Page 11 of If We Were Young

“Ma.”

Her gaze narrowed, and she peered at me. Jesus. What was it with people getting in my face to read my thoughts? “There is something else. There was a reason you didn’t want to go to that reunion.”

“Leave it, please.”

“Secrets always undo those who keep them.”

“Reading your horoscope again, Ma?” I got up and pecked a kiss on the top of her forehead. “I will work for a while. It’s a big day tomorrow and I can’t afford to mess up.”

She shook her head but didn’t say anything else.

I lay my head down on the bed for a good half an hour. Thoughts rushed through my mind.

Matthew in the lift.

Matthew in a dark suit.

Matthew not bald and fat.

Matthew with broad shoulders, dark hair waved back from his face.

Matthew who didn’t look at me at all. Not once. For five thuds of my heart I’d stood there, and his gaze hadn’t met my face once.

Maybe I’d thought we would bump into one another? Say hi. Reminisce about old times.

Maybe I thought I’d see him and move on. But if we hadn’t made eye contact it didn’t count as seeing. So where did that leave me?

Nowhere.

Maybe if I’d gone to the reunion instead of doing the ‘Ronnie Run’, those things could have happened.

Maybe I was never meant to talk to him again.

Maybe I should forget him. Well, hell, hadn’t I tried? What did it mean to still obsess over someone fifteen years after you’d last seen them?

“Mum?” I turned to Hannah in the doorway. “What are you doing?”

“Contemplating life?” I shouldn’t let Hannah see me like this. All the guidebooks say you should always act the way you want your children to behave. Teach by example.

Lying face down on my bed on the verge of a ‘my life is so shit’ pity parade breakdown was not what I should show my thirteen-year-old.

“Are you as hung over as Aunty Ange?” she asked, leaning against the doorframe.

“Nope. How do you know she is?” I rolled over, realising how hot and sticky my face had become.

“She’s downstairs in the kitchen. She does not look good.”

I grinned. Again, I shouldn’t show childish delight at the discomfort of others. But, ha, that would teach Ange for leaving me to run away by myself. I scrambled from the bed. “Where’s Nonna?” The thought of Ange and Ma being left together for longer than three seconds prevented my ‘Nonna’ eye-roll. Ma had insisted on it as soon as Hannah could talk—apparently it spoke to her Italian roots. Whatever.

“Making something very noisy. Not sure what, but she’s bashing a wooden spoon against a cake tin.”

Oh that old trick. That reminded me of the jelly shots.

“Come on, we’d better save her.”

I paused at the bedroom door. “Are you coming?” I asked Hannah. Well, what I could see of her. She hid most of herself behind a thick curtain of dark hair. Occasionally I’d catch a flicker of blue eyes from behind the brown waves, but I’d resigned myself to the fact my daughter now looked like Cousin Itt from the Addams Family. Which was a step up from the pineapple stage we’d gone through the year before.

The sound of groaning came from the front room. Ma hated any loud noises in the house, but I leant into the kitchen and gave her a wink. We weren’t often winky, nudge nudge, aren’t we mates, people. But I knew she’d appreciate this. I unlatched the front door, pulled it five inches and then slammed it so hard the house shook.