‘Before I forget, Mum and Dad are having a wedding anniversary thing on Saturday night,’ Adrian said, inhaling deeply on a Marlboro Gold outside the bar as soon as Lucy and Sumi were out of sight. There was every chance he was the last person I knew who still smoked actual cigarettes. ‘Will you come? They’ve been asking after you.’
‘Are Lucy and Sumi coming?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Lucy has a Creepy Dave thing and Sumi has a Jemima thing. She’s off to Madrid to build a cathedral or something so they’re going to visit for the weekend.’
Sumi’s girlfriend was an architect, which meant she was very clever, very rich and an endless source of exciting minibreaks. I was sure there were many wonderful things about being in a relationship but having a lifetime-long reason to get out of doing things you really didn’t want to do had to be right up there with the best of them.
‘Come on, Ros, it’ll be a laugh,’ Adrian said with a wheedling whine.
‘No offence to your parents but it absolutely will not,’ I said, rummaging around in my bag for chewing gum. The hake crepe that Lucy had demanded had left a very unpleasant aftertaste in my mouth, which wasn’t too surprising since it had tasted very unpleasant. Fish finger sandwiches were definitely better. ‘Surely you’d rather take someone who might actually have sex with you afterwards?’
‘Yes, of course I would,’ he replied without so much as blinking. ‘But I’ve turned over a new leaf. I’m the new Adrian, I don’t do that any more.’
‘Why?’ I asked, suspicious.
‘Because I’m only interested in forming a deep and meaningful relationship with someone I care about,’ he said, pouting. ‘I’m a reformed character, Ros, I haven’t had a shag in ages.’
I gave him a questioning look.
‘Fine, it’s been a slow summer and I haven’t had any offers,’ he admitted. ‘But please come, it’s their ruby wedding anniversary, it’s a big deal. There’s going to be an ungodly amount of food and drink and you know you want to.’
I really didn’t want to but I couldn’t say no. It wasn’t as if I had anything else to do and Adrian would cross hot coals for me if I asked.
‘Ros?’ he wheedled. He took one last draw on his cigarette, stamping it out as a black Prius with a glowing Uber badge pulled up beside us. I let out a very heavy sigh and nodded. ‘Fantastic,’ he said as he opened the car door and hopped inside. ‘Come any time after seven, can’t wait. See you Saturday.’
Without the money for a taxi, I wandered back down the street towards the tube station. It had been so good to see my friends but I couldn’t help but feel a little empty as I took myself off home instead of linking arms with the others and laughing all the way back to our shared house. The late-night milk runs, doing our makeup in each other’s rooms, snuggling up together on the sofa to watch a film. I couldn’t think of a time that I’d been happier. Now they had new homes to go to, new partners to snuggle up with. But not me.
Just like everyone else who happened to be walking alone down a busy city street at ten o’clock on a Tuesday night, I automatically slid my hand into my pocket and pulled out my phone. I was still getting replies to my texts: my great-aunt who hadn’t realized I’d been away, my university friend Alison who wanted to know if I’d accepted Jesus as my Lord and Saviour since the last time she’d seen me (at our ten-year reunion with me hugging one of the student union toilets after a regrettable pint of snakebite and black). I wondered what new messages might have arrived since I’d last checked.
And then I saw it.
My heart pounded, my stomach lurched and I started to sweat, a horrible conviction that I was about to see the hake pancake again washing over me. I stuttered out of the flow of people on the street and leaned against a cold stone wall, staring at my phone, quite sure I was seeing things, quite sure it would disappear. But it didn’t. It stayed right where it was, shining up at me and willing me to open it.
I held my breath.
I opened the message.
Two words.
Hello, stranger
The text was from Patrick.
Everyone has a Patrick.
Adrian’s words echoed in my ears all the way home to my shed. Was it true? Did everyone have someone who made them feel this way? Light-headed and loose-limbed and like they might have forgotten their own name? Because if they did, someone should have warned me before things got as bad as they did. No matter how many songs I heard or books I read or films I watched, no one had ever quite managed to put into words how I’d felt about Patrick Parker. The whole time we were together, I melted at the thought of him even as I seized up with fear that I would somehow breathe the wrong way and ruin it all. He made the sun shine, the moon glow, I had a secret smile that was just for him and there was nothing I wouldn’t have done if he’d asked. He took my breath from the moment we met and I didn’t get it back for nine whole months.
And then it was over.
I turned the music up in my earphones as I rounded the corner of my parents’ road, trying to drown out the memories.
Sumi once told me everything in life was an equation, that everything had a value and could all be worked out with maths. With relationships, you took the length of time you were together, added how desperately in love you were, then multiplied it by the degree of pain of the ending to find out how badly it would affect you. There were other variables: the amount of time you’d been crushing on someone before you got together (add ten), how good the sex had been (multiply by a hundred), unforgiving habits or unappealing fetishes (subtract accordingly) and, eventually, divide by the amount of time since the end of the relationship. That was how long it would take you to get over someone.
It was a straightforward solution for Sumi; her friend was the happiest she’d ever been and then, in a matter of moments, became the most heartbroken human alive, meaning there was only one conclusion: my ex was evil. But for me, it was more complicated. I needed more than just maths to figure out Patrick and me. Maybe one of those fancy calculators they’d made us buy in Year Eight but literally never showed us how to use. Was this what the ‘sine’ button was for?
All that was left now was a bittersweet aching, tender at the heart but warm around the edges. It was the kind of pain that felt good to press on from time to time. When I looked at my phone I was anxious and excited and sad and scared but also, there was no point lying to myself, incredibly turned on.
Instead of walking down the driveway directly to my shed, I pulled out the key to my parents’ front door and skipped up the steps. There were no lights on inside, my parents were probably asleep already, but I’d left all my old diaries in the loft when I went away and I needed them. The written word was more reliable than memories.
The house was quiet, except for the ticking of the hallway clock and the occasional clack of the boiler in the understairs cupboard. It didn’t matter that it was July, a day did not go by when my mother did not have the heating on. What if the queen was driving past, her car broke down and she wanted a bath and we didn’t have any hot water? It just wouldn’t do. What would the neighbours think?
I was rifling through the post in the hall when I heard a sound coming from the living room.
‘Bugger me, that’s cold.’
Clearly my dad, clearly complaining. Even though all I wanted to do was get my diaries and retreat to my shed with my memories and the enormous bar of chocolate I’d bought at the train station, I couldn’t imagine a version of events where I didn’t get an almighty bollocking for not coming in to