Famously in Love

CHAPTER ONE

ONE

They say a change is as good as a rest, well arrest me, then, because I’m not ready for the changes you bring …

– from ‘Change It Up’, by These Exiles

‘JESSY, ALL YOU HAVE to do is message some guys,’ begged my sister, hands clasped before her. ‘I just need you to –’

‘Yeaaaah, no!’

But my older twin wasn’t one to take no for an answer –

‘Ouch!’ I rubbed my ear, the music that had been playing there suddenly absent.

Laura tossed my earbud on to her kitchen table. Her glasses had a few smudge marks in the corners, but it didn’t stop the determination in her gaze coming through, flicking away only to look at our best friend. ‘Anna’s going to help, aren’t you, Anna? Ann–’

But Anna was already on the move, her laptop bag, notes and her phone all balanced impossibly in one hand.

‘Sorry, babe, I’d love to – but I’ve got to get going.

My caseload at work has doubled since they fired Julian,’ she said with a grimace, gold eyeliner making her dark eyes pop even as she rolled them.

‘I just came by to grab the notes I left here last night.’ The three of us had spent the evening working on various projects, before giving up and bingeing the latest season of Temptation Hotel.

‘Anna, I am begging you –’ started my sister.

‘And your begging is noted.’ Anna poured coffee into the flask Laura had just handed her. ‘I’m sorry, really, but I have to go.’

I called after her. ‘You’re going to leave me here with her?’

‘Duty calls!’ our best friend said with a wry smile, grabbing her jacket, throwing it around her shoulders and pulling her box braids free. Her hair tumbled down to her waist, bouncing as she shot back, ‘Besides, if I stay much longer, I’ll get roped in too. Not a risk I’m willing to take.’

I laughed as Anna hugged my sister and threw me a wink as she shut the front door to the flat behind her.

‘Escaping before you bully her into this nonsense too. She’s got the right idea,’ I teased.

‘I’ll get her in the end,’ Laura said with a grin that was honestly a little frightening. Laura had a tendency to go a little crazy with her projects. ‘I always do.’

She wasn’t wrong. Laura, Anna and Jessy. Friends for practically forever – and Laura had been talking us into all sorts of things for just as long. She was the one who convinced us to get our noses pierced at fourteen. She was the one who’d found fake IDs to sneak us into the clubs. And now –

‘Look, are you going to help me or not?’ Laura narrowed her eyes as she placed the coffee she’d made for me on to the kitchen table.

I smiled sweetly. ‘Absolutely not.’

I had to stand firm. Unlike the time we got our noses pierced, and the time we got fake IDs, I was not going to give in. She was just going to have to learn to take no for an answer.

Laura turned away from me, but only to grab a cloth and immediately wipe up the offending coffee ring on the table.

‘What I don’t understand, Jessy,’ my delightful sister forced out through gritted teeth, pushing her glasses up her nose, ‘is why you even bothered to come over here if all you’re going to do is –’

The cheeky – ‘You said it was an emergency!’ I picked up my phone and thrust our chat into her face.

‘The house burning down is an emergency! You’re pregnant is an emergency.

Wanting me to join your dating app? Not an emergency.

Matter of fact, it’s the exact opposite of an emergency.

Can’t believe I left a guy in my bed for –’

Laura’s eyes widened as she threw the cloth down. ‘A guy – a guy? I thought you’d sworn off dating?’

‘Screwing is not dating, Laura.’ I rolled my eyes. Trust her to focus on the least important part of my impassioned speech. ‘The point is, I wouldn’t have come over if I’d known you were just trying to stick your nose into my love life.’

We may not have been identical twins, and we were distinctly lacking in telepathic skills, but Laura knew me better than anyone. She knew I wasn’t ready to start dating again. Casual hook-ups, sure – a girl has needs, after all. But anything more serious than that?

No chance.

I knew Laura’s business venture, Butterflies, was important to her.

I’d spent the last few years watching her put herself through coding classes by waiting tables, cycling takeaways across London’s potholed streets, and working some shitty retail job – how she’d managed all three, I don’t know.

She’d finally quit all her jobs a few months ago and started her own company from this very kitchen table.

Coffee rings and all.

I was ridiculously proud of her, and ridiculously certain that she was going to become a billionaire before we were thirty – Laura was amazing like that. She’d inherited all the go-getter genes and left none for me.

I put my earbud back in, tapped my phone and pulled up my playlist again.

The little nub of tension between my shoulder blades started to melt away as the latest track by These Exiles soared into my ears.

I took another sip of my coffee and started to scroll the timeline.

Now I knew Laura’s emergency was just her meddling, I could go back to doomscrolling through reactions to yesterday’s episode of Temptation Hotel – the only romance in my near future.

Or at least, I would have, if Laura hadn’t chosen that moment to interrupt my scrolling with, ‘Considering I’m facing bankruptcy, the least you could do right now is actually listen to me.’

I almost spat out my coffee.

‘What? You said you wanted me to chat with random guys on your app – you didn’t say anything about money troubles.’ Panic raced through me, the taste of coffee bitter on my tongue.

Laura bit her lip, guilt written across her face. ‘Fine, not exactly bankruptcy – but it could happen if the investors pull out and the app dies. This is serious, Jessy. This is real life – adult life. If things don’t go well … they go badly.’

A few minutes’ difference, that was all it was – but the gap between our births had always been big enough for Laura to act like we were years apart.

She sighed, her top riding up a little at the sides and her suit trousers bunching around her hips as she pulled a vape out of her pocket. She took a long look at it and regretfully stuffed it away again. ‘God, I could really do with a smoke right now.’

That was when I knew something was really wrong. Laura had quit smoking last year, and, damn, hadn’t Anna and I heard about it. She didn’t turn to it unless she was really stressed, and I couldn’t remember the last time she’d had to resort to a nicotine hit.

Shit.

I paused the music and pulled my earbuds out. My stomach twisted as I pointed at her to sit. ‘Talk to me. Now.’

‘These investors, they’re great, but … but that review meeting I practised with you for?

It didn’t go well.’ She pushed her glasses up her nose again.

‘Like, at all. They’re going to pull out by the end of the summer.

I’ll have nothing, Jessy. Butterflies will just …

die.’ Laura’s voice cracked. Heartbreak was written all over her face.

I hadn’t seen Laura this vulnerable in years.

It didn’t seem possible. Laura had dedicated everything she had to Butterflies. Hell, she was still living in this dump – mould on the walls, holey carpet, creepy landlord and all – because she’d found the cheapest, dingiest place to live and put every other penny into her app.

‘I don’t get it,’ I said, managing to find my voice in the silence as I pulled at my cardigan, tugging it closer around me. ‘I thought the app had thousands of downloads. Loads of people are using it.’ She’d told me so herself when we’d practised her review pitch – I’d colour-coded the pie chart.

‘Loads of guys are using it,’ my twin said with a sigh, worry flickering over her face. ‘Tons of men are on there, and they’re all waiting around because … Look, research shows that, on average, there’s a seventy–thirty men-to-women split on dating apps –’

I loved my sister, but it was difficult for my eyes not to glaze over when she started quoting figures. Hyper-fixating on numbers was her thing, not mine – and I was the one in finance. ‘Can we skip the statistics?’ I pleaded. ‘I spend all week looking at spreadsheets that I barely understand.’

But Laura was already on a roll: ‘– need an eleven per cent increase in female-instigated –’

‘Sis. Seriously?’ I could feel a headache building.

‘I’m just saying: men have a seventy-five per cent chance of meeting someone on a dating app, while women only do so sixty-six per cent of the time –’

‘Laura!’ I finally snapped. It couldn’t be healthy having all these stats running through her head.

My twin glared at the interruption, but took a deep breath before admitting, ‘There aren’t enough women on the app.’

Well, I couldn’t say I was surprised. Dating wasn’t exactly a picnic, no matter how you went about it. Who wasn’t sick of being chatted up by men with commitment issues, mummy issues, or – my personal fave – daddy issues?

‘I just need you to use this profile –’

‘Will me joining even make a difference?!’ I asked desperately, pushing aside the nausea that rose at the mere thought of dating again. ‘It sounds like you need a lot more than one or two extra women to –’

‘I’ve put the word out: asked all my old work friends, everyone I can find from back home.

I even dropped a message in the old school group chat,’ Laura rushed, words pouring from her mouth like she’d anticipated my every argument.

‘There’s literally no one I’ve ever known that I haven’t reached out to at this point.

If Mum was still – I’d be begging her too.

Please, Jessy. I wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important. You know I never ask much from you!’

I hesitated as I pushed a curl of hair behind my ear.

It was true. Laura was always so self-sufficient, never needing anything from me.

In fact, it was usually the opposite; she always gave to me.

Gave up those expensive piano lessons so I could keep going.

Gave up hockey because our mum couldn’t afford equipment for both of us.

Looking at her now brought back memories of everything she had given up for me.

Sometimes, looking at Laura in distress was like staring into a cracked mirror. I had the darker hair, she wore glasses – but it was the same eyes, the same chin.

‘You know I’m not dating. Not after …’ It cost me, to even begin to say those words. I’d needed time to process the colossal fuckup that was my last relationship, and, truthfully, I’d probably been ignoring it more than actually trying to move on.

Who doesn’t want to just stuff down all their emotions and pretend the bad shit never happened?

A shadow flickered across Laura’s face. ‘You don’t talk about him. I … I haven’t known how to ask.’

Pain roared through my chest as though it had happened just yesterday. The bags packed by the door. The note I was supposed to find, not read with him standing there.

For a moment I was dizzy, my head spinning, the nausea that had roiled in my stomach returning in a flash. As though I could never think of dating without thinking of Ross and all the promises he broke.

I tried to reassure her with a smile. ‘I don’t want to talk about him, anyway. I know you’d listen if I wanted to.’ I really was trying.

Laura was staring at me, concern painted across her face.

‘I’m fine.’ Even I wasn’t convinced – but I was not going to be unpacking my relationship trauma this morning.

‘You’re better than fine. You were too good for that –’

‘Laura, I said I don’t want to talk about it,’ I repeated more forcefully, pulling a hairband from my wrist and tying up my hair.

‘I’m not asking you to date these men, Jessy,’ Laura said quietly, after a pause. ‘I just need you to talk to them a little. I’ve already created your profile; all you have to do –’ She broke off.

Rain was starting to patter against the cracked windowpanes of Laura’s kitchen, and in the growing gloom – honestly, London in summer was so grey sometimes – my twin looked at me before starting again. ‘I … I really need Butterflies to work.’

I took a long, deep breath.

I was going to regret this. I knew it deep down, and I was going to be mad about it. Future Jessy was standing on the window ledge, banging on the glass, shouting, ‘Don’t do it!’

But it was too late. She wasn’t here, and Present Jessy could see that her sister needed her – for once.

‘How much replying are we talking about exactly? Because I am not – ouch – shit, my coffee!’

Laura had launched herself at me, pulling me into a firm hug. ‘Thank you.’

I hugged her back, tightly.

‘Don’t thank me. Just tell your investors to give you more time,’ I said, as Laura finally loosened her grip and sat back down.

‘Thank you,’ repeated my twin. ‘Seriously, Jessy. You only have to message each guy once a day. That’ll count as engagement.

There are even conversation starters on there that you can use; you don’t have to think about it.

’ She looked at me with a hesitant smile.

‘But you never know … you might meet someone you actually like.’

Right. I very much doubted that.