if you’re chasing. That’s not Amy’s style.’
I am being pathetic, she’s right. But surely right now I’m allowed to be pathetic and my friends just have to deal with it and not point it out. ‘This is the time you tell me how great I am.’
‘You want me to lie?’
Rachel’s come back as an entirely different person. She’s rude. She’s been rude all week, and not just to me. She’s been rude to my dad, which is shitty. I decide to let her have it. ‘You’ve insulted my dad and ignored my mum. You don’t answer George’s questions and you’re rude to Martin.’
‘I’ve been driving him home,’ she points out.
‘Because my mum pays for your petrol and it means you can leave at five. You won’t let him speak in the car.’ I take a breath. ‘You haven’t written, you clearly don’t give a shit about me and now you come back and call me pathetic. And you’re complaining about cataloguing the Letter Library, telling me my dad’s having a midlife crisis – which he might well be – but that’s understandable given that he’s losing the bookshop. Meanwhile, I’ve lost Amy, George is missing Mum. What have you lost, Rachel? Apart from your sense of humour?’
She raises her middle finger at me.
‘Very grown up,’ I say, and she raises her other one.
‘If you don’t want to work at the bookshop, don’t. If you don’t want to be at the party, leave. You have a car.’
‘Thanks for reminding me, Henry,’ she says, then she tips the last of her water down the front of my jeans, and walks out.
I sit here shifting between feeling terrible about what I said to Rachel and feeling good because I stood up for myself and most of all feeling like I’ve wet myself because of Rachel’s parting move.
After about half an hour, Martin walks over and sits next to me. ‘Great party,’ he says, like what he’s really saying is, This is the worst place I have ever been in my whole life. Fuck you for bringing me here. Even when he’s being rude, Martin is polite.
‘You seemed to be saying in the car that I should make a move on George,’ he continues. ‘That, if I made a move on George, she would welcome that move.’
‘I thought you weren’t planning on making the move.’
‘I wasn’t. And then I changed my mind because we’d been talking to each other for an hour and I was making her laugh, and she was leaning close to me and it seemed like it’d be okay to kiss her.’
‘But I was wrong?’
‘You were wrong,’ he says. ‘I am definitely not attractive to her and worse, she’s in love with someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. Someone who is attractive to her, presumably.’ He shakes his head a little, like he can’t make sense of the evening in any way. ‘‘You think you’re so hot,” she said. I don’t think I’m hot. I think I’m geeky. I think I’m a geeky guy who likes computers and wants to be a lawyer.’
While he’s talking a text comes in from George, letting me know that she’s going home with Rachel. I wave to Lola and Hiroko and tell Martin that I’ll drive him home.
‘It’s possible the party wasn’t a great idea,’ I say as we get to the front door and walk through onto the front lawn where Greg is standing with Amy.
‘They just keep turning up around me. He’s doing it deliberately.’
‘I like Rachel better than Amy,’ Martin says, as if that’s even relevant.
‘Rachel doesn’t let you speak in the car,’ I remind him.
‘She lets me choose the radio station. She lets me eat in the car. She stops if I need to buy something on the way home. She just doesn’t let me talk.’
Before I can reply, Greg calls over to me. ‘Couldn’t find the bathroom?’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Greg,’ Amy says, which gives me some small hope that she will realise, in time, that he can’t not be an idiot because that’s how he’s made.
‘I’m not the one who wet myself,’ he says.
I should be mature and walk away from Greg. But I’m not mature, as evidenced by my life. I pick up the garden hose that’s sitting by my feet. It’s got a pressure nozzle, which is convenient. I don’t hose Greg all over. I get him where Rachel got me. Exactly there. It gives me great satisfaction that I’ve probably ruined a very expensive suit.
While Greg’s yelling, Martin