Page 9 of Enemies to Lovers

Me

What do you do when you start thinking about the future? Not spinning out, but like … musing?

Hope

Tell myself nobody cares

Me

Oh, cheery!

Hope

Lol, not in a bad way. Just that like, when all is said and done, I’m not going to be remembered in the history books. Nobody cares what I do! People are not going to sit around me on my deathbed and issue their final score for how well I did life

Or wait, if they do, I want the criteria to be like, how much I followed my heart. Not like, other people’s criteria – being sensible and jobs and family and all that

Me

That’s where I get stuck. I’m terrified of the end-of-life scorecard that says I failed!

Hope

I know, babe. All I can say is … I’m here, and I see you, and you’ll get there. You’re doing so much better even in the time I’ve known you!

‘Penny for your thoughts?’

I’m so in my head trying to unpick all this that I didn’t even realise Kate and Laurie have come down to the beach, too, and are casting shadows over the pale sand with their forms.

‘Just thinking about the future,’ I say, clicking my phone locked and slipping it back into my bag. I try to sound breezier than I feel, as they roll out their towels and fuss about getting sorted. They’ve brought food down – bread and dips and crisps and some water – so I can’t be too mad at their arrival.

Kate laughs. ‘Might I advise you not to?’ She throws a bottle of water at me and then spreads out the picnic.

I chortle. ‘Says the woman who still looks eighteen, is a trainee lawyer, marriedandstill has a sense of humour.’

She steps back from the food and holds out an arm to spray on her sun lotion. ‘It’s true,’ she sing-songs, rubbing the oil up and down. ‘I am quite the catch, aren’t I, Laurie?’

‘Indeed you are,’ he agrees, scooping up some creamy hummus with his pitta. Through a full mouth he adds, ‘That’s what makes us such a match.’

I snort teasingly. ‘I think you got my share of self-esteem, too, you know. Surely it’s not healthy to regard yourself as highly as you do.’

Laurie gets up with a wink and takes the sun lotion from Kate, spraying her back without her asking. His easy gesture of love isn’t lost on me. Kate’s the best thing ever to have happened to him. When they fell in love five years ago, we all saw this whole other side to him: considerate and complimentary and thoughtful. He was no longer my jackass of an older brother, the one who used to burp into my water bottle for school and close the lid, so that it tasted like sick at breaktime. He has … grown up. At least for Kate. Obviously he’s still a jackass to the rest of us.

Jamie appears at the bottom of the steps from the house then, too, with Laurie waving him over to what was my sacrosanct and peaceful spot and is now the official meeting point – like a family holiday is supposed to be about us all spending time together. His thighs move like honey-glazed hams stuffed into Ralph Lauren shorts, a backward baseball cap making him look like a high-school jock. He doesn’t walk, butstruts.

‘Hey, man!’ Laurie greets him, holding a fist so that Jamie knocks into it with his own. Jamie looks over at us and barely nods, but I have to admit it is a greeting of sorts. Duly noted that he doesn’t ignore me when my brother is around, then – probably doesn’t want to get into Laurie’s bad books. I think that might be worse. ‘You feeling the holiday vibe?’

‘Yeah, I am,’ Jamie replies. ‘I’ve just been annihilated at cards by your mum, though. She’s a shark!’

‘Oh yeah, Veronica Greenberg is a smiling assassin. Did you have money on it?’

‘A fiver,’ Jamie hoots. ‘She saw me coming!’

‘Mug,’ Laurie laughs. ‘Absolute mug.’

Jamie and Laurie kick a football about, calling each other names and getting increasingly close to what even I can tell is red-card kind of behaviour. Eventually Kate tells them they’re getting sand in the food. They come over to the shade of the tree and sit down to nibble at the snacks, too, before Kate suddenly decides to pick up on our conversation from before.

‘You know what I’dlovefor you?’ she asks, licking errant olive oil from where it is running down her hand to her forearm.

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