Page 22

Chapter Twelve

It takes me a while to notice. It’s all so normal that, at first, I don’t notice that anything is different.

But the normalcy is the different thing!

The cardboard boxes are gone and our sofa, the sofa I’ve cried on, laughed on, eaten on, been sick on…

It’s back! All our photos are hanging on the walls, there’s me, aged eleven, in my school uniform – teeth so buck I couldn’t close my mouth – grinning away.

There’s us on holiday, me in a big blow-up ring, in the shape of a pink flamingo, and Mam, back when she had her perm.

We’d had a weird drive home from Layla’s this morning where neither of us mentioned what happened yesterday – we just turned up the tunes and sang all the way home.

And now we’re back, and I’d just walked in and sat down on the sofa, while Mam and Dad looked on bemused.

“What are you looking at?” I asked, before going.

“Oh my god! It’s all back! What happened? !”

“Well, you happened, Angelica,” Mam says, smiling. “We thought because you’re the one who sorted it all, we wouldn’t make you do all the unpacking.”

I haven’t the foggiest what’s going on. Leo’s standing in the doorway, and chips in, helping me out. “That fucker had no idea what was coming when you waltzed in, telling him you’d pay the next year’s rent up front, in cash, if he didn’t evict you lot.”

Slowly, it begins to register what’s happened. Leo! Leo has somehow paid Callum to save us from eviction. How on earth could he afford that? I didn’t think cameramen earned that much.

“We’re so grateful sweetheart, I was crying when Callum called after you left yesterday. I can’t believe you spent your afternoon facing him down and saving this place. We sprung right into action unpacking, didn’t we? Wanted to get it all nice and normal for when you came home.”

“Because it is your home, Angelica, always was, always will be love,” Dad says, squeezing my shoulder.

“Wherever you go in the world, whatever you do, you’ve got a home here.

Now, come on in properly, son,” he says to Leo.

“Stop hovering in doorways, my daughter is looking happier than she has in ages. Whatever you’ve done to put this grin on her face, I shake your hand for it. ”

I look at Leo and see that blush is sneaking up his (freakishly long) neck again.

“We went for a hike!” I blurt out.

“What, between going to see Callum and driving all the way to Layla’s?” Mam says, confused.

“Er yes…” I say, regaling them with everything we saw on our walk (leaving out a select few parts, admittedly…) “The Angel was stunning, so…”

“Yes, love,” says Dad, “It’s one of the most impressive erections in the whole of the north east.”

I almost swallow my tongue as I’m trying so hard not to laugh. I can’t even look at Leo. Or think about what really was the most impressive erection in the north east.

It’s hard to concentrate though, even without Dad and his typical foot-in-mouth moment.

It’s all so confusing, and there’s so much to try and wrap my head around while trying to come across as normal to Mam and Dad, and not like someone who’s just had three of the most earth-shattering orgasms of her life.

With Leo! Someone who until now, I swear, I only thought of as a friend.

Of course, I’d admired his looks, his arms and his cyclist’s tan, glowing from days spent outdoors, rather than (cough, Damon’s) days on the sunbed.

I’d also always appreciated his laid-back, friendly and self-assured company.

I always feel myself in his presence and I’d assumed that meant we were destined to be mates, after all.

Normally when I fancy someone I feel on edge, almost desperate around them.

Desperate to impress, to please and to bend myself this way and that, in order to get their attention (sometimes quite literally).

I’m used to butterflies in my stomach and the feeling that this person, and the way they feel about me, could be snatched away any minute.

But this? Comfort? Being able to laugh after sex and not feel paranoid that my make-up has slid off, and my hair is a mess? This is new.

Maybe Leo doesn’t have a million thoughts racing through his mind like I do, considering he’s casually chatting away with Mam and Dad, listening intently as Dad lists some facts about coal that are honestly so boring, they blank from my mind as soon as I hear them.

I want to talk to Leo, get him somewhere alone, but I feel like a teenager again.

I’m worried if I try and say anything like, “hey Leo, let’s go up to my room and chat,” it will come out like a squeak and Mam and Dad will think I’m trying to seduce him or something.

Maybe I am trying to seduce him? Am I? The sex was obviously incredible but afterwards, we just went back to being us.

Angelica and Leo, joking around like pals, racing each other down the hills on the way back.

Then, in the car, he could have put his hand on my leg, or given me a kiss but we just drove to Layla’s and acted like nothing had happened.

I didn’t even tell Layla, which is a first for me.

It felt too new and special and surprising to share.

I can’t sense if Mam and Dad can feel the tension in the air but Mam stands up, brushes off crumbs from her toast and says, “I’m meeting the girls for a Chardonnay tonight.

” She stares at Dad, who then coughs uncomfortably and says, “and I should really go and begin unpacking the boxes in the shed.”

Born In Buckinghamshire is on the telly, and that wally Sebastian is dicking around on a horse, and we settle side by side on the sofa for a while, in companionable silence, apart from occasionally bursting into laughter at his expense.

“God he’s such a buffoon,” I say, before pausing. “That’s a posh word for an idiot, right?”

“The perfect word,” he says, before adding softly under his breath, in a way that speeds my heart right up, “Angelica, I need to explain a few things to you.”

“The house? Was that you? Why?”

“I’ve got some savings and I hate dickhead landlords,” he shrugs.

“I particularly hate dickhead landlords who just might have had something to do with the show house fire. I also happen, with the same intensity that I hate dickhead landlords, to like you.” He smiles fondly.

“I didn’t want to see you or your family forced to move out. It seemed simple.”

“But savings? Are you sure? I’ll pay you back.”

“I know you will, 100%. You’re going places, Angelica, it’s just not showing up in your bank balance yet.” He reaches over and squeezes my forearm. “But it will.”

“You didn’t have to say it was me, you could have taken the glory.”

“It’s going to be you soon, I was just skipping one step.”

He’s being so nice I could cry. But, he’s also on the far end of the sofa, when he could be closer to me.

He could have his leg pressed against mine.

Do I even want that? Or am I just so accustomed to wanting men to want me, so that’s the only relationship I understand?

Over the past few months, I’ve made a few really nice lad friends.

I wouldn’t dream of getting with Reed, as he feels like a brotherly figure to me or Marc, mostly because of Madison, but even if she wasn’t in the picture I don’t think I would.

He’s almost too good looking, if that makes sense?

Like he wouldn’t even have to try in bed because he’d think looking at him was orgasmic enough.

And, until twenty-four hours ago, I didn’t think I’d have slept with Leo.

Sure, there’s been a few frissons of electricity, but the smallest amount of electricity isn’t enough to ruin a friendship, is it?

Because if we keep doing what we did, no matter how fun, or indeed mind-blowing, it might be, we can’t go back to friends.

“And…?” I ask. All that’s not being said hangs heavy in the air between us.

I shift in my seat, look over at him, but I feel almost afraid to look him right in the eye.

It feels like this is the moment one of us has to act, to speak, in order for something momentous to happen.

I’m too unsure of myself to be the one to do it.

I don’t know if going from friends to something more is what I really want.

But there’s also something else there, lingering, in the back of my mind, a small but vicious new feeling.

It’s doubt about who I am, and whether I’m even desirable to a man like him.

What if he rejects me? I didn’t used to feel this way about boys, I’d go crazy for them but always feel confident in my own skin.

I knew that, no matter what went down, they’d be into me.

What’s changed? The house. The trolls and their barbed comments but also…

one of the unsayable things hovering between us.

Damon. What Damon and I have isn’t in any way solid, and without actually knowing if he’s apologised or not, there may not be a way back from our phone fight.

But, that was also only two days ago. So much has happened in the last forty-eight hours – can I really be sure I want to leave him behind?

Things are bad at the moment but when they’re good…

they’re so good. I know Damon, I understand him – even the shitty parts of him – but Leo, he’s a mystery to me.

It’s Leo who breaks the silence.

“I hope you know how much I like you, Angelica,” he says, and he’s finally shuffled closer to me.

“It’s come as a bit of a surprise,” I admit. “I thought you saw me as this clumsy idiot friend of yours.”

“I do,” he says. “Clumsy, yes, but not an idiot. It’s all that wildness that makes me, er, like you so much. No one is themselves quite like you. It makes you so…”