The Valentines

by Holly Smale

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I reassure Jamie quickly, grabbing his hands and squeezing them. ‘It’s not easy to get the words right, so any old way is fine. I’ll be totally cool whatever.’

  JAMIE

  Hope—

  HOPE

  YES! YES, I’ll go out with you already! YES, YES, YES, YOU FOOL!

  Probably.

  ‘Wow,’ Jamie breathes, visibly relaxing. ‘You really are something else, you know that? I’ve never met anyone like you. You’re so balanced, so awesome, so chilled. I never expected to connect with someone so fast.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I lie happily. ‘Who saw it coming? Not me.’

  Jamie touches my face and here we go, here we go, here we go—

  ‘Hope—’

  ‘YES!’ Squeezing my eyes shut, I fling my arms round his neck and the foot’s coming, the foot’s coming, the foot’s – pop. ‘YES, I’LL GO OUT WITH YOU ALREADY. YES, YES, YES, YOU FOOL!’

  ‘I’m really gonna miss you.’

  There’s a pause; we just talked over each other.

  Jamie and I pull quickly apart, scene screeching abruptly to a halt.

  Wait.

  What?

  Cut.

  Cut cut cut cut cut cut—

  ‘Wait. What? Where am I going?’

  ‘Not you.’ Jamie blinks twice. ‘Me. I’m going home, back to California. Where I live. You know that, Hope. You’ve always known that.’

  Cut. Cut. Freaking cut.

  I stare at him blankly. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  ‘You have. I told you I was Californian on the train, during our first-ever conversation. I have school to go back to. I’m only here on vacation with my parents. What did you think I was doing?’

  I mean, I didn’t think.

  Obviously, I was far too busy falling in love to bother with logistics. I also kind of assumed that, if there was an imminent deadline for the credits rolling, I’d have been alerted to it somehow.

  Otherwise, what was the point of this whole week?

  What have we been doing?

  ‘I thought you’d left school already,’ I say in a weirdly small voice. ‘At sixteen, like we can in England. I thought you worked for that charity with the houses and the pool and maybe you moved over here to start the English head office. Or you had sick grandparents who happened to live in London, but would eventually die and I’d be very supportive, but you’d inherit and live here forever.’

  ‘You made up a random set of rich Brit grandparents for me?’

  ‘That’s no more random than coming all the way to England for a break,’ I bridle defensively. ‘Why would anybody come to England out of choice? It’s boring and rainy and not even the holidays.’

  ‘It is in America, actually.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Man.’ Jamie breathes out. ‘Hope, I’ve had the most awesome time with you. If I was staying here, or if you were in California, then things would be completely different. I’d date you in a hot second. You’d be my girlfriend so fast your head would spin. You’re basically my perfect girl. I adore you.’

  He’s smiling, but my head is already spinning.

  I’m trying to hold on to the fact that he just called me perfect, but all I can think is that I should have asked some smarter questions. Any at all would have been handy. Was I supposed to just guess we had an expiry date from the start?

  ‘So you’re not my boyfriend?’

  Maybe this is a dream sequence. Maybe I’m in a coma, or it’s an alternative timeline, or – or—

  ‘I’m not your girlfriend? We’re … nothing at all?’

  My chest is starting to ache. No no no no.

  ‘Hope. Listen.’ Jamie puts two hands gently on either side of my face. ‘We will never be nothing. Never. What we’ve shared, the connection we’ve had, the moments we’ve experienced … we will always have them. I’ll never forget you. Never.’

  My chin is wobbling out of control. ‘But am I ever going to see you again?’

  ‘Of course. I mean, I’m not sure when – can’t imagine I’ll be back in England any time soon, I’ve kinda done it now – but, if you’re ever in America, be sure to look me up, OK?’ He strokes my cheek softly. ‘I can’t imagine not seeing your lovely face again.’

  My throat makes a weird little whimpering sound.

  ‘Maybe,’ I blurt as Jamie continues gazing at me with his electric-blue eyes, ‘there’s an alternative universe where there’s a girl called Hope and a boy called Jamie who live in the same place. And, every time we look up at the stars at night, we’ll see them, happy together?’

  He smiles and kisses my trembling top lip. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And maybe the universe has a plan for us that we can’t see yet. It’ll bring us back together when the time is right – we’ll randomly bump into each other at, like, a party and we’ll remember how much we mean to each other – it’ll be like we’ve never been apart?’

  ‘Yes.’ Jamie kisses my nose.

  ‘And we can still message each other and call and maybe send little gifts sometimes?’

  ‘Of course we can. I’ll always want to hear from you, baby.’

  ‘But I’m still not your girlfriend?’

  ‘Well.’ Jamie grimaces. ‘I can’t really see how that would work, what with the distance and everything.’ He smiles and strokes my hair. ‘But who knows what the future will bring? I can’t imagine never seeing you again, Hope. What a pointless life that would be.’

  And that was all I needed: just a little bit of hope.

  Enough to hang my heart on.

  ‘Don’t be sad,’ Jamie whispers as I close my eyes. ‘It would break me to see you cry.’

  Then he reaches forward and – with the sleeve of his jumper – wipes my dry cheek tenderly.

  And it feels like I’m melting again. Except it suddenly occurs to me that actually melting probably isn’t very nice. It would hurt and be confusing and afterwards there’d be nothing left of you at all.

  Valentines Always Act With Class Valentines Always Act With Class Valentines Always Act—

  ‘So,’ I say, lifting my chin bravely. ‘When do you leave? How much time do we have left?’

  ‘None. I’m leaving for the airport now.’

  And that’s it.

  The curtain’s down, the reel has stopped running, the lights are off, the cinema is emptying.

  My epic romance is over.

  ‘Hope?’

  I keep walking.

  ‘Hope?’

  And walking.

  ‘Hope Valentine, it’s a Saturday, but I insist that you take a lesson at some point this week. I’m in the paid employment of your parents, exams are approaching and I cannot impress on you enough the importance of education. Not only in preparing you for a rounded future but in arming you with knowledge and skills with which to—’

  I blink and slowly turn towards the library.

  At some point I must have said goodbye to Jamie and then walked through the park, down the road, through the electric gates, up the driveway, through the front door and into the hallway. Mr Gilbert is standing in the doorway – grey hair on end, eyebrows bushy and anxious – waiting for me to answer him.

  ‘Sure,’ I say numbly. ‘Why not? Let’s do some schoolwork.’

  Without another word, I walk into the library and sit down.

  ‘Ah …’ Mr Gilbert looks startled. ‘Oh. Now? Right! Let me just … ah.’ He starts scrambling through a large pile of books on the table. ‘Maths? History? Biology? Physics? What strikes your fancy, Hope? We’ve got quite a lot to catch up on so …’

  I glance at my lesson books: dull and pointless.

  Then I look up at Sophia and Olivia and Madison, but the chairs are all empty; there’s nobody there because there never actually was.

  ‘I don’t care.’ My voice is flat. ‘You pick.’

  ‘Oh.’ My tutor blinks at my blank expression, then at the table. ‘Well, last time you seemed quite interested
in poor old Elaine, so why don’t we …’ Muttering, he grabs a poetry collection off the shelf.

  ‘Ah …’ He opens the book and scans it with a finger. ‘In that case, why don’t I quickly read her poem out loud, get us back into the swing of things?’

  Mr Gilbert pauses anxiously and I shrug. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Then, uh.’ He clears his throat. ‘Umm. The Lady of Shalott by Alfred, Lord Tennyson. On either side the river lie long fields of barley and of rye, that clothe the wold and meet the sky …’

  My eyes glide over my tutor’s shoulder to stare blankly at the dark oily painting: her pale, closed face, her curled blonde hair, the scattered flowers.

  What the hell am I supposed to do now, Elaine?

  ‘… There she weaves by night and day a magic web with colours …’

  Jamie’s gone.

  ‘… And moving thro’ a mirror clear that hangs before her all the year, shadows of the world appear …’

  One minute he’s kissing me, the next he’s disappeared.

  One minute I’m happy, thirty seconds later I’m never going to see him again.

  ‘But in her web she still delights to weave the mirror’s magic sights …’

  Although … maybe mine is the other kind of romance. Maybe it’s the tragic, star-crossed kind: ripped apart by circumstances beyond our control, joined forever by our hearts, pining for each other across oceans all our lives, never able to replace each other, never able to forget.

  ‘For often through the silent nights …’

  But I don’t want that kind of love story.

  I want a happy film: a boyfriend who lives in the same city and goes to the cinema with me at weekends. Who kisses me lots and makes me soup when I’m poorly. Who laughs when I tell jokes and who thinks I’m the most beautiful girl in the world.

  ‘… or when the moon was overhead, came two young lovers lately wed …’

  But now everything’s going to go back to exactly as it was before.

  Me, sitting here, waiting for my life to start.

  ‘“I am half sick of shadows,” said the Lady of Shal—’

  Apparently, some people get the big love story and everyone else just has to sit and watch.

  ‘Stop,’ I say abruptly, standing up. ‘Please, please stop.’

  Mr Gilbert stops. ‘Is everything—’

  ‘No, it’s not.’ The centre of my chest hurts. ‘I don’t want to listen to this. I don’t want to hear a sad poem about a sad picture painted of a sad lady with a sad story who has a sad ending that makes everyone around her sad. Why can’t we read something nice for a change? Something uplifting? Is that so difficult to find?’

  I stare at the books around me, then at poor Elaine in her gloomy painting.

  ‘All these extras,’ I say, stabbing a finger at the poem. ‘These knights and princes and whoever … They’re constantly to-ing and fro-ing in front of the tower. Couldn’t she have just gone with one of them? Like, once? Would that have been such a big deal?’

  Mr Gilbert opens his mouth.

  ‘But nooooo, she’s only allowed out in her little death boat. Because you guys won’t let anybody have a happy ending.’

  I grab the book and slam it on the desk.

  ‘Hope,’ Mr Gilbert says as I open the library door. ‘I’m not sure I totally understand what’s—’

  ‘I quit,’ I finish flatly over my shoulder. ‘Thanks for your hard work and stuff, but I’m out.’

  Then I walk heavily out of the library and up the stairs.

  My phone starts ringing – it’s Dad again – so I hang up and put it back in my pocket.

  ‘Po? Baby? What’s going on?’

  ‘Is she OK? Poodle. Poodle?’

  ‘At least she’s finally stopped twirling and sliding down the bannisters. That’s something, I guess.’

  Blinking, I push through my siblings.

  Seriously. Months, years – a decade and a half – of begging them to hang out with me and now that I finally want some time on my own, here they all are. Lurking outside my bedroom, trying to get my attention.

  Freaking actors.

  ‘It’s not Poodle,’ I say, yanking open my bedroom door. ‘It’s not Po, it’s not Poo, it’s not baby. I’m not a child and I’m not a little doll for you lot to pick up and put down every time it amuses you.’

  My siblings stare at me.

  ‘You think because I try to be happy I don’t feel sad. You think because I don’t talk about something I don’t remember. But you’re wrong. So do me a favour: take your patronising poodles and stick them where the sun don’t shine, along with your stupid heads.’

  And I shut my door in their faces.

  I’d like that last scene cut, please.

  I’m not entirely sure what just happened.

  I literally never lose my temper so I don’t think that scene does justice to the direction of my overall character development. Also, I didn’t flop on my bed, face down, and scream loudly into a pillow.

  You can edit that bit out too.

  ‘Hope?’ Ten minutes later, my door squeaks open. ‘Ba— Ummm. What other names have we got? Hoop? Hopeless?’

  I put the pillow over my head. ‘LEAVE. ME. A FREAKING LONE.’

  ‘Well, we would, but you didn’t lock the door and that means we can’t actually leave you alone, according to sibling law. You know what it says in the handbook they give us at birth: no lock, no leave.’

  ‘No bolt, no bail.’

  ‘No barricade, no … lemonade?’ They laugh.

  ‘Hey,’ Faith objects. ‘At least mine kind of rhymed.’

  My queen-size bed bounces and dips once, then twice, then a third time. After another sullen minute, I lift my head, feeling hot and crumpled. My brother is flopped across my feet like a big dog, Mercy is lying diagonally across the bed with one heel propped on top of the other and Effie has curled up to my left with her beautiful head on the small of my back.

  Sighing, I roll over until she’s resting on my stomach.

  We all stare at the ceiling in silence.

  ‘So,’ Mer says after a few minutes. ‘The American dumped you then, huh?’

  I smack Faith.

  ‘I didn’t tell her!’ she says earnestly, staring up at me with her huge hazel eyes. ‘I promise you, Po, I didn’t breathe a single word. Hand on heart.’

  ‘It didn’t take a genius to crack the code,’ Mer sighs. ‘You’ve been mooning around the house, making random speeches about love, disappearing every day and giggling noisily down the phone with a person called Jamie.’

  ‘At one point you started humming the American national anthem while cutting a breakfast waffle into a heart shape and then covering it in little strawberries,’ Max agrees. ‘Also in heart shapes.’

  ‘And your phone screensaver is you and a blond boy.’

  ‘In a Lakers hoodie.’

  ‘With ME AND JAMIE <3 <3 typed underneath in capitals.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say flatly, still staring at the ceiling. ‘Well.’ Weird, I’m normally much more subtle. ‘Yes, it’s over now, but Jamie didn’t dump me. He had to go back to America, which he told me about at the beginning. I wasn’t listening so it’s totally my fault. Don’t you dare blame him.’

  Faith grabs my hand and squeezes it. ‘I’m sorry, Po. He sounded lovely, but there’ll be other guys, I promise. In the long run, this is all going to make you so much stronger.’

  I scowl. What a terrible thing to say to someone. ‘I don’t want to be stronger. I want Jamie.’

  My bottom lip pushes out.

  ‘You’ll be OK, baby.’ Effie kisses my hand. ‘It’s your first break-up and it’s going to hurt, but every day it’ll get easier and before you know it—’

  ‘Oh my God, it was a week,’ Mercy snaps. ‘Can we put aside the Instagram mantras and get a bit of perspective here? She met him one week ago. It’s not exactly Romeo and Juliet, is it?’

  ‘No,’ Max says calmly. ‘Because Romeo and Juliet fam
ously knew each other for less than four days total and they’re generally considered one of the greatest romances of all time. Maybe try looking at things from Hope’s perspective, yeah, Merwitch?’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’ Mer growls back, looking at her watch. ‘Like literally right now?’

  Max grins and yawns. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be worn out from all the shoe throwing you did at the paparazzi last night, according to page six?’

  ‘Page seven, actually.’

  ‘You’re really starting to slip.’

  I blink at the ceiling three times.

  Then I suddenly sit up very straight. ‘Oh my gosh, Max, you’re right. That’s it.’

  ‘What’s it? What did I say? Although of course I’m right, naturally.’

  ‘The bit about looking from my perspective.’

  I stare at the posters adorning my walls: the kissing one, the dancing one, the one where she’s passed out and being carried out of flames. I look at my red velvet curtains and the gloves and the sword and the clackerboard. At a whole century of romantic movies all around me.

  This is a test.

  I was so focused on casting my male role, I forgot that at some stage I’d have to audition for the heroine too. The universe wants to see what I’m made of and whether I’ll fight for what I want. Whether I can be strong and remain true to who I really am.

  Because I am Hope Valentine.

  I’m a future legend in the making and I am not defeated by anything: not distance, not fate, not circumstance, not love, not heartbreak and certainly not by myself.

  What kind of leading lady am I anyway?

  A versatile one, that’s what.

  ‘It’s not over!’ I leap off the bed and hold my hands out. ‘I know I said it was a few minutes ago, but it was an error in my script. This is an unexpected plot twist and I’m going to roll with it because I am a professionalist.’

  My siblings stare at me with wide eyes.

  ‘Jamie loves me,’ I explain happily. ‘He told me so. And love ultimately triumphs – we all know that. It doesn’t stop because of a bit of water and a few random miles here or there.’

  Max coughs. ‘I am deeply concerned by how big you think the Atlantic Ocean is, Poodle, and whether you’re planning on building a raft out of cereal boxes.’