Page 48 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

‘To be fair, you are quite busy,’ Bianca adds, letting her fork clang on her plate. Oh here we go …

‘I’ve written this production – the ONE I am going to invite you all to, obviously.’ I am flustered. ‘I’m rehearsing, reading—’

‘—hanging out with Dominique … ’ Aoife mimics my tone, letting her glasses slide down her nose like a challenging librarian – how did she get so cocky? I know Dom annoys them with her creativity and love for life. The others go quiet.

‘Aoife? What the hell?’ I laugh but not because it’s funny. ‘We go to the same college. What do you want, me to have no friends?’

Ronks sticks up for me again. ‘It’s good to meet new people.’ Thanks, Ronks. ‘You’re blossoming, Ella, and it’s glorious to see. Lowe will have to just suck it up.’ But then she adds, ‘You’ve always been too available for that guy anyway.’

‘What does that mean?’ I ask, my voice rising. ‘Ronke?’

Shreya looks about for a waiter, desperate to flag down her own surprise birthday cake (that we were meant to bring out) to slice through the tension.

‘It’s like you’re saying I’m some desperate people pleaser,’ I add.

‘No, we’re saying you’ve changed.’ Shreya drops the mic. ‘There. Said it. You’re different.’

The whole table is silent. Ouch. Changed is the worst. Changed means Judas.

‘Grown.’ Ronke finds a kinder word.

Bianca hides her face in the dessert menu; Aoife wipes a tear from behind her glasses. I’ve betrayed my friends by enjoying college. I’m having an affair on my whole entire past.

‘This isn’t even about Lowe, is it? It’s about all of you.’

‘God, I wish we’d never said anything now.’ Twin 1 folds her arms.

‘Me. The. Fuck. Too.’

Thunder and lightning strikes our table, the restaurant is thrown into darkness and drama, caught in an invisible rainstorm; a soundscape of hooting chimps, roaring lions and screeching birds; the gorilla beats his chest. A startled baby cries in a highchair on the table next to us.

‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!’ sing the waiters, winding through the tables with a cake on fire that, for some reason, Shreya’s pretending she’s never seen before, even though she ferried the bloody thing, along with the seventeen candles, in a fuck-off Tupperware, on the 159 bus.

And we’re all looking very separate. The spaces between our chairs, huge.

That evening – as an olive branch – I reluctantly send a text inviting my friends to our show next week. They all RSVP yes.

I can’t invite Lowe though. I’m not ready to share my new life with him. Or maybe share him with my new life. Why is that? Is it that I’m embarrassed of trying? I don’t want him to see that I’ve been having a go of living outside of him.

Knowing my friends are coming to the play has instantly snuffed out my creative flair. I worry about how certain lines will land and begin to panic-edit the play at the last minute. Then I fret I’ve cheated myself by compromising my vision from fear of what others will think.

Cut to:

Aoife, Bianca, Ronks, Shreya, The Twins and their boyfriends, Mum, Adam, Dad, Violet and Sonny, all there to support me at 4.25 p.m. on a Tuesday afternoon, shivering in the school car park to see the production of:

BAD WOLF

By Ella Cole

And no one can hear a single line as the wind drags my precious words off into the distance. The forecast said ‘sunny spells’ – what the hell spell do you call this? I wince and cringe during the entire production. Begging for it to be over. Wishing that I, too, could get eaten by the bad wolf. At the climactic ending, I’m sure I hear Aoife snort with laughter but when I look around, she is nodding at the scene, feigning pensive and it’s way better acting than ANY of these amateurs on stage.

At the end of the terrible production, one by one I hear the critics:

‘Well, that was interesting,’ says Violet.

‘Entertaining,’ says Dad.

‘Very avant-garde,’ says Stepdad Adam.

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