Page 47 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

‘Rude. ANYWAY. It’s from the POV of Little Red’s gran – her lived experience of home intrusion as a senior female and how there aren’t enough parts for women in theatre. Except it’s set in Croydon and Little Red Riding Hood wears a red Nike hoody and gold hoop earrings and speaks in verse and we’re going to perform it in the car park and school are going to let us use real cigarettes as props if we promise not to light them.’

Violet gags.

I squint at her, unsure how to take her feedback.

The rehearsals are full on. I still try to hang out with my old friends but I’m writing or sitting in on rehearsals or going to new house parties with my new friends. I find myself cancelling on Aoife, The Twins. Missing Bianca’s calls. Not replying to Ronke’s texts. I tell myself that long friendships are like stews that get better, over time – left undisturbed, flavour deepening and concentrating days after. I can no longer justify sitting on a common freezing my arse off whilst a spliff I don’t even smoke is passed in front of my face. I see Lowe’s name slip to the back of my recents, until the restricted memory on my phone is at full capacity. I delete around him, not having the heart to lose his messages.

It’s Shreya’s birthday at the Rainforest Café, a dusty central London tourist attraction in a windowless basement that’s made to look like a rainforest and has a thunderstorm every half an hour. It’s quite exhilarating when the robotic rubber gorilla beats his faux-fur chest, or the clunking trunk of the mechanic elephant sucks up stagnant water, its screw-loose eye wobbling around its skull. Shreya has been given her parents’ chequebook to buy us all lunch and Coca-Colas. Bianca rebelliously orders a beer and Shreya holds up the menu and reminds, ‘Coca-Colas.’

Bianca mumbles, ‘Aren’t we a bit old for the Rainforest Café?’

Aoife snorts into the garlic tear ’n’ share bread.

‘Sorry, Ella,’ Bianca says, like there’s no possible way she can go on with Shreya’s birthday lunch unless she addresses the actual elephant in the room, ‘have you changed your perfume?’

‘Yeah’ – I try to own it – ‘it’s DKNY Women.’ I sniff my wrist. ‘Justin Timberlake isn’t the only cool one these days.’ But that goes down like a shit baguette.

‘We haven’t seen you for ages.’ Bianca pokes, ‘Do you not love us any more?’

‘Seriously? I am just at one of those schools where you get out what you put in and I want to do well.’

‘We all want to do well!’ Aoife bites into her cob salad.

‘That’s good to want to do well.’ Ronks picks at her noodles.

A Twin asks, ‘So will we see you in a production or anything soon?’

I just want this conversation to be over. The thought of The Twins dressed up in their silver spangly Oscar dresses, clutching opera binoculars, expecting West End ice-cream tubs, only to see me shouting about in a Sarah Kane play is too much.

‘I’ve actually got a show soon.’ After Violet’s reaction, I can’t bring myself to pitch Bad Wolf out loud.

‘Yay!’ a Twin claps.

Not Yay. I don’t want to invite them; they won’t get it (or the many layers). But I’ll feel bad if I don’t.

‘I’ll send you the details.’

The other Twin – the more outspoken of the two – let’s call her Twin 1 – asks, ‘And have you spoken to Lowe recently … ?’ His name spikes me right though the chest. Just because she’s going out with Sam now – as in Sam’s house, where I first met Lowe – she thinks she’s superior.

I haven’t spoken to Lowe in a while; I’ve been so whipped up with college. We still keep our friendship cooking but things are … scratchy. We are less like a stew but a risotto that needs a sturdy hand and constant feeding of stock in the form of love and attention. We are no longer silky smooth and unctuous. We are starting to catch to the bottom of the pan. To stick. To get stodgy. And it wouldn’t be long before we’d burn.

I say, ‘No, not as much as before. It’s not that I don’t want to see him, but you know what it’s like: he’s at some music college now, which is in the total opposite direction. Don’t you have to get like a tram there or something?’

‘Hmmm,’ Twin 2 adds like she knows otherwise. She’s going out with Nas; they’re double-dating friends like their life is a constant game of squash. ‘Still, you should probably just call him.’

‘What is this?’ I feel myself sharpening.

‘You don’t have to get so defensive, Ella; it wasn’t an attack. I just know he’d appreciate to hear from you, that’s all,’ Twin 1 says.

‘OK. Thanks.’ I sip my watered-down Coke. This is blatantly Pepsi. ‘Why, did he say something?’

‘Well … ’ Twin 2 checks with Twin 1 if it’s OK to speak and says, ‘We bumped into him on the common and he said you hadn’t really spoken to him since you started this new college.’

‘He hasn’t spoken to me either!’ I snap back, shooting the messenger dead.

‘He said he thought you might be too busy, that’s all,’ Twin 1 says.

‘So now I’m the one that’s too busy to see him? That’s hilarious.’ I’m thinking back to all the times he’s been off on his BMX and never called.

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