The Pieces of You and Me

…A few days after we turned seven, my grandmother died.

At her funeral I cried big fat tears. I hated that I couldn’t stop them from falling in front of everyone. I hated that I couldn’t be stronger for my mum. You stood beside me in your school uniform, your jaw set stoically – a baby version of the way you set your jaw later whenever anyone disagreed with you.

You refused to go to school that morning, insisting on being at the funeral, on being with me even though your parents didn’t want you to. They told you that you were too young to go but you said you were twelve hours older than me and you came anyway. Halfway through the service, when I thought my tears would never stop and Dad had run out of tissues, I felt your hand slip into mine, hot and sticky and reminding me that you were there. Everything would always be all right as long as you were there. You may only have been twelve hours older than me but you always understood the world better than I ever did.

We were born twelve hours apart – you at 6 p.m. and me the following morning – in the same hospital, our mothers recovering in beds next to each other, an odd but lifelong friendship developing from that initial bond. You were early and I was late, which was the pattern that continued for the rest of our lives. You were always waiting for me to catch up with you.

Our parents’ houses stood back to back and our mothers’ friendship transferred to us. We grew up together, in one another’s pockets. We made a hole in the back fence so we could cut through into each other’s gardens instead of walking around the block to the front door. We wandered in and out of each other’s houses as though we owned the whole street. We did everything together from the moment we were born.

Our first day of school seemed less daunting because we had each other. We were always in trouble for talking, or for reading some book or other that we weren’t meant to be reading, both of us so ahead of the rest of the class even then. Sometimes, when they made us work in pairs, the teachers would separate us, make us work with other people. But you were always looking over your shoulder, making sure I was OK.

When you were six you punched the boy who used to bully me. You got in a lot of trouble for that. Afterwards you told me you were going to marry me one day, and always look after me. You were the only six-year-old I’ve ever known who tried to stick to that promise.

The autumn after my grandmother died we were sent off to separate schools, hothousing us in single-sex environments, prepping us for the ‘great things’ our parents had planned for our futures. I missed you desperately. I was so used to you then that I missed the testosterone in my every day, even if I wasn’t really aware that’s what it was that I was missing. Every evening when we got home we ripped off our expensive school uniforms and pulled on the dirty, scruffy clothes we preferred wearing to sit in my mother’s apple orchard, catching up on our days, daydreaming.

And then, when we were eleven, the unthinkable happened.

They took you away from me …

5 (#ulink_2b9016cd-0afa-5f49-9102-981f1772d849)

JESS (#ulink_2b9016cd-0afa-5f49-9102-981f1772d849)

‘Don’t be mad at me,’ Gemma said in the voice of someone who had done something that would make me mad.

The two of us were lying on our backs listening to soothing music as two beauty therapists performed a procedure known as Billion Dollar Brows on us.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What have you done other than make me undergo this torture?’ I wasn’t sure I was a Billion Dollar Brow sort of person. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d set foot in a beauty salon. It must have been over six years ago and I was sure eyebrows had been much less complicated back then.

‘You’ll thank me for it,’ Gemma said.

‘For what? The eyebrows or whatever else it is you’ve done?’

‘You’ll thank me for both in the end,’ she said.

‘Gemma, what have you done?’

‘I invited Rupert to my wedding and he’s RSVP’d yes,’ she replied very quickly, the words tumbling out of her mouth.

‘You’ve what?’ I felt my stomach lurch at the thought of it. After spending the last few nights going through my old diaries, reading through my memories of Rupert as a child, a teenager, our first kiss and everything that happened afterwards, I had been trying not to think about him at all. I had been failing spectacularly but seeing him at Gemma’s wedding wasn’t going to help. I’d worked so hard at moving on that this felt like a setback.

Except the part that felt like a second chance.

‘He’s coming to the wedding,’ Gemma said. ‘And he’ll dance with you and realise what a terrible mistake he made and …’

‘Gemma, stop,’ I said. ‘Stop getting carried away. If you’ve invited him because he’s an old friend and you’d like him to be there then that’s fine.’ I was being much more reasonable than I felt, mostly due to the presence of the two eyebrow technicians. ‘But if you think there’s going to be some great reunion, you’re mistaken.’

‘I just want us all to be together again,’ she said. ‘Well, except Camilla of course.’

‘And Dan,’ I replied, wondering what he was doing these days. Gemma didn’t say anything.

‘When did you invite Rupert?’ I asked, changing the subject.

‘I sent an invitation to his department at the university. He replied with his address and telephone number, if you’d like them.’

I was tempted. More than tempted. I wanted her to put the number into my phone so I could call him the minute I got out of the beauty salon. But I ignored that feeling, took a deep breath and tried not to think about the fact that in just over a week I’d be seeing him again.

‘I’m sorry,’ Gemma said when I didn’t respond. ‘I wanted to do something nice for you. You were always meant to get married first – you know that.’

I didn’t know what to say to that because it was true. It should have been me first. It should have been me ten years ago. Rupert and I should be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary instead of being forced into some awkward situation at Gemma’s wedding. We could have had a house together; we could have had a family. I could have avoided Dan and never got ill. I could have been happy for the last decade instead of wasting my time thinking about what might have been.

‘It’s OK,’ I said.

‘So you don’t mind?’

I sighed. Gemma and Rupert had always got along well. They had the same sense of humour, even though Rupert’s was far more restrained. They spent years as teenagers ribbing each other and I knew that she had missed him when he left. He was one of the few people who stuck by her, who didn’t try and encourage her to go to university when she hadn’t wanted to.

‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘But don’t try and matchmake. Just leave it OK?’

‘I told you he was single, didn’t I?’ she carried on regardless. ‘And his first question was whether you were seeing anyone.’

‘Really?’ I asked, despite myself.

‘Yes, he seemed quite keen to know that.’

My heart skipped at the thought of that, although I tried to put it out of my mind.

‘Look, Gemma,’ I said. ‘It’ll be lovely to see Rupert again at the wedding, but it doesn’t mean we’re getting back together. It was a long time ago and we’re different people now.’

‘I’ll sit him next to your mum,’ Gemma said, ignoring me. ‘She can write a poem about it all.’

‘What do you think?’ the eyebrow technician asked suddenly, holding a mirror above my face. It took me a moment to recognise myself. I looked ghastly and had to bite my lip to stop myself saying so. I could hear Gemma gushing about her amazing new eyebrows in the background, so I forced a smile and told the therapist that they were perfect. I actually wanted to cry. I was still so pale and thin, and the sudden encroachment of dark oppressive brows just didn’t look right. Brows like this suited women like Gemma, with her tanned skin and good bone structure. On me it looked like a five-year-old had got into her mother’s make-up bag.

I managed to keep quiet as we paid and left the salon. I didn’t want Gemma to realise how upset I was but she knew me too well.

‘Shall we go for a coffee?’ she asked.

I made a non-committal noise. All I wanted to do was go home and scrub my forehead for the rest of the evening until I looked less ridiculous.

‘Jess, what’s the matter?’

‘Nothing,’ I replied in an attempt to sound breezy.

‘Don’t lie to me, Jess. What’s wrong?’

I sighed. ‘I look like Noel bloody Gallagher,’ I said. It was ridiculous to be this upset about eyebrows, but honestly, they looked dreadful.

Gemma started laughing to herself and headed off down the street. I followed her, brushing my fringe down in an attempt to hide my brows.