Chapter 17
LYRA
Why Hasn’t He Called?
‘Earth to Lyra,’ Mandy says.
I’m leaning on the counter in our store, staring at the high street beyond. ‘Sorry? Do you need me?’
‘What’s going on with you today? Is everything okay?’
I sigh. ‘I don’t want to be that girl, Mandy, but why hasn’t he called, or even messaged?
’ I turn around to face her, where she’s setting up the studio for a baby photoshoot – shaggy rug on the floor, a moses basket, teddy bears, pink love heart confetti, and a bubble machine.
‘It wasn’t just a kiss, it was…’ Subconsciously, my hand has travelled to my neck, where his mouth was four days ago.
The insides of my thighs twitch, remembering the feeling of being wrapped around his waist, held up by his arms and rendered completely senseless.
She stops setting up the lights for her shoot.
‘I’ve got to admit, I’m surprised. When I gave him your parents’ address, I was so happy for you.
I’ve never seen you like this about a lad as long as I’ve known you.
’ She shakes her head. ‘If he doesn’t call, do I have permission to cut off his balls and sell them to all these crazy TikTokers who’re in love with him? ’
I chuckle. ‘You’d probably get a good price with two and a half million people competing.’
She sobers. ‘Jokes aside, babes, it’s only Tuesday. He might still get in touch. Also, he’s a man. Men are totally useless when it comes to romance.’
‘I thought you’ve never been with a man.’
‘True. But my point is, if he doesn’t get in touch, his loss. You’re a catch, Lyra. He’d be punching anyway.’
I watch my friend get back to work, all the while thinking, Am I? What I’ve known for most of my twenties is suddenly screamingly obvious – my life is completely mundane. This can’t be all there is. Can it?
Mandy fixes her camera to a tripod. Staring down the lens, she asks me, ‘Have you thought about messaging him?’
‘Me?’ I ask, incredulous.
Mandy shrugs, still fixing her set up. ‘Shy bairns get nowt, hunny.’
And forward bairns get burnt.
* * *
By the time the Hump in the Week comes, I’ve stopped waiting for a message from Guy.
I had the kiss of my life. Correction – two pretty amazing kisses, though the first was nothing like Saturday night’s kiss.
Saturday was hot, steamy, knicker-meltingly good.
There was a moment when I wondered where we were going to go – the sofa?
The back of my car on the driveway? Because I was there, in it, desperate for more, completely lust-fuelled, and there was no going back.
Until it ended abruptly. Now, four days have passed and it’s clear Guy didn’t have the same reaction I did.
Maybe in the moment. Surely, he did, because I couldn’t make up the fire that ignited between us.
But now, afterwards, I guess he’s thinking he had a lucky save.
I’m not the kind of girl who’s going to beat herself up for no good reason but in this situation, the evidence speaks volumes. He isn’t interested.
Honestly, I’m gutted. I don’t know what it is about him – the voice, the lyrics, sure.
But it’s more than that; it’s the way he looks at me, the way he looks when he’s thinking.
Those moments when I catch him lost in thought and he isn’t just grumpy, he’s sad.
And I want to be the person who picks him up.
Cliché, I know, but true. I admire that he’s fallen from the top and he’s still going, grinding on the hamster wheel of life and making ends meet.
There’s no denying there’s an aesthetic perspective that’s more than a bit appealing. On a hotness scale, he’s a nine out of ten, near perfection. Only getting marked down because it doesn’t belong to me.
And, I don’t know, maybe there’s something about him that reminds me of my university days, before the proverbial shit hit the fan. When I aspired to see the world one day, take pictures and turn them into sellable work.
‘Penny for your thoughts?’ Mum asks as I’m standing at the kitchen bench in my parents’ house, chopping vegetables to make a hot pot, which, I have pointed out, is an odd choice for the time of year and the freakishly hot weather we’re experiencing.
‘Hmm?’ I ask, holding my knife aloft.
Mum’s eyes widen but with good humour as she stares at my weapon.
‘Sorry.’ I slip the knife onto my chopping board. ‘Actually, I was thinking about taking a holiday. Do you remember my map I used to have with all the stickers on it marking places I wanted to visit? I found it.’
Mum frowns. ‘Was it amongst your old medical papers?’
My old medical papers. From the degree I never finished. Mum gets back to slicing onions, her disappointment loud yet unspoken.
Just like that, I’m reminded why I’m here, making dinner in my parents’ house when I moved out months ago.
Because I created a situation and this is the bed I need to lie in.
Mum can’t be here all the time, so I am, to take care of things, to make reparations for what I caused, and I’m just…
tired. And for some reason, Mum’s onions are having a stronger effect on my eyes than usual.
My nose is running and my eyes watering and I know it’s just the onions but I think I’m sad, too.
‘I made you a hair appointment for next Saturday morning,’ Mum says, snapping me out of my pathetic, sulfuric-acid-induced reverie. ‘Just for a trim.’ She scrapes her onions into a pan and starts to fry them off. ‘Olivia wants you to keep your hair in nice condition for the wedding.’
‘I’m capable of making a hair appointment when I need one, Mum. Plus, I have an early wedding next Saturday.’
Huffily, I drop my cubes of root veggies into a casserole dish.
‘You have the first appointment at 9 a.m.’ She looks to the heavens as if she’s exasperated by me being mothered. ‘It’s only a trim, Lyra. It wouldn’t kill you to be more enthusiastic about your sister’s wedding.’
I could lie and tell her I am enthused. Or I could be honest and tell her I’m fed up with hearing about it and receiving directions to organise something or collect something because they think I have time on my hands.
Instead, I avoid the argument and simply say, ‘Sorry.’ It isn’t worth the aggravation.
Mum scrapes her softened onions from the frying pan into the casserole dish with my veg. I pour boiled water from the kettle on top and slip the dish into the preheated oven.
‘Now,’ Mum says. ‘I’d like to talk about that man you had over here on Saturday night.’
Here we go.
‘Don’t give me that look, Lyra.’ She wags a finger at me.
The same action I’ve seen many times in my twenty-eight years.
‘If you want to have fun with someone like that, please do it in your house and don’t tell me about it.
When you’re ready to bring home someone who doesn’t take his clothes off for a living, you may bring him to lunch.
’ She starts walking out of the kitchen, turning for one parting shot.
‘I’d suggest you take all the protection you can.
You’ve no idea where a man like that has been. ’
I fight back my amusement as I tell her, ‘He says he only sleeps with the pretty hens.’
‘Lyra.’ Her tone is a warning.
‘Mum,’ I reply, in much the same way.
But as I watch her go, I’m wondering if maybe Guy does sleep around. Maybe that’s why he came here on Saturday night and why he hasn’t bothered to call or message.
Suddenly, I’m not laughing inwardly any more. I’m not even amused.
Mum’s walking away, and I want her to. I should let her go, let it go, the animosity or whatever it is that drips from her, just like I always do. Hands braced on the worktop, I take a deep breath.
Nope. Something has snapped inside me and I’m powerless to stop it as I follow Mum into the lounge, where Dad is sitting watching TV in his armchair.
‘Why do you do that?’ I ask her. ‘Why do you act like we’re so much better than other people?’
She’s just sat down on the sofa and turns her head slowly, shocked. ‘Excuse me?’
‘What if I do like him? Then what? He’s not good enough for me? He’s actually a musician. A brilliant one.’
‘So fantastic, in fact, he’s taking his clothes off for a living. Fornicating with women at parties. Singing karaoke to someone else’s wedding playlist?’
‘Stop it, Mum. Just stop it! You don’t get to dictate who I like.
What do you want for me? To have a neurosurgeon as a husband, whom I never see and have nothing in common with?
To spend my life photographing other people’s happy endings, whilst I spend my evenings alone, making hotpots to leave in the oven for my husband, who’s devoted to work rather than me, to eat alone in our fancy kitchen when he comes home? ’
I’ve gone too far, I know it. I’ve called out Mum’s life, Dad’s life, and that isn’t what I intended to do. I’m grateful for everything I had growing up, and their stifling opinions aside, Guy is right; I’ve always known I’m loved.
My cage feels too small lately and I don’t know why now.
Maybe it’s been moving out, or finding my box of stuff from university.
Maybe it’s the reminders I seem to have at every corner recently of that time I decided to live the life I wanted for myself.
Perhaps I’m wound up anyway this week because the very man Mum has just called out is messing with my head in every possible way.
‘Lyra, I don’t want you to sit at home, as much as I don’t want you dating a dead-end man who briefly used to be someone. I see people from every walk of life in my job and I treat them all the same but I don’t necessarily want them for my daughter.’
She picks up the TV remote and changes the channel, which pisses me off for two reasons. First, Dad was watching that. Second, it’s downright rude and dismissive, and it makes me dig my fingernails into my palms with rage I don’t normally feel.
‘Sweetheart, contrary to your belief that I want you to be a wilting flower in a house with potted plants and a vegetable patch, it’s your lack of ambition that disappoints me.
’ She sets down the remote on the arm of the sofa and looks at me now.
Not looks, fixes on me, as if she’s willing me to be better. ‘It always has been.’
I stare back at her, then find my feet, avoiding the pull I feel to look at my dad and see if his expression is also one of disappointment.
The fire I had a minute ago is being put out by water. I feel it filling my eyes. A burning sensation replaced by clouded vision.