Page 80 of Enemies to Lovers

‘Is it time for that coffee break yet?’ I ask.

‘Of course it is,’ she replies, checking her own imaginary watch. ‘I couldn’t care less about the shopping. Tell meeverything, Flo. I’ve been desperate to find out the facts.’

‘Now why doesn’t that surprise me?’ I say, although I can already feel the relief coursing through me that I finally get to tell somebody the beginning, the middle and the end. I’d like to try to make sense of it all myself.

At a pretty place on the corner with a small courtyard and lots of shaded seating, we order drinks and water and pastries, and take turns to use the loo. By the time we’re settled, I’m breathing more deeply than I have all morning. I think one of my favourite things in the world is being somewhere new, at a café, people-watching. It feels like anything could happen, like everything is a possibility. How funny that I am happiest this way, but spend my time doing the same old thing, day in and day out, never going anywhere. Maybe my big lessonfrom this trip is that I need to get out more, take more chances. I don’t think there’s a single person in my life who would disagree.Take the plastic off.I heard that on the radio once. They were talking about their Italian grandparents, who always kept a plastic cover over their furniture so it didn’t get ruined. But that made the furniture uncomfortable. The radio guest said it’s a metaphor for life: take the plastic off – things are designed to get messy. I remember siding with the Italian grandparents in my head, when I heard it. I’m starting to get it now, though.

‘So,’ Kate begins, ripping a croissant apart. ‘Start at the beginning.’

I nod. ‘I think the beginning might be before this holiday started,’ I say, and Kate waves a hand and rolls her eyes.

‘You think?’ she teases. I take a breath. There’s no hiding from Kate.

‘You know most of it. It’s hard to say what had changed last December. My studying was going really well, and I’d turned a corner after the breakdown. I always think of it as having been ill for a year, and now I’ve been recovering for a year. Soon it will be a longer amount of time I’ve been well again than I was ever bad, you know? But I suppose it was only six months at that point. I knew I was different, stronger, more capable—’ I say, and Kate interjects.

‘But the rest of us were too scared to believe it?’ she supplies.

‘Exactly,’ I reply. ‘And last Christmas … I don’t know. I’ve had so much therapy, and done so much “inner work”.’ I put quotation marks around this with my fingers, embarrassed to be using such a phrase.

‘Don’t worry,’ says Kate, sensing my mortification. ‘This is a safe space.’

I shake my head, but it’s a shake of appreciation, not annoyance.

‘I came home and Jamie was there and it hit me, almost for the first time, that he’s handsome, and easy to talk to.’

Kate laughs. ‘If you go in for that muscly, thoughtful, chiselled-jaw and heart-of-gold thing,’ she says. ‘Sure. I guess he’sokay…’

‘Exactly,’ I giggle. ‘Like what was I ever doing, thinking I could deny that?’

‘No idea,’ Kate chuckles. ‘Youwerebusy struggling to get through the day. That probably helped.’

‘Well, yes,’ I say. ‘There is that. I know I was bad, because I don’t even remember his parents dying. Like, I was so in the throes of my own stuff that I have fuzzy recollections of just … now there’s more of us at home at Easter, or August bank holiday, or birthdays, or whatever.’

‘But Christmas was a turning point?’

‘I’d thought it was. We seemed to gravitate towards each other a lot, and I felt like Jamie saw me, in a way the rest of you didn’t. Well, maybe you did. But you and Laurie are a unit, if that makes sense.’

Kate nods. ‘It does,’ she says. ‘Getting married will do that to ya.’

‘But the thing is … Jamie and I almost kissed one night. And then the night after that he was supposed to come and meet me in my room, but as you know he bailed on me. Left a note that said he’d led me on, and then the next morning he told Laurie he’d got a month-long gig on a boat. He took the job and I didn’t see him again until now.’

‘He’s the reason you skipped your dad’s birthday, and Easter?’

‘And Mum’s birthday,’ I say. ‘I couldn’t take the fact that Jamie had rejected me, but my family still accepted him as if nothing had happened. I mean, not that they knew, because I couldn’t tell anybody …’

‘Oh, mate – I thought your excuses were a bit paper-thin.’

I shrug. ‘I didn’t even know Jamie was going to be here. I don’t think I would have come, you know. Is that why nobody told me? Did they all know more than I thought they did?’

‘Ah, the email,’ Kate says. ‘I checked the family email thread. You’re definitely on it. So I think you need to check your spam filters, darling. Alex has the wordassin his personal email address, so I think the filters try to block it.’

‘Oh,’ I reply. ‘Thanks. Still. I regret coming. I love my family, but being around Jamie is so … loaded. But thenhe doesn’t have anybody else. So maybe this ismyproblem?’

Kate sits back in her chair, chewing over what I’ve told her.

‘Why do you think, honestly and truly, Jamie did that? Left you a note saying he’d led you on?’

‘Just, like, cold feet or whatever. Couldn’t do it to His Lordship King Laurie.’

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