by Beth O'Leary
I come home from work one night in January and find Dylan sprawled on the sofa, watching Dad’s latest documentary. He’s staying in an Airbnb while he flat-hunts, but he’s here most nights. Already smiling, I kick my shoes off in the hall.
‘You must come and try fly-fishing at ours,’ Dylan is saying as I come into the room. He sips from one of our most chipped mugs – clearly Mum doesn’t see him as a guest any more. ‘My family has fishing rights for a stretch of the Avon, and they go to waste. My brother and I proved disappointingly poor sportsmen. Luke could never be doing with it and I didn’t have the patience,’ he says ruefully, scratching the back of his head.
My dad blinks a few times. ‘Right,’ he says. ‘Golly. Thanks.’
I catch my mum’s eye. She’s tidying up around the living room – my mum is always bending down to pick up an errant sock or a used glass – and I watch as her lip twitches in amusement. He’s so posh, she mouths at me. I pull a face.
‘Don’t pretend you don’t love the idea of owning half a river one day,’ she whispers to me as she passes me to the kitchen.
I laugh and follow her. ‘You like him though? Right?’
‘Why do you keep asking me that?’ she says, loading the dishwasher.
I move to help her. She bats me away for putting a cereal bowl in the bottom instead of the top.
‘I just . . . I want you to like him.’
‘Well, I do.’ She looks at me shrewdly. ‘Do you want me to say he can stay here until he finds his own place, instead of hopping around all those short-term rentals?’
I blink, startled. ‘Whoa.’
‘He’s here all the time anyway, sweets,’ she says, straightening up and wiping her hands on the back of her jeans. They’re ‘mom jeans’, made of thick old denim and turned up at the bottoms. ‘Your dad and I talked about it last night.’
I say nothing. My heart flutters. Do I want that? Dylan living here? It feels . . . big.
‘Ads?’ Mum tilts her head. ‘No? You two are so inseparable, and you seem so settled together . . .’
I lean against the counter, scraping at the skin on the edge of my thumbnail. ‘Yeah. No, we are.’
She lowers her voice. ‘But you’re not feeling sure about him?’
‘No, I am, I am, it’s just . . . that time when he was away, I sort of started thinking . . . he didn’t actually like me much. Or he would have come home.’
‘He did come home, didn’t he?’
‘Yeah, but . . . not for ages. And I was starting work, and I kind of needed him here.’
‘Did you tell him you needed him?’
‘I wanted him to just . . . know,’ I say, wincing at myself.
Mum waves me out of the way so she can wipe the surface behind me. ‘You should talk to him about it and clear the air, sweetie.’
I chew my lip. Trouble is, I really raised the bar for myself in those weeks in Provence. Three weeks was just enough time to be sexy and interesting and a bit mysterious. Now Dylan’s here, on our second-hand sofa, and I’m back late from work in my worn black trousers and dowdy blouse . . . I do worry that this just isn’t very Dylan, all this. All my real-life stuff. He fell in love with Summer Addie. I’m definitely not the girl I was before the summer, but I’m not exactly Summer Addie now either, am I?
‘How do you do it?’ I ask impulsively, watching my mum tuck her hair behind her ear as she scrubs at the surfaces. ‘With Dad? I mean . . . you’ve been together for . . .’
‘Twenty-five years,’ Mum says, glancing over her shoulder with a smile. ‘And it’s all about compromise, I’d say.’
‘Like how you always let Dad watch the telly after dinner and you tidy up?’ I say, raising my eyebrows.
‘Exactly. He cooks!’
‘But you do all the thinking about what to make,’ I point out. ‘And the shop.’
She frowns. ‘We each do our fair share.’
There is no point talking to my mother about mental load. For her, Dad is the ultimate modern man because he irons his own shirts.
‘Will you at least let me wash up?’ I ask.
‘Of course!’ Mum says, passing me the rubber gloves. ‘You really are a changed woman these days. Gone is the layabout student, in comes the responsible young lady who notices the pile of dirty pans by the sink.’
I stick my tongue out at her. ‘Urgh, I don’t know,’ I say, turning on the hot tap. ‘I don’t know why I’m holding back. I’ll ask him about moving in for a bit.’
‘Only if you’re absolutely sure, sweets – you’ve got a whole life ahead of you, there’s no need to rush things. Oh, Addie, careful with that plate, it was your grandmother’s . . .’
I let her step in and wash up the plate I am not qualified for.
‘But I don’t think you need to worry about him not being as interested as you are,’ Mum continues. ‘He hardly leaves your side.’
‘Can I help?’ Dylan says from the doorway.
Mum gives me a significant look, as if Dylan coming in to help with the dishes is a sign he can’t bear to be parted from me.
‘I’m home!’ Deb yells through the house, slamming the front door. ‘Is the Addie shadow here? Oh, good, hi, Dylan. I need your help with a job application. Can you read it through for me and make it sound, you know . . .’ She chucks her bag down in the corner of the kitchen. ‘More clever?’
‘The Addie shadow?’ Dylan repeats, half laughing.
Deb waves that off, tsking as she finds no clean glasses in the cupboard. She heads for the dishwasher. ‘Damn, is that running?’
‘You’re welcome,’ Mum says mildly.
‘Addie’s shadow, like . . . I follow her around in a sinister fashion?’ Dylan asks.
‘No, just like you’re attached to her ankle,’ Deb says. ‘I’ll have to use a mug – Dad! Dad! Have you got my French bulldog mug through there?’
‘No,’ Dad roars from the living room.
‘You left it under your desk,’ Mum says. ‘I cleared it up this morning. It’s in the dishwasher.’
‘Under the desk?’ I ask.
‘Attached to her ankle?’ Dylan repeats, his brow furrowing.
‘When’s Cherry arriving?’ Deb asks.
‘Tomorrow,’ Dad calls, in a loaded sort of way. Dad’s sulking because when Cherry stays he has to clear out of his ‘study’, the box room at the front of the house that he’s filled with crap. Parts of train and aeroplane models, old issues of The Beano, laptops that died but for some reason must not be thrown away. Dad hates guests coming. It gives Mum the perfect excuse to tell him to clear out the junk.
‘Do you think I’m clinging to your ankles?’ Dylan asks me, with a very sweet frown.
My heart seems to open up for a moment, and everything suddenly feels simple. I loop my arms around his neck and kiss him on the lips.
‘I think you should cancel the Airbnb.’
He pulls back. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Mum says you can stay here while you wait to buy a flat.’
‘Ooh,’ says Deb, shoving past us. ‘Dylan’s moving in!’
My cheeks go red. ‘Not moving in,’ I say, already regretting it a bit. ‘He stays over most nights anyway.’
Dylan blinks his long eyelashes at me. Just as the worry starts to bloom in my belly he wraps me up and presses kisses to my cheeks, my forehead, my neck. I laugh, wriggling in his arms.
‘Thank you,’ he says, lifting his head to speak to my mum. ‘That’s so kind of you and Neil.’ He lowers his mouth to mine again, then presses his lips to my ear. ‘And thank you,’ he whispers.
‘Wait until you’ve stayed a few weeks,’ I say, pulling away, but smiling. ‘You’ll be so sick of Dad’s snoring through the wall and Deb banging around the kitchen at five in the morning, you’ll be out the door like a shot.’
Dylan collects Cherry from the station. I have no idea where he magicked the car up from. One day he just . . . had one. Brand new and smelling of that flowery air-freshener made by people who have clearly only heard about roses and lilies second-hand.
Cherry turns up on my parents’ doorstep looking like the perfect public-school princess, as usual. Her hair is in a simple high ponytail and she looks like she isn’t wearing any make-up, but I know how much time and effort – and how many products – go into giving that impression. Cherry and I shared a room in second year at uni. There isn’t much we don’t know about each other. Boundaries were blurred. Lines were crossed. Knickers were borrowed.
She throws herself towards me over the threshold. As we hug, we do that squealing thing girls do in American high-school films. That was a joke, once, but we definitely ditched the sense of irony a while back.
‘Addie! God, I’ve missed you!’
‘Come in,’ I say, tugging her inside. ‘Dad’s decluttered your room again.’
Cherry’s often here. Her parents are even more eccentric than she is: if she’s home for more than a week or two they usually rope her into doing something totally bizarre, like knitting a mile-long scarf for charity or helping to rehome a load of nuns.
‘I hope Neil left me a model aeroplane to do again,’ Cherry says, heading for the study. She sits and bounces on the bed, looking around happily. ‘Home!’ she says. ‘Well. One of them. One of my favourite ones. Oh! Mr and Mrs Gilbert!’
‘Welcome back, sweet,’ Mum says as Cherry bounds towards them for hugs.
My parents love Cherry. Everyone loves Cherry. Not loving Cherry is like hating puppies.
‘I’ll put the kettle on, shall I?’ Cherry says, shoving Dylan out of her way with her hip. ‘We have so much to talk about.’
She’s already on her way through to the kitchen. We all follow in her wake.
‘I am such a good matchmaker,’ Cherry tells Mum as she fills the kettle. ‘Didn’t I tell you I’d find Addie someone?’
I frown. ‘I didn’t need—’
‘And it’s a good job you spent your summer in France,’ she says, waggling a finger at me, ‘because teaching? There’s no men in teaching.’
‘There are!’ I say, laughing. ‘Our head teacher is a man.’
Cherry rolls her eyes, flicking on the kettle. ‘Oh, of course the head is a man. I bet he’s old and dull.’
‘He’s young and interesting, actually,’ I tell her, pointing her to the mug cupboard. ‘And hot.’
‘Ooh! Set me up?’ Cherry says, digging around. ‘Where’s Deb’s bulldog mug? Has she locked it away?’
‘Are you always this loud?’ Deb asks, appearing in the kitchen doorway. ‘I don’t remember you being this loud.’
‘Deb!’ Cherry runs in for a hug and then stops short, socks skidding on the lino. ‘No hug! I remember. Hi! You look so pretty!’
Deb smiles. ‘Hey, Cherry. You can have my mug. It’s in the bottom drawer, inside the spare washing-up bowl.’
Cherry spins on her heels with a quiet yes and a fist-pump and heads for the drawer.
‘What?’ Deb says, as we all stare at her. ‘You try saying no to that woman.’
Dylan
Young and interesting and hot?
I take the tea Cherry offers me and she scans my face for a moment, turning serious; she knows me too well.
‘OK?’ she mouths.
I smile, forcing the fear back to wherever it reared up from, dark and grasping. ‘Of course.’
She looks unconvinced, but then Deb starts complaining about the fact that Addie’s mother now insists on the purchase of skimmed milk, rather than their usual semi-skimmed, and a debate begins about whether full fat is green top or blue top, and Cherry is lost to me again.
I swallow, cupping the tea between my palms, watching Addie. She’s wearing her favourite dungarees, and her dark hair is still in the lopsided bun she slept in; she’s all unkempt and wild and at-home. It’s perhaps the Addie-est she has ever looked, here with her family clattering around her, and I feel terrifyingly sure that every man in the world must be in love with her.
Young and interesting and hot, she said. I’ve never even heard her mention the head teacher before. I do recall her saying that the senior staff were very supportive, but I think I had assumed they were all middle-aged women.
My phone buzzes in my pocket and I wince – it will be my father. I ignored his last phone call, letting it ring and ring in my hand, watching his name bobbing on the screen like a fishing lure on the water.
‘No way!’ Cherry is saying. ‘The lady across the road? The one with all the ear piercings?’
‘Yes! That one!’ Addie says, doubling over, laughing so hard her cheeks are turning rose-pink.
‘And what about the cat?’ Cherry says, eyes wide.
‘Shipped off to her mum’s,’ Addie’s mother says, laughing. ‘Haven’t seen it since!’
They all crack up – even Addie’s dad is chortling, and I’ve only ever seen him laughing when sportspeople fall over on the television. I wish I caught the beginning of the story instead of spending the last five minutes inside the tortured labyrinth of my own brain.
I ease my phone out of my back pocket and check it.
Call me. You can’t be serious about this Chichester nonsense. You need to come home and start doing something with your life, for God’s sake.
I swallow.
‘You OK?’ Addie asks, glancing down at my phone.
I switch it off quickly, turning the screen black. ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Just my dad, on at me to view another property.’
Addie laughs. ‘Listen to you. Property. You’re such a grown-up.’
Me, the grown-up? Every day she comes home from work and kicks off her shoes with a groan, pulling her hair out of its bun, and then she tells me all about the kids who refused to hand over the cigarettes they rolled on their lunch hour, and I try to say something helpful and supportive, but truly I feel like a fraud. Addie’s in the real world. I don’t even know what the real world is. The dread is tugging at me again, and in its way the fear of it is almost as bad as the dread itself.
My phone buzzes again: Marcus this time.
Hello?? You still out there? I’ve forgotten what you look like, my friend.
I feel an unmistakable twinge of guilt – since getting back to the UK, I’ve not seen Marcus as often as I should.
Come over tonight? I have something really cool to show you and it would be nice to actually spend some time?
‘What d’you think?’ Addie asks me.
‘Hey? Sorry,’ I say, shaking my hair out of my eyes. ‘I missed that.’
Addie huffs through her nose. ‘Are you writing a poem in there?’ she asks, pointing at my forehead.
‘Something like that.’
‘Give me the line and I’ll find you a rhyme, Dyl!’ Cherry yells across the kitchen, popping the toaster down.
I have tried many times to explain to Cherry that poems do not always have to rhyme, but she is not to be persuaded.
‘Thanks, but I’m good, Cherry.’
‘Cherry! Berry! Very!’ Cherry chants, ducking under Deb’s arm to get the margarine out of the fridge. ‘Derry! Kerry! Merry!’
‘Does she have a volume switch?’ Addie’s dad asks her mum.
‘She winds down eventually,’ Addie’s mum says fondly. ‘She’s just excited.’
‘Could we take her for a walk, or something?’ Addie’s dad suggests, with some desperation.
‘We were talking about what we’re going to do tonight,’ Addie tells me, voice raised over the noise. ‘Wine, a film? Cherry bingo – we drink every time she exclaims something?’
I want to. I don’t want to let Addie out of my sight even for a moment; I know on some level that I’m still paying fo
r that time away, or perhaps not paying for it but earning it back. But there’s that text from Marcus. It would be nice to actually spend some time?
‘I’m seeing Marcus this evening,’ I say. ‘I’m really sorry.’
An expression flickers on Addie’s face. Not quite irritation, but perhaps something related to it – disappointment? Churlishness? She turns away so fast I can’t tell.
‘Cool, no worries,’ she says, heading out of the kitchen, slipping away.
Joel, Marcus’s dad, played for Arsenal in his youth, earning over fifty thousand pounds a week, and the house he built himself is designed to demonstrate that fact in every possible way. The mansion has an aura of forced glamour, of blaring, teeth-gritted, garish extravagance. The taps are made of gold – not just gold-coloured, but built from real, solid gold – and the bannisters are wrought iron, twisted into the repeated symbol of the Arsenal badge.
I’ve been to Marcus’s house so many times that I’ve stopped noticing how absurd it all is – the gigantic walk-in wardrobe in every bedroom, the cinema in the basement, the theme-park-style slide in the back garden. I have to consciously stop and take a moment to appreciate the sheer and disgusting decadence of it all.
‘You’re late,’ Marcus says, making his way down the grand staircase. ‘You missed dinner. India dropped around tacos.’
India is Marcus’s stepmother. She’s half Joel’s age and a former backing singer for Miley Cyrus; she built an empire on selling vegan dog treats, and her Instagram following is over two million. Marcus’s mother died when he was five, and India arrived on the scene a mere six months later. There are hundreds of reasons why Marcus would despise her, but once you meet India, you quickly realise why he loves her so much. Or rather, why he did, once.
India is loud, kind and straightforward to the point of rudeness. When Marcus was a teenager they would have screaming matches, veins popping in their foreheads, arguments so loud and vicious you’d never think they could reach any sort of resolution, and then somehow, miraculously, India would get an apology out of Marcus for whatever he’d done, and they’d be playing golf together again. This is how Marcus’s family worked, until, in our first year of university, India left Joel for Joel’s brother.