Читать книгу The Happiness Recipe - Stella Newman - Страница 13

Some Saturdays I wake up, and before I’ve even managed to get out of bed a little grey cloud comes to join me under the duvet. The weekend should be the highlight of your week, should it not? Should. Now there’s a word.

When Jake and I split up, my best friend Polly told me something her therapist had said after Polly’s first husband, Spencer, walked out on her when she was seven months pregnant:

‘“Should” is the worst word in the English language.’

Funny, because I always thought the worst word was ‘jism’.

But no: ‘should’ should be eradicated from the dictionary. (Although you see what just happened there?) ‘Should’ means you want people or situations to be a certain way. But they’re not that way at all. ‘He shouldn’t have abandoned his pregnant wife.’ But he did. ‘I shouldn’t still miss my ex.’ But I do. Weekends ‘should’ be the highlight of the week.

Yet some Saturdays when I wake up, all I can see before me is a vast stretch of time that I’m supposed to fill up with ‘stuff’. And ‘good’ stuff. Fun, meaningful, stimulating stuff. Not just lying in bed, watching DVDs, eating ice cream stuff, because that would make me a loser.

As much as I hate my day job, at least there’s always stuff to do. Stuff I’m paid to do. Pointless stuff. Soul-destroying stuff. But at least it’s stuff that I have to do or else there’ll be a repercussion involving immediate pain. If I stay in bed all weekend watching Ryan Gosling movies there’s no pain. In fact there’s the opposite of pain. But where will it ever get me?

I’m lucky though. I have good friends. Friends from school, from uni, from all over. Yet when I stand back and look at how our lives have turned out, it seems that I’m the only one still hanging out here on the ledge of singleness. Everyone else has been busy, busy, busy. They’ve been having babies and twins and sometimes up to three babies, though not all at once. They’ve been moving to bigger houses, moving to the country. Buying Farrow & Ball paints, building glass extensions, razing, gutting and expanding into loft space. The only thing gutted in my flat is me.

Of course they haven’t all had a smooth ride. Take Polly, who’s coming round for dinner later with our friend from school, Dalia. After Polly’s first husband walked out she spent two years bringing up her little girl Maisie on her own. But Polly would never think of herself as a leftover; she got on with life without a fuss. Maybe when you have a kid whom you have to put first then it’s easy, though it didn’t look easy.

And then she met Dave, and Dave is amazing and it didn’t bother him in the slightest that Polly wasn’t young and perfect and baggage-free. He proposed after three months, down on one knee, singing Sinatra’s ‘All of Me’, in their local curry house. The wedding’s in six weeks’ time and I cannot wait to dance away the ghost of Spencer and celebrate Polly and Dave’s union. If anyone deserves all the happiness it’s Polly. And men like Dave restore your faith in the universe. Shame there’s only one of him in the universe.

And then of course there’s Dalia: successful and gorgeous and thick as four short planks where men are concerned. ‘Better to have loved and lost …’ That is so entirely not true when it comes to Dalia and Mark. Honestly I think Tennyson would have developed writer’s block when faced with making sense of the on/off relationship between Dalia and that douche ‘property-developer’ (i.e. trumped-up estate agent) Mark Dawson.

Perhaps, after considerable pondering, with quill in mouth, Tennyson might have come up with the following:

‘Better to have never loved. In fact better to have stayed home watching TOWIE repeats than to have wasted so much time at the beck and call of an odious man-boy who tells you, through word and deed, that you’re not quite good enough for him. Where is thy self-respect, girl? The man is clearly a cock-head.’

But I don’t suppose Tennyson would have used a word like cock-head.

So yes, there are worse things than being single. And there are worse things than being alone.

The girls are coming round at 7 p.m., and even though Polly’s meant to be on a pre-wedding diet, she’s asked me to make spag bol – her favourite. Dalia is off the carbs, since Mark poked her in the thigh a few weeks ago and just shook his head. But it pains me that a paunch-laden forty-four-year-old man dares criticise my friend’s weight. She’s been shrinking ever since she met him.

So I’ll make the spag bol. And if Dalia wants to eat the bolognese sauce on broccoli instead of spaghetti, that’s up to her. But after a glass of wine she’ll probably be herself again, at least for a while. And I’ll make the brownie pudding. Then I can take some in for Sam on Monday morning.

First things first though, chores: put the laundry on, tidy the flat, do the recycling. I head to the recycling bins round the corner armed with my cardboard wine delivery box, filled with bottles. Thank goodness no one I work with lives in my area and has ever witnessed me at these bins on a Saturday morning. Every time I stand here I curse myself for not having removed the thick tape from these boxes back in my flat, and yet I never do. Because now, not only do I look like an alcoholic (six glass bottles smashing the message home) I also look like I’m drunk. I mean, like I am currently drunk at 9 a.m., not just I am a drunk. I try to tear the tape but it won’t come off so I try to pull the box apart but it’s tougher to rip than the Yellow Pages. I stand wrestling with it like an old souse in a pub brawl. I grunt a bit, pull and shake it, then try to bash it through the slot, even though I’ve tried this twice already and I know it doesn’t quite fit. Then I jump on it, kick it, manage to tear a tiny corner off it and end up grunting again, before throwing it in despair onto the pile to the right of the bins where all the less civic-minded people simply dump their cardboard in the first place.

I’m exhausted. That’s more than enough interface with the real world for one day. I return home, put Prefab Sprout loudly on the stereo in a pre-emptive move against Caspar and head to the kitchen to start making dinner. It’s barely breakfast time, I know, but the key to making a bolognese this delicious is to start as early as possible on the day you’re going to eat it. (In an ideal world, you’d make it the day before, so that the flavours can develop overnight, but work tends to get in the way.) For best results, the sauce needs to cook for at least six hours, preferably more. If you can leave it to its own devices in the oven on a very low heat for twelve hours, you’ll have the best bolognese you’ve ever eaten in your life, and I can guarantee that or your money back.

Everyone has a recipe for bolognese that they love. And in Italy, every region has a slightly different recipe. In some areas they sweat the vegetables in butter and olive oil – they insist it makes it sweeter than olive oil alone. Some people don’t even use celery, just carrot and onion as the base. Then there’s the dairy brigade who insist on cooking out the meat in milk, to help cut through the acidity of the tomatoes. Others swear that white wine, not red, is the key to perfection. And don’t even start on the subject of tomatoes. Fresh or chopped or passata or puree? All of the above, or no tomatoes at all?

Every Italian swears that theirs is the best recipe. What’s more, if you don’t make your bolognese in the same way they do, that means your father must have been dropped on his head when he was a baby and your grandmother was probably the town slut. Naturally I use my Italian grandmother’s recipe, and I know for a fact that she wasn’t the town slut. I know this because shortly after she gave birth to my mother, my grandfather ran off with the actual town slut, a woman by the name of Lucia Mollica, which means ‘crumb’ in Italian. Which seems fitting, as my grandmother took all of his money, along with my infant mother, and left him with just a loaf of bread in the kitchen and a note saying ‘Don’t eat it all at once’. She boarded a train, then a boat, and ended up in Glasgow, where her uncle ran a successful ice cream parlour, in which one Saturday, a year later, she met my ‘real’ grandfather. Until the day she died, whenever she saw or heard the name Lucia, Nonna would curse both her first husband and his mistress in the most lurid phrases you’ve ever heard come out of the mouth of a pensioner. (My grandfather had taught her to swear like a Glaswegian navvy, so she was pretty professional.)

Nonna’s recipe isn’t difficult but it does require two ingredients you can’t buy off the shelf: love and patience. First you have to chop your vegetables into very fine dice. And of course you can’t use a food processor, because the ghost of Nonna is watching, and she wouldn’t like it. Cook the veg in olive oil for at least half an hour, on a heat so low you have to keep checking that the gas is actually on. Then add garlic, and sweat some more. In a separate pan, dry-fry some pancetta – salty pig meat being the base for so much that is good in this world. Then in the same pan, brown some beef mince, then half the amount of pork mince again. Add it to your soffrito along with a bottle of passata, fresh rosemary, salt and pepper. And then the secret ingredient that truly makes this dish: an entire bottle of red wine. Pour that in, put a lid on the casserole dish and put it in the oven for the whole day, stirring every couple of hours.

This is the perfect dish for a day like today. The weather’s miserable, I’ve got nothing better to do, and I can justify not setting foot outside again with the excuse that I have to babysit the dinner. At around 4pm I rouse myself from a mid-afternoon doze and head for my A4 files of recipes. They’re the one organised thing in my flat. I’m always fiddling with recipes, and the only way that I remember these tweaks is if I’ve scrawled them on a piece of paper. Aah, here we go: chocolate brownie cheesecake bake. It’s one of the more obscene puddings in this file, but I’ve never met anyone who didn’t go back for seconds. First you make the brownies, and Lord knows there are as many brownie recipes as there are Hindu deities. Normally I’d go straight to my friend Claire’s recipe, which produces the ultimate squidgy yet chunky brownie. But the brownies in this pudding need to stay in neat squares so I use a Nigel Slater recipe that is foolproof and produces a more cake-like brownie, better fit for purpose.

While the brownies are in the oven I make the cheesecake base – full-fat Philadelphia, mascarpone and vanilla, whipped together and poured onto a base of crushed dark chocolate digestives mixed with melted better. That’s my favourite part of the whole process – spreading the biscuit base out into the tray with a spatula, like it’s wet sand. The brownies come out of the top oven and in goes the cheesecake for forty minutes, then the heat goes off and the cheesecake stays in the oven to cool and set. I give the bolognese a quick stir, then head back to the sofa for another little lie-down. I can’t wait to be an old lady when all this mid-afternoon snoozing will be deemed socially acceptable.

The girls are due at 7 p.m. so at 6.30 p.m. I open a bottle of wine and start drinking – I might as well air the wine before they get here.

Polly’s the first to arrive at 7 p.m. on the dot.

‘You look amazing!’ I say, as I open the door and give her a hug.

‘D’you think?’ she says, handing me a bottle of Prosecco.

‘You’re glowing.’

‘Really? I’ve been on the Perricone, lots of oily fish. I feel like a penguin.’

‘And your hair totally suits you longer.’

She reaches up and touches her neck. ‘I’m growing it for the wedding. You don’t think I’m too old for long hair, do you?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, you’re thirty-six. You didn’t drive by the way, did you?’ Polly, Dave and Maisie now live in a small village near Marlow in Buckinghamshire. It’s only forty minutes by car, but if she’s driving that means I’m drinking alone, which isn’t good for anyone.

‘My one night out and you think I’m drinking Evian? Dave gave me a lift in and I’ll get a cab back. Is that smell what I think it is?’

I nod.

‘How long has it been on for?’ she says.

I check my watch. ‘Just over eight hours.’

‘I cannot wait, I’ve been looking forward to this all week! Will you email me the recipe? I want to make it for Dave.’

‘I’ve got some copies of it, I gave one to Terry the other day,’ I say, retrieving the recipe file I’d just returned to the hall cupboard.

‘I’m so sick of eating mackerel,’ she calls out from the kitchen. ‘Shall we start this Prosecco or wait for Dalia?’

‘He who hesitates … plus, it’ll help the crisps go down more easily,’ I say, opening a packet of Kettle Chips.

And it’s just as well we don’t wait for Dalia. Because twenty minutes later she sends me a text apologising profusely saying she can’t make it, and she’ll make it up to me another time, promise, kiss kiss.

‘Look at this,’ I say to Polly, showing her my phone. ‘She doesn’t even bother making excuses any more because she knows we won’t believe them.’

‘At least she’s got the decency not to pretend she has a migraine, I suppose,’ says Polly, handing the phone back to me and shaking her head.

‘You would think she would at least pick up the phone rather than just text,’ I say. ‘It’s rude.’

‘Mark’s probably there with her and she can’t bear to drag herself away from his side for twenty seconds.’

‘Do you reckon the sex is as good as she makes out it is?’ I say. ‘I’ve always thought Mark looked like the sort of man who would be entirely about his penis and not much else.’

‘Me too!’ she says. ‘But apparently it’s so amazing she says it’s like a drug.’

‘Huh,’ I say. ‘Well none of the drugs I’ve ever taken turned round and asked me if I wanted Botox for my birthday. Did she tell you about that?’

Polly nods. ‘She’s incapable of being on her own, though,’ she says. ‘She’d rather have someone than no one. I just wish that someone wasn’t him.’

‘I keep on telling her a man isn’t the be all and end all.’

‘That man’s just the end all,’ she says.

‘Let’s not talk about it, it’ll just make me angry, and I’ve had a bad enough week as it is … Ooh, although I did meet a man.’

‘A man?’ says Polly. ‘An actual real live man?’

‘Hang on, I’ll just put the pasta on and then I can tell you all about it.’

Two bowls of pasta, two bottles of wine and two helpings of cake later, I’m trying to remember all the reasons why I think Jeff is going to be my new boyfriend.

‘And he noticed those earrings I bought in New York, the five-dollar ones from Old Navy that actually look quite expensive.’

‘The moonstone ones?’

‘Yes, and he actually knows what a moonstone is, but he’s definitely not gay because he went out with another girl called Susie … with three Is … oh, and then he said that this chocolate sponge was my namecake, like namesake, because it’s like a Suzy Q apparently. Isn’t that funny? He’s funny as well as handsome … and he used to live in New York and he’s learning Spanish, and we like the same films, and he loves food!’

‘Sounds perfect,’ she says. ‘Apart from one big thing.’

‘What?’ I say, suddenly worried that she has found a clue in something I’ve said that reveals he is not single. ‘Polly?’

‘It’s obvious what the problem is, isn’t it?’ she says, waving her wine glass in the air.

‘No,’ I say. ‘What’s obvious?’

‘The name, Suze, the name.’

I breathe a sigh of relief.

‘It’s up there with Tarquin on the list of worst men’s names ever.’

‘It’s nowhere near Tarquin,’ I say. ‘It’s a totally fine name.’

‘Jeffrey?’ she says. ‘How many sexy Jeffs or Jeffreys are there? There’s plenty of unsexy Jeffreys. Geoffrey from Rainbow. Geoff Capes, Jeffrey Dahmer. Yep, serial killer name,’ she says, shuddering. ‘Or a man in a golfing jumper. A golf-playing serial killer.’

‘Jeff Bridges. He’s a sexy Jeff. My God, have you ever seen a photo of him when he was young?’

She raises an eyebrow suspiciously.

‘And Jeff Goldblum, kind of,’ I say. ‘Anyway, I’m in no position to be fussy about names at this stage of the game. If Nimrod Mcfartwhistle asked me out, I’d be hard-pressed to say no.’

‘Does he have a beard?’ she says.

‘Jeff? Why do you ask?’

‘It’s a beardy name.’

‘No,’ I say. ‘No beard. A little bit of stubble, but good stubble. And very very blue eyes. Just like Daniel Craig but with a less craggy nose. And he’s bald.’

‘So nothing like Daniel Craig.’

‘Same eyes,’ I say.

‘Thank goodness he’s not called Craig,’ she says.

‘What’s wrong with Craig?’

‘Who calls a baby Craig?’ she says.

‘Who calls a baby Spencer?!’

She laughs. ‘Fair point.’

‘So more importantly, tell me what’s the latest on the wedding!’ I say. ‘I’m so excited, I can’t wait!’

Her face lights up. ‘The dress is sorted – Nanette’s done the most amazing job ever – and I’ve found the perfect shoes, and they were a total bargain, forty quid in a shop in a village down the road from us.’

‘Colour?’

‘Silver,’ she says.

‘Comfortable?’

‘Hell no! And the head-dress! Unbelievable. I found a woman on eBay who’d inherited her aunt’s – Edwardian lace, totally beautiful, a hundred and ten years old this thing, worn once, and she only wanted sixty-five quid for it! And Dave and I have finally made our minds up about the food …’

‘Are you going to tell me anything or are you keeping it a surprise?’

‘Definitely a surprise. Although I think you’ll like the cake.’

‘Tell me about the cake at least?’

‘No way!’ she says, ‘the cake’s the best bit. Just be warned, the whole thing’s not going to be as posh as first time round – the venue’s just a little restaurant in Farringdon near the registry office. But all the money’s going into food and booze this time!’

‘Poll, I don’t care if you guys get married in Nando’s, I’m just so excited for you. You deserve this more than anyone.’

She squeezes my hand. ‘I swear, Suze, it’ll happen to you when you least expect it.’

‘Oh Polly. I’ve been least expecting it for a very long time now,’ I say, smiling.

She takes another sip of her wine and pours the rest of the bottle into her glass. ‘Oh. And you’ll never guess who’s RSVPd and is coming without a certain evil other half …’ she says, looking at me with a mischievous grin.

I put down my glass.

‘Daniel McKendall’s coming?’ I say.

‘Daniel McKendall’s coming, and he asked if you were coming too.’

Daniel McKendall: best mate of Polly’s brother.

I’ve known Daniel McKendall since I was twelve. We were born on the same day, in the same year. And from the age of thirteen through to fifteen, he was my best male friend and my sort-of boyfriend.

‘I’m going to open another bottle,’ I say, getting off the sofa and heading to the kitchen. I fetch myself a glass of water and drink it slowly, trying to figure out why even now, after all this time, just the sound of his name still has an effect on me.

‘Bring me some booze immediately!’ she shouts from the sofa. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got any cider in the fridge, have you?’

Polly and I spent far too many of our teenage years drinking cider, wearing DMs and listening to The Cure. She was a proper bona fide Goth, hair dyed Naples Black, scary eyeliner, the works. I was just copying her because I was in awe of her, and because the DMs offended my mother in a way that I found hugely gratifying. Although there was no way I’d have got away with dyed hair living under my parents’ roof. They’d have put me up for fostering.

‘Polly, I haven’t touched cider since I disgraced myself at your eighteenth. If you really want a blast from the past I can offer you Malibu, or I still have some Galliano left over from New Year’s Eve 2004. It looks like fluorescent urine but it tastes far worse …’

‘Malibu,’ she says. ‘And have you got any bad shit in the cupboard? I’ve chucked all the sweets out at home and I need something full of fat and sugar.’

‘Chocolate raisins, jumbo Chocolate Buttons, peanut M&Ms, take your pick,’ I say.

‘Bloody hell, you’re better than the Texaco. Buttons!’

I take the booze and the chocolates back through to her.

‘Did I tell you Brooke’s been living in New York for the last four months?’ she says, taking a glass from me. ‘Without Daniel …’

I take a sip of neat Malibu, wince at the sweetness, and pretend I haven’t heard her.

‘She said she can’t bear to live in England any more because of the weather,’ she says, with a raised eyebrow. ‘Says the rain gives her headaches. More like it makes her hair go curly. God, she’s such a spoiled princess,’ she says, ripping open the packet of Buttons.

‘It never rains in New York, does it,’ I say, finding two Buttons that are stuck together. Almost as good as the mythical Kit Kat finger that’s all-chocolate, no biscuit.

‘Anyway, her family are so bloody rich they can probably blow the clouds away like the Chinese did at the Olympics …’ says Polly.

‘What do they do again? Finance?’

‘Property, they’re minted.’

‘So she’s moved back there and Daniel’s still out in Kent?’

‘It’s only fifteen minutes on the train from Waterloo, Suze. That’s less than an hour from here, door to door.’

‘Have they actually separated though?’ I say, trying not to sound a tiny bit hopeful.

I last saw Daniel five years ago, in the pub on Christmas Eve. Even then there’d been problems in his marriage. He’d flirted with me just enough to make me feel human, but not to the point where I felt like he’d meant anything by it. More just for old times’ sake. Still, I remember when the clock had struck midnight, and we were all drunkenly hugging and kissing and singing carols, he’d given me a look filled with so much sadness and affection, I’d had to look away. Because I’d felt something.

‘They’re not separated yet,’ she says. ‘But it can’t be long now. They’re basically living separate lives. Apparently even before she moved back to the States she’d had him sleeping in the spare room for over a year.’

‘A year?’

‘That’s what my brother said.’

‘Hang on,’ I say. ‘They’ve got a little boy, haven’t they?’

‘He’s nearly ten now. He’s in New York with Brooke, the two of them rattling around in some Upper East Side penthouse …’ she says, looking slightly less triumphant.

‘But how does that work?’ I say.

‘How indeed,’ she says, with raised eyebrows. ‘Daniel’s been flying over there every other weekend, but that can’t make sense longer term.’

‘He must be knackered. Why doesn’t he just move to New York? I’d love to live in New York,’ I say. ‘Isn’t that pretty selfish of him?’

‘No! It’s selfish of her! He’s trying to get his business off the ground, he’s been plugging away at it for years and he’s finally doing OK. And you know his dad’s not well, he’s been in a home since last summer. Plus his brother’s struggling through a hideous divorce. Daniel’s got all that on his plate and then Brooke drags their son out of school a year before he’s due to finish primary, so that she can swan around Barneys and get her nails done every day.’

‘Bad timing. That must be hard for him,’ I say, filing him back in the folder labelled ‘unavailable’.

‘Yeah, it’s shit, by the sounds of it,’ she says, shaking out the last of the chocolate. ‘I think he’s pretty messed up about the whole thing but you know what men are like, he says everything’s fine. Maybe you can offer him a shoulder to cry on at the wedding. I’m putting you next to him at dinner.’

‘Don’t do that, Poll,’ I say. ‘He’s married. And I mean, what’s the point?’

‘The point is, that marriage is as good as over. And it would be helpful for him to have an old friend talk some sense into him,’ she says.

‘I’m supposed to give him marriage guidance? I’m hardly a role model for successful living. No, stick me next to someone single.’

‘I’ll check with Dave to see if any of his mates are, but I don’t think there are any single men coming,’ she says. ‘Apart from my brother, and he only seems to date women in their twenties nowadays. He’s such a City Boy.’

‘I remember he always used to steal the five-hundred-pound notes in Monopoly,’ I say, laughing. ‘Don’t you have any single men on the list at all? Anyone – waiters, ushers, someone in the band?’

She shakes her head. ‘Not that I can think of. Right, I’ve definitely had too much to drink, best call me a cab.’

I haven’t thought about Daniel McKendall for years. Well, a few years at least. We’re friends on Facebook, but the fact that I haven’t even casually stalked him shows how low on my radar he is.

I remember Daniel’s parents back in the day, must be over twenty years ago now … They were so much more exotic than mine. Daniel’s mum, Krista, was a crazy Danish hippy; his dad, Robert, was a Scottish guitar teacher. When we first met, his parents were still listening to Joan Baez and smoking a lot of weed. (My parents listened to Vivaldi and to this day have never smoked a joint. When my mum found out I’d been smoking Consulate round at the McKendalls’ house, she went ballistic. ‘It starts with cigarettes, then you get hooked on the harder stuff. You’ll be round the back of King’s Cross, turning tricks for heroin if you don’t cut that out right now!’ If there’d been a ‘rat on a rat’ anti-nicotine hotline in the eighties, my mum would have shopped Daniel and me, taken her ten-pound reward, and still had a smile on her face when she put dinner on the table.)

Going round to Daniel’s big, ramshackle house and twos-ing menthol cigarettes that we’d stolen from Krista McKendall’s crochet handbag was the most exciting, bohemian thing I had ever experienced. Daniel and I used to take a picnic blanket, sneak up onto the roof and spend hours lying on our backs, blowing smoke rings and staring up at the clouds. All that time, imagining what we would do with our lives.

Up on the roof we’d pretend things could stay the way they were forever. In our future it would still always be five in the afternoon on a perfect summer’s day, with the sky so blue it felt like a child’s drawing. Our parents would always stay young and strong and good looking and healthy and we would never have to think of them as actually being human. There would always be cold lingonberry lemonade so sharp it made your tongue curl waiting for us in Krista McKendall’s fridge, if only we could be bothered to go down to the kitchen. Homework could wait. Tidying our rooms could wait. For now and always we would stay lying, side by side on this green and blue tartan blanket, looking up to the sky. Best friends who just happened to also like kissing each other.

Daniel and I were always happiest when we were together, just the two of us. The best days of my teens were spent with him. We had so much in common, and because we were born on the same day he used to joke that we were twins, separated at birth. ‘The exact same day, that can’t be coincidence! Look at the facts: your grandfather was Scottish and so was mine. It is technically possible.’

‘He wasn’t my actual grandfather,’ I pointed out.

‘Yeah, but he was the only one you ever knew,’ he said. ‘And look at the other things that are identical: both crap at art. You eat Breakaways the exact same way that I do, that must be genetic!’

‘Clearly we’re not twins. Your mum’s Dutch. I wish I had her bone structure, she looks like Julie Christie.’

‘For ten points, what’s the capital of Denmark …?’

‘Oh. Copenhagen. Sorry, your mum’s Danish. I do know the difference, but you’ve got to admit they’re confusing, they are quite close to each other. Anyway, why would you even want me to be your sister? That’s messed up.’ If we were siblings that would mean that all the medium petting we were doing up on that roof was technically incest. I’d read Flowers in the Attic though – maybe it wasn’t so bad.

‘What?’ he said, looking confused.

‘Think about what you’re actually saying! Brothers and sisters don’t do this. Oh God, just think about my brother … Gross! What’s wrong with you? You’re a pervert!’ I said, pushing him away from me.

‘Jeez, you’re the one who’s sick! I wasn’t thinking about it like that! I just meant … If you were my twin you wouldn’t have to go home at night. You could stay here with us. You could live in our house! We’d go on holiday together. We’d have fun all the time. That’s what I meant.’

‘Ah, so you’re a romantic pervert at least. Well that’s OK then,’ I said, moving back towards him and kissing him on his beautiful mouth.

That’s the thing about Daniel – he had an innocence about him. He always seemed a little bit lost but underneath that he also had a quiet confidence. Daniel was the first boy I fell in love with. Not just because he was good looking and tall and could blow double smoke rings. But because of that combination of sweetness and strength. And because, from the very first moment I met him on a hot July day in Polly’s garden, I felt like I had always known him. He was the first boy I could truly be myself with, the first boy who made me laugh.

And then life got in the way, good and proper. Krista McKendall, that wild, crazy bohemian, ran off to Surrey with a balding accountant named Albert. And Daniel’s heartbroken, cuckolded father took his boys back up to Edinburgh to be near their grandparents. And that was the end of that.