that bloke off the PE course. So I didn’t make a move. But we had so much in common and we were in all the same classes and, you know, that was that.’
‘And you never thought to bother again?’ I said, shuffling my feet a little bit closer to him. ‘In ten years?’
‘I know your mum and dad got divorced, Tess, but if you’d lived through what I’ve lived through,
