Page 3 of I Love You, I Love You, I Love You

‘Bad News,’ snorts Bianca, appearing from behind us, stinking of the 600 Camels she’d smoked. Where the hell has she even been? ‘They’re making us pay for the bar now.’ Her fake eyelash hangs off. ‘What a piss-take. Some of us are on probation here! It’s not like I haven’t had to sell my clothes to be able to even afford a new dress for today! Then they’ll want money towards a honeymoon.’

I haven’t told her that the ‘honeymoon’ money is going towards the deposit for a flat. Mia told me. Turns out, if you want to get a deposit for a house fast – throw a wedding and invite three hundred people.

‘I feel like I’ve been mugged.’ Still Bianca fumbles for her bank card in her splurging handbag, which vomits tampons, a loose mascara wand and a weed grinder that rolls out like a circus act across the biscuit factory floor. ‘Shots?’

Tequila. Sambuca. Café Patrón.

Cut to me in the designated smokers’ area, cigarette hanging out my mouth (WTF?) – telling Aoife, Bianca, Ronks (anyone who will listen) – that Jackson – my boyfriend – and I don’t have sex any more; is that normal? We haven’t in ages and I’m fixated on it becoming an issue; we’re flatlining and I’m taking it personally. Bianca’s livid: Just pounce on him tomorrow morning, she says; that’s what I’d do. No shit, Bianca, but Ronke agrees: It works both ways, she says; you have to make an effort too, Ella. Some girl begins to give me advice. It might be golden but I can only make out one in every seven of the words she slurs.

Enter the siren’s song of Britney’s ‘Toxic’ resounding like a choir of angels, and we kick our shoes off and run to the dancefloor. Turns out that hours of being nice and patient to everyone without one sip of water takes its toll. Like Gremlins that did eat after midnight, our true selves come out. Hair comes down or scrapes up into topknots. Abdominals relax. Lipstick smudges and skirts hike. We did good today. We pat ourselves on the back. We’re the life and soul, turning it up. And it’s to Destiny’s Child’s ‘Lose My Breath’ that I lose all sense of dignity and pride.

So, when it’s time to ‘throw the bouquet’, who could have known it would be me, in the thick of it, elbows out, ready to catch my fate?

The flowers take me down with their weight, heavy and wet, knuckles kissing the dancefloor as I bow like the branch of a tree to catch them. Surprise, gasps, laughter, the room applauds. Aoife and Bianca scream; Ronks films me. My shocked face is apparently priceless. I never catch anything. I never win anything. The photographer snaps photos – bedazzled … stunned – a halo of silver stars around me like I’m Miss World.

‘Congratulations!’ says Mia’s nan with a grip so hard she could kill a minotaur. ‘That’ll be you next to walk the aisle then, love. Got anyone special?’

It could be a coincidence (it’s definitely a coincidence) but it feels like a targeted attack when the DJ plays the next song. I know it by the feeling; the feeling always comes before the sound. I feel it before I hear it. It’s my ‘friend’s’ (the ‘’ are important) band, True Love. It’s him. Lowe. The guitar line, the melody in those recognizable chords, his voice, warm syrup over sponge, always collapsing me to mush. And I shove it down, just like I always do, and excuse myself.

In the toilets, Book Club are doing coke off what I’m pretty sure is a nappy bin. They look at me with an oh, it’s just you and get back to it. No one ever offers me drugs. Do I just give off that boring scent? The irony that now is the one time I could probably really use a drug. Some sort of pain relief. A droplet or two of Rescue Remedy at the very least. The acoustics of the bathroom make his voice jump and vibrate off the walls. I find a cubicle, sloppily slam the door behind me and slump on the toilet with my jumpsuit round my ankles. It’s fitted, so I am not wearing a bra, which feels extra exposing but also fun. A one-piece is great until you realize you will spend a lot of your time sitting naked on toilets. Boobs hovering above spread thighs in contemplation.

I think of him.

Of course I do. He lives rent free in my head. Does he think of me? I want him to be doing something, somewhere and stop. And for that one second think of me. Let that moment of his be mine. Let his hairs stand on end in some contagious shudder of ET telepathy. I have the urge to speak to him. I should know better, trust that I’ve been here a million times before, that the feeling always passes. Find the wisdom to remember that another passage of time will go by where I won’t even think of him and I’ll be grateful that I didn’t send that impulsive message.

I take my phone out … I search for his name in my phone book, heart beating – I’m going to do this tonight. I’m going to text him. It’s a great idea … isn’t it? Isn’t it?

But then the cubicle door flies open with a bang. Shit, the lock. I leap up to slam the door shut. ‘Sorry!’ I shout out even though the door-pusher should be the one apologizing. But it’s too late: Mia’s father-in-law has seen it all. Mainly the hovering boobs.

He’s so angry with embarrassment, I hear him muttering something prehistoric about ‘the trouble with unisex toilets’. And, as he storms out: ‘I’ll take a piss by a tree!’

Well, that was sobering. I put my phone away.

The door barges open again and I hear Aoife’s familiar voice: ‘They’re playing “Young Hearts Run Free”! Where is she? Ella! You in here?’ Aoife kicks the cubicle door next to me wide open.

‘Yeah,’ I call out, ‘I’m here!’

Followed by Bianca: ‘Did Mia’s dad-in-law just see your tits?’

But I don’t answer because I don’t care. Because I’m not here; I’m back there, back where it all began.

Chapter 2

Then

It’s the year 2000 and summer here in London is almost over. I’m fourteen. I’m trying really hard to be a grunger right now but I look like an uncooked meatball in a Foo Fighters t-shirt and a spiked choker. Probably because I’m addicted to Dairylea Dunkers and those waxy orange rolls of Bavarian smoked cheese. (I’m also trying really hard to grow out of my lip-sniff habit and everything has to be an even number otherwise we die, but that’s by the by.) My soft little universe is meant to be opening up, only just getting started and yet, because of the millennium, there are rumours that the world is going to end (in which case my lip-sniff habit really isn’t that big a deal). It hasn’t as of yet but I still have reasons to believe it’s true.

We’ve spent the weeks not on a beach in Spain or camping in the New Forest like the other girls in my school but packing up our life into boxes. We’ve just left our cosy cocoon ground-floor Brixton flat, where we were all ‘living in each other’s pockets’ happily, or so I thought. Apparently, it wasn’t big enough for three kids. Violet, Sonny and I have outgrown the overflowing cupboards and beaten down, Biro-doodled sofa, frame buckled from being tickled, performing shows and playing dens. It was noisy and restless. But it was ours. Now it’s time to break free and become butterflies but I miss the flat, terribly. I don’t like change at all.

My parents decided to take a gamble on a doer-upper, only without any money to doer-up: 251 Palace Road. The house looks like Count Olaf’s (only, the series of unfortunate events is now my life.) My mum, Antonia – as if carved from stone, with the physique of a shot putter, almost tall enough to block an entire doorframe, loves the three of us fiercely – is a practical person in need of a project. My dad, Rod – a two-pints-after-work mechanic, who listens to Motown all day long and never asked for this (meaning how his life has panned out) – just wants an easy time. Up until 251 Palace Road, they were a team, a force against the world – Bonnie and Clyde, Barbie and Ken, Kermit and Miss Piggy – though maybe now Mr and Mrs Twit would be a more accurate comparison.

But let’s not make things depressing. It’s actually quite a good time to find me because I have a boyfriend. Or that’s what I’ll tell anyone who will listen on our first day back at least.

‘Hey, guys, so, if you’ve been wondering why I’ve been quiet this summer holiday, well, I’m not exactly sure how to say this without making you seethe with jealousy but I now have a boyfriend. So if you notice any elevations of maturity in me, that’ll be why.’

The reason I can say I, Ella Cole, have a boyfriend is because I now have ‘proof’, in the form of a photograph, AKA gold dust. Said photograph was found – hear me out – in the bottom drawer of a rickety old dresser that Mum picked up on the roadside saying TAKE ME. The photo is of a teenage boy – maybe seventeen – I KNOW! – with blond curtains. The photo is of a total stranger but he’ll do. I stuff the photo into my hoodie pocket. In the photo he’s sleeping, almost like I took the photo with my own disposable camera one lazy morning in bed and got the photos developed at Woolworths, paying extra for the twenty-four-hour service. Even on the grainy matte Kodak print I can see how juicily surfaced and poppable his spots are – like heads of seals emerging from the ocean. But imperfections are good; they make my boyfriend obtainable, realistic. The brutal reality that I’ve not even had one snog in real life is quite irrelevant. I guess what I’m saying is: he’s a lie. I suppose it’s quite sad if you look at it like that, so let’s not look at it like that.

My journey to the local girls’ school is a lonely half-hour walk down the Brixton back roads, ample time to fixate on my phantom boyfriend (his name is Jason now) and invent our summer love story in preparation for this morning’s recital.

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