Chapter 10
‘The conduct of neither, if strictly examined, will be irreproachable…’
Despite his mother’s prediction, Jamie and I continued to date.
A whole year passed by. I was enrolled on a business studies course.
It wasn’t what I’d set my heart on – I’d dreamed of Edinburgh, studying English literature, walking through drizzle with books under my arm.
But my grades were lacklustre, thanks to too much time day-dreaming of Jamie Stonehill.
Dad had refused to entertain the idea of me studying anything ‘impractical’ anyway.
‘You need something with teeth,’ he’d said, ‘something the world will take seriously.’
So business studies it was.
Weekdays were lectures and essays and barely making my grant stretch.
But weekends? Weekends belonged to Jamie if he was in the country.
He’d swoop in in his sports car, scoop me up, and off we’d go to parties, country houses, and twenty-firsts in marquees.
I lived two lives: college student scraping pennies together, and girlfriend of Jamie Stonehill, floating in a haze of champagne and charm.
He wasn’t studying, he never had. He was either in London or Marbella, helping his family ‘manage things,’ though it was never exactly clear what that meant. Lily was in London too, doing an art foundation course. Jamie always said she should have been in Rome, ‘somewhere with better light.’
The holidays started and I got assigned, as ever, to Dad’s business.
I was stationed in the project management team as an underling, the lowest of the low.
I answered phones, chased invoices, ran errands, estimated costs, and was tea-maker-in-chief.
One of the hotels was behind schedule, and tension hovered in the office.
Dad didn’t believe in holidays. Or lunch breaks.
Or his daughter being treated with any sort of favouritism.
I was the first in and last out. I locked up, set the alarm, switched off the lights. It was drilled into me. Work always came first.
Jamie was driving up and we were going to Alice’s party together. I’d run a bath after work, and was busy shampooing my hair, wondering whether to wear my midnight blue skirt or black leggings when Mum called up the stairs.
‘Jamie’s on the phone – from Spain!’
I wrapped myself in a towel and bounded downstairs, heart thudding. Why the hell was he not on the M1?
‘Hi,’ I said, breathless.
‘Florrie, sorry, babe, I can’t make it. I’m stuck here. Family stuff.’ He sounded tired. Hollow.
‘But you said…’
‘I know. I know. I’ll see you next week. For Lily’s birthday.’
The line cut. He was gone in mid-sentence. I stared at the receiver, willing it to ring again. It didn’t.
At the party, I danced and smiled and answered every ‘Where’s Jamie?’ with a shrug and a laugh. But a heavy stone had settled in the pit of my stomach. Why wasn’t he here with me?
On Wednesday, Mum handed me a blue airmail envelope. ‘From Spain,’ she said, holding it out like it was sacred. I ran upstairs, tore it open, and devoured every word. He missed me. He loved me, and everything in my world was well again.
I pleaded with Dad to let me have a Friday off. He grumbled but relented.
I took an early train to London and emerged at Green Park into a thick blanket of summer heat. My backpack was stuck to my back with sweat. I’d dressed for northern gloom – boots, sheer black shirt, bandanna. I looked like a goth on holiday.
I buzzed the intercom at Jamie’s flat. No answer. Of course not – it was barely past ten. Jamie and mornings had never been well acquainted.
I was about to turn and head to a café when a man from another flat let me in. The marble cool of the lobby felt like heaven.
I climbed the stairs to the first floor. As I pushed through the fire door, I heard shouting. It was Jamie and Lily.
‘You’re a liar, Jamie!’ Her voice was raw, cracking.
‘I didn’t take anything! Maybe it was your friend who vanished at dawn.’
A door slammed. Then music. Bob Marley, loud. As if volume could mop up rage.
I hesitated, torn between bolting and staying. This wasn’t the version of them I knew. This was something else.
The door to No.6 creaked open. Jamie stood there, dishevelled and barefoot, holding his Ray-Bans and a packet of cigarettes. His face softened when he saw me.
‘I wanted to surprise you,’ I said, awkward.
He stepped towards me, wrapped his arms around me like I was the last solid thing on earth. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he said into my hair.
We stayed like that for a long minute, suspended in time and place.
Inside, the flat was dark. The air smelt of incense and unwashed laundry. Jamie’s room was the same: drawn curtains, crumpled bedding, overflowing ashtrays.
We lay in bed all day, lolling in that half-space between real and not real, wrapped around each other like ivy.
Lily didn’t come out of her room.
‘She’s been… low,’ Jamie said, eyes flickering. ‘The doctor’s changed her meds again.’ He didn’t say much more, only that he worried about her. A lot. ‘She just disappears sometimes,’ he added, ‘and I don’t always know where to.’
Later that night, we went to Velvet Underground for Lily’s birthday in a kind of hopeful show of normality. Jamie looked beautiful in a white shirt and espadrilles, freshly shaved. I wore a Gaultier midi skirt and mesh top Lily had given me a few weeks before.
In the taxi there, Jamie curled up against me, whispering, ‘Marry me, Florrie.’
I turned, startled. This was it. All my hopes in one sentence. ‘I do,’ I said, then laughed. ‘Oops – I mean, I will.’
He kissed me, long and slow, and the world blinked away.
At the club, the crowd was thick and glittering. Girls and boys alike threw themselves at Jamie. I drifted to where Dom and Alice were drinking fluorescent cocktails with Luke, keeping the secret of his proposal in the warm cocoon of my heart.
The night wore on. Lily never arrived.
‘She wasn’t feeling well,’ Jamie said later, his jaw tight. ‘Probably asleep back at the flat.’
We all knew she wasn’t. But no one said anything.
Back at the flat, Jamie dumped the bin bag of birthday gifts on Lily’s bed. He didn’t want to talk about her absence. He was tired. Done.
We went to bed. He stayed up, rolling a joint in silence while I fell asleep, dreaming of wedding dresses and becoming Florence Stonehill.
Saturday disappeared. Heat built outside while we lay in the dark. Two shadows on tangled sheets. It was almost four when the front door opened.
Lily was back.
Jamie jumped up, dressing in a flash, and stalked out into the hallway. I stayed in bed, pulled the covers over my head.
Voices rose. Sharp. Emotional.
I escaped into the shower, letting the water stream down over my face, blocking out the argument.
I wasn’t used to this kind of drama. It knotted my stomach.
My instinct when things felt out of control was to make order.
So I tidied. I opened the curtains and let in cool city air.
I picked up clothes, made the bed, rinsed the mugs, emptied the ashtray.
I wanted something, anything, to feel clean again.
When I finished, I put on one of Jamie’s shirts and knotted it at the waist. I sprayed his aftershave on my neck, trying to make the room, and myself, feel whole again.
‘Thanks, babe,’ Jamie said, walking in.
He wrapped his arms around me. Up close I caught sour tang of sweat on his skin, as if the argument was still clinging to him.
I tensed before I could stop myself.
He pulled back, looking hurt. ‘Sorry this weekend’s fucked,’ he said.
Jamie had always moved through the world with a kind of bright intensity that drew people in. At the time, I thought that kind of heat meant you were at the centre of his world.
Standing there in his shirt, in that bedroom, I didn’t yet understand the difference between intensity and steadiness.
I only knew that when he turned that brightness on you, it felt impossible to imagine life without it.