“We’ll head over to the house, then,” he says. “Help Mum out.”
By “Help Mum out” I know he means, “Get myself a beer and turn on Sky Sports,” but I don’t challenge him.
“OK,” I say. “See you there.”
Our house is only ten minutes’ walk from the shop; sometimes it feels like one is an extension of the other. And I’m turning back to sort out a display of table mats which has gone wonky when Leila says, “What are you going to wear, Fixie?” in excited tones, as if we’re going to the school prom.
“Dunno,” I say, puzzled. “A dress, I suppose. Nothing special.”
It’s Mum’s birthday party. It’ll be friends and neighbors and Uncle Ned. I mean, I want to look nice, but it’s not exactly the Grand Embassy Ball.
“Oh, right.” Leila seems perplexed. “So you’re not going to…”
“Not what…”
“I just thought, because…”
She trails off meaningfully, as though I’ll know exactly what she’s talking about.
“Because what?” I peer at her, and Leila suddenly swivels on her clippy-cloppy heel to Jake.
“Jakey!” she says, in her version of a reproving tone. (Basically still an adoring simper.) “Haven’t you told her?”
“Oh, that. Right.” Jake rolls his eyes and glances at me. “Ryan’s back.”
What?
I stare at him, frozen. I can’t speak, because my lungs have seized up, but my brain has already started analyzing the word back like a relentless computer program. Back. What does back mean? Back to the UK? Back home? Back to me?
No, not back to me, obviously not back to me—
“He’s back in the country,” elaborates Leila, her eyes soft with empathy. “It never worked out with that American girl. He’s coming to the party. And he was asking after you.”
Three
I don’t know how many times a heart can be broken, but mine’s been shattered again and again, and every single time by Ryan Chalker.
Not that he’d know it. I’ve been pretty good at concealing my feelings (I think). But the truth is, I’ve been in love with Ryan pretty much solidly since I was ten years old and he was fifteen and I came across him and Jake with a group of boys in Burger King. I was instantly fixated on him. How could you not be fixated on him, with that blond hair, that profile, that glow?
By the time I joined secondary school, Ryan and Jake were best friends and Ryan used to hang around our house every weekend, cracking jokes and flirting with Mum. Unlike every other boy in that year, he had flawless skin. He knew how to style his hair. He could make our school uniform look sexy—that’s how hot he was.
He had money too. Everyone whispered about it. Some relative had left him a small fortune. He always hosted parties and he got a car for his seventeenth. A convertible. I’m twenty-seven years old and I’m sure I’ll never own a convertible. Ryan and Jake used to drive around London in it, roof down, music blaring, like a couple of rock stars. In fact, it was Ryan who introduced Jake to that posh, flash, hard-partying set. The pair of them used to get into the kind of clubs that you read about in tabloids, and they’d boast about it at our house the next day. When I was old enough, Mum let me go out with Jake and Ryan sometimes, and I felt like I’d won the lottery. There was such a buzz around them, and suddenly I was part of it too.
Ryan could be genuinely kind too. I’ll always remember one evening when we went to the cinema. I’d just broken up with a boy called Jason, and a bunch of his friends were behind us. They started to laugh at me and jeer, and Ryan whipped round before anyone else could and lashed into them. People heard about it at school the next day, and everyone was saying, “Ryan loves Fixie!”
Of course I laughed along. I treated it like a joke. But inside, I was smitten. I felt as if we were connected now. I kept thinking, Surely we’ll end up together? Surely it’s meant to be?
There were so many moments over the years when I thought I had a chance. The time in Pizza Express when he kissed me lingeringly on greeting me. The time he squeezed my thigh. The time he asked if I was single at the moment. Dad’s funeral, when he sat with me for a while at the reception