Page 146 of You Float My Boat

It was hard to tell whether I was crying with laughter, or just plain crying.

‘Oh my God,’ cried Stella, making me jump because I’d been so engrossed with Charlie’s letter I’d totallyforgotten she was next to me reading over my shoulder. ‘That is the worst poem I’ve ever read. Will Shakespeare can sleep easy.’

‘Shut up,’ I snapped, trying hard not to laugh too, as I snatched the paper out of her sight and tried to shove her off the sofa. ‘It’s a sonnet. And as it’s the first one anyone has ever written for me, I’m saying it’s the best one I’ve ever read.’

‘Let’s agree to disagree,’ she snorted, propping herself back up on the cushions, before grabbing her phone again.

‘Who’d you keep texting?’

‘No one.’ The phone was slipped under a cushion, and she reached out. ‘Now open the box of cupcakes.’

‘No, wait. What does he mean about checking my email?’ I frowned, snatching up my phone. ‘I haven’t had any emails.’

I scrolled through the top part of my inbox – once, twice, three times – I might have 17,532 unread emails but none of them was from Charlie.

‘Did you look in your junk folder?’

I shook my head right as I clicked into it. Sure enough, eleven emails from the top was one from Charlie sent two days ago. Two days. I’d wasted two days of my life waiting for a message when one was right here under my nose.

Just in case …

Charlie x

I frowned; if that was all the message, I didn’t understand it. But as I opened it up fully, I noticed an attachment of an MP3 file.

The deep timbre of Charlie’s voice sounded out so clearly he may as well have been sitting next to me instead of Stella. ‘Hi Violet, I thought you might still want to rehearse while you were at home …’ there was a muffled throat clearing before, ‘Twelfth Night, by William Shakespeare. Rehearsal tape for Violet Brooks. Act one, Scene two.’

I turned to Stella with a gasp, ‘Oh my god, he’s put the play on audio so I can do my parts.’

‘That must have taken him all day,’ she replied. ‘Wow, that’s dedication. I hate to say it, but Charlie Masterson is absolutely Coco-Pops for you.’

‘Yeah,’ I sniffed, because it seemed the tears weren’t done yet.

‘Can you open the cupcakes before you start crying again?’

‘How d’you know they’re cupcakes?’

‘It says in the poem, dummy.’

‘Oh yeah,’ I giggled, which worked miracles to dry up the current flood of tears.

I pulled the box closer and eased the ribbon off the top. Sure enough, inside were a dozen cupcakes with a thick swirl of violet frosting, covered in little red hearts. I was willing to bet a lot of money these were the chocolate chip variety.

‘Seriously,’ began Stella, easing one out of the box, ‘I need Charlie to stop being so swoony, because it’sgoing to make it much harder for any boyfriend I get in the future.’

‘Yeah,’ I sniffed, because the tears had started up again.

Stella shuffled along the sofa to sit next to me, throwing her arm around my shoulder. ‘Come on, Vi. Don’t cry again, it’s getting a bit boring. Everything you ever wanted has come true.’

‘I know,’ I wailed, because I didn’t seem to be able to stop myself.

‘Okay,’ she patted my back, ‘it’s probably better to get it out now. The Boat Race is in five days, which means you can only cry for another three and then we have two to depuff your face, and wean you off all this chocolate. It’s really unfortunate he’s sent you those cupcakes, because I’ll have to eat them for you.’

I sat up and narrowed my eyes. ‘Don’t you dare!’

She just grinned back at me and bit down into the frosting. ‘So, shall we go and tell Janey we’re going to the Boat Race on Saturday?’

I nodded, ‘Yeah. We’re going to the Boat Race.’

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