‘That arsehole.’ My mum dropped a slightly floppy slice of Pollo ad Astra
pizza back onto the plate and stared at me, mouth hanging wide open. ‘Why
didn’t you ring me?’
My mother and I had a standing Monday evening dinner date at Pizza
Express. We varied location to mix it up a bit but, like her daughter, Sarah
Summers was a creature of habit. On the odd occasion, we’d have company,
Simon, Emelie or Matthew usually. If it was a blue moon, my brother might
come too and, given my circumstances, he had promised he’d come along
this evening. We’d been there for an hour. No sign of him.
‘Because you would have called him an arsehole and then spent the next
three hours telling me how you always knew he wasn’t the one for me and
how this would just be the universe’s way of making room for my soul
mate,’ I said, dunking a dough ball in garlic butter. Really, there were times
when Pizza Express was all you needed in life. I’d picked the relatively
swanky Kentish Town restaurant to try and make it feel like a slightly
classier occasion. It wasn’t really working.
‘I would not,’ Mum denied vehemently, still not ready to tackle her posh
chicken pizza.
‘Really?’
‘I may, may, have suggested that everything happens for a reason,’ she
relented. ‘And actually, I know you’re going to tell me to shut up, but your
Saturn return is due to start very soon so this does make a lot of sense.
Clearing the decks, presenting you with the problems you need to solve.
Saturn always brings important life lessons.’
I was always being told how I was the double of my mum – and it was
true. Or at least it was before my makeover. We had the same blonde hair,
the same blue eyes, and I’d inherited her short stature, small boobs and dry
sense of humour. What hadn’t been passed down was her inexhaustible
ability to believe the best in people. She and my dad had met as teenagers,
fallen hopelessly in love, married within months, knocked out me and my
brother and then, after fifteen years of heart-warming bliss, my dad met a
new soul mate – his secretary – and sodded off to start a new family. Five
years later, he did it again. In two weeks, he’d be on to ‘The One’ version
4.0. Despite this, Mum remained the eternal optimist and they were still
best friends. Seriously, he regularly popped round for a cup of tea and, on
occasion, she had been known to babysit my step-siblings. It was too weird
for me but they seemed pretty happy with the arrangement. Didn’t mean she
wasn’t completely mentally imbalanced though. Once upon a time, my
mum was just a generally chipper person. Then she started saying things
like ‘everything happens for a reason’, followed by ‘the universe always
gives you what you need as long as you are open to its energies’. For the
last two years, she had moved onto the hard stuff – astrology. It wasn’t a
pretty addiction but my brother refused to be involved in the intervention. I
had explained that his ‘whatever makes her happy’ rationale would only
lead her onto worse things – Tarot cards, Ouija boards, psychics – astrology
was clearly a gateway drug.
‘He was always going to be a problem though, you knew that,’ she said
after a couple minutes of silence/me ignoring her last comment.
‘I did?’
I did?
‘Don’t you remember when I did your charts? You being a Virgo and him
a Scorpio, it was never going to work out. Opposite ends of the spectrum:
nightmare.’ She tucked back into her pizza, much happier. It was the
astrological equivalent of ‘I told you so’.
‘If we could knock off the Mystic Meg shit, that’d be fab,’ I said without
really thinking.
‘Rachel Lulu Summers,’ Mum replied just as fast. ‘We don’t swear in
restaurants.’
My mother’s appalling taste in music meant that I had suffered for
twenty-eight years. Literally a handful of people knew my middle name and
two of them were dead. Natural causes, though: I hadn’t done anything
dramatic.
‘It’s not a restaurant, it’s a Pizza Express,’ I sulked. I was a South Park Tshirt
and pair of DMs away from reverting to my 15-year-old self. If I
wasn’t careful, she was going to stop my pocket money. Or cry. Which I
just couldn’t take.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, taking a deep breath. ‘I’m out of order. You’re right, it
is for the best.’
She faux-yawned and wiped at her eyes. In case I didn’t feel horrible
enough.
‘And I won’t swear if you won’t use the “L” word.’ I pushed the plate of
dough balls over to her. The most dramatic apology known to man.
‘So you’re all right then?’ she asked, giving her nose a scratch. ‘I know
you’ve got Emelie and Matthew and whatever, but you don’t have to
pretend with me.’
‘I’m not all right,’ I admitted quietly. ‘And it’s the first time I haven’t
been, which is why it’s horrible. But I will be. Got to be, haven’t I?’
‘I don’t know where you get that attitude from,’ Mum marvelled, sitting
back in her seat and smiling. ‘You’ve always been so rational. So levelheaded.’
‘Your stellar parenting, I’m sure,’ I smiled back, nabbing one of the
dough balls.
‘I’m sure.’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘I thought I was the sarcastic one.’ I chased the dough ball with a bite of
her pizza. I always got the worst food envy.
‘Everything I know I learned from you,’ she promised. ‘But seriously, it’s
definitely over? With Simon?’
‘Definitely definitely.’ I looked around the room at all the happy couples
enjoying their mid-priced Monday-night pizza extravaganza. Bastards. ‘I
mean, he’s gone. He left a note. We talked yesterday.’
My mum really didn’t need to know about our pre-note activities. If only
because she’d probably hunt Simon down and kill him like a dog. Which
might be fun but I’d hate to have to go and visit her in prison. They were
always in the middle of nowhere.
‘I just can’t believe he’d be so heartless.’ She shook her head, tight
blonde pixie crop shimmering under the overhead lighting. ‘But you know
Scorpios, emotionally detached. Cold.’
‘Mother.’
‘Sorry.’
I stared at the last dough ball until Mum sighed and pushed the plate back
over to my side of the table. ‘I don’t know why you bother ordering
anything else. You haven’t touched your salad.’ She pointed with her fork.
Manners. ‘You are eating, aren’t you?’
‘I am,’ I said, actually trying to think when I’d last consumed solid food.
That wasn’t pizza. ‘Matthew and Emelie are taking care of me. They’re not
going to let me starve or fall asleep in the bath or do anything silly.’
‘Yeah, I can see that with the hair,’ she replied, spearing a giant piece of
tuna from my plate. ‘I can’t believe you did that to yourself.’
‘You don’t like it?’ I modelled my new bob, flourishing my hands for full
effect. ‘It’s been a bit of a hit with everyone else.’
‘Well obviously it looks lovely,’ Mum backtracked. ‘I meant I’m not
convinced they’re going to stop you from doing something stupid. As
evidenced by the fact that you just told me you hacked your own hair off
with kitchen scissors. Your lovely hair.’ She sighed loudly and took a
moment’s silence for my butchered mullet.
‘First-aid scissors,’ I corrected. ‘And it’s fine. It’s on my list.’
‘You and your silly life.’ She looked lovingly across the table. For one
silly minute, I thought it was at me.
‘Get into an argument with your hairdresser?’ I felt a hard slap on the
back of my head. ‘Or are they retraining Freddie Krueger? Care in the
community or something?’
‘Paul,’ I greeted my brother with the enthusiasm he deserved. Given that
he was ninety-seven minutes late.
‘All right Mum?’ He ducked down to give our beaming mother a kiss on
the cheek. While Mum and I could stand in for Doc and Dopey if the panto
was running out of dwarves, Paul was the opposite. He was massive, almost
as tall as Matthew and, given that Matthew was practically a genetic freak,
that was big. But his height was about the only thing he’d got from our dad.
Two sets of bright blue eyes looked at me from across the table now, and
Paul’s blond crop was almost the same style as our mum’s. Which was a bit
weird actually.
‘So, she told you she’s been dumped?’ Paul picked up a fork and started
on my salad. And Mum’s pizza. At the same time.
‘Paul, try and be a bit more sensitive to your sister.’ Mum slapped his
arm and tried not to smile. I tried not to point out that she hadn’t told him
not to swear in the restaurant. I also tried to remember I wasn’t 15. ‘She’s
had her heart broken.’
‘Yeah Paul, I’ve had my heart broken,’ I parroted, taking my salad back,
even though I didn’t want it. I had sharing issues with him, dating back to a
LEGO incident in 1989. ‘Piss off.’
‘Language, Rachel.’
‘Yeah, language, Rachel.’
The last time I’d laid eyes on Paul he was knocking Simon on his arse
outside The Phoenix but despite that Neanderthal display of brotherly love,
he was clearly not giving an inch tonight.
‘So how’s your young lady?’ Mum asked politely, signalling the waiter
so Paul could order a drink. Young lady was code for ‘that girl whose voice
I heard in the background the last time I called you and I can’t remember
her name probably because you didn’t know it’. ‘Well?’
‘Uh, fine,’ Paul evaded the question and stretched with a yawn. ‘I’m
knackered. Work’s been a bitch lately.’
‘You work in a shop selling skateboards,’ I said flatly. ‘And said shop
doesn’t open until midday. How are you knackered?’
‘Busy time of year?’ He gave a waitress a grin as she delivered his beer.
It was horrifying to watch him in action. Until he was 21, Paul had been a
skinny runt of a boy, obsessed with computer games and Lord of the Rings.
Then something terrible had happened to him – the combination of a
pneumatic blonde called Theresa and some late-blooming testosterone. For
the last ten years, he’d been burning through girls faster than he’d read the
Harry Potter books. Both activities that took place under cover of darkness,
in his bedroom and away from prying eyes.
‘Hang on, I need to answer this,’ Mum pulled a buzzing mobile out of
her handbag and waved it at us. ‘I’ve applied to go on this goddess
workshop in Glastonbury this weekend. I think this is the head of the
coven.’
‘The coven?’ I repeated loudly and not with love. Paul kicked me under
the table and shook his head, but Mum hadn’t even noticed. She was too
busy running for the door, the phone to one ear, her hand pressed against the
other.
‘The coven?’ I hissed at my brother. ‘Seriously? And you don’t think
she’s going too far with it?’
‘You are so hard on her,’ he said between mouthfuls of tuna. ‘I don’t
know why you can’t just let her do what makes her happy.’
‘Because she’s not really happy, it’s a distraction,’ I replied. ‘How can
she be happy on her own, still convinced that Dad’s going to wake up one
day and be like, “ooh, I think I might actually still be in love with Sarah,
goodbye current wife”.’
‘You say it like it would be the most random thing he’s ever done,’ Paul
deadpanned.
‘Touché,’ I said, turning my glass of wine thoughtfully. ‘But I just wish
she would find somebody. I hate her being on her own.’
‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be with somebody. Some people don’t,’ he
replied. ‘I don’t.’
‘You’re always with someone,’ I argued. ‘I’ve never ever known you
without a girl.’
‘Not the same,’ he said, still eyeing up the waitress. ‘I like having
someone around, yeah, but I’m not knocking myself out to get married. I
have fun and when it stops being fun, we’re done.’
‘And you wonder why I won’t let you go out with Emelie,’ I said,
looking him hard in the eye.
‘Who’s to say I wouldn’t feel differently about her?’ He was enjoying
this far too much.
‘I so don’t understand why someone wouldn’t want to be in a
relationship. Isn’t it better to have one person to share your life with? To be
there at the end of the day?’ I leaned over the table and nicked a cherry
tomato back. ‘Someone who puts you first?’
‘I put me first,’ Paul said. ‘And there’s always someone there when I
need them.’
‘Yeah, I don’t mean the first lucky girl to answer your “who wants a
shag?” text on a Friday night.’ I pulled a face when he laughed.
‘It’s not always a Friday but they are lucky. A quality collection of
London’s finest ladies, handpicked for their high IQs, conversational
abilities and readiness to turn up at mine at one a.m.’
‘You are disgusting, you know that don’t you?’ I took my salad back.
Maturity be damned.
‘Whatever,’ he said, grabbing the remains of Mum’s pizza. ‘I’m just
saying, not everyone wants to be you. Not everyone needs a boyfriend or
girlfriend to be happy. We’re not all after two-point-four children and a
semi in the suburbs.’
‘I like having a boyfriend,’ I said defensively. ‘There’s nothing wrong
with that.’
‘And there’s nothing wrong with Mum wanting to be on her own.’ Paul
finished the pizza and wiped his hands on his jeans. ‘And there’s nothing
wrong with me playing the field until I decide otherwise.’
‘As long as you’re not playing the field with my best friend, I don’t care.’
I handed him a napkin. ‘It’s this whole “I hang around until it’s not fun”
attitude. That’s not how relationships work, you know.’
Paul shook his head and tore his eyes away from the waitress for a
moment. It looked as if he was about to give me the benefit of his extra
years of dating wisdom. Or burp.
‘I get it, I do. We haven’t got the best parental role models as far as
relationships go, but you can’t go around telling everyone you’re right and
they’re wrong just because you don’t want to be on your own.’
‘You make me sound like a monogamy nazi,’ I complained. There was
no way he was going to Psych 101 me on this. Just because I didn’t like the
idea of casual dating didn’t mean I was a complete mental.
‘Your walk does have a touch of goose step to it,’ he said, standing up.
‘At least she’s not on her fourth wedding. Are you going?’
‘I’ve got to, haven’t I? You’re not going to bail?’
‘No, I’m going.’ He looked as though he’d been caught with his hand in
the biscuit tin. ‘You haven’t talked to Emelie?’
‘Of course I’ve talked to Emelie?’ I narrowed my eyes. ‘Since when do
you talk to Emelie?’
‘Just the other night.’ He waved off my glare. ‘After I’d punched your
boyfriend in the face, we were talking.’
‘No, that’s fine.’ Mum wandered back up to the table and absently
stroked my head as she sat down, knocking half my hair down. ‘Yes,
tomorrow. Blessed be.’
Blessed bloody be.
I necked my wine and then smiled as genuinely as I could. Which
probably wasn’t very.
‘Anything you want to say?’ Mum asked.
‘Paul ate all your pizza.’
‘Rachel thinks you need a boyfriend.’
‘Children,’ my mum sighed, rubbing her forehead. ‘I should have just
had cats.’
‘Couldn’t agree more,’ Paul raised his glass.
‘Or at least stopped at one,’ I replied. ‘Definitely just stopped at one.’
After Paul had finished eating everyone else’s dessert and I’d spent a
thrilling twenty minutes on the 214, trying to avoid making eye contact with
a scary-looking tramp obsessed with singing the entire score of The Little
Mermaid, I arrived home to an empty flat. A Post-it from Emelie explained
she’d had to go home to pick up some stuff she needed for work and that
she’d be back late. An overly complicated note from Matthew told me he
needed to pop home to do something but to call if I needed him, which I
assumed meant he had a date and didn’t know how to tell me. Well, I had to
be home alone sooner or later.
Sitting on the sofa, staring at the blank TV screen, my brain immediately
started flitting around. I wondered what Simon was doing, how I was going
to pay the mortgage on my own, when I was supposed to start my next job,
why I still hadn’t bought Matthew a birthday card for Saturday. There was
only one way to shut myself up when my brain started messing around like
this. Picking my handbag up from the floor where I’d dropped it, I fished
around for my notebook. A list would help. I had so much to do. Except,
well, I didn’t. Without a boyfriend to look after, there really wasn’t anything
that had to be done – besides my to-do list.
Feeling one of Emelie’s promised horrible lows coming on, along with an
almost overwhelming urge to call Simon and beg him to come back to me, I
picked up my phone. My hair couldn’t take another funny turn. And he had
said to call if I needed him.
‘What’s up?’ Matthew answered on the first ring.
‘My mother’s a witch and my brother’s an arsehole.’
‘That’s a terrible thing to say about your mother.’
‘She’s joining a coven,’ I said, holding the list up in front of me. I was
literally itching to put a line through something. ‘I got fired today.’
‘Did you finally punch Dan?’
‘I called the model a vacuous oversexed cow,’ I yawned.
‘Is she?’ I heard some skittering around in the background, hushed words
not meant for me.
‘Yes, but that’s not the point,’ I replied. ‘I’m blaming my hair. It makes
me do things I would never do. Is someone there? Is this a bad time?’
‘Yes but no, I can talk.’ He clearly didn’t want to go into more detail than
that so I let it go. ‘And you’re missing a vital fact here. You did do them.
Maybe you’ve always been a redhead at heart. Have you done anything on
the list today?’
‘No,’ I admitted. ‘I really wanted to, but what with work and dinner with
my mum, today just sort of got away from me.’
‘It’s not too late: go out and rob an off-licence,’ he half joked. ‘Are you
OK?’
‘Yeah, I thought I might do some online shopping or something.’ I pulled
my laptop out and rested it on my belly. ‘I still need a dress for my dad’s
wedding. Because I need all the dresses now. And, you know, actual
clothes.’
‘You did get a bit brutal on the clear-out,’ he replied. ‘Women have got
the internet all wrong, though. You know it’s really only there for porn,
don’t you?’
‘And for ex-boyfriends to humiliate you in an international public
forum.’
‘And for that,’ he admitted. ‘You haven’t been stalking him, have you?
Take it from an expert, it’s really not worth it.’
In the first few post-break-up weeks, Matthew hadn’t taken his eyes off
his phone. He was constantly checking for status updates, new photos,
comments on friends’ notes. Anything that would give him a clue as to
what was happening in Stephen’s life now that he was no longer a part of it.
It was like cyber self-harm. And only now could I completely understand
the draw.
‘You know what we could do.’ I opened Facebook, hovered over the
search box and then began typing in a name. ‘We could stalk my first crush
instead.’
‘Oh, we could.’ Matthew suddenly sounded animated on the other end of
the line. ‘That would be fun and nonviolent.’
‘I was sixteen,’ I reminisced. ‘His name was Ethan, he was gorgeous and
I was completely obsessed with him. It was all very late Nineties David
Beckham. He was the trumpet player in this summer orchestra thing I went
to.’
‘You were in an orchestra?’ I could hear him trying not to giggle. I hoped
it was at me and not as a re action to anything else that might be happening
in his flat. ‘What did you play?’
‘Violin. Badly.’
‘Did that put Ethan off?’
‘I can’t imagine it helped. I sounded like I was trying to abuse a guinea
pig. I’m not musically gifted.’
‘I know, I’ve heard you sing.’ Matthew yawned again. ‘So tell me all
about Ethan. I’m determined to get you giddy about boys again.’
‘I’m going to get giddy over someone I haven’t seen in twelve years?’
‘Can’t hurt, can it? Little bit of catching up, maybe some online flirting.
This is what Facebook is for.’
‘I thought it was for your boyfriend to let the entire world know you’re a
used-up old hag who he wouldn’t spit on even if you were on fire.’
‘What’s his surname?’
‘Harrison, Ethan Harrison.’ I tapped his name into the little box at the top
of the page. ‘He was blond. And gorgeous.’
‘Like me.’
I let that one sit for a moment.
‘Did you kiss him? Did he touch you up behind the bike sheds?’
‘Sadly not.’ I refused to look at the numbers racking up underneath my
shopping cart. ‘He wasn’t interested, I think he thought I was a boy. I did
look a bit like a boy, to be fair. It was all very traumatic, lots of longing
looks through the music stand, scribbling his name inside my composition
books.’
‘I’ve got about seventy-five thousand Ethan Harrisons,’ Matthew
complained. ‘Can we narrow this down a bit?’
‘Yep,’ I nodded, looking at the same search page. ‘He went to a different
school to do his A levels and then I heard he’d moved to Canada with his
family, so try that maybe? I must have cried for about a month after he left,
just lay in my room listening to “Eternal Flame” on a loop.’
‘Mine was Ryan Smith,’ Matthew replied. ‘He was such a thug. I’ve
never been able to listen to “My Heart Will Go On” since. What a
heartbreaker. Are you still looking?’
‘Yes,’ I was down to five possibilities. This was actually quite exciting.
‘Well? Which one is he?’
‘He’s the beautiful one,’ I said, clicking on a photo of my schoolgirl
crush, all grown up. ‘He’s the really, really hot one. Dark blond hair,
Labrador in the background, father of my future children.’
‘You had good taste as a teenager,’ he whistled down the phone. ‘He is
hot. And I never agree with you on boys.
‘What do I do?’ I was actually stroking the screen. ‘What do I do?’
‘I don’t know,’ Matthew admitted. ‘If you were gay, you’d just send him
an obscene photo and hope he sends one back.’
‘You’re such a cliché.’ I refused to let him sully this moment with the
love of my life. ‘But since I can’t whizz off a picture of my genitals, what
should I do?’
‘Cold shower and bed?’ Not a bad suggestion given the circumstances.
This was when I realized the more open-to-interpretation items of the to-do
list were going to be dissatisfying. Objectives should always be clearly
defined.
‘Do I message him?’ I couldn’t get anything out of his profile other than
this single pic, but already I’d painted an entire life for him. The photo was
just him and the dog, so I’d decided he was definitely single and the dog
meant he was loving and outdoorsy. I could be outdoorsy. If I put my mind
to it. The shorts and T-shirt combo didn’t give a lot away and he’d cut his
hair, which was fair, given that curtains weren’t really a big trend in the
twenty-first century. Thank god. But his eyes were the same. His smile was
the same. I suddenly had a very strong urge to start doodling Rachel 4
Ethan and listening to ‘Hit Me Baby (One More Time)’. Not that I’d bought
that single. Or subsequent album. Cough.
‘Do you want to message him?’ Matthew asked.
‘I want to marry him I replied.’
‘Maybe save that for the second message,’ Matthew advised.
I was still filling in Ethan’s life story when I heard a key in the door.
‘Emelie’s home,’ I told him. ‘I’d better go and put the kettle on.’
‘I know when I’m not needed,’ he said. ‘Use me up then cast me aside as
soon as your wife gets home.’
‘Oh, just go back to whatever sordid scenario you were working up to
before I called,’ I cackled down the phone. ‘Bye Matthew. Bye nameless,
faceless stranger.’
‘Quite, love to the wife.’ He hung up.
I closed up my laptop and took out the napkin. I was going to have to be
careful with it – only two days old and it was already looking a little fragile.
But then, it was only two days old and I had already completed two of the
tasks. My transformation was well under way and I had found my first
crush.
‘Em?’ I shouted from the sofa. ‘What are you doing in the morning?’
‘Sleeping,’ she said, clutching the doorframe as though she was about to
collapse. ‘I had to go to that Kitty Kitty meeting this afternoon. Honestly, I
thought I was going to die. Pretty sure I would have approved Kitty Kitty
branded nukes today if they’d painted them Pantone 264 and stuck a cat on
them. You?’
‘I called a supermodel a vacuous oversexed cow and got kicked off the
set,’ I said, twisting around to see her properly.
‘Fine,’ she turned around and disappeared into the spare room. ‘You
win.’
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