Page 96 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

‘Since you were a child I knew you lived inside your head.’ Mum directs her words only to me, as though she’s forgotten seventy-five of our loved ones are also here. ‘I used to ask myself, what on earth is that child thinking about? And well, now I know.’ She holds up the book and laughs. ‘I mean, what an overthinking, highly sensitive anxiety-riddled little shit you are—’

The room applauds and laughs. Aoife hangs around my neck crying with laughter.

Violet whispers, ‘Do you want me to make her stop?’

I say, ‘No. She’s good.’

‘But you are also fearless and brave and full of so much love. My word, am I proud of you?’ Her tears make me cry, and everyone awwwws at our mother/daughter bond, which now I think about it, is probably the real greatest love of my life. ‘And if anyone wants to know where she gets it from … ?’ Oh, here we go – she looks like she’s about to point at herself, loving the attention. ‘ … I have no fucking idea. I wish I could say it was me.’

And my dad re-enters to hear this bit, and blows me a kiss.

I, through tears, hug Mum as the room claps. There’s so much commotion – laughter, talking, crying, music – that I don’t hear the knock on the door. It’s Violet who leaves the room to answer it.

‘ME NEXT!’ Bianca screams and everyone protests as she takes a half-full bottle of prosecco off the table, holding it like a microphone. ‘I was actually Ella’s first commission. Sorry about me, she used to write my love letters for me back in the day to help me catch boyfriends … ’

Violet taps me on the shoulder, whispers in my ear; she says, ‘Ella, that was Lowe.’

I say, ‘What was?’ I think she’s referring to a song that was being played (when it was definitely Elvis Costello) but I can see by the look on her face she doesn’t mean that.

‘At the door.’

‘Now?’

She nods.

FUCK! I squeeze past Mum’s annoying friends loitering in the hallway sharing a spliff – the friends she HAD to go and invite to the ‘afters’ even though I told her not to – with Mum’s dress hitched up to my knees in a bundle, so I don’t trip; the thing is like a bloody wedding dress with a train of its own. Out of the wide-open front door, the gate on the latch and onto the street. I’m buzzy and warm from the feeling of the night, the love and now this. I look up and down the empty road, the streetlamps breathing their honey-and-lemon-lozenge luminescence, see Lowe climbing into his same old dad-car. Oh. My. Days. There he is.

‘Ella.’ His voice seems to echo. ‘I didn’t know you were having a party. Sorry, I knew your book came out today. I just wanted to say congratulations and give you this’ – he holds up a carton of strawberry Ribena – ‘but I appreciate that looks not that great a present now … ’ The straw in its plastic casing limply falls off onto the road. He picks it up, awkwardly, scrunching it in his hand.

‘It’s good to see you.’ Really good but maybe a bit sad. I feel bad he wasn’t at the launch, that he didn’t feel he could come.

‘No, no, thanks, it’s your night. I do have something else for you though, and it’s not flowers because I know that’s … whatever.’

He looks even sweeter when he’s shy. He pulls out a pizza-boy bag and goes to open it but Bianca storms outside – uh-oh, here goes.

She demands, ‘What the fuck is going on? What are YOU doing here?’

And then Violet. Aoife. Ronke. All of my parade, piling out onto the street.

‘Lowe! Come in, have a drink!’ Mum drags him towards the front door and he looks back at me over his shoulder like Is that alright?

Even though I know it’s virtually impossible to say no to Mum I say, ‘Can hardly say no now, can I?’ whilst secretly screaming YES YES YES! But I’m not giving him that.

My friends follow Mum inside, dutifully. She is the boss, of course.

We pile back into the kitchen. The guy is OUT. OF. HIS. DEPTH. All eyes on him as he skulks through our house.

He’s so nervous his hands are shaking. Mum pours him a drink, and he tries to find the furthest place in the back of the kitchen, so he can wallflower himself and become invisible which, if your name is Lowe Archer, is pretty impossible.

‘Poor thing,’ says Dom, ‘he’s been thrown in at the deep end, hasn’t he?’ And she goes over to keep him company.

But before she can get to him, it’s Mum who shoots Lowe right between the eyes. ‘Perfect timing, Lowe. We were just giving speeches. Is there anything you’d like to say to Ella?’

Heads swoop round to face him.

The silence is deafening. Lowe flushes luminous with horror.

‘Mum!’ I say, defending him. ‘He just got here!’ I look at Lowe. ‘You don’t have to say anything.’

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