“I know what you think,” he cuts me off dismissively. “But I’m the one trying to be strategic about the future of the shop here. Bigger. Better. High-end. Profitable.”
“Yes, but ninety-five quid for one bottle of olive oil, Jake,” I appeal to him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Why not?” he snaps. “Harrods stock it.”
I don’t even know what to say to this. Harrods?
I’m aware of Greg glancing our way, and I hastily paste on a smile. Dad would kill us for airing family disputes on the shop floor.
“Jakey?” I turn to see Leila, Jake’s girlfriend, coming into the store, wearing an adorable yellow full-skirted dress and sunglasses on her head. Leila always reminds me of Bambi. She has long spindly legs and she wears high wedged sandals that clip-clop like hooves and she peers at the world through her long eyelashes as though she’s not sure if it’s about to shoot her. She’s very sweet and I can’t possibly argue with Jake in front of her.
Not just because she’s sweet, but because family first. Leila isn’t family. Not actual family. Not yet. She’s been going out with Jake for three years—they met in a club—and I’ve never seen them argue. Leila doesn’t seem the arguing type, although she must get angry with Jake sometimes? She’s never mentioned it, though. In fact, she once said to me, “Jake’s a real softie, isn’t he?” and I nearly fell over backward. Jake? A softie?
“Hi, Leila,” I say, kissing her. She’s as thin and tiny as a child; in fact, I’m amazed she can hold all those glossy carrier bags. “Been shopping?”
“I’ve been treating the missus,” says Jake loftily. “We got Mum’s present too.”
Jake always calls Leila “the missus,” although they’re not even engaged. I sometimes wonder if she minds, but then, I’ve never known Leila to mind about anything. Once, Jake arrived at the shop for a family meeting and it was only after an hour that we realized he’d left Leila in the car to watch out for traffic wardens. She wasn’t annoyed at all; she’d just been sitting scrolling through her phone, humming to herself. When Mum exclaimed, “Jake! How could you leave Leila like that?” he shrugged and said, “She offered.”
Now Leila dangles a shiny Christian Dior shopping bag at me and I inspect it with a small pang. I can’t afford to buy Mum Christian Dior perfume. Still. She likes Sanctuary stuff too, which is what I bought her. And now just the thought of Mum is calming me down. I don’t need to worry about any of this, of course—Mum will sort it out. She’ll talk to Jake in that firm, calm way she has. She won’t let him order silly-money olive oil.
Mum runs the family, the home, the business … basically everything. She’s our CEO. Our anchor. When Dad suddenly died of a heart attack, it was like something exploded in her. It was as if all the negative energy of her grief circled round into a determination that this wouldn’t destroy the business, or the family, or anything. She’s powered us all through the last nine years, and she’s learned Zumba and no one makes flaky pastry like she does. She’s amazing. She says she channels Dad in everything she does and that he talks to her every night. Which sounds weird—but I believe her.
She’s normally in this shop from dawn to dusk. The only reason she’s not here now is it’s her birthday party this evening and she wanted the day off to cook. And, yes, some women of her age—or any age—would let other people cook for them on their birthday. Not Mum. She’s made sausage rolls, Waldorf salad, and apple pie every August 2 since I can remember. It’s tradition. We’re big on tradition, we Farrs.
“By the way, I sorted out your car-repair bill for you,” Jake says to Leila. “I rang the guy. I said, ‘You’ve been messing my girlfriend around. Try again.’ He backed down on everything.”
“Jake!” gasps Leila. “You’re my hero!”
“And then I think you should upgrade,” Jake adds carelessly. “Let’s get you a newer model. We’ll look at the weekend.”
“Oh, Jakey.” Leila’s eyes glow, and she turns to me. “Isn’t he the sweetest?”
“Er … yes.” I smile feebly at her. “Totally.”
At this moment, Morag and her customer—a middle-aged woman—come up to the till. Immediately Jake switches into top customer-service mode, beaming at her and asking, “Did you find everything you need? Ah, a paring knife. Now, I’m afraid I will have to ask a delicate question: Are you over eighteen?”
The woman giggles and blushes, and even I crack a smile. Jake’s pretty charming when he wants to be. As she leaves we all say, “Goodbye,” several times, and smile until the door closes. Then Jake gets his car keys out of his pocket and starts swinging them round his finger, the way he’s done ever since he first got a car.
I know what I want to say to him. It’s almost as if I can see the words forming in front of me in a thought bubble. Articulate, passionate words about the business. About what we do. About Dad. But somehow I can’t seem to get the words out of the thought bubble and into the air.
Jake’s face is distant and I know better than to interrupt him. Leila is poised like me, waiting, her eyebrows anxiously winged together.
She’s so pretty, Leila. Pretty and gentle and never judges anyone. The thing she takes most seriously in life is manicures, because that’s her business and her passion. But she doesn’t even blink at my tatty nails, let alone sneer at them. She just accepts everyone for who they are, Jake included.
Finally, Jake stops swinging the keys and comes to. I have no idea what kinds of thoughts have been transfixing him. Even though I grew up with him, I really don’t understand Jake very well.
“We’ll head over to the house, then,” he says. “Help Mum out.”
By “Help Mum out” I know he means, “Get myself a beer and turn on Sky Sports,” but I don’t challenge him.
“OK,” I say. “See you there.”
Our house is only ten minutes’ walk from the shop; sometimes it feels like one is an extension of the other. And I’m turning back to sort out a display of table mats which has gone wonky when Leila says, “What are you going to wear, Fixie?” in excited tones, as if we’re going to the school prom.
“Dunno,” I say, puzzled. “A dress, I suppose. Nothing special.”
It’s Mum’s birthday party. It’ll be friends and neighbors and Uncle Ned. I mean, I want to look nice, but it’s not exactly the Grand Embassy Ball.
“Oh, right.” Leila seems perplexed. “So you’re not going to …”
“Not what …”
“I just thought, because …”
She trails off meaningfully, as though I’ll know exactly what she’s talking about.
“Because what?” I peer at her, and Leila suddenly swivels on her clippy-cloppy heel to Jake.
“Jakey!” she says, in her version of a reproving tone. (Basically still an adoring simper.) “Haven’t you told her?”
“Oh, that. Right.” Jake rolls his eyes and glances at me. “Ryan’s back.”
What?
I stare at him, frozen. I can’t speak, because my lungs have seized up, but my brain has already started analyzing the word back like a relentless computer program. Back. What does back mean? Back to the UK? Back home? Back to me?
No, not back to me, obviously not back to me—
“He’s back in the country,” elaborates Leila, her eyes soft with empathy. “It never worked out with that American girl. He’s coming to the party. And he was asking after you.”
Three
I don’t know how many times a heart can be broken, but mine’s been shattered again and again, and every single time by Ryan Chalker.
Not that he’d know it. I’ve been pretty good at concealing my feelings (I think). But the truth is, I’ve been in love with Ryan pretty much solidly since I was ten years old and he was fifteen and I came across him and Jake with a group of boys in Burger King. I was instantly fixated on him. How could you not be fixated on him, with that blond hair, that profile, that glow?
By the time I joined secondary school, Ryan and Jake were best friends and Ryan used to hang around our house every weekend, cracking jokes and flirting with Mum. Unlike every other boy in that year, he had flawless skin. He knew how to style his hair. He could make our school uniform look sexy—that’s how hot he was.
He had money too. Everyone whispered about it. Some relative had left him a small fortune. He always hosted parties and he got a car for his seventeenth. A convertible. I’m twenty-seven years old and I’m sure I’ll never own a convertible. Ryan and Jake used to drive around London in it, roof down, music blaring, like a couple of rock stars. In fact, it was Ryan who introduced Jake to that posh, flash, hard-partying set. The pair of them used to get into the kind of clubs that you read about in tabloids, and they’d boast about it at our house the next day. When I was old enough, Mum let me go out with Jake and Ryan sometimes, and I felt like I’d won the lottery. There was such a buzz around them, and suddenly I was part of it too.
Ryan could be genuinely kind too. I’ll always remember one evening when we went to the cinema. I’d just broken up with a boy called Jason, and a bunch of his friends were behind us. They started to laugh at me and jeer, and Ryan whipped round before anyone else could and lashed into them. People heard about it at school the next day, and everyone was saying, “Ryan loves Fixie!”
Of course I laughed along. I treated it like a joke. But inside, I was smitten. I felt as if we were connected now. I kept thinking, Surely we’ll end up together? Surely it’s meant to be?
There were so many moments over the years when I thought I had a chance. The time in Pizza Express when he kissed me lingeringly on greeting me. The time he squeezed my thigh. The time he asked if I was single at the moment. Dad’s funeral, when he sat with me for a while at the reception and let me talk on endlessly about Dad. At my twenty-first birthday party he sang a karaoke version of “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing,” straight to me, while my heart fluttered like a manic butterfly and I thought, Yes, yes, this is it … But that night he went off with a girl called Tamara. Over the years I watched and secretly wept as he dated what seemed like every girl in West London and never looked my way.