When I get up in the morning, the restaurant’s empty apart from Elyse, who is sitting in a corner, a coffee in front of her, and her phone face down on the table next to it.
‘Robbie?’ I say, pointing at it.
She sighs. ‘Yeah. He’s … I don’t think we’re going to move in together.’
I’m trying to think of an appropriate reaction when she says, ‘I know. You can say it.’
‘I just think you’re better off at home anyway!’ I burst out.
‘I know you do,’ she says. ‘You want us all at home. Together. Safe. Life doesn’t work like that.’
‘I know it doesn’t,’ I say. ‘But maybe it could for a little while?’
‘You’re not even going to be there,’ she says. ‘You’ll be in Liverpool.’
‘Maybe,’ I say.
‘You keep saying that,’ Elyse says. ‘But you sent back the acceptance, so –’
‘I didn’t,’ I say, without looking at her. ‘I didn’t send it back.’
‘What? Why?’
‘I don’t know that I want to go. I need more time. It’s in my bag. Upstairs.’
‘Oh, fucking hell, Milly!’ Elyse says. ‘You have to go!’
‘Why? Why do I have to? Why can’t I just go to UWL? Then I can stay at home and look after Mum and Leonie and –’
‘That’s why,’ Elyse says, shoving her chair back and leaning towards me. ‘That’s why. You’re eighteen. You have to start living your own life. That doesn’t mean we won’t be a family, it doesn’t mean we’re not going to be okay. You putting your life on hold is not the answer here.’
‘I’m not ready,’ I say, my voice low.
‘You are,’ Elyse says. ‘I know you don’t think you are, but you are.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because you’re eighteen. Because you’ve always been the responsible one. Because you don’t want to go, you want to stay home and take care of everyone. But you need to accept that we can look after ourselves.’
I pull her coffee towards me and drink some.
‘I’ll get you one,’ she says, standing and heading over to the kitchen.
Her coffee is too strong and too sweet for me, but I slept so badly that I don’t really care. She comes back with fresh coffees for both of us. She turns her phone face up and then back again.
‘He hasn’t texted?’
She shakes her head. ‘No. I gave him an ultimatum. Either we get a place together or it’s over.’
‘Shit, Elyse!’
‘But then I realised I want him to say it’s over. I don’t want to move in with him. I’m not sure I ever did. I just want … something.’
‘Something like what?’
‘Something for me. Something outside the family. Something to distract me from the fucking great hole in our house.’
I nod, biting at my bottom lip. ‘I know.’
At least, I knew that’s how I felt. I didn’t know that’s how Elyse felt. I thought it was weird how different she’s been with Robbie, but it didn’t cross my mind that this was why.
She reaches across the table and curls her fingers around my wrist.
‘We’ve never talked about it,’ I say.
‘We didn’t think you wanted to.’
‘We?’ I ask.
‘Me and Leonie. We’ve talked about it. Quite a lot. But you and Mum …’
‘Yeah,’ I say, looking down at the table. ‘I don’t really want to talk about it now. I mean … I will talk about it. When we get home, maybe? But not now.’
‘Okay,’ she says, carefully.
I pull the fresh cup of coffee towards me and lean forward to smell it, feeling the steam heat my skin.
‘So are you going to stay at home?’ I ask.
She smiles. ‘I haven’t decided yet. I might get a place with some friends. It depends.’
‘On what?’
‘On you and Leonie and Mum.’
I nod. ‘Okay.’
We both drink our coffees and then she says, ‘So you and Carlo, eh?’ and waggles her eyebrows at me.
I close my eyes. ‘Oh god. No. There is no me and Carlo. He seems really nice. But … no.’
‘Still Luke, eh?’ she says.
I sigh. ‘Yeah.’
‘Why don’t you just, you know? Grab him. Kiss him. Tell him you want to make sweet, sweet love. Climb him like a tree.’
‘God,’ I say, laughing. ‘Shut up.’ And then I feel my throat start to tighten and the next thing I know I’m biting back tears.
‘Hey,’ Elyse says, tugging at my hand. ‘Hey, sorry. I didn’t mean to – Of course you don’t have to if you don’t want to, I just –’
‘No,’ I say, my voice tiny. ‘It’s not that. It’s … I’ve tried that.’ I take a deep breath. ‘I’ve done that. And he said no.’
‘Oh,’ my sister says. ‘Fuck.’
I rub my face. ‘God. Okay. I need to tell you. I keep going over and over it in my mind and I just –’
‘It’s fine,’ Elyse says. ‘Tell me.’
I nod. And decide the easiest way is just to say it. ‘So, after the funeral. When we were back at Alice’s?’
I see her nod out of the corner of my eye.
‘I went upstairs to the loo and Luke was just coming out of the bathroom. And I’d had a couple of drinks –’
‘You drank some brandy, I remember.’
‘Ugh, god, yeah. I’d forgotten that. And, I mean, I wasn’t drunk, but I wasn’t all there either. I felt spaced out. And … I just felt sad, you know.’
Elyse reaches over and takes my hand. ‘Of course.’
‘I mean … not just sad. It was more than sad. I remember thinking that I wanted to die too. So I could see him again.’
‘Oh, Mil,’ my sister says.
I nod. ‘So I was upstairs and Luke was there and he said something to me, about Dad. I can’t remember what. Something nice. And I kissed him. I just kissed him. And he kissed me back.’
‘Leonie said you’d kissed him. That’s what she said you were freaking out about.’
‘We went into the spare room and we were kissing for a while and then I … I wanted more. I wanted to … I just wanted to forget about Dad. To stop feeling so sad. And Luke is so –’
‘Milly,’ Elyse says.
I glance up and see the way she’s looking at me – she looks heartbroken – and I look back down at my coffee again.
‘I was all over him. I can’t remember all of it. But I tried to undo his shirt. And I remember, like, sitting in his lap and trying to push him down on the bed, but he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t do it.’
‘Good for him,’ Elyse says.
I nod. ‘I know. But then I was just … I was so angry. I was angry at everything. And I wanted to have sex with Luke. He was right there and he let me kiss him and I wanted him. But he said no.’
‘It’s good that he did,’ Elyse says. ‘A lot of boys wouldn’t.’
I drink some coffee. It’s not as strong as Elyse’s first cup, but it’s still got too much sugar in.
‘I know. But it was the same with Jake. I … we sort of started seeing each other. Ages ago. And then we were in my room and we were kissing on my bed and I … I guess I was too into it? And he told me to stop.’
Elyse shakes her head. ‘There’s no such thing as too into it. Too into it is good. Loads of men would love too into it, never mind a skinny ginger kid like Jake.’
I feel like she’s not getting it. She’s thinking I was just enthusiastic. But that’s not it.
‘It’s … it’s like I was totally out of control.’
‘But that’s okay. That’s good. As long as you were enjoying it.’
‘I was with Jake.’ I stare down at the table. ‘And with Luke, even. Even though I shouldn’t have been, because of … you know. But I was so embarrassed. I’m still so embarrassed. And then when we went to that bar and had those shots and I was just all over him again – Luke, I mean – even though he said no. And … I don’t even know what’s wrong with me.’
‘First of all, there’s nothing’s wrong with you, you stupid cow,’ Elyse says, but gently, and the contrast between her words and her tone actually makes me smile. ‘It’s okay to want to have sex,’ she says. ‘I mean, it’s good that you didn’t after the funeral because that would’ve been weird. But there’s nothing wrong with you wanting to have sex with Luke, god!’
Elyse drinks some of her coffee. ‘And second of all … you can’t be in control all the time. That’s always been your thing. But it’s got so much worse since Dad died. You can’t control everything, Milly. And you can’t protect everyone.’
‘I can try,’ I say, staring down into my coffee.
‘Yeah, you can,’ she says. ‘But it’s a waste of time. All it does is separate you from everyone.’
‘How am I separate?’ I say. ‘I’m the one trying to keep us all together!’
‘But you’re trying to keep us together to keep us safe, and life doesn’t work like that. We were all together when Dad died!’ Her voice cracks and I dig my fingers into my legs.
‘We need to be able to live, Mil,’ Elyse says, her eyes brimming with tears. ‘You know what I keep thinking about? That bit in Finding Fucking Nemo.’
I smile, knowing that if Dad was here he’d make a joke about that being the full title.
‘You know when the dad says something like, “I promised I’d never let anything happen to him” and Dory says that would be awful.’
‘And she says it wouldn’t be much fun if nothing ever happened to him. I know,’ I say. I’ve watched that film a lot.
‘That!’ Elyse says, prodding me in the chest. ‘Exactly that. You don’t want anything to happen to any of us. But it has to. We have to live and we’ll make mistakes and we’ll get hurt and that has to be okay with you. Because none of us can do it if we’re worried about you all the time.’
‘You’re all worried about me all the time!’ I say. ‘You have been since Dad died. You all keep saying how I’ve changed and of course I’ve changed, but I don’t think I’ve changed that much, I don’t think –’
Elyse shakes her head. ‘You’ve changed so much, Mil. You’ve shut yourself down.’
‘I don’t think I have,’ I say, while a little voice inside is telling me she’s absolutely right.
‘Remember when you used to watch Dad leave for work?’ Elyse says.
I nod. For a while Dad had an evening job, singing in a bar. He’d work during the day, pick me, Leonie and Elyse up from school, make our dinner, and then go back out again, just as Mum came home. And I used to stand on our front step to watch him go. I was always worried he wouldn’t come back – I think I’d heard something about bars and thought he was going off to a dangerous job – and if he didn’t come back, I wanted to make sure I’d seen him one last time.
‘Do you remember when he went without saying goodbye to you and you freaked out?’ Elyse asks.
‘Yeah,’ I say. I try not to. I’d gone to the loo, I think, and when I came downstairs he’d gone. Mum told me he’d tried to wait but he couldn’t be late, and I lost it.
‘You kept saying, “What if he doesn’t come back?”’ Elyse says. ‘Mum thought you were worried about him leaving us.’
I nod again. ‘I remember that night, she came and sat on my bed and asked if any of my friends were upset because their parents had split up.’
‘I knew it wasn’t that though. I knew you thought he might die. I worried about it too.’
‘Did you?’
‘Of course,’ Elyse says. ‘I think everyone worries about that kind of thing sometimes. But you worried about it so much.’
I picture myself standing on our front step. There was a small sort of porch area off to the side and that’s where I used to stand, in case someone came out of the door. It had a little wall that I held onto as I watched him go. It was a kind of stone that crumbled a bit when I scraped it with my nails. I did it as I watched him drive away. I wonder if that’s where the holding on came from. I wonder if that’s where it started.
‘But what can I do?’ I ask Elyse. ‘How can I stop?’
Elyse shakes her head. ‘I don’t know. I wish I did.’
‘You know what I remember thinking? At the funeral? That at least I didn’t have to worry about him any more.’ My voice cracks halfway through and Elyse pulls me into a hug. The table is digging into my belly.
‘That doesn’t mean you’re glad he’s dead,’ she says.
‘I know,’ I say into her hair. ‘I miss him so much. But what does that say about me?’
‘That you want to keep the people you love safe?’ Elyse says. ‘That’s a good thing. You just need to learn that you can’t do it. You can’t even keep yourself safe.’
I pull back, sniffing disgustingly, and laugh. ‘Good pep talk.’
She grins. ‘I was thinking about training as a motivational speaker. But you know what I mean. That Nemo thing. You want things to happen to you. And if things happen to you, some of them will be bad. But that’s okay. You’ll survive.’
I pull a face at her. ‘If you start singing I’ll stab you with a spoon.’
‘Ooh, who are we stabbing?’ Leonie says, appearing through the door from the stairs. Her hair is sticking up at the back and she’s wearing her hoodie over Cookie Monster pyjama bottoms.
‘I’m stabbing Elyse if she sings “I Will Survive”,’ I say, picking up my coffee.
‘First I was betrayed!’ Leonie sings, flinging her arms out to the side.
‘It’s “afraid”,’ Elyse says. ‘And shut up.’
Leonie shuffles into the kitchen and gets herself a coffee before joining Elyse and me at the table.
‘What are we talking about?’ she says. Her eyes are still mostly closed.
‘About Milly being a big control freak,’ Elyse tells her.
‘Oh,’ Leonie says. ‘Yeah.’
I roll my eyes. ‘Can we change the subject?’
‘Just because you threw yourself at him and he didn’t call –’
‘He did call,’ I say, dropping my head and closing my eyes.
‘What?’ Elyse says.
‘When?’ Leonie says.
‘After the funeral. After … you know.’
‘And what did you tell him?’ Elyse asks.
‘I didn’t. I ignored the calls. And he texted. And I told him not to.’
‘Fuck me,’ Elyse says. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell us.’
‘I was humiliated!’ I say, looking up. ‘I felt fucking awful.’
‘I know,’ Elyse says, reaching over and pinching my arm just above the elbow. ‘You know what your problem is?’
‘Oh god,’ I say. ‘Another one? Should I make a list?’
‘You think everything has to be for ever,’ Elyse says. ‘You don’t want to go to music college in case you can’t make it as a singer. You don’t want to even try going out with Luke in case it doesn’t work out. And it probably won’t work out. And would you even want it to? You’re eighteen!’
‘You don’t get it though, El,’ I say. ‘It’s always been easy for you. You like someone, they like you, you go out with them, you split up, and none of it seems to faze you. I don’t know how you do it.’
‘It’s not always like that,’ she says, sliding her phone closer with one finger on the screen. ‘With some of them – like Rio – it was just a bit of fun. We liked each other, I fancied him, but I knew there was nothing really in it. With Robbie it was different. I just wanted … I just wanted something more secure. I didn’t want to go back to college and get off with random boys and never know where I was with any of them. I wanted to not have to think about that. To have a boy to go home to. I told myself he was The One. I don’t even believe in The One.’
I don’t know if I do either. But I’d like to try to find out.