Almost Forever: An emotional debut perfect for fans of Jojo Moyes

‘Because!’ Harry snorted at my question as if his annoyance was completely justified and needed no explanation. ‘He just spent all day with those losers,’ he replied with resentment in his voice.

I raised an eyebrow then replied sarcastically, ‘Bunch of losers, eh?’

‘Right,’ he agreed even though we both knew that Paul’s friends were anything but – some of them even had royal titles – ‘losers’ wasn’t quite the term I would have used to describe them.

I looked at Harry wondering why he was suddenly acting so weird.

‘They were drinking champagne in the pool last night, after the party,’ he said, turning his head to me as we walked on the narrow path.

‘We were doing the exact same thing the night before,’ I reminded him. ‘Right up until your father came to take the bottle away from us and forbid us to drink alcohol away from the dinner table,’ I said in a mock Albert voice, but Harry didn’t laugh as I expected he would.

He shrugged at my comment, and jumped off from one of the rocks straight into the sand.

‘Why didn’t we use the normal access, again?’ I asked him, carefully stepping over some driftwood and a pile of dry smelly seaweed.

‘Because that’s the way “they” go, and that’s where “they” spend the day, so we can’t!’ he said looking at me sideways as if questioning my loyalty to him.

‘Harry, please,’ I said trying to be patient – while actually all this ‘us’ and ‘them’ nonsense was starting to get on my nerves. ‘What’s really going on?’ I asked him, trying to keep my cool about his absurd behaviour towards Paul and his entourage.

‘Nothing,’ he answered sharply and kept walking ahead of me.

I treaded faster through the sand. ‘Harry, wait!’ I huffed in the heat until I was near enough to grab his hand. ‘I said wait!’ The sun was ferocious; the sand was boiling under my feet. I wished we were under one of the lovely canopies in our private part of the beach, only a few feet away. ‘Harry, please,’ I said again, pulling at his hand.

‘What?’ he growled, turning to me with a face like thunder, all glaring eyes and furrowed brow.

‘You! What?!’ I asked pointing my finger to his chest, incensed by his annoying mood. ‘You’ve been acting weird and I want to know what’s going on …’

He looked away, then sighed. He swallowed whatever he was about to say, and then looked back at me, his rage somehow under control. He seemed vulnerable and hurt now, and I realised that I’d never seen that expression on his face before.

‘It’s because of Lizzie,’ he said eventually, blushing.

Lizzie was one of Paul’s classmates. She lived in Cambridge too. She’d hung out with Paul ever since I could remember.

‘I like her, okay?’ he said and, freeing his hand from mine, he dropped his towel and the snorkel on the hot sand with unjustified force. That explained the angst in his eyes. I was right about his jealousy, but I was wrong about the reason. Harry was jealous of Paul because of Lizzie. Something sharp and painful stung my heart, and I decided that it was better not to find out what caused it. I stood a step away, watching as he muttered to himself. When he took his T-shirt off, I couldn’t look away. He was growing into a sculptured, handsome young man, and his lean face only slightly resembled the nine-year-old boy I’d first met half a dozen years earlier.

Gee! That’s Harry you’re ogling, I scolded myself, knowing that my hormones were to blame for setting my belly on fire.

I fumbled with my beach bag, trying not to look at him as he lifted his sunglasses over his head and sat down in a pensive pose that made him look like a bohemian hero.

‘I really like her,’ he said, confiding in me and unwittingly putting me in a difficult situation. We’d never really discussed topics of this nature before, so I guessed that was why I felt so uncomfortable. I didn’t like to consider any other reason for the ache inside my chest. It felt strange to suddenly pine for him when I knew I was head over heels in love with Paul. Maybe this was a way for my heart to protect itself, because since Paul had started keeping me at arm’s length, I’d lost hope of ever having a chance with him.

Harry interrupted my tormented musings, adding more details about his non-existent relationship with Lizzie.

‘She is all flirty, you know?’ he sighed. ‘And cute, really cute, when no one is around to see, but then, if I try to approach her when Paul’s there, she just brushes me off.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know!’ he answered testily. ‘She’s been blowing hot and cold the whole summer. Didn’t you notice?’

I shook my head, resigned to having to listen to Harry’s complaints about Lizzie’s inconsistent behaviour. To give myself something to do, I spread my towel on the scorching sand, and focused on the crashing waves.

‘So? What do you think of my plan?’ he asked, claiming my attention again.

‘What plan?’ I asked, realising that I’d completely missed what he’d just told me.

‘About pretending that you’re my girlfriend?’

‘Who?’

‘You, Fran, you! Please keep up,’ he answered.

‘Why do you want to do that?’ I exclaimed.

‘Did your brain get fried by sunstroke?’ he grumbled, rolling his eyes at me.

‘Keep talking like that and you’ll never get a girlfriend, not even a pretend one,’ I said, taking my T-shirt off, too hot to wear anything but a swimming costume. Worried about the sun, I rummaged in my bag to find the factor 50 lotion, and started to spread it on my shoulders.

‘Please, please, please,’ Harry begged with a hint of desperation in his words that made me empathise with him.

‘All right, tell me again what you have in mind,’ I asked, looking up at him, and immediately regretting it because of the grin on his face.

No good would ever come from a sham relationship, and considering who was involved I could already feel disaster approaching, but Harry was off on a tangent and I knew it was too late to rein it in. He told me the plan was simple: he wanted to make Lizzie jealous, using me.

‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked tentatively but he was already grinning.

‘Just act like you are desperately in love with me.’ I raised an eyebrow at his words, so he added, ‘Laugh at my jokes, snuggle up to me, and if she is around, I might kiss you,’ he said seriously.

‘Ewww, no way, no kissing,’ I said, shaking my head. I squirted more cream onto my hands and then spread it evenly on my arms, hoping he wouldn’t notice the slight trembling of my hands. ‘That’s so gross!’ I added for effect.

‘What do you mean “gross”?’ he asked offended. ‘Don’t you think I’m handsome?’

My forced laugh came out slightly hysterical, but it did the job of deflecting the fact that I was attracted to Harry, even if it was just hormones.

‘Oh really! What do you think of me, then?’ he insisted, kneeling a few inches away and flirting with a confidence I had never seen from him before. Maybe it was only because he never used his charm on me. We were just friends.

Against my will, my body responded to him with a slight shiver.

I lowered my eyes pretending that my heart wasn’t beating faster than it should, and that his proximity didn’t make me feel self-conscious. ‘I don’t think of you at all, Harry,’ I answered with a sigh, continuing my cream-spreading exercise on my legs, purposely trying to ignore the fact that he was leaning uncomfortably closer.

I could feel his insistent gaze on me when he said, ‘So, you don’t think of me, uh?’ He was getting in the way so I had to look at him.

‘Nope.’ I swallowed my lie and shook my head.

He took a strand of my hair in between his fingers and started to play with it gently.

No boy had ever invaded my personal space like that before, and the novelty made his gesture even more unsettling. I felt my blood swimming inside my tense body, so when he whispered in my ear, ‘I don’t believe you,’ my breathing stopped altogether.

Because my cheeks were now burning, and my skin tingled, I swatted his hand away.