He rings me and I pick up at once. ‘Hi,’ I say.
I hear Ollie swallow. ‘Hi,’ he returns. ‘I see you’ve been busy.’ I notice the humour in his voice.
‘Oh, be quiet,’ I chastise him, but I’m smiling.
‘So you’re dating a celebrity now? You didn’t say.’
‘I don’t think it’s dating,’ I confess. ‘I don’t think it’s anything.’
‘It’s enough to get into the media,’ Ollie says. ‘I take it you’ve seen the photo online? Ben made a point of telling me he’d told you.’
‘I haven’t read Ben’s thousand messages. Sam showed me just now.’
I hear Ollie take a deep breath. ‘Is he still there?’
‘No, he’s left.’
There’s silence between us for a moment and then we both speak at the same time. Me with, ‘Why have you been ignoring me?’ and Ollie with, ‘It’s weird you talking about someone off the TV by their first name.’
‘You don’t even know who he is,’ I joke. ‘And he’s been Sam Charlton in my head since I met him, until about twenty minutes ago when first-name terms felt really overdue, given what we …’ I stop talking.
Silence again, for one second, two seconds. ‘I’ve been ignoring you,’ Ollie starts up, ‘because I needed a bit of space.’
‘From what? From me?’
‘I’m not sure. I think a little distance is never a bad thing. Means we’ve got more to talk about when we see each other.’ He says this in such an upbeat tone that I can’t quite believe he’s even said it.
‘That’s a smooth, pointless comment and I don’t believe you,’ I dare. ‘Did I do something wrong?’
‘No. You didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘I don’t understand. What’s happening?’
‘Nothing’s happening,’ he says.
‘You said you had reasons why you weren’t talking to me, but you don’t,’ I retort. ‘You don’t have any reasons.’
‘Listen, just drop it,’ Ollie says.
I sit up straight. ‘No. I won’t drop it. Aren’t we friends any more?’ I ask. I can feel tears start to prick at the back of my eyes, even contemplating this. I can’t lose Ollie. I just can’t. He’s one of my closest friends.
‘Aury,’ he pleads, ‘drop it.’
‘Ollie, what’s going on?’
He breathes in, then exhales. ‘I’ve got to go. Bye, Aury.’
He hangs up and I’m left reeling, staring at my phone to check he really did hang up on me. I’ve been awake only minutes and everything is going at a hundred miles an hour. I want to ring Ollie back and find out what the hell is going on, but my phone rings and it’s my mum. I close my eyes for a second, count to three and answer it as brightly as I can.
‘Hi, Mum.’
‘Hi, Princess,’ my mum says, with a hint of humour behind it. ‘Anything you want to tell me?’
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
Ollie
Well, I made a right mess of that, didn’t I? AsifI was going to tell Aury. I might have done. Before.I have reasons. I might – justmight– have been able to at least insinuate that I feel odd in her company, now more than ever. But she has no idea, and now I probably can’t ever tell her. We’ve never spoken about the kiss that never was, but Iknewway before that how I felt about Aury. From day one. Nearly ten years ago. On the staircase when I sent her flying. Right then – that moment. It felt fated, as if all the stars had aligned. But of course they hadn’t.Of coursethey hadn’t. Because she ended up with Ben. What an idiot I was.
