‘Did someone order the pepperoni?’
Thank goodness for the waitress.
‘Me, please,’ I gasp, as if the pizza were the answer to world peace.
We eat in silence, except for the stilted attempt at conversation from Jemima and Tim. It doesn’t go anywhere. Lydia keeps glancing at me, then to Ollie, as if trying to workus out. Sam taps his leg, his jaw twitching. Ollie looks around the table, and I know that look: it’s the one he would use when judging someone he didn’t like. His nose would wrinkle ever so slightly. His eyes would narrow. He would make a small sniffing noise.
What did I ever see in him?
Has he always been like this?
I may not know Lydia well, or Tim or Jemima, but they’ve been kinder to me in the last two weeks than he ever was in ten years. They’ve welcomed me like they have known me all my life.
And Ollie?
He couldn’t even tell Alec about me.
‘Will you be in the coffee shop tomorrow, then?’ Tim asks Sam.
‘Oh, um…’ Sam looks anywhere but towards Ollie’s end of the table. ‘Yeah, I think I will be.’
‘We’ll have to stop by,’ Jemima says. ‘I do adore a No Name Coffee.’
‘The coffee shop we walked through?’ Ollie asks.
‘Sam’s shop,’ Lydia says.
‘Sam’sshop?’
Oh God. Beam me up. Abduct me. Alien experiments would be preferable to this.
‘What do you mean, Sam’s shop?’ Ollie pushes. ‘Sam’s a porn star.’
‘You watch your tongue,’ Tim blusters.
‘You can’t just call people porn stars,’ Jemima says, a little shocked.
A smile spreads across Ollie’s face as he considers my own stricken one, like he’s spotted prey. ‘What’s going on?’
I put down my last slice of pizza, a shame because it looks so good.
‘Nothing is going on,’ I begin, but Sam clears his throat.
‘It’s fine,’ he says. ‘We should come clean.’
Lydia chews slowly on her pizza as the car crash unfolds. Iwish she wouldn’t look at me like that, like she wants me to fight back. Like she’s daring me to.
‘Sam isn’t my boyfriend,’ I say. Is that true? ‘Well, I don’t know what he is.’
‘I don’t follow.’
Sam’s hand finds mine, and in that moment, I feel like I could take on the world.
‘I’ve known Sam since I was a kid,’ I say. ‘He left when we were at primary school. Moved to Athens. I lost touch with him. And then he found me on the roadside.’
‘But you’re a porn star?’ Ollie asks Sam.
‘No.’
