Miss You

SIXTEEN Tess

I think it’s called the mile-high club. That’s definitely what was going on, but I don’t suppose it was much fun with Hope banging on the door. I’d thought the business-class toilet would have more room—I couldn’t risk letting Hope go in on her own and locking herself in—but we couldn’t wait, so we ended up walking all the way back through the dimmed economy section, where people were trying to sleep, with Hope loudly declaring, “My knickers are wet!”

“Why didn’t you go at the airport when I told you?”

“I didn’t need to.”

It was so long since Hope had had “an accident,” I hadn’t packed a change of clothes in my carry-on luggage and I was dreading asking the stewardess for a towel for the seat, but it got worse in the cubicle when Hope pulled down her knickers and saw the blood.

None of the books give any advice about how to tell a mildly autistic child in an airplane loo that they’re having their first period. Hope was only just eleven, so I hadn’t expected it to happen yet, even though I knew that plumper girls sometimes got theirs earlier. It’s a difficult enough process to explain at the best of times, especially to someone as literal as Hope. The only upside was that by the time I got her out of there, with a wad of tissues stuffed into her knickers, Hope was so exhausted from screaming that she slept the rest of the flight.

Kevin and Shaun were waiting for us in the arrivals hall with a sign saying: Céad míle fáilte Teresa and Hope Costello.

Which shows it’s true what they say about Irish people becoming even more Irish when they’re living abroad.

It’s funny when you haven’t seen someone for several years, because there’s always a bit of awkwardness at first, when you’re looking at each other, wondering if they’re thinking how much older you look too.

I’ve never quite understood why men with a fear of going bald elect to go completely bald at the first sign of losing their hair, but it can’t be nice seeing a shiny dome relentlessly stretching back from your brow, even worse if it’s a bit patchy. I suppose the thinking is that shaven is cooler than comb-over, and I’d have to agree with that. Did Kev have to wear a wig when he was performing, I wondered? I’d never seen a bald ballet dancer, not that I’d seen a lot of ballet dancers apart from on BBC2 on Boxing Day and the all-male swans at the end of Billy Elliot, and you couldn’t see their heads for feathers.

I’ve no idea what Kevin was thinking about me. Or perhaps I have, because he and Shaun discussed the idea of getting me a “makeover” long before Shaun suggested it later on in the holiday.

“Good flight?” Kev asked.

“Blood is coming out of my room because I’m not going to have a baby,” Hope announced.

I think even Kev had to admit at that point that Hope wasn’t like most girls her age.

“She got her first period... Yes, on the plane... No, not expected, obviously... Apart from that? Oh, fine, perfect flight, thanks.”

“Welcome to the Big Apple,” said Shaun.

He seemed like a decent, sensitive man. Although we’d only just met, I found him easier to be with in some ways than Kevin, who I’d known all my life. With Kev, there was always the defensiveness. It wasn’t that I was going to make a big deal about him leaving me to do everything, but he still had to keep listing all the reasons why it had been impossible for him to come home even for the occasional visit.

We took a yellow cab into Manhattan. I was disappointed at first. New York was just like any other city on the outskirts, with scrubby nondescript buildings, dusty parking lots and billboards, although, if I’d thought about it, I should have known from The Great Gatsby. As soon as we caught our first glimpse of Manhattan, all lit up like the beginning of Friends, that changed of course. Driving over the Brooklyn Bridge and seeing the view, so familiar from television and movies, really brought it home to me that the Twin Towers were no longer there, and how the empty bit of sky must remind New Yorkers every day how the whole world would never be the same.

Kev and Shaun had a duplex loft apartment in the downtown area known as Tribeca. Shaun explained the name was short for Triangle Below Canal Street, although it sounds more exotic than that, doesn’t it, like some old Russian quarter or something. Kev told us that Robert De Niro—he called him Bob, as if he knew him—lived just around the corner. The apartment seemed quite dark when Shaun opened the door and showed us the bedrooms on the fifth floor. Hope and I had a room of our own with a view towards the Wall Street area, a big double bed and a futon unrolled on the parquet floor.

Kev and Shaun shared an enormous double bed in the other bedroom. I didn’t know what Hope was going to make of that. She wasn’t keen on what she called “kissy stuff” between a man and a woman and I had no idea how she’d respond to the idea of two men doing it. I kind of felt I should have prepared her, but I didn’t know where to start, so I spent quite a lot of the holiday dreading the moment she would ask an embarrassing question, and it would somehow be my fault.

You entered the living room on the fifth-floor level, but the ceiling above had been knocked out and a staircase went up to an open-plan kitchen which had doors onto a roof terrace. All the glass gave it a massive, airy feeling.

“Why is the kitchen upstairs?” Hope wanted to know.

“Why not?” said Kev. Like I said, defensive.

“Tree! Why is the kitchen upstairs?”

“It’s just the way Kevin and Shaun like it. It means you can eat your meals and look at the view, see?”

I could tell she was thinking, Why would you want to do that? Wedidn’t look at a view at home, or in school, or any other place where we ate our meals.

“Is your house upside down?” Hope asked Shaun.

“I suppose you could say that.” He chuckled. “But please make it your home!”

Hope wasn’t good with idioms.

“Our home is the right way up.”

We wandered around the neighborhood before eating an early supper, because it was already after midnight for us. It was the kind of area where the clothes shops look like art installations, with a neon tube in the window and maybe just one pair of shoes, or a dress on a hanger, and no price tags. Shaun had booked us into a lovely restaurant, but it was wasted on people who had no idea of the difference between a flounder and a snapper (or even that they were fish) and knew pasta only as “cheesy,” “meaty” or “tinned.” The staff were so helpful and friendly, I think they’d have gone out and bought us a can of Heinz spaghetti if we’d demanded it, but I assured Shaun that Hope would be fine with farfalle—although better to call them bows than butterflies—with cherry tomatoes and goat’s cheese.

I couldn’t help noticing that the tip Shaun left was bigger than the entire cost of any meal I’d ever eaten out. I told him on the way back to the apartment, when Kevin fell in next to Hope for the first time and Shaun and I hung back to give them some space to get to know each other, that we’d be just as happy with McDonald’s or KFC.

He smiled at me. “What would you like to do while you’re here?”

“We have to see the Empire State Building. I mean go up to the top.”

You could see the actual building in the distance from their roof terrace.

“Would Hope like to see a musical?” Shaun asked. “Kevin says she enjoys singing.”

I hesitated, because of course that was the thing she’d like most of all.

I decided to be up front about it. “The problem is, if she knows the song, she’ll try to sing along. And she knows all the songs.”

“Don’t worry, Tess,” said Shaun. “I spend my life dealing with high-maintenance people.”

He was a director, so he probably meant all the dancers and actors, but he definitely nodded his head in Kevin’s direction, and we exchanged one of those sweet, private moments of understanding.

The following evening, Shaun got us tickets for The Lion King. We had four seats right in the center of the stalls, house seats, he called them, which people in the theatre know about because they save them in case someone like George Clooney wants to come along at the last minute. Hope sat between Shaun and me, and when the lights went down and the music started, he said to her, nicely, but very firmly, “Now, Hope, you’re in the audience, and the audience’s job is to sit still and stay quiet, otherwise we won’t be allowed to watch the show any more.”

Which was a risky strategy, but clever, because it didn’t give her any time to object. To my astonishment, she did exactly as she was told. It helped that Shaun was a man, I suppose, because we were used to doing what Dad told us, and there was so much for her to look at. It’s amazing the way the cast move like African animals and the music makes you well up. Literally breathtaking.

Afterwards, as soon as we were on the street, Hope said, “Can I sing now?”

And Shaun said, “OK, now you can.”

So it was “Hakuna Matata” all the way home, much to Kev’s embarrassment, although the other passengers on the subway enjoyed it. If Kev had taken the cap off his head, I reckon we could have filled it with change that evening.

After that, Shaun took Hope and me to Broadway shows matinee and evening. Wicked, Hairspray,and her favorite, Mamma Mia! Kev had a performance coming up and was rehearsing most days, so couldn’t join us, and I sensed he was a bit miffed. Kev liked to be the center of attention, and maybe he was right to be jealous, because, to be honest, I think I fell a little bit in love with Shaun. Not in a physical way, obviously—although he was a very good-looking man and wore beautiful clothes, like soft yellow cashmere sweaters with perfectly clean jeans, and he always smelled lovely—but just because he was so considerate and good at bringing out the best in everyone. Not just Hope, but me too.

Shaun was the first person I ever spoke to properly about art. We went to MoMA together while Kev took Hope to the zoo. They have some lovely Matisses there, as well as all the Warhols, and it was great to see them in the city where they’d actually been made (I’d never said “made” about art before that, always “painted,” which wasn’t the right word). He also introduced me to contemporary American literature, selecting shiny hardback novels from the shelf in their living room, which I read every night, and discussed with him the following day. My mind was like an empty vessel, thirsting for knowledge. He didn’t even laugh when I said that, but instead told me I should go to school, which means university in America.

“I had a place to read English,” I told him proudly. “At University College London. But I couldn’t go because of Mum.”

“Here we go!” said Kevin, playing an imaginary violin.

We were all sitting in Central Park because it was one of those days when it’s so sunny you think it’s warm enough for a picnic (which we’d got in a paper carrier bag from a deli called Zabar’s), although when he said that, the grassy lawn we were sitting on suddenly felt a bit too cold, the breeze a bit chilly, and we probably should have moved off.

It’s not that I wanted people to think I was a martyr, or thank me all the time, but I did feel I was coping with something pretty difficult, and making some sacrifices on the way. I wasn’t looking for sympathy, but because of other people’s refusal to acknowledge that there was actually a problem (in case that meant they might be obliged to share the responsibility), it didn’t seem fair, somehow, that I wasn’t allowed to get any recognition either.

So I said something of the sort and Kevin took umbrage.

“It’s not as if you were going to study anything useful,” he said.

Which sounded just like Dad, when Kev’s meant to be the artistic, creative one of the family.

“Like dancing’s useful, you mean!” I retorted.

To which he replied, “Why has everyone in my family always been against me dancing?”

“Why do you always twist things? You were the one saying what I wanted to do was nothing!”

How easily siblings revert to being children. You started it! No, you started it! Very soon you’re so cross you can’t actually remember who started it.

“I just meant it didn’t stop you reading books,” Kev said. I should have recognized that as his attempt to climb down. But I was on fire by then.

“It stopped me getting a degree! I was top in our school, and now I’m not even qualified for anything!”

“But you still can be, Tess,” Shaun said. “And you should be, shouldn’t she, Kevin?”

“She should be, shouldn’t she, Kevin?” echoed Hope.

That afternoon we went on the Circle Line boat, which takes you all the way around Manhattan Island.

Standing out on deck, Kevin pointed. “There’s the—”

“Statue of Liberty,” Hope told him.

“How did you know that, Hope?” He looked over the top of her head at me, surprised.

“You sent us a postcard.”

I could see he was pleased as well as impressed.

He started pointing out the other sights as we chugged past: the Staten Island Ferry, South Street Seaport, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge...

“That building is United Nations HQ,” Hope said as we motored up the East River. “It says so underneath people on the news.”

Where most people would probably be watching the reporter and listening to what he’s saying about the latest meeting of the Security Council or whatever, Hope’s paying attention to the shape of the building and reading the words in the red strip along the bottom of the screen. It’s two ways of looking at the same thing. I could see it was dawning on Kevin that Hope was bright, but in a different way, and I was so pleased, because it’s difficult to explain to someone; they have to get it themselves.

“What about that one?” he asked.

“Empire State Building, where the Giant Peach landed,” she said, as if he was a complete idiot for asking.

“Correct! And that one?” He pointed at the Chrysler Building.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I’ll tell you, shall I...?”

It almost made me cry to see Kev putting his arm around his sister and talking to her about his adopted city. I think it was the first time Kev had seen Hope as a gift instead of a problem, which sounds like something a priest would say, but is actually quite a good way of looking at her.

Shaun and I withdrew, leaving Hope and Kev out on deck, bonding.

“What are you going to do when she goes to high school?” Shaun asked me.

They didn’t have teaching assistants in the same way there, and even if they did, I knew it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to go with her. At some point, Hope had to tackle the world on her own, and it seemed like the right time to start the process. If she didn’t panic in her upcoming exams, she would get the grade required to be in a normal class, and we now had a Statement of Medical Need, so she would have a care worker with her at least some of the time. Which was all good progress, but it raised the question, what was I going to do?

“Have you thought about training to be a teacher?” Shaun asked.

“That’s what everyone says!”

It was the most logical path for me to take, given that I still had to be at home for Hope outside school hours. Dad was mainly living with Anne by then, and Anne didn’t want Hope full-time.

“Bad enough having Dad full-time,” Kev said the previous evening, when I’d described Anne for him, and we’d smiled at each other with that shared understanding only siblings have, friends for a moment instead of rivals.

Several things were stopping me from going down the teaching route. First, I’d need to get a degree, which would mean studying in the evenings while I continued to work as a TA, and that would take at least three years. Then I’d have to do a teacher-training course, with no income coming in, for another year. But my main objection was that I didn’t actually want to be one.

“I was at school, then instead of going away to university, I went back to school, and now I’m supposed to spend the rest of my bloody life in school!” I told Shaun. “I haven’t even learned anything yet!”

Shaun held up his hands, like he’d heard enough reasons.

“So do you know what you do want to do?”

I was on a tourist boat in a foreign country, with a man who hardly knew me, but I found myself admitting something that I’d never told anyone before, except my mum—and that was when I was ten years old, so it probably doesn’t count—not Dave, nor even Doll. It was almost like it was an opportunity to try out the words, see how they sounded. If Shaun laughed, the mockery wouldn’t follow me around like it would at home.

“I’d like to be a writer.”

He didn’t laugh. To be honest, if I’d believed there was the slightest chance he would, I wouldn’t have told him, so it wasn’t that brave.

“Do you write?” he asked.

“I used to write poems at school, and I’m always making up stories. Do you think I’m crazy?”

“If you’re asking if I think you can write, I can’t answer that until I read something you’ve written. What I do know is that you’re a reader and writers are always readers. And you surely have a speaking voice that’s all your own, Tess. But that’s all I can say. The rest of it is up to you. Write some stuff. Go to a creative-writing group...”

I felt like I was being given permission, which was exciting. But the question of how I was going to make my living remained.

“I could always work for Doll...”

“Doll?”

“My best friend.”

It was hard to believe Shaun now knew me so well without knowing about Doll, so I gave him a condensed history of our friendship. Doll had been spot on in her predictions about nails, and she’d worked really hard, living back at home, spending all her time and savings on setting up The Dolls House. The business was now growing so quickly she was about to open her fourth nail bar.

“She sounds like an enterprising lady.”

I felt a tiny irrational twinge of jealousy. Doll had enough male admirers. She couldn’t help being pretty, which made men go out of their way to help her, but she was ruthless about taking advantage, from the bank manager to the bloke who’d designed her logo and even Dave, who’d done a lot of work putting in sinks and stuff and only charging her at cost. I didn’t want to share Shaun with Doll, even though he lived in New York, so it was unlikely they’d ever meet.

“The name was my idea,” I said.

“But you don’t want to work with her?” he asked, picking up on my ambivalence.

“One, people say you shouldn’t work with your friends. And two, I’m just not interested in pampering and exfoliation and all that stuff...”

“Maybe your work doesn’t have to provide all your intellectual and emotional satisfaction? Maybe you should do something that will leave you the imaginative space to write...”

He was actually taking my ambition seriously.

“So, what’s number three?” he asked.

“I don’t look right, do I?”

Shaun laughed out loud.

“Well, if that’s your only problem, sweetie,” he said, “let me tell you about what Kevin and I have been planning.”

The makeover. That probably makes it sound spookier than it was. We’re not talking plastic surgery, or Botox or anything like that.

“You’re a blank canvas,” Shaun said.

“Thanks a bunch.”

“I mean, my dear, that you have unrealized potential. Will you let me help you realize it?”

Hope and I both had our hair cut while Shaun instructed the stylist exactly what he wanted: a neat bob for Hope that suited the shape of her face and was easy to maintain; for me, a radical restyle that left piles of nondescript frizz on the floor of the salon, and a face I barely recognized.

I’d had longish dark brown curly hair since I was a child. At school I’d worn it in bunches or plaits. Since then, Doll had bought me all the hair-straighteners and serums ever invented to try to tame and smooth it, but nothing ever worked for more than a day or two. Usually I scraped it back in a big bushy ponytail, and if I wanted to look more groomed, pinned and sprayed it up into a bun. Whenever I did that, people said I looked like my mother, which was nice, because she was an attractive woman, but I think what they probably meant was old.

Now, when I looked in the salon mirror, I saw someone young. The frizz, when chopped, had miraculously turned into glossy curls. With my hair now short, my eyes looked much bigger. Shaun said the word was “gamine,” which the dictionary defines as an elfish tomboy.

After a session with the dance company’s make-up lady, who tidied up my eyebrows and showed me how to make the most of my cheekbones, and then the department-store trip, with Shaun as my personal shopper, giving me the confidence to try on outfits I wouldn’t have dreamed of considering, I felt like a different person. The American sizing probably had something to do with it; I’d never been an 8 before.

I drew the line at heels. It’s different in America, where everyone’s taller. Dave was going to find it difficult enough to get used to me in short A-line dresses with cropped jackets, or ankle-skimming Capri pants, without me towering over him too.

“Who’s Dave?” asked Shaun.

It probably said a lot that I hadn’t once mentioned my fiancé, not that we’d set a date yet.

“Dave is the Music Man,” Hope explained, as if that was the only introduction required.

That night I sat with Shaun out on the roof terrace drinking Cosmopolitans, feeling very Sex and the City with the glittering grid of street lights stretching way into the distance. My highball glass was full of ice, the lime and cranberry juice was tart and refreshing and you couldn’t really taste the alcohol, so I probably drank too much too quickly.

“You’re marrying this guy Dave?” Shaun asked.

“He’s a lovely man and he’s got his own flat in Herne Bay and a van. Everyone likes him...”

I stared at a nearby apartment building. Behind each of those windows, there were little dramas going on, I thought. Thousands and thousands of little dramas. I loved cities.

“But?” said Shaun, leaning over and refilling my glass.

Was it so obvious there was a but?

I sighed. “I can’t seem to get rid of this stupid idea that there should be more. I know things probably aren’t as amazing out there as I think, but I want to find that out for myself. It’s all right for Doll because she’s lived the dream and now she’s got work she loves, but why do I have to take her word for it?”

Shaun said nothing.

“Same time,” I argued with myself, “I love Dave. Everyone does. He’s like part of the family. Even Dad likes him! And Anne. And what would Hope do without him? I can’t even think about that. So... I don’t know why I can’t just get on with it, and make everyone happy...”

If I was looking for confirmation, Shaun wasn’t going to offer it.

“It’s not Dave’s fault, by the way,” I tried to explain. “He loves me. But the thing is, he doesn’t really know me!”

“What doesn’t he know about you?” Shaun asked.

I took another long gulp of my pink cocktail. “The first time Dave saw me, I was at work with the kids, and you know how they are, they crowd around wanting to tell you things all the time, so Dave had this vision of this caring, maternal type of person, you know? I don’t think he’d even have noticed me standing on my own at a student party...”

Shaun stayed quiet, giving me the space to continue with thoughts I’d never voiced before.

“What Dave wants out of life is a nice little house and a family, and the thing is... I don’t even want kids!”

Still no reaction.

“I am NEVER EVER going to bring a child into this world.”

The words seemed to reverberate in the air, like the moment after church bells cease tolling.

“Why?” Shaun said eventually.

“Because I couldn’t risk dying and leaving them. I couldn’t do that to anyone!”

Suddenly there were tears trickling down my face and I didn’t know where they had come from.

“It’s terrifying looking after a child, you know? I’m living in fear all the time, because what the hell would happen to Hope if I wasn’t there?”

The tears were choking me now.

“It must have been like that for Mum, mustn’t it? So why the hell didn’t she get herself checked? It was SO selfish of her, and I honestly can’t forgive her for that. What was she thinking? What did she think was going to happen to us?”

Then crying totally took over, convulsing my body, drowning out the drone of traffic from below.

“I’m sorry, Mum! I know you didn’t mean it... I’m so sorry!”

I felt Shaun standing beside me, gently resting a hand on my back, which made me weep even more because he was so lovely, and in two days’ time we’d be home, and I wouldn’t have him to talk to, and I wouldn’t even have the holiday to look forward to any more.

And then, suddenly, I took a huge breath. There were no more tears.

One summer in Ireland when we were kids, we dammed up a little stream of water on the beach. When the time came to go home, the tiny trickle had become a huge lake, and we all stood there, with Dad counting one, two, three, before smashing the wall with our shovels, releasing a torrent that gushed down the beach to the sea. Then suddenly the sand was flat again, the water all blended into the sea, and I’d stared at the sun going down over the horizon, feeling strangely sad, as if a little part of my life had gone.

“I should’ve got through the anger stage, shouldn’t I?” I said.

“Grief’s not a checklist, Tess, it’s a process.”

“I’m not really angry with Mum,” I said. “I loved her more than anyone. I just wish she hadn’t always put everyone else first, because actually that didn’t help, because Hope needed her to be there...”

“And you needed her?”

“But I wouldn’t have needed her so much if she hadn’t died!”

“Tess, sometimes you’re almost as pedantic as Hope!”

When people talk about nature and nurture, I think they forget that nurture works both ways. It’s obvious children copy grown-ups, but nobody ever talks about how much grown-ups copy children. Those funny little sayings that become part of a family’s language, they’re usually from the kids, aren’t they? So if there are ways Hope and I are alike, maybe it’s genetic, or she’s picked stuff up from me, but maybe I’ve picked stuff up from her too.

“Shall we try to unpack some of this?” Shaun asked.

“Unpack” was a word he used a lot, and not about suitcases.

I nodded.

“Seems to me the major issue here is your fear of dying,” he said. “You’re assuming you’ll die early because your mother did?”

“And her mother did...”

“So, isn’t there a genetic test you can have?”

“There is.” I repeated the article I’d read recently. “But only five per cent of people get cancer because of genetics. And at the moment the guidelines are that they won’t give you a test unless there’s evidence that a close relation carries the mutation...”

I’d been to the doctor about it. The nice female GP I usually saw was on maternity leave, so I’d had to see the head of the practice, a much older man who’d known me since I was a child and still treated me like one.

“How old are you now, Tess?” he’d asked, peering at my notes. “Twenty-four! That’s far too young! Having a genetic test has all sorts of serious implications...”

Sometimes you don’t dare ask about scary things like “serious implications” in case by saying the words out loud you make them more likely. So instead I’d asked, “How old do I need to be, then?”

“We’ll think about it again when you’re in your thirties and you’ve had a family. Enjoy life, Teresa! Don’t look so worried!”

“That’s crazy,” Shaun said. “If the test’s available, I think you should go back and demand it. What does Dave think?”

“He says the doctor ought to know what he’s talking about,” I said. “Which is probably fair enough.”

He hadn’t diagnosed my mother’s ovarian cancer, but she hadn’t gone to see him, so I couldn’t blame him for that. The nice female doctor had told me that taking the Pill lessened my chances of getting that one, at least.

“Have you told Dave about not wanting kids?”

“No,” I admitted.

“Why?”

“Because I know he’d say something like, ‘You say that now, but...’”

“What if he said, ‘Tess, I don’t want kids either. I just want to be with you’?”

“He wouldn’t.”

“But if he did?” Shaun stared at me.

“I don’t know,” I confessed.

But suddenly it all seemed much clearer.

On the final night, the three of us went to see Kevin perform in the ballet of Romeo and Juliet. He wasn’t Romeo, but he was Benvolio, who has a big solo dance in the second act. Technically, Kev was on fire, but what I loved most was the natural, laddish quality he brought to acting the role, jeering and bantering with his mates Mercutio and Romeo. It took me back to him and Brendan kicking a ball about in the garden at home, and it made me want to cry, because if Dad was there, he’d see that there was nothing effeminate about the dancing at all and he’d be really proud of his eldest son. And I knew that, underneath, that’s the thing Kev still wanted most in the whole world.

I tried to tell him at the after-party, but it’s not the same, someone telling you, is it? Especially not your little sister.

He did wear a wig, by the way.

I’d never seen Hope so animated as when we got back and she was telling Dad and Anne about the trip. Of course, she had a different take on it from me, like the sound of the subway trains coming into a station, which I hadn’t even noticed, and the way Americans pronounce “coffee.” She sang them songs from all the musicals and Dad didn’t believe her when she said we went nine times, although he should have known that Hope doesn’t lie.

“Who paid for all this, then?” he asked me.

“Shaun got us house seats,” I told him, knowledgeably. To be honest, I didn’t know whether that meant he paid or not, but it shut Dad up.

“There’s something unusual about Shaun and Kevin,” Hope suddenly said.

Just when I thought we’d managed to steer a safe course through that whole question.

I could feel the temperature in the room falling as my dad waited for the inevitable evidence of his youngest daughter’s exposure to mortal sin. He looked at me daggers.

“They have their kitchen upstairs!” said Hope.

Dave was talking on his mobile phone outside the restaurant, so he wasn’t aware of me approaching, and I saw him for a moment as someone else might see him. He was wearing a plain navy polo shirt and well-fitting jeans and he looked really masculine and kind of hot. All the certainty I’d brought back with me from New York began to waver. Was I really going to let this lovely man go on some vague hope that there was something better out there waiting for me? In New York, it was easy to dream, but this was my real life. Dave loved me and cared about me, and that suddenly seemed so precious, I couldn’t think why I would gamble it away. Maybe all I’d needed was a bit of distance.

He looked up at the sound of my footsteps running towards him, and put his mobile phone in his pocket.

“Wow!” He did a double-take. “You look different!”

“Do you like it?” I did a little twirl.

“It’s great,” he said.

To be honest, I’d been expecting more than great.

We gave each other a quick, almost embarrassed peck of a kiss. It had only been a week, but it was like we’d forgotten what to do.

At the table, I handed over the Yankees cap I’d bought him. He put it on his head, then took it off again.

“So what do you fancy?” He picked up the menu.

I wished we hadn’t gone for pizza because pizza in New York was so much better, and I found myself babbling on about it, probably because of jet lag.

“Anything to start?” He beckoned the waitress over.

“No, thanks.”

It felt almost like our first date, when I’d been eager to impress but didn’t know what sort of thing he’d like to talk about. I’d promised myself that I wouldn’t mention my plans to get a different job and write until I’d got a bit further, but it all came tumbling out.

“A writing group?” Dave repeated.

“Just to see if I can.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“Because I think I might find it creatively fulfilling,” I said, a little bit prickly, like Kev.

“You and your big words!”

The phrase seemed to echo between us.

“Have you been seeing a lot of Doll?” I asked, meaning, as in doing the plumbing for her new shop, but Dave had such an open face, I saw immediately that, one, he had, and two, he thought I meant much more than plumbing.

“You and Doll?” I faltered.

I’d left her a voicemail to say we were back, but she hadn’t called immediately to get the low-down.

“I’m so sorry, Tess...”

“If I hadn’t asked, were you actually going to tell me, or were you going to carry on behind my back?”

“It’s not what you think...”

“How is it not what I think?”

“It’s serious,” he said.

He was right, because that wasn’t what I was thinking at all. I was thinking fling. I couldn’t seem to work out whether that would have been better, or worse.

Everything felt a bit out-of-body, like being in a film whose script demanded that I should ask, “How long has this been going on, then?”

“Only this week. We’ve been working late, trying to get the new shop ready and—”

I held my hand up to stop him. I didn’t want to hear the details.

“Only this week, and it’s serious?” I imitated his earnest tone.

“Doll and I have known each other years, though, haven’t we? Not that I’d ever thought it was possible...”

The implication being that any man in his right mind would want Doll over me. Thinking about sex, or whatever it was he was thinking about, Dave’s face broke into a smile.

“For heaven’s sake!” I shouted.

Then I couldn’t think of anything else to say, so I scraped back my chair and walked out, leaving him to pick up the bill.

Half an hour before, I’d felt so grown up with my new haircut and styling, but now, as I sat on the bus home, it was as if I’d gone right back to our first school disco, watching all the boys dare each other to ask Doll to dance as if I didn’t even exist.

Doll’s big blue eyes froze when she opened the door.

She’d been expecting Dave, I realized. Had they agreed that he would report back after? Were they planning to sit there analyzing my reaction, or rush upstairs and screw?

“It just happened...,” said Doll.

“How?”

“You really want to know?”

“Nooooo!”

She looked upset at the rawness of my anguish.

She touched my arm. “Come inside and we’ll talk.”

I batted her hand away.

“What’s there to talk about?” I asked bitterly.

“Don’t make me choose, Tess!” she whined.

“Don’t you dare try to make out I’m the unreasonable one and you’re the hapless victim...”

“Hapless?”

“Unfortunate.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I knew you’d be cross but I thought—”

“What? That I’d give you my blessing?” I was suddenly furious. “No problem, Doll, take my fiancé! Do whatever you want. You always do anyway. It’s always take, take, take, with you, isn’t it? I’ll have this one, oh and that one, in both colors, please. Someone else’ll pick up the tab...”

“You bloody cow!” Doll retaliated. “What have I ever taken from you?”

“My homework, my ideas... my bloody fiancé!” I cried.

“You didn’t really want him, though, did you?” said Doll.

There was no answer to that, and she knew it, and her willingness to use privileged information gleaned from knowing me so well felt like the ultimate betrayal.

“Don’t go! Please, Tess!” She chased me up the road. “You’ll find your dream, I know you will...”

“What?” I rounded on her. “So you can take it away from me?”

“That’s not fair!”

She stopped.

I marched on, half-expecting her to continue after me. But she didn’t. Nor did she come round to our house later.

We’d fallen out badly only once before, aged eight, for the summer term when Doll had suddenly announced that Cerise McQuarry was her best friend.

“I think you’re better off without her,” I remembered Mum saying.

That’s all very well, but I’ve got nobody now, I told her silently.