Ten Years On Read Online Free PDF Page B

and a white shirt. ‘Sorry, overheard.’ He clears his throat. ‘The room’s great. Thanks for letting me stay here, Olly.’
    ‘Not a problem. It’s cool.’
    ‘Rebecca?’ Joe leans one hand against the front door. There’s something so arrogant about this man I want to slap him.
    I take off my jacket. ‘Yes?’
    ‘You’re happy I’m here?’
    I give him one of my best smiles. ‘Sure.’
    ‘Great.’
    ‘Off somewhere nice?’ Olly asks, as if he’s a concerned dad.
    ‘Just out,’ comes the elusive reply. ‘Meeting a couple of friends. I’ll see you tomorrow … unless both of you want to come?’
    ‘No thanks,’ I say, before noticing the hesitation in Olly’s eyes.
    *
    ‘Where’s Olly?’ asks Sylvie when she enters the kitchen and finds me alone, wondering what happened to our early night and my foot massage.
    ‘Out. With our new housemate.’
    She seems surprised. ‘You’re OK now, about Joe moving in?’
    ‘Yes, it’s fine.’ I stretch out my arms. ‘Right, bedtime.’
    ‘Becca? What’s wrong?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘Becca?’
    ‘It’s Olly.’
    ‘What about him?’
    ‘Have you noticed he does exactly what he wants, pretty much all the time?’
    ‘Yes!’ She laughs. ‘Haven’t you? I reckon it’s because he’s cute and funny and in a band, so he thinks he has some divine right or something, which he does.’ She opens one of the cupboards above the sink, takes out a loaf of sliced white bread. ‘Toast?’
    I shake my head.
    ‘Olly does things without thinking sometimes, that’s all. Most blokes are like that – well, at least all the ones I’ve been out with. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything earlier, you know, about Joe. If he’d been some spotty science geek or maths nerd with soup-bowl glasses—’
    ‘You’d have backed me. He does have a great body,’ I confide, smiling.
    Sylvie pulls up chair. ‘Exactly. It’s not everyday an Adonis graces our lives. Dan was no oil painting, and he used to nick my crisps.’
    I laugh, saying he used to pinch my Snicker bars too.
    ‘Olly loves you, you know.’
    ‘Maybe.’
    ‘No maybes about it.’
    ‘Thanks, Sylvie.’ I kiss her goodnight and head upstairs, walking past Dan’s old bedroom, the door shut. For a moment I am tempted to open it, just to see what his room’s like. Why do I have a sneaking suspicion that Joe’s arrival is about to change everything in this house?

5
    The sun is shining. It’s a lovely warm summer’s day, but I miss Kitty already.
    ‘The thing about London, Becca, is nothing changes,’ she had promised, as we’d said our tearful goodbyes this morning. ‘When you come back, I’ll still be living in Earls Court and talking to dysfunctional teenagers about what they should do with their lives, when I have no idea myself what to do with mine. Jamie will still be going out with the awful Amanda and Sylvie will still be sleeping with her boss, or maybe not … In fact she’s the only one who is slightly unpredictable, but you can be sure I’ll still be going on bad dates.’ Kitty had told me how her last date, Richard, Dickie for short, was severely lacking in the hair department, but the final straw was when he said his top film of all time was Sister Act .
    ‘You’ll be fine, just fine,’ Kitty had said, hugging me.
    ‘Thank you,’ I held her close, ‘a million times.’
    Mum has booked my scan at the maternity unit of our local hospital at midday. I can’t even begin to unpack yet. I stare at all my suitcases and boxes. It’s so odd being back in my old bedroom. Opposite me, hanging on the wall, is a framed painting of St Catherine’s Hill that I painted when I was eight. I picture my easel by the old dressing-up box, see myself in my red smocked top mixing acrylic paints. I touch my wardrobe and imagine my lime-green and red Flamenco dress still hanging in one corner. I kissed my first boyfriend, Javier, in that dress, at Kitty’s tenth birthday party. Javier was Spanish