Chapter Twenty-Two
‘You didn’t need to come,’ Connie said, as soon as she opened the door. ‘I’m fine.’
She looked fine. She actually looked better than the last time Piper had been home. She had a bit of colour in her cheeks and Piper thought she might have even put on a bit of weight.
‘I told you on the phone,’ Piper said. ‘I didn’t come to see you: I’m having dinner with Rob.’
Connie rolled her eyes as if she didn’t believe her. ‘Everyone’s been making such a fuss. Beryl keeps bringing me meals. Lunch and dinner! She says it’s no trouble, she just makes a bit extra when she’s cooking for the family, but I don’t need so much. I don’t have a big appetite! Not like you.’
‘That’s lovely of her,’ Piper said, ignoring the dig. ‘Where’s Buster?’
‘Oh,’ Connie said, glancing down as if she expected to see him at her heels. ‘I think he’s asleep on his bean thing.’
Piper followed Connie into the living room where they both immediately saw Buster on the balcony, the doors closed, his little face practically pressed up against the glass. He wiggled delightedly at the sight of Piper and she opened the door and reached down to stroke him while he peed.
‘I didn’t realise he was out there,’ Connie said. ‘I thought he was quiet.’
‘So,’ Piper said, as Buster wriggled past her and jumped up on the sofa. ‘What did the hospital say?’
‘Come and have a cup of tea first. I haven’t got any trifles, but I’ve got crackers and cheese. And a bit of ham?’
‘I’m fine,’ Piper said. ‘I’m having dinner at Rob’s in a bit. But I’ll have a tea. Sit down, I’ll make it.’
‘I’m not an invalid,’ Connie said. ‘The hospital said I had a thing. I can’t remember. Initials. A mini stroke. But nothing to worry about. They’ve got me on blood thinners. And I’m supposed to cut back on salt.’
‘Right,’ Piper said. ‘And how do you feel?’ She actually wanted to ask if she’d been scared. If she was planning to cut back on salt. If she thought there was any way she could maybe not die for a while because Piper really wasn’t ready to lose someone else.
‘Your sister sent me flowers,’ Connie said. ‘And chocolates. I gave the flowers to Beryl and the chocolates to Jim. Don’t tell them if they come round.’
‘That’s nice,’ Piper said. She’d actually suggested Holly come home with her this weekend, but had received a firm no.
‘I can’t remember the last time I saw her,’ Connie said. ‘I don’t think I’d recognise her in the street.’
While Connie made the tea, Piper scanned the kitchen for signs that her aunt really wasn’t okay, but everything looked the same as always: clean and tidy, tea towels folded neatly on top of the microwave, dishes on the drainer, mugs hanging on hooks under the cupboard.
‘Do you have to go back to the hospital?’ Piper asked.
‘No. I have to see my GP. But I don’t know if I’ll go. I don’t like her. I don’t like having a woman GP. Unless it’s for lady business.’
Piper tried not to laugh at ‘lady business’ but failed.
‘Oh I know,’ Connie said. ‘I’m very old-fashioned.’
Piper Power Posed until she heard Rob’s footsteps at the other side of the door. By the time he opened it, smiling at her in jeans and a long-sleeved black jumper, she was standing like a normal person. A normal person who thought she might be sick from nerves.
‘Present for you,’ she said, holding out the CD.
Rob took it and stepped back from the door, ushering her inside and following her through to the lounge. The curtains were pulled right back, showing off the amazing river view and a cloudless blue sky. One of the doors was open and the flat felt cool and fresh.
‘This looks great,’ Rob said, turning the CD over and reading the track listing.
‘Yeah, they’re good. Everyone at work’s pretty excited about their new album. They’re recording it at the moment.’
Rob’s laptop was standing open on the breakfast bar and he pushed the CD into it, turning the sound up a little.
‘Wine?’ he asked Piper.
‘Please.’
He poured her a glass and Piper cradled it with both hands, leaning back against one of the units.
‘How’s things?’ Rob asked.
‘Good,’ she said. ‘Partly thanks to you actually.’
‘Me?’
She nodded. ‘Turns out brands are quite keen on bloggers whose photos go viral. And I had two in quick succession. Yours and then one on my Instagram. I mean, the Insta one wasn’t quite as big as yours, but then I didn’t have your face photoshopped onto my boobs in the Insta one.’
‘God,’ Rob said. ‘I’m so—’
Piper shook her head. ‘I know. It’s fine, I’ve told you. You honestly don’t have to keep apologising.’
‘I want to though.’ He grinned.
‘You’re making me dinner,’ Piper said. ‘After that we’re even, okay?’
‘Blimey,’ Rob said. ‘Better step up my game then.’ He held a bowl out towards her. ‘Tortilla chip?’
She laughed, taking a couple. ‘Wow, quite the host. Didn’t get this treatment when I used to go round your house to watch you and Dave watch Star Wars.’
‘Fuck. We seriously watched it every day for about a year. I can recite it from start to finish.’
‘I don’t think I ever saw it all the way through. Always fell asleep. Do you keep in touch with Dave?’ He hadn’t gone to their school – Rob knew him through their mums – so he hadn’t been at the reunion.
‘Sort of.’ He leaned over and switched the oven on at the wall. ‘On Facebook. He does a Star Wars podcast now. It’s massive. He goes to Comic Con and he’s interviewed some of the actors.’
‘Wow,’ Piper said. ‘Living the dream.’
‘Right? Must admit, I was pretty jealous when he met Mark Hamill. Oh, and he goes out with Claire. You know Claire.’
‘Claire Ellis?’
‘Wow,’ Piper said again. ‘Never would have put those two together.’ Mostly because for years she’d assumed Claire was with Rob.
‘How long have they been together?’ she asked.
He put an onion on the chopping board and took a knife down from the magnetic strip on the wall.
‘Not sure actually. A while.’
‘And how long were you together?’ Piper asked.
‘Who?’ He’d peeled the onion and was already chopping it, his hand moving swiftly across the wooden board.
‘You and Claire.’
He glanced up at her but didn’t stop chopping.
‘Careful!’ she said instantly.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, smiling. ‘I’m good at this.’
‘I know you are. Did you do a course or something?’
He pushed the chopped onion to one corner of the chopping board and started on a piece of celery.
‘I’ve done a few actually. Mum got me one for a present when I moved out of home. It was meant to be sort of a piss-take – you know, like “Rob can’t boil water, he’ll starve living on his own” kind of thing – but I loved it. So then I did a few more. I’ve done soups and stews. Indian. Bread and pizza. I love it.’
‘Bloody hell. That’s very impressive.’
He smiled at her again. ‘You haven’t tasted it yet. And we were never together.’
He opened the fridge and took out two steaks, sliding them into the pan he was heating on the hob. They sizzled and immediately smelled delicious.
‘What?’ Piper said.
He was back at the chopping board, halving new potatoes.
‘Me and Claire. We were never together. Only ever friends.’
Piper stared at him. ‘What?’ Why couldn’t she form a sentence?
‘Do you need more wine?’ Rob asked.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Thanks. I’m good.’ But it reminded her that she did indeed have wine, and she slugged some.
‘We never went out. I never liked her like that. I mean, I didn’t like her much at all, a lot of the time. She could be a real bitch. And she was awful to you.’
‘But…’ Piper said. ‘She told me the two of you…’
But even as she was saying it, she wasn’t sure if it was actually true. Had Claire told her she and Rob were together? Or had Piper just assumed because she’d seen them together? She wasn’t sure.
‘She told you that?’ Rob said.
Piper finished her wine and reached for the bottle. ‘Do you know, I’m not actually sure now. It’s so long ago. I guess it doesn’t matter.’
‘She asked me. More than once. But…’ He scraped the onions and celery into a pan and Piper’s stomach rumbled immediately.
‘But…?’ she couldn’t help saying.
He leaned back against the worktop and smiled at her. The sleeves of his jumper were pushed up to the elbows. He’d thrown a tea towel over his shoulder earlier, but seemed to have forgotten it was there since he kept picking up another tea towel to wipe his hands on. He looked really good. And he was looking at her like…
‘What?’ Piper said.
‘I was fucking crazy about you,’ he said.
‘What?’ Piper said again. Honestly, she was going to have to do something about this brilliant repartee business – she was barely able to string a sentence together.
‘Yeah.’ He smiled, shrugged and reached for some plastic tongs to lift the steaks out onto the plates he’d set out earlier.
Piper had no idea what she was supposed to say. Was he making it up? Had he had a head injury at some point in the past ten years that had given him false memory syndrome or something? There was no way he’d been crazy about her back then. It just wasn’t possible.
‘What about you?’ he asked, not looking at her. ‘How long have you and Matt been…’
‘Me and Matt?’ Piper said, genuinely astonished. ‘We’re not together. God. No. No. Never been together. Well, there was one time… but that was years ago and—’ Why was she still talking? She put a thumb up to her lips to shut herself up and then mumbled, ‘We’re flat-mates. That’s all.’
Rob stopped what he was doing and looked at her sideways. ‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’
He emptied the new potatoes onto the plate, along with some peas and then carried the plates over to the table.
Piper followed him, still cradling her wine. She couldn’t believe he’d said he’d liked her back then. Did that mean he liked her now? Or that he definitely didn’t like her now? Matt would say that of course he did: men didn’t cook for women they didn’t like. But that didn’t mean he like liked her. Just because he had then – if indeed he had – didn’t mean he did now. And he’d thought she was with Matt. So if he thought she was with Matt then this had definitely been intended as a friend dinner. Not a date. Definitely not a date.
Piper sat down opposite him and looked at her plate. Her stomach was churning so much, she wasn’t sure she’d be able to eat, but it smelled so good.
‘This looks amazing,’ she said.
Rob noticed the tea towel over his shoulder and slid it off, draping it over the back of the chair next to him.
‘It’s easy,’ he said. ‘But it’s a crowd-pleaser.’
Piper cut into the steak and popped a piece into her mouth. It was good: flavoursome and tender.
‘This is really good,’ she said, stabbing a piece of potato.
‘Do you cook?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘Not really. I assemble, mostly. Usually by the time I’m home from work I can’t be bothered to cook anything fancy. So I tend to have something bigger – and healthy – at lunch. There’s loads of nice places near work.’
‘Your building’s on the river, right?’
Piper frowned. ‘How did you know that?’
Rob wrinkled his nose. ‘Ah. Yeah. I googled.’
Piper laughed. ‘Why?’
‘You mentioned it one day – you were talking about the girl band? – and I hadn’t heard of it. The company. So I googled it. And then I’m just kind of nosy about London so I looked it up on Google Maps and—’
‘Wow,’ Piper said. ‘Stalker.’ Maybe it was better that it wasn’t a date. It took the pressure off. She could just relax and be herself instead of worrying about what might possibly happen after dinner.
‘I mean, I couldn’t see you on Google Maps…’ Rob said, cutting his own steak.
Piper laughed again. ‘One of my colleagues is actually on it. She saw the car going past and so she’s captured forever with a what-the-fuck-is-that expression on her face.’ Piper ate another piece of steak. Another potato. Drank some more wine. And said, ‘I did it too. I looked up this place.’ She gestured at Rob’s flat. ‘And wandered up Vicky Road. Along the prom. Checked to see if the chippy was still there. Looked at our old house. Stopped when I made myself cry. It’s a weird compulsion. Like poking a bruise.’
‘I get that,’ Rob said. ‘And maybe it’s easier to do it online. You’re that bit removed. I can’t imagine how painful it must be to actually come back here.’
Piper shook her head. ‘Everyone says it gets easier. But I don’t know. They’re never going to be here.’
‘I know,’ Rob said. ‘I mean… I don’t. I’m lucky. But I can imagine. And I understand why you didn’t want to come back.’
Piper drank some wine and ate some steak and thought about how so far it had been easier than she’d feared. Coming home. And that Rob was definitely a big part of that.
‘You know, you never used to eat,’ Rob said, gesturing at Piper’s plate.
‘What? When?’
‘When we were growing up. We’d all go out and get chips or go to McDonald’s or whatever and you came too, but you didn’t eat. I remember. I noticed once and then I used to look out for it. I think I saw you eat a chip once. But that’s it.’
Piper put her cutlery down and stared at him.
‘Sorry,’ Rob said. ‘I shouldn’t have—’
‘No,’ Piper said. ‘I’d just forgotten I used to do that. Fuck.’
‘Yeah?’
‘When you’re…’ Piper started to say before realising that she was about to say ‘when you’re fat’. To Rob. Teenage Piper would have died before she referenced her body in front of him, but fuck that. ‘When you’re fat,’ she said, pausing to drink some more wine, ‘eating in public is a bit of a headfuck. People comment. And if they don’t comment, you can often see them judging anyway. Like on Instagram a photo of a thin girl eating a burger gets comments about how hot it is to see a girl eating, right? Or eating “properly”, not a salad, all that shite. But a fat girl eating a burger? You can imagine the comments.’
Rob winced. ‘I can.’
Piper laughed. ‘Yeah. You definitely got an up-front introduction to being fat online.’
‘It’s so fucking obnoxious,’ he said, topping up her wine. ‘And I’m ashamed to say I really wasn’t aware of it before I posted that photo. I mean, I knew people were dicks online. And I knew people were particularly dicks to women online, but I’d never seen anything like that. That and the article. The Naomi Jones one.’
‘Oh god, yeah. That’s a particularly insidious thing. Because it’s abuse dressed up as care. How can anyone be offended by “I’m just worried about your health”, right? But it’s bullshit. There are plenty of unhealthy thin people. People risk their health in loads of different ways every single day and it’s no one else’s business.’
‘Remember when my mum and dad split up?’ Rob said. He’d stopped eating and was leaning both arms on the table, his body tilted towards Piper. ‘I started self-harming. Just a bit. No one knew. I never told anyone. I used to hit myself, bash my arm against the end of my bed. I didn’t think of it as self-harm at the time, I just thought I was getting my anger out, I guess. But that’s what it was. And no one knew. No one could have known.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Piper said. She felt tears building behind her eyes. She’d known him then. She’d hung out with him then. She’d had no idea. He’d seemed fine.
‘I’m fine now,’ he said. ‘And Mum and Dad are fine. They were much happier once they split. But…’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t know why I told you that. I know it’s not the same.’
‘No,’ Piper said. She wanted to reach out and touch him – she sat on her hands instead. ‘Thank you for telling me. I wish I’d known back then.’
‘Ah,’ Rob said. ‘No way would I have told you back then. I didn’t want you feeling sorry for me. I wanted you to fancy me.’
Piper wriggled her hands out from under her thighs and picked up her wine. ‘I did,’ she said, before taking a large mouthful.
‘You did what?’
‘Fucking hell,’ Piper said. She couldn’t look at him. He was too close. And too hot and she might have had too much wine. ‘I did fancy you.’
‘You did not.’
She could hear the laugh in his voice. She looked at him. He looked incredulous, smile wide, eyes crinkling at the corners.
‘I was completely fucking batshit about you,’ she said. ‘From the day we met until the day I left.’
She’d definitely had too much wine. Fuck.
Rob was quiet. Staring at her. She forced herself to stare back. She’d never have been brave enough to do this back when they were teens, but she could maybe be brave enough now. Maybe.
‘When I walked into the reunion and I saw you…’ Rob said. ‘I couldn’t even approach you straight away. I couldn’t catch my breath. You looked… You looked so fucking gorgeous. And then later, when we were dancing, the light was shining on your dress – you were like a glitter ball.’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘Wait. I don’t mean—’
‘I know,’ Piper said, laughing, even though she was struggling to breathe too. He thought she was gorgeous. He’d really just said that. ‘It’s okay.’
‘Bright and shining and sparkling and…’ He drained his wine. ‘I’d always thought I was a dickhead for letting you just go off to London. For not telling you or asking you… I almost messaged you so many times. But then I thought, well, you left for a reason. You didn’t keep in touch for a reason. And I didn’t want to make you feel like you had to keep in touch or anything. Until I saw you on that show and I just thought “fuck it”.’
Piper stared at him. Fuck it. She stood and walked around the table towards him. He turned in his chair, but didn’t stand. He looked up at her, and his eyes were dark and focussed on her face.
She grazed his jaw with her fingertips, brushed her thumb along his cheekbone. He spread his legs and she stepped into the V made by his thighs. He reached for her hand, intertwining his fingers with hers. He reached up with his other hand and Piper gasped as he grazed his thumb over her bottom lip. She wanted to kiss him, but at the same time she wanted to stretch the anticipation out forever.
Rob shifted in his seat, his thighs tightening either side of Piper’s legs, and she couldn’t wait any longer. She dipped her head and pressed her mouth to his and oh god. One of Rob’s arms wrapped around her waist, his hand curved around the back of her neck, and she sagged against him as his tongue slipped over her bottom lip.
‘Fuck,’ she breathed against his mouth.