Page 89 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

‘Jackson, I think I have to break up with you.’

‘OK, well, please don’t do that?’ He laughs again but his brows are pinched. ‘Is it the engagement? It’s just a ring! I don’t even really like weddings! I thought you were the one that wanted to get married. Let’s just call it off?’

He brings me round and holds me tight. I feel his heart pounding through his t-shirt into my chest. I cry down his shoulder. My whole face steams up.

‘I’m so sorry, Jackson.’

I take off my ring and tuck it into his hand. He shakes his head, and puts the ring on the bedside table, hoping, I guess, that it will be back on my finger in an hour. Then he pulls me back and we lie together in silence.

Maybe that’s the kind of maturity that only comes when you reach mid-thirties?

Is that it? Have I done it? Have we broken up?

Of course, it doesn’t end that simply. We tripwire ourselves into an argument. He’s pissed off. Annoyed. Hurt. He talks about the mortgage; he’s rattled at me and my ‘impeccable timing’. He blames Aoife and Bianca for ‘making my decisions’ for me; he says, ‘They’re jealous, they just want you to be single with them!’ I say, ‘Aoife wanted me to stay with you!’ The fact that we’ve discussed him hurts him more. I shouldn’t have said it. I call his colleagues workaholic money-obsessed privileged snobs. I go off about Zahra. You answer the phone to her at 11 p.m. I say we’ve got nothing in common. This makes him mad and sad. He tries to kiss me; I don’t kiss back. I say, ‘I love you.’ He tells me to ‘fuck off’. He sits on his phone whilst I lie in bed with the covers pulled over my head. He comes to talk to me and I flop the covers off, only to see him clip a hangnail on the cabinet and shout like I’ve never seen him do before. I shush him. ‘The neighbours!’ He goes for a walk, slamming the door. I make tea. He returns crying. He begs. We cry. We hug. We’re exhausted, red-faced and hungry. We eat beans on toast, in silence, heads in our hands.

It’s as though Lowe has exposed my capacity to love. Unlocked some kind of forgotten door. It was never Lowe’s or Jackson’s responsibility to feed and water my self-esteem. Finding Lowe again after all these years was not a waste; it’s given me the courage to kick that door open wide and here it is, swinging off the hinges and I am walking through it, alone, whether I wanted to or not. Into the complete unknown.

I imagine myself ducking out of my life like the woman in the Scottish Widows advert, but I just take the 137 bus back to Streatham, scraping a wholesale multipack crisp box full of books down the road towards 251, muttering promises to myself that I’m going to love myself better than anybody else can.

I get a buzz on my phone – my agent: We’ve got a nice offer in, Ella! Your novel is going to be published! Merry Christmas! x

If only she knew.

18 MONTHS LATER

Chapter 36

I’ve watched the spring thaw on the windscreen of Mum’s car until it becomes a trap for golden tree pollen. The forget-me-nots and acorns. I’ve watched the same tree get dressed and strip. I’ve been back at 251 for almost eighteen months and, yes, I am the cliché of arrested development: thirty-two, single, always wearing leggings and that same Foo Fighters t-shirt, and, now that our flat has sold, ‘saving for a deposit’. My brother and sister have both moved out. Sonny’s moved in with his friends; Violet lives above her café. So it’s just me. People who don’t know my mum might list the pros of living at home – the money I must save, the washing she must do for me, the nutritious home-cooked meals I must eat. Well, as said, these people obviously don’t know my mum.

And yet, my raw newborn skin is soothed by the harsh, itchy blanket of my mother. I feel at home. It’s what we both needed: I needed to be taken care of; she needed a new project. We’ve bonded over cooking Thai curry, books we’re reading, and she’s even writing now too – yes, it’s her memoir. When I moved back home, I helped Mum and Stepdad Adam with the garden. Mum gave me a patch of my own to grow vegetables and I laughed like, yeah right. But I surprised myself and have grown beans, peas, and beetroot and knobbly cucumbers as big as my arm. Having soil behind my fingers has even stopped me biting my nails. The patch is now a great pleasure of mine. Turns out I’m way more like her than I thought.

It’s not all been easy, learning how to sleep on my own again, nobody to check if I’ve eaten (not that I forget) and I’ve been tempted to dig out that old rape alarm for the backstreets after 9 p.m. It’s mostly a lot of writing and watching TV alone on my laptop, but I no longer need to wear a gumshield at night. My aching teenage self haunted me from the corners of my bedroom until I invited her to lie in the bed with me, where I held her tight, kissed her head and lullabied her to sleep. My vegetables are growing nicely and my book, just like me, is almost ready to face the world.

I’ve done an interview about it for the newspaper (only the South London Express but still): a profile piece on returning to writing and coming of age.

‘They could have used a new photo,’ Mum says. ‘You look like a thirteen-year-old.’

I get a few messages about it. Dad, his wife. My friends. An email from my girls’ school, inviting me back to give a talk to the students. Ha! Knew you suckers would be back.

And then Lowe. STING. His last message was way over a year ago when I turned down an invite to a New Year’s Eve party. I wasn’t in the mood for parties or seeing him kiss Heather as the clock struck twelve. It’s difficult not to search for True Love updates online but I don’t. Anyway, he’s probably enjoying the stability of not touring, the peace of not being under the microscope, just living.

He says: Ella! My dad just showed me you in the paper! You’ve got a new book coming out? That will be the second book I’ve ever read! meet soon? Lowe x

It’s surreal that he’s the one reading articles about me for once.

I write back: aww say hi to your dad! Yes, come to the launch if you fancy it? But no pressure, defo up for meeting x And I send over the invitation to my book launch, thinking he’ll never come.

There’s a heatwave in London when Lowe and I meet again, on the South Bank like before. I carry a hand fan now, like one of those nans you see on postcards in Greece sitting in cobbled lanes on little straw chairs outside tavernas. I spread my legs when I sit down like them too. I’ve embraced my age and, you know, I’m looking forward to getting older. My wireless bras. My hairy legs. My high-waisted everything and flat summer shoes all-year round.

There’s an energy in the air, like carnival, like a night only just getting started. There’s no real cause for celebration. For new lovers on a first date to kiss, for drunk girls in bikinis to be grinding next to a speaker. For the busker to sing another song. For plastic cups of beer and dewy ice buckets of rosé. For kids to run in the fountains. But tomorrow doesn’t matter; that’s what this kind of weather does to humans.

I’m wearing a jade dress; it shines like mermaid skin in the sun.

As always, Lowe is magnificent. He rearranges his posture, pulls at his dark clothes, boyishly, to look smart. He’s never been good at dressing for hot weather. Hey. Hey.

‘What would you like to drink?’ he asks. Just being near him is a tonic. He’s having lemonade.

‘Sounds good. Me too.’ I smile and he smiles back. ‘I’m just going to find the toilet.’

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