by Clare Lydon
You’re My Kind
Clare Lydon
Contents
Also by Clare Lydon
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Epilogue
Would You Write Me A Review?
Acknowledgments
Also by Clare Lydon
First Edition March 2019
Published by Custard Books
Copyright © 2019 Clare Lydon
ISBN: 978-1-912019-90-8
Cover Design: Rachel Lawston
Copy Editor: Cheyenne Blue
Find out more at: www.clarelydon.co.uk
Follow me on Twitter: @clarelydon
Follow me on Instagram: @clarefic
All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. All characters & happenings in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons (living or dead), locales or events is purely coincidental.
Also by Clare Lydon
Other Novels
The Long Weekend
Nothing To Lose: A Lesbian Romance
Twice In A Lifetime
Once Upon A Princess
London Romance Series
London Calling (Book One)
This London Love (Book Two)
A Girl Called London (Book Three)
The London Of Us (Book Four)
London, Actually (Book Five)
Made In London (Book Six)
All I Want Series
All I Want For Christmas (Book One)
All I Want For Valentine’s (Book Two)
All I Want For Spring (Book Three)
All I Want For Summer (Book Four)
All I Want For Autumn (Book Five)
All I Want Forever (Book Six)
Boxsets
All I Want Series Boxset, Books 1-3
All I Want Series Boxset, Books 4-6
All I Want Series Boxset, Books 1-6
London Romance Series Boxset, Books 1-3
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For Marc Evans.
Forever missed.
Chapter 1
I was wearing the wrong shoes. My new navy brogues were rubbing already, and I’d only walked to the bloody car. But today, they were the least of my worries.
“Okay, we can do this. We can totally do this.” Gemma reached across and put her hand on mine, her short, pristine nails freshly painted dark red. “You’re going to be fine. I know it’s a big day, and Kerry dropped a bomb last night telling us you-know-who was coming too, but today is not about her; it’s about James and Kerry. Got it?”
I gave Gemma a tight-lipped smile. I was scared I’d contradict her if I opened my mouth.
Outside, the May morning was in full swing, sunshine dripping off the car even though it was only 9:30 am. It reminded me of those endless summer days we used to share at university. The end of term, exams done and worries shed. Us slathering layers of coconut oil on our skin and basting ourselves before we knew any better. With my fair hair and pale skin, the sun always won that battle. Even the grass outside reminded me of our university grounds, cut to regulation length, neat and ordered. Everything as it should be.
The complete opposite of this morning, in fact. Because today, we were burying James. The first of the gang to die.
“I’m trying to distract myself, but my mind keeps pinballing from one disaster to another. James, Maddie, James, Maddie.” I put my hands to my face. If Maddie turned up with a beautiful wife, I was going to dissolve on the spot. “I need a drink and it’s not even ten. Have I mentioned this is a stupid time for a funeral?”
Gemma patted my knee as I dropped my hands. “Only about 47 times on the way over here.” My best friend gave me a look, before patting her short, dark hair. She’d had it cut short this week and she was still getting used to it. Everyone at work kept telling her she looked like Halle Berry in that James Bond film. Gemma said they needed to update their references, but I’d told her to concentrate on the ‘you look like a Bond girl’ part.
“Repeat after me. My name is Justine Thomas, I’m a successful entrepreneur and a gorgeous woman to boot.” Gemma waited a few seconds. “You’re meant to repeat it.”
“I’m not five years old.”
“No,” she agreed. “But you’re about to meet the woman who completely shattered your heart, so I imagine right now you feel about 24 years old. I just want to remind you that in the intervening years since Maddie, you’ve flourished, opened a successful business and been featured in national newspapers because of it. You’re a big deal.”
I laughed. “I’m not a fucking big deal. Maddie’s probably a millionaire by now, you know what she was like. Driven. Determined. High-achiever.”
“And what are you? You’re all those things and more, and lovely into the bargain.” She tapped the mirror on my sun visor. “Take a look in the mirror, see for yourself.”
I sighed. “I know I’ve done okay.”
“You just need to be reminded, what with Maddie looming.”
“She’s not looming. And she was a very long time ago.”
“I know, but it still happened and has shaped your life ever since.”
I creased my face, before turning to Gemma. Not only my best friend, but also my business partner for the past five years. “I appreciate your concern, but I can cope. I’m an adult now, fully grown, responsible even. Maddie and I were a decade ago. Today, I’ll be civil, we’ll smile, and then I never have to see her again. I knew this might happen one day, and James has brought that day forward. Bloody James, going and dying on us.” I smiled, even though every time I said it, my heart broke a little bit more.
I’d loved James like a brother. Plus, he was far less annoying than my actual brother. A wave of sadness washed down me, and I reminded myself: Maddie wasn’t important today. James and Kerry were.
Cars were beginning to pull up around us, and brightly dressed mourners walked past. One man wore a Union Jack three-piece suit. He’d clearly got Kerry’s message about no black. One of our best friends was about to bury a man she’d loved for 13 years. I couldn’t even fathom how she must be feeling.
I cleared my throat. “Should we make a move?” I took a deep breath. “I want to be there when Kerry arrives with her parents. She’s going to need our support.”
Gemma nodded. “Course.” She pulled down her sun visor, got her lipstick out of her bag and applied more colour.
“How do I look?”
She’d told me earlier the lipstick was called Brave, which seemed apt. It popped against her soft, brown skin. Gemma had that knack of looking incredible whatever she was wearing. Today, what she was wearing was certainly a statement.
I appraised her yellow trousers and orange shirt, which she’d combined with white patent shoes. “How do you look? Like you’re the entertainment for a kids’ birthday party.”
She laughed. “That’s just the look I was going for.”
A knock on the window interrupted us. It was our friend, Rob, in a sombre black suit and tie. He looked like he was going to a funeral, exactly what Kerry had instructed us not to wear. Gemma rolled down the window.
“All right, cake ladies! You coming in, or planning on sitting in a hot tin box for the rest of the morning?” Rob gave us a broad grin. “I hear there’s air-con inside, so I’d plump for that if I were you.”
“Very droll,” Gemma replied. “We were just getting out. Where’s Jeremy?”
He grimaced. “Babysitter fell through, so he’s not here. He dropped me off in town just now. He’s devastated, but sends his love.”
I pouted. I loved Rob and his husband Jeremy, but since they’d spawned twins last year via surrogacy, it was pretty common for only one of them to turn up to occasions. However, Rob was a regular fixture in our lives, as he ran the bakery opposite our cake school in Bristol. We were business neighbours as well as friends.
“And what’s with the black?”
He shrugged. “I had a way jauntier outfit on, but then the twins puked on me three times. Each. In the end, this was almost my only item of clean clothing that was ironed.”
“Rob!” someone yelled from across the car park. He looked up and waved as someone I didn’t know walked up and gave him a hug. This was the first funeral I’d ever been to, and it was already striking me that it was like any big life occasion, only without the guest of honour.
I glanced at Gemma. “Shall we?” I opened the door and just as my brogues hit the tarmac, a brand-new red Mini pulled up beside us. It had tinted windows and those go-faster hub caps. Total boy-racer territory. Whoever was driving this car clearly wanted the world to know who they were.
The Mini’s engine shut off as I slammed the passenger door of Gemma’s Ford Focus. I reached my arms above my head, performing a full-body stretch. It had only been a 20-minute journey to the crematorium, but I was already sticky from the heat. I was glad I’d opted for pale blue trousers paired with a short-sleeved printed shirt and no jacket.
I threw a smile across the top of the car to Gemma and Rob, but they were both looking at me with panic etched on their faces. What was going on?
A car door slammed behind me, and my two friends froze.
Suddenly, I knew who that Mini belonged to, who it was who wanted to get noticed. Who it was standing behind me, causing my friends to turn into ice statues even on a blazing hot day.
I closed my eyes, my heart slamming into my ribs, all the hairs on my neck standing up one by one, craning their necks to get a better look.
The number of times I’d thought about this moment over the years, and now it was about to happen.
I clenched my fists at my sides, the itch of anxiety burning my throat. I took a deep breath and spun round. And there was Maddie. The ex that counted. Still tall and slim. Still beautiful. Still with the most styled, thick eyebrows I’d ever encountered. And how were her blonde waves still so goddamn shiny and perfect?
Just like that, and exactly as Gemma had predicted, I was 24 again. Lost, abandoned, heart-broken. Only now, coming over my emotional hill at speed were the dual cavalries of anger and rage.
I’d wondered how I was going to react, and now I was getting my answer.
Yep, I was completely over it.
Maddie was dressed in fitted black trousers, black shirt and black lace-ups. She hadn’t got the memo about no black. I was inordinately pleased. It showed that, even if she tried to wheedle her way back in, she wasn’t part of the gang anymore. That was important. She’d lost the right a long time ago.
“Hi, Justine.” She held me with her piercing grey eyes, and my heart stuttered. “It’s good to see you.”
Maddie Kind. Once the author of my dreams, then the author of my nightmares.
I couldn’t say the same.
Chapter 2
We met at university, all of us raring to go. Out of our parental homes and into our halls of residence like we were starring in some cool TV show. At least, that’s what our first taste of freedom felt like. We were invincible, like anything could happen. Because when you’re 18, that’s what life feels like: scary, incredible, wonky.
It all seemed so long ago now. I avoided Maddie’s intense stare and tried to radiate confidence and calm. I was anything but. Seeing her again brought up so many memories, most of them bad. Most of them from after us. I still wanted answers, but now wasn’t the time.
Plus, my bladder needed emptying. I indicated with my head towards the main crematorium as Gemma landed at my side, Rob at the other.
Reinforcements had finally arrived.
“I have to go to the loo.” Not the first line I’d imagined I’d utter to my ex, but then, real life never mimicked what happened in your head, did it?
I walked past a group of men in black suits, already wiping the sweat from the back of their necks. James had died at the start of the summer. Today was the sort of day we’d all have met at a pub by the river for lunch and drinks. Stories of our former life coating the air like melted honey. Raucous laughter from James. He’d always been the loudest. The one who made people turn their heads. He was still doing it today, wasn’t he?
The toilet signs were polished brass with the black outline of a woman in a ridiculously uniform A-line skirt. A bit like the ones we’d been tasked to create in sewing class in school. I’d made a bright orange version, the colour of burnt sunsets. My teacher, a kind Australian woman who was probably around the age I am now, had made encouraging noises from the sidelines, while probably wondering where the hell I was going to wear such a thing. It was a fair question. Who knew where that skirt was now?
Once inside the loo, I took some deep breaths. Today was going to be long. I might even cry. I had tissues in my bag, just in case. Kerry had told us she wanted floods of tears, gales of laughter, and rivers of snot rolling down the crematorium aisles. Did crematoriums have aisles? I wasn’t sure.
The only issue was, I hadn’t shed a single tear since Maddie left. Then, I’d cried for weeks. But since then? A whole decade of nothing.
Perhaps James’s funeral was the place to change that.
Whatever, I knew I had to stop hiding in the toilet. James would have told me that Maddie’s presence today didn’t change anything I’d achieved in the intervening years. I was still a strong woman. I still ran a successful cake school. James would tell me to go out there and be the strong person I am. Because it had only been five minutes since Maddie walked back into my life, and I could already feel my skin tingling with nerves, could already hear my confidence scuttling out the door.
I wasn’t going to let Maddie railroad me. I could do this. How many hours had I spent conjuring words to Maddie in my head, telling her exactly what I thought of her? Numerous train journeys, hundreds of bus rides, thousands of steps on endless pavements. But now my chance to tell her was here, ten years later, it was all a little… stale. A little after-the-fact.
Seeing Maddie and knowing what had happened between us, my body had reacted like always. But I didn’t trust my body: it was just a collection of muscles and veins, after all.
It was my mind I trusted, my mind I could control. And my mind was telling my body to calm the fuck down, get back out there and do what James would have wanted me to do.
“Woman up, Justine!” That had been James’s catchphrase. When it came to being a feminist ally, James was at the head of the pack. All of which made it that little more bitter it was James wh
o’d died.
Back out in the glaring sunshine, I clocked Gemma waving at me. Maddie was standing to the side, chatting to Daniel, who’d lived in our halls at university. Daniel had always had a bottle of Southern Comfort in his room back then, in case he was invited to an impromptu party. Nobody had liked Daniel, and yet, here he was at James’s funeral. I bet he had a bottle of Southern Comfort in his muted grey backpack. Who brought a backpack to a funeral? Was he going hiking afterwards?
I walked over to Gemma as Rob approached, putting an arm around her. Gemma put her head on Rob’s shoulder, leaning in.
“What a fucking day. Can’t believe I’m in a suit. James would have wanted us all in shorts, wouldn’t he?” Rob tugged at his black tie. It was only when I looked closer, I saw it had tiny reindeer stamped all over it.
I pulled it out from his chest and raised a single eyebrow.
He slapped my hand away and smoothed it back down. “It’s my nod to the party theme.” He rubbed his hand around the back of his neck and did a sweep of the crowd, which had swelled considerably since we arrived.
“Have you spoken to her yet?” Rob leaned his head in the direction of Maddie.
I shook my head. “Not really. But when I do, I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Lies, all lies.