Page 232 of Falling for You

‘Right!’ Tanya says, marching into my room with her label maker in one hand and a roll of packing tape in the other. ‘How can I help?’

‘What are you doing?’ Penny turns to her accusingly.

Tanya blinks back. ‘What?’

‘You’rehelpingher!’ Penny says incredulously. ‘You’re helping her move out a week early. We should be locking her in her room and stealing her purse so she can’t leave.’

I place a stack of books in a box. Obviously, I’m not planning on taking all my things with me on the train down to the Cotswolds. Paddington is bad enough as it is. But I’m trying to pack everything up, so when Mum and Dad come up with me at the weekend we can move out in some form of order. I owe it to them after they turned up to move me out of university in third year and found me asleep, unpacked, hungover, with absolutely no idea what they were doing there.

I just thank the lord there wasn’t anybody I had to stuff out of a bathroom window.

‘It’s just a label maker,’ Tanya says in a small voice. ‘Oh!’ she adds, spotting a Marian Keyes book. ‘Can I have this? Have you read it?’

‘Sure.’ I hand it to her.

‘You’ll have to finish it by Friday,’ Penny says stroppily.

‘Or you can post it back to me,’ I say.

Tanya’s face scrunches up with worry, and I laugh. ‘Tanya, I’m joking, you can keep it.’

‘What is all this?’ she says, looking around at my boxes.I’ve been super organised and labelled them ‘keep’, ‘sell’, ‘bin’. She is eyeing my ‘sell’ box suspiciously.

‘If you want anything in there, take it,’ I say. ‘Now is your last chance.’

‘You can’t sell this!’ Penny cries in outrage, as she pulls out a particularly garish jumper I knitted last year. It’s made out of pink, glittery wool with a black cat sat on an orange pumpkin on the front.

‘Why not?’

‘Annie, you love this jumper!’ Penny says, waving it in my face. ‘Why would you sell it? What’s going on? I’m worried about you.’ She turns to Tanya. ‘We need an intervention.’

Tanya nods. ‘I’ll get the biscuits.’

‘What, no!’ I say, grabbing Tanya’s arm. ‘Nothing is going on, I’mfine. I’m just trying to … you know, get my life in order.’

‘By selling your favourite clothes and taking a corporate job and giving up your dreams?’ Penny shoots back.

‘You sound like Nate,’ I mutter under my breath, turning back to my piles of books. I keep my back firmly to them both, even though I can feel them exchanging worried glances. We haven’t spoken about Nate since Saturday night. Even then, I only told them the headlines of what happened. He wasn’t seeing other girls, I fucked up, it’s over.

‘Have you heard from him?’ Tanya says gently.

‘Nope,’ I say. ‘And I won’t. He’s gone. But I’ve decided it’s a good thing,’ I hear myself add, apparently making that decision as soon as I voice it.

‘Why?’ Penny sinks back onto my bed.

‘Well, like … was he ever real?’ I shrug.

Tanya and Penny glance at each other.

‘We … we did meet him, Annie,’ Tanya says nervously.

I roll my eyes. ‘No, I mean, he was too perfect! All the romance and chance meetings, the perfect dates and great, easy conversation and the instant connection … that’s not real, is it? Nobody has a relationship like that in real life.’

I’m saying it like it’s a fact, but I can see the doubt on their faces.

‘Annie,’ Tanya says eventually. ‘You deserve all of those things.’

‘And you will have them,’ Penny adds, her voice stern.