The Love of My Afterlife(83)

Beside us Frida and Aled also start to dance, Frida’s cheeks pink with joy, Aled swaying awkwardly from side to side.

Cooper leans his head back, eyes travelling across my face. “Honey,” he says, “you really do sparkle and shine.”

I can’t help but laugh as Cooper raises an eyebrow cornily, referring to the slogan on my terrible nightie. He grins and pulls me even closer.

I think about his mum’s excited words. Cooper is in love with me. He is in love. With me? How can that be when we don’t even really know each other yet? It can’t be. I don’t know about love, but I get the sense that the way I feel right now, dancing with him, is the way humans are supposed to feel. Anticipation. Hope. An excitement about the days to come. And if I disappear back to Evermore, the emotional fallout for a man in love would be…it doesn’t bear thinking about.

Behind me Jan and Leanne laugh out loud at something Mr. Yoon has typed into the machine. Aled has just kissed Frida on the cheek. She gives me a thumbs-up behind his back. Shelley from the corner shop and her sister are chugging champagne in the corner, and Flashy Tom from The Orchestra Pit is talking to Mrs. Ernestine, his mouth full of a Baba sandwich from Deli Dan.

My heart lifts and my stomach churns.

How am I supposed to leave this? This…life. Because what I was living ten days ago wasn’t a life at all. But this? This noise and laughter and mess and fear and…people. Friends. Possible love.

I can’t lose this.

There are people in this room who wouldn’t want to lose me either. I make a difference to them.

I can’t leave. Evermore is too far away. I don’t want to die.

Fuck.

I want to live.

I glance up at the clock on the wall.

I have two hours until Merritt takes me.

I need to find Jonah. Now.

And for the first time in the last ten days, I know exactly where to go.





41





The party is becoming more raucous as I quietly slip away and hail a cab to Ladbroke Grove. When I reach the house, my throat tightens as a montage of memories comes tumbling back. Not the awful memories, but the earlier, happier ones. The ones of sitting on the grass in this front garden playing with Barbies, making up dance routines, talking about what we would be when we grew up (me an artist, her Rihanna). As soon as she answers the door, the happy thoughts are replaced by nerves and anger and fear. Everything in my body wants to turn around and run away. But I stand firm. I’m not at school anymore. I’m a grown woman. With friends. I have friends now. New friends, starter friends, but still. People who like me. Who like what is good and right and funny and true, not what is loudest or scariest or prettiest and meanest.

It’s late in the afternoon, but Gen is dressed in a fleecy dressing gown.

“What do you want?” she asks, her voice flat.

“Can I come in?” I say. “I’ll be quick, I promise.”

She hesitates before rolling her eyes and inviting me in. While the interior design of the place has been updated in what is clearly a tasteful way, there are kids’ toys and stacks of bills and piles of clothes strewn everywhere.

“Where are your children?” I ask curiously.

“Park. With Ryan,” she says, plonking down onto her cream sofa and vaguely indicating that I should sit. “He’s just always around…you know? Since school he’s just always been there. A girl needs a little break sometimes is all.”

She picks up an almost empty glass of wine from the coffee table in front of her and takes a sip. “You want some?”

I shake my head no.

She gives a mirthless laugh.

Gen takes another sip of her drink. “So have you come to apologise? You threw champagne at me. You ruined my gown, you know. Cost four hundred pounds that did.” She chuckles. “Didn’t think you had it in you, I’ll be honest.”

I tamp down the anger that starts to crowd my chest. “You deserved it,” I say evenly. “Using my experiences—trauma you caused—to lie for your own gain? That was really fucking horrible. I thought maybe you’d have grown up.”

Gen shrugs and finishes the rest of her wine before pouring herself another glass.

I open my mouth to ask her what I came here to ask her, but a different question pops out.

“Did you really forget about me?” I ask. Because after everything, that’s what I can’t get my head around. Even if she hadn’t made my life a misery, we were so tight as kids.

Gen meets my eyes and shakes her head. “No. I didn’t forget. When you wouldn’t accept my apology, I wanted to make you feel bad.”

I nod. “You’re very good at it.”

Gen sits forward. “Do you remember when you cut the hair off my Barbie because we didn’t have a Ken and your mum went mad?”

I instinctively laugh at the memory before clamping my hand over my mouth.

“Why did you hate me?” I ask, the question blurting out more desperately than I intended. “We used to have so much fun.”

Gen bites her lip, a little hiccup escaping her. “I hated you because you hated me first.”

“What? Why on earth do you think that?”

“You just stopped inviting me round to yours. You knew my parents were always at work. How I had no-one at home. I practically lived with you, and you just cut it off because you were jealous.”