‘Did you talk to Luke?’ Elyse asks me as we walk through the market.
I shake my head. Which is a mistake because I immediately feel sick again. I reach up and press my fingers to my temples.
‘You need more water,’ Elyse says. ‘Did you bring some?’
I squeak out a no and she rolls her eyes and goes to buy one from a market stall. I stand very still, my eyes closed behind my sunglasses. Leonie decided to hang around the restaurant today, but Elyse wants to do some shopping and I didn’t want to be anywhere near Luke so I said I’d come with her. I don’t like my sisters going out on their own in Rome. Even at home in London I don’t like not knowing where they are, but at least I know they are usually with friends. Here it all feels a bit less safe.
I can hear Elyse chatting in Italian with one of the stallholders.Her Italian’s always been the best out of all of us – she picks things up really quickly. I open my eyes and squint at her: she’s pointing at fruit. I close my eyes again.
‘Here,’ Elyse says.
I open my eyes as she presses a cold bottle of water into my right hand and an orange into my left. The water bottle is wet with condensation and I press it to my forehead. I feel briefly better.
‘Want me to peel that for you?’ she asks, already taking the orange off me.
As Elyse peels, I open the water and drink as much as I can. Elyse takes the orange peel back to the stall to throw it away, even though the cobbles are covered with fruit and vegetable peelings and the occasional curl of pasta.
Elyse hooks her arm through mine and turns back towards San Georgio.
‘No,’ I say, stopping dead. ‘I don’t want to see Luke.’
‘You’ve already seen him,’ Elyse says, rolling her eyes.
‘Well, then I don’t want to see him again.’
‘But I want to go to the fabric shop.’
I steer us back the way we came and say, ‘We can walk all the way round.’
We pass the small Cinema Farnese and walk along the edge of the square into a narrow side street.
‘Have you had any more luck with a flat?’ I ask her, just for something to say. When it’s quiet, I focus more on the banging in my head.
‘Maybe,’ she says. ‘I found an amazing one, but it was really expensive and only one bedroom so it would depend.’
‘On what?’ I say, as she steers me out of the way of an oncoming taxi.
‘On whether I use Dad’s money.’
‘Oh my god,’ I say.
‘I know,’ Elyse says. ‘I knew you’d say that, but –’
‘No,’ I say, looking around desperately, one hand over my mouth. ‘I’m going to be sick.’
‘Shit,’ Elyse says.
I can actually feel the vomit building and I don’t know what I’m going to do – or, more importantly, where I’m going to do it – but then I see one of those bins that’s just a clear plastic bag hanging from a circle and I dart through the tourists, almost crashing into a man carrying a stack of fruit crates, and yank open the lid and whatever was left from last night reappears.
I feel Elyse rubbing my back and holding back my hair and I hear an English woman say ‘Poor you’, which makes me feel even worse. All these people here on holiday, out shopping in the sun, subjected to the revolting sounds I’m making.
My eyes are streaming and I cough a bit, but I think I’m done. I stand up, still holding onto the bin, and Elyse hands me a tissue.
‘You okay?’ she says. ‘You’re sweating.’
‘Ugh,’ I groan. I wipe my eyes and mouth and throw the tissue in the bin.
Elyse drops the orange in too. ‘Sorry, that wasn’t my best idea. I was thinking vitamin C … but maybe that’s for colds, not hangovers.’
I let go of the bin and hold Elyse’s arm instead. I want to get away from the gross mess I’ve just made and from anyone who may feasibly have seen me making it. We pass a middle-aged couple sitting with espressos at one of the barrel tables and totally judging me.
‘God,’ Elyse says, as we walk. ‘You’re shaking.’
‘I feel terrible,’ I say. ‘What is wrong with me?’
‘You’re hungover, dickhead,’ Elyse says.
‘I don’t mean that,’ I say, but I’m interrupted by an Italian man opening the parasols over the tables outside a restaurant. He shouts ‘Ciao, bella!’ at Elyse and kisses his fingers.
‘Buongiorno!’ she says and waves at him, even though when men shout at her at home she tells them to fuck off.
‘You’re different in Italy,’ I say, drinking some more water. My mouth tastes disgusting.
‘We all are,’ Elyse says. ‘Hadn’t you noticed?’
Actually, yeah, I had. About the rest of us. But not Elyse so much. Not until this trip. Maybe it’s because of Dad. Or maybe it’s because of Robbie.
‘Why do you feel terrible?’ Elyse says.
‘What?’
‘You said you felt terrible, not the hangover. About what?’
There’s a few market stalls along the edge of the street and Elyse wanders over and I follow. She picks up a bright yellow leather bag and then turns to look at me. ‘Go on.’
‘I feel terrible about last night,’ I say.
An Italian guy appears from the other side of stall. ‘Sixty euro.’
‘Thanks,’ Elyse says, putting the bag down.
‘Very nice bag,’ he says and picks it up again, holding it out to her. ‘Prego, prego!’
‘No, I don’t want it. Thanks,’ Elyse says.
He nods and puts the bag back down. Elyse walks to the next stall.
‘What about last night?’ she asks me.
I follow her around the stall.
‘About getting so drunk. And throwing myself at Luke. And having to be brought home. And throwing up, for that matter.’
‘Fucksake, Mil,’ Elyse says, flicking through a rail of patterned silk dresses. ‘You’re eighteen. That’s all perfectly normal behaviour for an eighteen-year-old, you know.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘But that doesn’t make it right for me.’
‘Didn’t you ever get hammered at home?’ She unhooks a red and brown dress and holds it up against herself, looking down.
I think about what happened after Dad’s funeral and my eyes burn, that boulder-in-my-stomach feeling coming straight back.
‘Take a photo,’ Elyse says, still holding the dress up to herself.
‘It’s nice,’ I say.
‘Good. I want to see.’
I take the photo and hand my phone to Elyse so she can see how the dress looks. She frowns and hangs it back up, pulling another one – green and yellow, this time – down from the rail.
‘Before Dad, I mean,’ she says. ‘With Jules and the band? Take another one.’
I take another photo.
‘No. I mean, we had a few drinks sometimes, but I never got drunk.’
‘I thought Jake was a pothead?’
‘Yeah, he is,’ I say. ‘Well, I mean, I know he smokes. I wouldn’t call him a pothead.’
‘But you never did?’ She takes the first dress down again and holds them up, one in each hand. ‘Not even when you were seeing him?’
‘What?’
‘Smoke. Which one do you think?’
‘I like them both,’ I say. ‘And no, I never did. I didn’t even know you knew I was seeing him.’
‘No?’ she says, holding the first dress against herself again. I don’t know if she’s talking about the dress or Jake. ‘Yeah. I saw you with him one day. On the Broadway. You were holding hands.’
She walks round the back of the stall, leaving me standing there on my own.
Me and Jake had been on our way back to our house that day. I’d met him at the station and we were walking home. We said we were going to do homework together, but I think we both knew we weren’t. I definitely did. I liked him. He was funny. And nice looking, good looking. I didn’t fancy him exactly, but kissing him had been nice. Even if I’d been thinking more about how I was finally – finally! – kissing someone than concentrating on the kiss itself.
In my room, we put our bags down and Jake sat on the chair in front of my desk in the window and sort of swivelled round on it a bit, grinning. He pointed out some stuff in my room, I can’t remember what exactly. I know he said I had a lot of books. I sat on the end of my bed and thought about how weird it was. A boy. In my room. Jake, who was my friend. Who I liked. Who made me laugh. In my room. With my bed.
We talked about the band and about Jules. About the gig Jake had been trying to arrange at the summer festival, some fringe thing. But the guy kept ignoring his calls. And I started to think nothing was going to happen, we weren’t going to kiss. I didn’t know how we’d go from talking like friends to anything else.
And then he said, ‘Come here a minute?’
And I walked over to him and he pulled me between his legs and dropped his head back and I kissed him. And he pushed his hand in my hair and I pressed against him until the chair slipped back on its casters and hit my desk and the little bucket I keep my pens in fell off and the pens rolled all over the floor. And we both laughed. And then we were on the bed. I don’t remember moving, but we were on the bed.
And I was kissing him and touching him, my hands in his hair, biting at his lip, his ear, his collarbones. And wondering why we hadn’t done this sooner. Why hadn’t we been doing it for as long as I’d known him? Pulling his T-shirt out of his jeans, stroking the skin on his back, warm and dry and soft. His thigh between my thighs, my hips moving against him.
Rolling on top of him and pushing, pushing, all the time. And it felt amazing. I didn’t want to stop. I couldn’t stop.
Until he pulled away and kissed me just under my ear and said, ‘Calm down, okay?’
And I felt like shit.
I look around the back of the stall and see that Elyse is actually trying on dresses over her clothes, so I open Instagram on my phone and search for Jules’s account. Her most recent photos are of her cat, Misha: Misha asleep on the arm of the sofa; Misha on her back with her legs spread; Misha cuddling a tiny toy version of herself. Then there’s a selfie: Jules in bed with Misha’s paw on her cheek. The caption says ‘I woke up like dis’ with the heart-eyes cat emoji. I swipe out of Instagram because I miss her too much. Both of them. Jules and Misha.
‘I bought both,’ Elyse says, reappearing from behind the stall. ‘The fabric shop’s just along here.’
We walk for about five minutes and then Elyse says, ‘This is it.’
‘Are you going to be ages?’ I ask her.
‘Probably,’ she says.
‘I’m going to get a coffee then. Is that okay?’ There’s a coffee shop next door.
‘Yeah. I’ll come and find you when I’m done.’
She goes inside, stopping in the doorway and looking around as if she’s been called to the mothership. I’ve never really got Elyse’s fascination with fabric. One of my earliest memories is of her getting in trouble for stealing some squares of felt from the craft box at primary school. She didn’t even make anything with them. She said she just liked the feel of them and once she had them at home, she’d just get them out of their hiding place and touch them.
In the coffee shop, I order my coffee then take my ticket to collect it before taking it over to a small table by the window. I add more sugar than I usually have in the hope that it’ll make me feel more awake. Just as I take a sip, my phone buzzes in my pocket and I pull it out to find a message from someone who’s not a contact. It says ‘Hope you’re okay after last night. Luke.’
I stare at it until the letters start to go swimmy in front of my eyes. No ‘love’. No kiss. I drink more coffee and think about resting my head down on the table and wishing the entire world away.
I don’t know how to reply. Or how he got my number. I text Leonie to ask if she gave it to him and she replies straight away, ‘Nah. Prob Tobes. What he say?’
‘He hates me,’ I reply.
‘HE SAID THAT DO YOU WANT ME TO KICK HIS ASS’ comes through almost immediately and I laugh, despite the whole wanting-to-die thing.
‘No he didn’t say it,’ I type and forward his text.
I’m halfway down my coffee by the time she replies: ‘Not great but this is his first text so maybe playing it cool?’
‘Too fucking cool,’ I reply. ‘I fucked it up.’
‘No. He likes you. Come back and talk to him.’
‘God no.’
‘Want me to talk to him?’
‘FUCK NO.’
The next text is six crying-with-laughter emojis. I roll my eyes and click open Facebook to torment myself with Jules’s updates, but there’s nothing much there either. A link to a petition about saving the bees; a meme about Kim Kardashian; a Throwback Thursday photo of Jules as a toddler – frilly white dress and baby afro in little round bunches tied up with bows. I’ve seen it before – it’s on the mantelpiece at her house.
I used to go to her house after school every Friday. Her mum always made loads of food and her cousins were always dropping in and out, everyone talking and laughing, passing dishes of food around and taking the piss out of Jules cos she’s the youngest. I haven’t been since Dad died. I couldn’t bear it.
I scroll for a while and then go back to Luke’s text. I add his contact details and write, ‘Bit rough, ngl. Sorry if I was a dick. Ta for getting me home.’ I close my eyes and send it before I can change my mind, then I drop the phone in my bag and go and get another coffee, along with a plate of tiny cookies. They’re all different and I start with the plainest: round and dusted with sugar. It tastes slightly of almond but mostly of sugar and it melts in my mouth. I eat the rest of the cookies – there’s one half dipped in chocolate, another covered with almonds, another sort of like a macaron – and only when they’ve all gone do I reach into my bag and find my phone.
There’s a text from Luke. It says: ‘No worries. You were fine. See you later.’
I lean down and rest my head on the table, but I can feel sugar crystals sticking in my skin so I sit back up again and brush them off. I check the time and wonder if Elyse is okay. As soon as I think that, I start imagining that something’s happened to her. She’s slipped down an escalator or a piece of roof has fallen off and hit her on the head. I imagine an ambulance pulling up outside and me sitting here, not even knowing it’s for my sister. If something did happen does she even have any ID? Would they know to come and find me? Or would they just take her off to hospital and I wouldn’t even know until I gave up waiting and went to try to find her and –
‘What are you doing?’ Elyse says as soon as she’s through the door. She drops into the seat opposite me, shoving about five bags under the table. ‘When I walked past the window you looked like you were having a nightmare with your eyes open.’
I shake my head to chase the visions of Elyse in the back of an ambulance, of Dad being carried out of the house, away. ‘Just thinking. You okay? If you want a coffee you have to go up to the counter.’
‘Fine,’ she says. ‘Do you want another?’
I tell her no and while she’s gone, I rearrange the bags under the table so they’re no longer on my feet and also not so easy to steal. And then I tear open another sugar sachet, pour the sugar on the table and swirl it with my finger.
‘Do you want to go back?’ Elyse says when she comes back with her coffee and a glass of tap water for me.
‘No. Never.’
She laughs. ‘Well, that’s not really going to work, is it? I don’t know why you’re in such a state. Everyone gets drunk and does stupid things. It’s no big deal.’
‘It’s a big deal to me,’ I say, staring at her.
‘The first time Robbie kissed me I had to pull away to throw up,’ Elyse says, ripping the top off a sugar sachet.
‘You did not,’ I say, leaning forward in my seat.
‘I did.’ She pours the sugar in. ‘And then I tried to go right back to kissing him again. But he wasn’t keen.’
I laugh. ‘I’m not surprised. Weren’t you embarrassed?’
‘Of course! I really liked him. But he thought it was funny. Gross, but funny. And it was pretty funny. It’s fine to be embarrassed. But you’re always so ashamed. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know. We all fuck up. It’s called being a person.’
‘I’m not ashamed,’ I say. ‘I’m –’ But I am. I am ashamed.
‘You are,’ Elyse says. ‘You’ve been like this since you were little. You always take things really hard. And that’s fine. It’s part of who you are. But since Dad it’s like you’re afraid to make a mistake and so you don’t want to live. And then if you do make a mistake – or you just do something, anything – then you can’t get over it.’
‘That …’ I frown. ‘That’s not …’
‘Yeah, it is,’ Elyse says. ‘Maybe you need therapy?’
‘Oh my god.’
‘Oh, come on,’ Elyse says. ‘I think we should all have therapy. After what happened. Mum certainly should.’
She’s right. I think. We probably should have done. But then wouldn’t we have to go over and over it? I don’t want to go over it. I don’t like to think about it at all. Even though I think about it all the time.