Prologue
Four years ago
Aurora
Today’s the day. It’s finally happening and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Nervous, excited, a little bit petrified. A party to celebrate moving into my own space seemed like such a good idea at the time; a way to bring us all back into each other’s orbits after so much time apart.
But we haven’t been together in the same room for so long that nerves have taken hold of me now, gripping me tightly as I think about the four of us reuniting again today. I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know how it will go, who will say what, who will keep quiet, who will forgive, who will forget. Will Liv even speak to Ben? Will she be able to be in the same room with him? How will I cope when we’re together again?
Will I be able to look any of them in the eye and truly say I don’t regretanythingthat happened between us all? I’m not sure. I’m not sure about any of this.
Perhaps this was a huge mistake.
I scroll through my phone camera, looking at photos of us that I’ve favourited over the years, reminding myself why I’m doing this, reminding myself what we lost and what we have to regain. Each other. We lost each other.
There was so much love, so much joy, and for a while we grew up together, became adults together. We watched each other fall in love, get our hearts broken, find ourselves; celebrated each other’s successes and mourned each other’s failures. And then we failed each other.
We were a team and it was perfect – beyond perfect – the way we’d made such an impact on each other’s lives, although we found each other by chance. Me and Liv, Ben and Ollie.
The four of us were family. The four of us were unbreakable. The four of us were everything.
And after all that we went through together – the heartaches and joys, the highs and the lows – I still can’t fathom how it ended the way it did. It was perfect. Almost too perfect. Until it wasn’t. Until the event that drove us apart, catapulted us in different directions. That day changed everything. And then we were broken.
But today I’m going to fix it. I’m going to bring us back to one another. This party is going to do that, come what may. This party is going to begin the healing process. Because it has to. After all this time, we need to do this. We need to reunite. We need to come together again. We need to analyse what happened between us back then.
Because if we’re going to move on with the future, the four of us are going to have to confront the past.
CHAPTER ONE
Ten years ago
Aurora
That very first moment you meet someone new is everything. That first impression cements them in your mind always. Or it can be what confines them to the past. It can go either way: you can forget someone instantly; or you can remember them for ever.
Meeting people on my first day of university is turning out a lot like that. Nothing else compares to it – that feeling of leaving your old life behind and starting again somewhere new, in close confines with people you don’t know. No longer a child, no longer living at home any more, but instead in your own space in halls of residence. It’s daunting, or at least it is for me, as I lift boxes from the boot of my mum’s old Volvo and brace myself to cross the threshold of the building for the first time. It’s frightening, heart-pounding. I want to grow up, move on from my old life. I’m ready for something new, only I don’t know what it is. But I’mdesperatelyexcited to find out while also being so nervous my stomach hurts,casting other students shy glances as I go, waiting to connect with someone – anyone.
There’s a certain frenzy about the first day of university that can’t be replicated in other locations. The excited buzz of people moving together with common goals – to experience new things, tolive.Reallylive.
My mum hangs behind in the busy car park full of expensive-looking Range Rovers and estate cars, manually locking her car doors. Ahead of her I lug two boxes, one positioned on top of the other, and make my way towards the front door of the old brick building with my newly collected keys. She’s a few moments behind me and we’ve done this trip up and down the stairs to my first-floor flat three or four times already. I’m the first flatmate to arrive. Mum and I got here really early and now we’ve almost finished unloading. Then comes the heady task of unpacking, saying goodbye to her. But before that joy, I have to squeeze round someone coming the other way on the stairs, carrying piles of empty packing boxes neatly folded down in that space-saving way I can never quite be bothered with. He’s coming towards me at quite a pace, his eyes only partly visible over the top of the huge pile of flattened boxes.
If I can barely see him over his many boxes, then he probably can’t see me and I realise this far too late as he careers towards me. ‘Hey, hey!’ I warn as he lurches in my direction, but it’s too late as he crashes into me on the narrow staircase, my boxes – heavy and cumbersome – falling from my grip and into him, and he stumbles back up a stair, showered in a mist of packing materials and used, scrunched-up brownpacking tape. It rains around us stickily and I’m thrown back by his force, down one stair, two stairs, three.God, is this how I die? Not like this, surely.
His hand grabs me quickly, righting me as everything falls to the floor, and it’s all over before it even started, but the air is knocked from me. I can’t even say thank you.
Another new male student appears behind me on the stairs, oblivious to the commotion, to my near-death experience. He appears oblivious even to this other guy’s flattened boxes strewn everywhere, and to my sturdily packed ones on the stairs, which thankfully haven’t sprung open because my mum packed them so well, binding them in tape so thick I don’t think I’ll be able to get into them without a saw.
‘Hi,’ this newcomer says to both of us, brandishing a set of keys. He’s tanned, tall, wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket and ripped jeans. If my mum was here she’d be flirting wildly. Not in a creepy way. Maybe in a creepy way. I’m too stunned to acknowledge him, still wondering why, when my life just flashed before my eyes, there was barely any video reel – nothing of consequence to show for my eighteen years.
‘I’m Ben,’ he says to me, and to the guy who knocked me down the stairs.
‘I’m Ollie,’ packing-box guy replies.
‘Aurora,’ I say, trying to recover after my near-death experience.
Ollie looks as if he didn’t hear, as he squints at me, waiting for me to clarify the word I just used. It’s notthatweird a name. I look away, back at Ben.
‘I’m in flat ten,’ Ben says merrily, and his wide smile and white teeth are mesmerising against his tan.
