I’m in the park. The sun’s shining, but it’s raining too. I look up and, over the Greek coffee shop, a rainbow is curving, the colours sharp and bright.

I walk further into the park, looking for Dan on the bench, Anthony on the bandstand, pigeons anywhere, but there’s no one here. I’m alone. And I feel fine. I’m not scared or nervous or anxious. I feel relaxed, warmed by the sun.

I sit down on one of the deckchairs and close my eyes, the sun warming my face. Music starts to play and at first I can’t place it, but eventually I recognise it and I smile. ‘It Had to be You’.

And then I wake up.

---

‘Henry phoned,’ Mum says when I get downstairs in the morning. ‘He said he didn’t want to try your mobile in case you were asleep.’

‘Is everything OK?’ I ask, sitting down at the dining table. I sit in my usual seat on the left hand side because Tom always sits at the head and Mum next to him, opposite me. Sat. Tom always sat.

‘Think so. He didn’t say otherwise. I think he just wanted to know you were OK. Or when you were coming home. He’s such a sweetheart.’

‘He is,’ I say.

I pour myself a tea from the pot on the table. Mum’s making a cooked breakfast and the smell makes my mouth water and my stomach rumble.

Matt comes in, scratching his belly under his T-shirt, his hair standing on end. He sits next to me and I pour him a tea too.

‘My bed here is so much comfier than home,’ he says. ‘Our mattress is shit.’

‘You should buy a better one,’ Mum says, checking on the bacon under the grill. ‘A good night’s sleep is so important.’

‘Lydia likes it,’ Matt says. ‘It’s so hard, I might as well be sleeping on the floor.’

‘How is Lydia?’ I ask.

He shrugs. ‘Same. Busy. She wants a baby.’

Mum drops the spatula she’s holding and says, ‘Oh shitsticks.’

I grin at Matt.

‘She’s not pregnant, Mother,’ he says. ‘We’ve just been talking about it.’

Mum’s running the spatula under the tap. ‘I’m too young to be a nan.’

‘You’re not actually,’ Matt says, and then ducks when she throws a tea towel at him. ‘But… I don’t know. I’m not sure. Not yet anyway.’

‘Not sure you want a baby?’ I ask him.

‘Not sure I want one with Lydia,’ he says, rubbing his face.

Oh. Shit.

---

On the train home, I think about Mum and Tom and me and Dan, and Matt and Lydia. I have to admit that I never knew what he saw in her in the first place – she always seemed cold and unfriendly to me – but I thought he liked that. I thought he liked her bossiness and efficiency and organisation skills and I think he did, at first. But he said that now he feels more like an employee than a husband. And that they never even laugh together any more. Mum said that was particularly important – that even when she and Tom had rough times before, they’d always been able to laugh about it. So far, she hasn’t been able to find the funny side of the whole embezzlement thing.

It was so lovely being home that I want to make time to get home more often. Plus Mum said she’s definitely going to sell the house – she wants to buy somewhere much smaller and, she says, simplify her life. I get it. But it’s going to be hard to say goodbye to that house. So many of my happiest times took place there.

Matt says he’s coming down to London for work next month and we’re going to go out for lunch. We’re also going to try to phone each other more often. I realised this weekend how much I’ve missed him.

I spend much of the train journey reminiscing and feeling sad about what we’ve lost as a family, what I’ve lost, what I thought I had – or was going to have – that just wasn’t real. But as the train pulls into Euston – when I look out of the window and see all the electric pylons, the tower blocks in the distance, the graffiti on the sidings – I realise that the life I have is the life I used to dream about.

Coming back to London still gives me a thrill. Every time.

---

‘We’re taking you out to dinner,’ Freya says when I get home. ‘I know you’re probably tired, but we all want to do this, so tough tits.’

‘That’s very sweet of you,’ I say, laughing. But it is. So I hug her too.

‘Missed you,’ she says, into my hair. ‘You OK?’

‘Yeah. It was actually really lovely.’

‘How’s your mum?’

I don’t get to tell her because Henry joins us in the kitchen and immediately wraps his arms around both of us.

‘Oof,’ Freya says into my neck. ‘All right, Henry, I know you’ve been dying to get your hands on Bea, but what am I? Collateral damage?’

Henry immediately lets go of both of us and crashes backwards into one of the units.

‘Shit,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’

‘I was only joking!’ Freya says, but her voice sounds weird. Henry’s gone bright red, which doesn’t surprise me, but I think Freya might actually be blushing too. I’ve never seen her blush. It’s weird.

‘Gonna go and get changed,’ Freya says and legs it. Huh.

‘So was your mum OK?’ Henry says. His face has calmed down a little but it’s still pink. I think he’s had his hair cut while I’ve been away. It’s shorter round the ears. It suits him.

‘Yeah. She’s amazing. I went to work with her one day. The shop’s great and she’s really good. The customers love her.’ I’m babbling. ‘How was work?’

‘Fine, yeah. I told head office you were away and they sent Craig in. So he was glad of the overtime.’

I nod. ‘Good. Great. Yeah.’ Oh god. ‘Where are we going, do you know?’

He shakes his head. ‘Oh, only the pub, I think. The Stag. But Adam’s paying – did Freya tell you? He got a bonus.’

Adam works in IT consulting and none of us knows exactly what he does. But he earns really good money and every now and then he gets a bonus and takes us out for dinner. I haven’t paid for a meal for days now, it must be the secret upside of your parents’ marriage falling apart. Then again, I’m probably going to miss out on Christmas presents, so it will even out eventually.

---

It’s another nice evening so we sit outside the pub. When we moved here, this place was rough. Me and Henry came in one night after work and conversation stopped, like something from a Western, while everyone checked us out. And then went back to their pool and darts and staring up at some foreign football match on the TV above the bar. And then it closed for six months and reopened as a gastropub. Henry was against it at first – he said he liked the ‘authenticity’ of the original place. But then he tried the steak and chips and it won him over.

The beer garden – or ‘patio garden’ as it is now – is lit with multicoloured bulbs hanging from the trees and heated with an open fire set into the wall. We pull two wooden tables together and arrange our chairs around and Adam goes to the bar and comes back with shots for everyone but Celine.

‘Bloody typical,’ she says, taking a small bottle of ginger ale from the tray.

‘So,’ Adam says. ‘Before we begin the festivities, Celine and I have an announcement.’

‘Celine’s pregnant!’ Freya says. ‘Oh wait, we knew that.’

‘You’re getting married!’ Henry laughs. ‘No, we knew that too…’

‘Shut up, dickheads,’ Adam says. ‘We’re moving to Southend.’

‘No!’ I say, before I can stop myself. Everyone looks at me. ‘I mean, I’m happy for you. If you’re happy?’ I look at Celine and she nods. ‘But I’ll miss you so much.’

‘It’s time,’ Celine says. ‘I know I said I couldn’t do it, but we can hardly raise a baby in that one room.’

‘Why have you stayed so long?’ Freya asks them. ‘You must’ve been able to afford somewhere bigger for a while.’

Celine shrugs. ‘It’s fun. I love living with you lot.’

My eyes fill with tears and Adam bumps my shoulder with his arm. ‘It was only ever meant to be temporary. But we got attached.’

I shake my head. It’s way too early in the evening for me to be crying in the pub.

‘We did look into buying somewhere here,’ Adam says. ‘’Cos Cel wasn’t sure about the whole family at the seaside thing—’

‘But we looked at what we could get for our money here,’ Celine interrupts. ‘And what we can get there and… there’s no contest. And you can all come and visit.’

‘We definitely will,’ Henry says.

‘Of course we will,’ Freya confirms.

I picture Celine and Adam and a baby in a big house by the sea. Everything’s changing.

I pick up my glass of god-only-knows-what and hold it out to the others, who hold up their glasses too.

‘To happy endings,’ I say.

Adam snorts.

‘And new beginnings,’ Celine adds. We crash our glasses together.