Rachel Ryan's Resolutions

by Laura Starkey

  ‘This gets better and better,’ Anna said, looking at Will in a way that made Rachel fear for his safety. ‘How do you “just know”?’

  Will rolled his eyes at her. Under the circumstances, Rachel considered this semi-suicidal.

  ‘I’ve known him since we were twelve, Anna. He’s my brother from another mother. And look at the evidence: when was the last time he had a proper girlfriend? How much has he hated everyone Rachel’s ever dated? How close did he come to laying one on Loser Laurence the night he turned up in here? He was prepared to fake a relationship for a night so she could save face. He helped to organise her birthday party. And he always remembers to buy her prawn cocktail crisps.’

  It was in rare moments like this that Rachel understood how Will had ended up becoming a lawyer.

  ‘I mean, Tom’s my best mate and everything – but I think the question here is less how did I know than how the hell did you girls not know?’

  This was too much for Anna and she poked him in the ribs. He yelped and laughed, ‘Calm down, Scrappy-Doo. You don’t get to be right about everything. Just, like, ninety per cent of things.’

  ‘Are you sure about this, Will?’ Rachel asked. ‘I’ve thought he might be seeing someone. There was … well. There was what seemed like a mystery date, plus this rose-smelling stuff in your bathroom.’

  ‘Rach, I’ve never been surer,’ Will said. ‘The only dates he’s been on lately are with his rather unexpected little brother … Trips to Camden Market and other such places. You met him, didn’t you? Oscar? Tom told me he vommed on you, as well as on the sitting room rug. And if you mean that glass jar of gubbins on the window ledge, it was Alice’s – my sister’s. She left it last time she stayed on the futon after a weekend of West End shopping. Come on Rach,’ Will went on. ‘He looks at you like …’

  Like you’re the sun coming up …

  In a flash, Rachel remembered Jack’s words, spoken with scorn on the night of her birthday. She finally believed them. She just hoped they hadn’t come back to her too late.

  ‘Okay, but what do I do?’ Rachel said, not waiting for Will to finish. She already knew the answer.

  ‘You get your arse to Soho, of course!’ Anna screeched, confirming it. ‘NOW! WHY AREN’T YOU MOVING ALREADY?’

  Rachel nodded, then jumped up and ran for the door.

  It was only when Rachel arrived at the gallery on Greek Street that she realised she was hideously underdressed. The event wasn’t black-tie or anything, but everywhere she looked there were women in tiny designer dresses and men in jeans that probably cost a week’s rent. There were actual bouncers on the door.

  Bollocks. Her tea-dress-and-Doc-Martens combo was fine for the office, but entirely inappropriate for cool events full of photographers, journalists and famous people. Also, the majority of her make-up had melted off on the Tube and her hair had gone past the textured, sexy stage, crossing the border into ‘eighties tribute act’ territory.

  Dev – looking sharp as ever in a grey double-breasted suit – raised his eyebrows at her as one of the bouncers got ready to stop her from going in. ‘She’s okay, Mike. I think …’

  His eyes followed her as she pushed into the first room of the exhibition. Tom’s photographs, blown up in black and white and carefully hung on the clean walls, sat next to her biographies of each participant. The quotations she’d been asked to pull out were printed larger and dotted around the walls and up the stairs. They brought everything together, telling the story of the show and what it meant in just the way she’d hoped.

  The photographs were incredible. As Rachel wandered through the room, then up to the next floor, she briefly forgot she was looking for Tom; she was transfixed by what he – they – had put together, and she was glad she wasn’t missing it.

  Here was Zack, vivacious and smiling in his YSL suit. Here was an MP whose campaign to end the use of airbrushed images in advertising for children had recently made the news. Here was a body positivity campaigner: an Instagram influencer whose photographs of her tummy rolls, cellulite and body hair had garnered her more than a million followers.

  And here was Jessica: slender, pretty and wide-eyed in the childlike pose Rachel remembered from the shoot. It was odd, seeing her and feeling unmoved by envy or anger – but where bitterness used to be, Rachel found something approaching understanding. Jessica was just a person, not the femme fatale of Rachel’s worst imaginings, nor a standard she had to be measured against. She smiled.

  By the time she reached the third floor, she’d begun sweating. What was she going to say when she saw Tom? What was he going to say when she found the words to tell him how she felt?

  And where the hell was he?

  She went all the way up to the fifth floor and still couldn’t find him. Rachel felt herself starting to panic. This wasn’t the sort of place where he could have slunk past without her seeing him. Perhaps he’d decided not to come to the press night in case she turned up. Maybe he was missing his own exhibition simply for the sake of avoiding her … In which case, it seemed to Rachel, there was surely no chance of convincing him they could be happy together.

  Despair welled in Rachel’s stomach and pushed up into her throat, forming a thick lump that she couldn’t swallow away. She wandered down the gallery’s spiralling staircases, willing herself not to cry.

  She was tired of crying. She wondered how, after the past few weeks, she could possibly have any tears left.

  When she reached the ground floor, her last hope of finding Tom was extinguished. He wasn’t here. Feeling bereft, she left the gallery and stood on the pavement outside.

  Press night guests were wafting in and out, some leaving the event for cigarette breaks, others clustering near the entrance to pose for pictures. Rachel tore her eyes away from an influencer couple hugging and kissing for a tabloid paparazzo. That was it, she decided. She couldn’t take any more.

  She turned in the direction of Leicester Square station, then stopped before she took a single step. Tom was standing in front of her, dressed in his usual jeans, trainers and well-worn T-shirt. And he was carrying a huge, thin, rectangular thing. A last-minute addition for the exhibition? Maybe he’d had some printing emergency, and that was why he wasn’t all dressed up.

  Rachel’s heart swelled at the sight of him – grew so big inside her chest she was scared it might crush her lungs. How could she ever have thought he was just her friend?

  His grey-blue eyes were wide and wary.

  ‘Are you leaving?’ he asked.

  ‘I was. You weren’t there,’ Rachel said. ‘I’m glad I saw the show – it’s brilliant. You should be proud of it. I’m proud of it. But … I didn’t come to look at the photographs. I came to see you.’

  ‘You did?’

  ‘Yes. I came to see you because … because I’ve been too stupid to see you. So stupid, for so bloody long.’

  Her eyes had filled with tears and her voice was wobbling in her throat. But if she didn’t say this now, she’d never forgive herself.

  ‘I love you, and not just as a friend. I think that, in some quiet corner of my head – no, my heart – you’ve been more than a friend to me for a really long time. I just couldn’t let myself admit it. I’d got so good at shoving my feelings away that I pushed this away too. Maybe I was scared – maybe I thought I’d lose you forever if you didn’t feel the same. But I can’t believe how blind I’ve been.’

  Rachel looked at Tom, her eyes travelling from his blondish curls to his tightly folded arms, then back up to those thousand-coloured eyes and NHS-style specs. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest as she suddenly understood.

  ‘It’s like Clark Kent and Superman,’ she said.

  Tom made a quizzical face.

  ‘They can’t occupy the same space,’ Rachel went on. ‘And I think … you being such an important friend to me, and me being in love with you – I couldn’t reconcile those things. Clark and Superman are never seen in a room together, are they?’ she said.
‘And yet it turns out …’

  Tears spilled from her eyes as she said it out loud: ‘It turns out that they are, and always have been, one and the same person.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me I’m your Superman?’ Tom asked. But he was smiling. Soft and gentle and smiling, with his kind eyes and his crooked smile and his dimpled bottom lip that, suddenly, powerfully, she wanted to kiss.

  ‘I think that’s stretching the metaphor a bit far, but I suppose so,’ Rachel said.

  ‘What about Jack?’

  ‘Ugh. Who? From the moment you fake-kissed me on my birthday, Jack may as well have disappeared … He’s back in Manchester now, thank God. For reasons I’ll bore you with another time, the senior management at R/C – and Mountaintop – thought it better that he return to his old job.’

  ‘I didn’t fake-kiss you,’ Tom said. Bright-pink blotches had appeared on his cheeks. ‘I kissed you because I was so incredibly exhausted with the effort of not kissing you. But the situation was all wrong, and I thought you were fake-kissing me.’

  ‘I wasn’t,’ Rachel said, shaking her head. ‘There was nothing fake about me trying to get you in a headlock after you stepped away from me … Much to my own surprise, I just really, really wanted to snog you.’

  Tom laughed and Rachel moved forward a couple of paces.

  ‘Do you still want to?’ he asked, raising an eyebrow.

  She took his hand in hers and looked up at him with an answering grin. ‘Obviously.’

  Then his arms were around her and they were crushed together, but his lips were so gentle on hers that it made her want to weep. She kissed him harder, pushing his mouth open with her lips.

  She loved him, she loved him, she loved him. Of course she did.

  ‘You’re going to give me a heart attack and I haven’t even said my bit yet,’ Tom whispered when they broke apart. His head was still bent down, his forehead resting on hers.

  ‘Your bit?’

  ‘Yes. My bit. I went to the Hope tonight, to find you. I figured you wouldn’t come here after I’d ignored you for three weeks – that I needed to make some sort of … gesture. To apologise for freezing you out when you’d tried to open up to me. Anna looked like she might actually murder me when she said they’d sent you here.’

  Rachel laughed, then asked, ‘What sort of gesture?’

  Tom bent down to pick up the huge rectangular thing that he’d rested against the wall of the building they were next to. He pulled off the tape that was holding its brown paper wrapping in place, then turned it to face her.

  It was a photograph of her.

  ‘It’s one of the test shots I did from the shoot with Zack,’ Tom explained. ‘You refused to look at them, remember? This one is my favourite … You’re so beautiful in it, because you look natural, real … Like who you really are.’

  In the A3 image, her big brown eyes were gleeful and alive – full of wit, as if she was about to make a joke. Her skin was smooth and creamy, and her lips were parted in a half-smile. Her hair tumbled over one shoulder, an unruly mass of shining auburn waves.

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ Rachel said.

  Tom grinned. ‘Say I’m your Superman again.’

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ Rachel said, shoving him, then raised herself onto her tiptoes to smile up at his face.

  ‘Gladly,’ he whispered, and bent down to kiss her again.

  August

  New Year’s Ongoing resolutions

  1. Consider exercise an act with actual benefits – both mental and physical – not merely grim punishment for pizzas consumed. Have a proper go at Continue letting Greg drag me to yoga. provided he refrains from making snide comments re Jack/me and Jack. Give up trying to control subject matter discussed over dinner.

  2. Also re-download Complete Couch to 5K running app and actually do the programme. Keep running at least twice per week, sometimes with hot boyfriend who it’s totally fine to ogle. – always being careful not to perv on anyone improper.

  3. Apply for promotion at work at first chance. Move to bigger account and try to get pay rise. Avoid, if possible, further projects concerning dog biscuits, disinfectant, high-quality printer ink cartridges, ‘miracle’ grass seed, organic vegetables, etc.

  3a. Try to enjoy job without stressing about it so much. (and temper) despite idiocy of gossipy colleagues. presence of evil ex-boyfriend hideousness control-freakery of certain clients.

  3b. Ignore everyone who keeps banging on about how fit he Jack is.

  3c. Ignore how fit he is.

  3d. Ignore the fact he keeps trying to be friendly/nice/possibly quite flirtatious is openly trying to shag me.

  3e. Ignore the fact he is getting divorced.

  4. DO NOT agree to further dates with Laurence. Remember: it’s no use having a boyfriend who is good on paper if you do not actually fancy him.

  4. Forget that Laurence even EXISTS (despite usefulness of overblown ‘romantic’ gestures for creating illusion of deeply devoted boyfriend. Try not to spin any more tales re ‘boyfriend’ though – don’t want story to get too complicated … ) – situation is already quite complicated enough.

  5. Try to remember Mum means well – she just wants me to be happy, even during phone calls where she implies I am doomed to a lonely life of penury because I am thirty with no partner, hardly any savings and no mortgage insists on talking about the babies/breasts of people I went to school with.

  6. HOWEVER, do not (!!!) speak to Mum when suffering PMT. Set phone alerts for likely spells based on period tracker intel.

  7. Try to address ‘hardly any savings’ situation. (If promoted, set aside extra earnings for future house deposit instead of spaffing it all on ASOS.) (Do not spend entire pay rise on ‘cheer up’ treats to distract from heinous ex-boyfriend mess.) hot new outfits for work – see 3c.)

  8. Try to eat my five-a-day. (Remember horrid rule that potatoes do not count.)

  9. Start using proper night cream with retinol. SERIOUSLY. Regularly apply retinol cream purchased from Boots in pursuit of perfect, Dev-style skin.

  10. Do the best possible job helping Tom with exhibition. Be supportive and discreet re Oscar. Avoid arguing with Tom about Jack. Sort things out with Tom somehow. Kiss Tom as often as is humanly possible.

  11. Be a good friend (and bridesmaid) to Anna. Help with wedding organisation and keep selfish, sad worries about how much I’ll miss her to myself.

  12. Find a way to end fake boyfriend pretence before it causes any more problems.

  Epilogue

  It was a beautiful wedding. Will’s grandfather’s estate was lush, gorgeous and green in the late-August sunshine. Champagne had been flowing endlessly for hours, and the band was playing what Will had charmingly termed ‘the erection section’: a series of romantic songs for slow-dancing.

  Anna and Will were happier than Rachel had ever seen them. Anna was glowing: a tiny, almost fluorescent ball of joy ricocheting around the gardens and kissing everyone she met. Will was as laid-back as ever, but happiness seemed to be seeping out of him – rolling off him in gentle waves.

  ‘It’s been a lovely day,’ Rachel said into Tom’s shoulder.

  ‘It has,’ he said, pulling her closer as they danced. ‘And you are lovely too. I’ll have to make sure Oscar never sees you in this dress – he’d probably offer to duel me in the street for you. He still isn’t over his crush.’

  ‘Ah, this old thing?’ Rachel shrugged, gesturing at the green chiffon shift that – even she had to admit – was giving her major Joan Holloway vibes. ‘I’m lucky Anna picked me such a stunning outfit. You should have seen me in the peach death-shroud I almost ended up with … You’d have had nightmares for a week.’

  ‘Like you did with The Blair Witch Project?’ he snickered.

  ‘I think that might have been a fortnight, actually.’

  Tom looked stupidly handsome in his navy-blue suit. His eyes were more bright and beautiful than ever – almost flamboyantly so, since he’d sta
rted wearing his new contacts.

  He caught her peering at him. ‘Are you checking me out?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Superman mode’s working for me, then?’ He pointed at his lack of spectacles and smiled wolfishly.

  ‘I kind of miss your glasses, actually. I always thought they were cute.’

  ‘Come on, pick a side: sexy or specs-y?’

  He whirled her around the parquet floor of the marquee. The band had moved on to a Motown set and was playing Marvin Gaye’s ‘Let’s Get It On’.

  ‘Am I the glasses-wearing pal you call in a jam,’ Tom asked, ‘or the planet-saving hottie you’re madly in love with? You have to decide.’

  ‘The thing is …’ Rachel replied, reaching up to kiss his face. She would never get tired of kissing this face.

  ‘The thing is that, with you, I really don’t.’

  Acknowledgements

  I always hoped that one day I’d get to write a list of people I’d like to thank at the end of my first published novel. Now I have the opportunity, of course, I’m bricking it. What if I do it all wrong?

  I will wade in and begin, though, by thanking the whole Embla team. Endless gratitude to everyone who has worked with me on Rachel Ryan’s Resolutions, especially my super-smart and talented editor Jane Snelgrove. You’ve made my first experience of authoring so enjoyable and exciting, and I couldn’t have asked for better support.

  To Kate Hordern, my unflappable agent: thank you for keeping your head while all about you (i.e. me) were losing theirs. Your experience and insight have been invaluable, as was your insistence that this book COULD be finished despite a global pandemic, a national lockdown and the horrors of home schooling. Your enthusiasm for this story powered me through many early mornings and late nights of writing. Were it not for your regular emails demanding more of the manuscript, I’m not entirely convinced I’d have finished it.

  Thanks to Tom Bromley, my tutor at the Faber Academy, and to all of my classmates. You were the first people I allowed to read my ramblings after around 15 years of procrastination, and your kind and thoughtful comments meant the world to me.