Page 7 of Enemies to Lovers

Hope

No you won’t

Me

You’re right. I won’t

I automatically pull on my running gear from the suitcase, sprawled out on the spare single bed opposite mine, because that’s how I start every morning, come rain or shine. I’ve always loved running, but now my mental health depends on it. It was a saviour after my breakdown. I don’t realise that it’s almost 11 a.m. until I get downstairs, though, and the heat is already fierce. If I run now, even in just shorts and a sports bra, I’ll melt … and probably miss the start of lunch, which as we’ve established is a no-go. This is a family of hungry gannets and they leave no crumb behind – as will be evidenced by breakfast, where there’s no doubt barely aslice of bread left. Huh. I feel oddly cross at myself. Perhaps it will be cool enough later this evening for a run. I’d hate to miss one, especially on holiday. I need to stay mentally sharp, keep my demons at bay.

I loiter at the kitchen door that leads to the veranda, deciding what to do. The villa is beautiful. This is by far the nicest family holiday we’ve ever been on. For as much as they annoy me, we’ve never been a family that grew out of all taking a trip together once a year. It wasn’t really a hard choice to turn down Hope’s Europe adventure and come to Greece with everyone instead. Even when we were teenagers, my brothers and I never rebelled like some of my friends did. Mum and Dad are largely good company, luckily, so we always get at least a weekend in somewhere.

Normally we all have to pay our own way, but this year Mum pulled down a tax-free lump sum of her pension to really show us a good time – her treat (!) – and also to build a ‘she-shed’ at the bottom of the garden, so she’s got somewhere special to do her pottery. It’s funny, being in the terrifying stage of my life where I don’t know what to do for the next thirty or forty years, but Mum has essentially lived most of her life, and gets to enjoy a retirement where her biggest decision is going to be what to have for lunch. Is there a way I can just fast-forward to retirement, too? It seems nice. Cosy. I like cosy. I’ve fallen into academia because it means I don’t have to take a chance. I can stay where I am and keep doing what I’ve been doing, and that suits me fine.I worry that anything else could make me end up back how I was. The uncertain has a tendency to do that. I like to keep things as I know them to be.

The windows here have pale-blue shutters to keep the sun out in the day, and the small-but-perfectly-formed kitchen has a two-hob stove. The entire place is a maze, with shelves filled with books other guests have left behind, and the odd board game that we’ll no doubt argue over. It’s all built over a million different levels, culminating in our very own private pool … which, of course, now that I step outside, Jamie is already in, goggles on and obnoxiously massive arms propelling him through the water at speed. Classic Jamie, showing off his physical prowess at every opportunity. Mum’s there, in the shade of the vine-covered pergola, flicking through a paperback thriller she bought at the airport. I planned all my reading before we came, devouring the ‘hot reads for summer’ lists in all the Sunday supplements and assessing the chart positions of the latest hardback releases. As in reading, so in life: I can’t risk surprises. So I’ve got three literary masterpieces that are ‘good’ for me, but actually quite boring. I’ll probably end up stealing Mum’s thriller when she’s done.

‘Morning,’ I say as I pad over, and she looks up at me with a lazy smile, a tiny espresso cup beside her.

‘Morning, darling,’ she tells me, taking in the sight of me. ‘I’m glad you slept. I think you needed it.’

I try not to bristle at the uninvited suggestion that, by needing sleep, I must somehow have been in sleepdeficit, which I hear as: ‘You must do a better job of looking after yourself, darling.’ I can’t help it – I’m forever searching for the real meaning behind Mum’s words. She’s incredible; I am not. That does not escape my attention. I pour myself the last of the orange juice and sit down to join her, changing tack to ask where everybody is.

‘Oh, here, there and everywhere,’ Mum says with a wave of her hand. ‘Kate and Laurie have gone for an explore, down past where we ate supper on the beach last night, the little lovebirds. Alex and your dad have gone into town to scope out somewhere to eat tonight and to pick up a few bits.’

I chuckle. ‘Presumably “a few bits” means an inflatable doughnut for the pool and, most likely, water pistols?’

Mum chuckles, too.

‘They have previous,’ she notes. ‘So I’d imagine it does, yes. Although I hope they remember actual sustenance, too. Nibbles for the fridge and whatnot.’

I give a non-committalhmmm, because I don’t have that much faith in my brother staying on-track, and he and Dad are a bad influence on each other. I slice open the last chocolate croissant (there’s one left – a bona-fide miracle) and chop up a banana, making a sort of banana-choco sandwich. Mum’s focus shifts away from her book and over towards me, which I can tell means she’s about to say Something Meaningful.

‘Whilst we’ve got a moment alone, darling,’ she starts, turning the corner of a page and closing it.

I chomp away, the only sound between us the noises of my food and Jamie’sslap-slap-slapthrough the water. I look into her blue eyes. She’s very Helen Mirren: soft features that add up to be more than the sum of their parts. Her nose isn’t remarkable, or her eyes or her smile, but somehow all together she’s beautiful. And urgh, dare I even say it, but Mum is also kind of sexy, too? She doesn’t flaunt it, doesn’t try to dress like a twenty-year-old to be relevant, or whatever. But she embraces her femininity and loves a cinched-in waist or a just low-enough top. Like now, in her swimsuit and sarong: it’s a one-piece, but low in the back to show off her curvy bits, and scooped to give her enough cleavage without being tacky. Her sarong is tied to one side, so it reveals a sliver of her runner’s legs, and she’s always got pedicured feet in a brilliant red. Oh my god. Do I mean that she’s a MILF? I think I do. I mean, you’ve gotta hand it to her, she’s definitely not become invisible in her retirement. Mum is more naturally put together in her sixties than I am in my alleged prime, that’s for sure.

When I swallow, Mum adds, ‘I’ve been wanting to check in.’

I know she means well. I do. But it makes shivers run down my spine, because this is the role I play now, since everything happened. I’m the delicate little dolleveryone needs to look out for, which I understand, because when my breakdown was at its absolute worst I had mentally checked out. By that point what was happening was probably worse for the people who love me than it was for me. But with Mum, I feel … I don’t know. Weak. Veronica Greenberg is Superwoman: she does it all. She headed up an IT firm for thirty years, raised three kids and absorbed Jamie as her own when he needed her two years ago, too – no questions asked, even though she must have had her hands full with me and my problems. She runs every day, cooks meals from scratch and always has a spare gift bag for presents, and extra lip balm in her handbag that she lets you keep.

And I did anamazingjob of being like that, too, even as a little girl, even as a teenager. I wasn’t surly or rebellious – I wasresponsible. I was exactly like Mum until I hit my mid-twenties and then I wasn’t like her at all; and now it’s all anyone wants to talk about with me, despite the fact I’ve been doing all right for a while now. I’m better. Mostly. I was really bad for about year, and it’s been a year of recovery. Recovery might never end; just like an alcoholic will always be an alcoholic, I might always be anxious. But I’m committed to looking after myself. I’m doing okay.

‘I’m fine, Mum,’ I say, smiling to prove my point.

‘I wasn’t implying that you weren’t,’ she protests, reaching out a hand for mine. She gives me a squeeze. ‘But I’ve been meaning to say: I don’t want you to make a misstep, taking this job full-time. You could take apause, you know. There’s no rush for teaching. You’ve been at university for so long, I worry you’ll be there for ever simply because it’s comfortable. First Newcastle and then Edinburgh … If you wanted to take a year off – six months even – and come home, think about your options, you could do—’

‘Okay,’ I tell her, nodding. I squeeze her hand back. Obviously I will never do that, nevermove back home at twenty-bloody-six.I’ll betshenever took a career pause and never made a misstep, either. God, I’d be mortified to go back home. I wish we could talk about something other than my mental bloody health.

I finish off my banana-chocolate croissant and gulp down the rest of my juice. I look in the coffee pot, but there’s none left. I’ll make some more in a minute. If I walk away now, Mum will think I’m cross, and I don’t want her to think that. I want us to be how we used to be, when we’d talk about TV and art, and running technique, and not my bloodyfeelings.

Jamie pulls himself out of the water in one easy swoop, grabbing the towel he left on one of the sun-loungers. Now I really can’t get up to make coffee: I refuse to let him chase me away. It’s like I forget he’s here until I don’t, and that winds me all over again.Urgh.

‘Am I interrupting?’ he asks, droplets of water dripping from his sandy-blond hair onto his shoulders, rolling over the mounds of his upper arms in a way that many cultures could label seductive, but I happen to think is messy, because he’s dripping perilously close tothe crockery. The sun reflects in fragments off the blue of the pool, and either the birds have just started chirruping in the trees because of Jamie, or else they were chirruping all along and I wasn’t paying attention. The terracotta-coloured tiled floor is warm underneath us, the leaves of the tall olive trees as still as soldiers on guard. The light makes him glow, like one of those salt lamps, all glimmering and hazy and … disgusting.

‘Of course not,’ Mum says, and Jamie’s eyes flicker towards me withthat look: the blank, almost aggressive one. I instantly look down into my empty coffee mug. ‘Sit, sit, sit,’ Mum tells him. ‘You’re very good to do all those lengths. Keeping fit, it really is the cornerstone for a happy life, don’t you think?’

‘Absolutely,’ Jamie replies, picking up the coffee pot like I did and finding – exactly as I did – that it’s empty.

‘Oh, let me,’ insists Mum. ‘I finished it, so I should brew another. Be right back.’

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