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  “I don’t think your adoring fans would appreciate that.” I smiled warmly to myself, trying to push my other thoughts aside. I needed to focus on him and what he was saying, because I never got to speak to him very long. I didn’t want my worries to affect the short time we had together.

  I was so happy for Danny and the way Jax had become so successful. I knew how much they deserved it and how hard they’d worked to get there. There was only one member of the band who had let the fame go to his head—their lead singer, Craig—but he was always a bit of a knob anyway, so it wasn’t much of a surprise. As the drummer, often hidden at the back of the stage, Danny had fewer admirers than the rest of the band, but that wasn’t to say there weren’t a few dedicated groupies just for him!

  “Anyway, I think we’re in Cardiff tonight, so I won’t be able to ring you until tomorrow, okay? Oh, hold on…” I could hear his muffled talking, which meant he obviously had his hand over the receiver. I couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed, couldn’t he spare just one moment for me without being dragged back into band stuff? Normally I didn’t mind, and I was really understanding, but today I felt different. Dragging up my past had made me uncomfortable and unsettled, which unfortunately I was taking out on him. “Got to go, babe, we have some promotion party thing to go to. Love ya! Bye.”

  “Work is going fine thanks, yeah, I’m good…” I muttered angrily into the dead receiver, slamming the phone down. I loved Danny to bits, but I felt like this was a moment I really needed him to just speak to me and pay me some attention, and I was irrationally angry because he hadn’t gotten my telepathic message about that.

  Or maybe I was just looking for an excuse for what I really wanted to do. Maybe I was looking for a reason to stomp back up into that attic and continue looking through my memories. I knew what I was doing was wrong—it certainly felt like deception, at any rate—but I had no intention of stopping. Especially not after that phone call!

  It was done, and I needed to know it all now. I wouldn’t be able to rest until I’d uncovered everything. I already knew there was no way I could sleep until I’d gone through all of the secrets hidden away up there, and I was forcing my guilt to subside to get me through that.

  Sighing as I sat back down, I flicked through the rest of the photographs in the box. There were literally thousands of us growing up, it was as if our parents couldn’t bear to let a second go by without catching it on camera. Joe’s sister sometimes featured alongside us in the pictures, but she was only an outsider really—everyone else was. No one was invited to our little clique, and that was the way we liked it.

  It was all quite causal and sweet to look back on, until in one of the boxes I found my diary. That changed everything. Even the atmosphere in the room changed as I ran my hand over the silky front cover, knowing what lay inside…

  I quickly scanned my eyes over the first few pages and the entries that were only bitching about my mum, because I knew that soon enough I started to talk about Joe—really talk about him—and for some reason, I wanted to explore that. I wanted to go back to that awkward time in secondary school when there was an obvious shift in our friendship—not that he seemed to notice, of course!

  12th March 2006

  Why not me? Why never me?

  It was always just me and you, Joe, so why did that have to change?

  I miss primary school when you didn’t notice anyone else. Damn it, when did it start to hurt to see you look at other girls?

  I gulped down a ball of emotion that lodged firmly in my throat as I read my teen-angst filled words. The feelings of jealousy I felt back then flooded right through me once more, which sent me to the edge of unease.

  Seeing Joe with anyone used to drive me crazy with jealousy, to the point where I thought I might go insane. I’d go hot and dizzy, nauseous if he even smiled at another girl. Yet with Danny—a bona fide rock star with gorgeous fans dripping from his shoulders—I didn’t feel bad about that even once. If anything, I was always pleased for him to have women chasing after him. It meant that he’d really made it.

  What did that mean?

  Did that mean I didn’t love Danny as much as I had Joe? Or that I trusted him more? I wasn’t sure, and it was making my head spin. I stood up, feeling light-headed and very sick, before staggering back down the stairs and into natural light. I couldn’t help bringing the diary with me. Now that I’d read that information, I felt like I needed to know more, to work out how I really felt about my life right now.

  I’d always assumed that I was happy, but was that just a trick I was playing on myself to help me move on with my life? To help me get over losing Joe?

  Sure, Danny was absolutely gorgeous, and he was lovely too, but did that really make him the man for me? Did that really mean I should marry him? It wasn’t even like he was the man I’d admired from afar anymore because we had a real bond and connection. We were really in love…or so I thought.

  Urgh, what the hell was wrong with me?

  I padded into the kitchen and grabbed a half drunk bottle of wine, taking a swig without even thinking. My heart was pounding and my mind was reeling, so much so that I felt like I wasn’t even in the room anymore.

  In the end, I poured myself a glass of the wine, trying to at least behave normally, before sitting on the bar stool and reading a little bit more, digging in even deeper to the girl I used to be.

  18th June 2006

  I can’t take it anymore. I can’t.

  This is the end of the world for me.

  How the hell am I supposed to move on?

  21st June 2006

  I’m so confused. Now you’re showing me all the attention that you once did, and I don’t know what to think about it. She’s still in the picture, and I can tell she hates me, but when I’m in your sunrays of affection, it doesn’t matter.

  It’s when you leave and you’re kissing her that I go into turmoil.

  I remembered feeling that way, so passionate and heartbroken that I didn’t even make any sense. That life felt like an unbearable rollercoaster I couldn’t seem to climb off of. I recalled needing to get my feelings out and writing them down as the only way to do that, and now reading over those words once more. It was weird—I was now twenty-three and it was like I’d reverted back to a teenage girl all over again. Everything that I’d learned about life just melted away, and I became an insecure, neurotic puddle all over again.

  I sipped the wine, just thinking for a moment, trying to get a calm perspective on things, but instead my brain span back over my memories, dragging me back there once more…

  Chapter Four

  About a week after we started secondary school, I noticed a change. Not just in everything surrounding us, but in me and Joe too. We joined a massive school from our very tiny one, and the difference was immense. I found it really hard to come to grips with. Our classes had gone from twelve students to over thirty, which was incredibly daunting. I felt claustrophobic, like I couldn’t breathe as easily anymore. Every day went from being fun and manageable, to a real challenge. It got to the point where even walking through those doors in the morning was overwhelming.

  But not for Joe.

  Joe relished our new life, he embraced it with open arms, and it didn’t take me long to work out why.

  The selection of new students brought along with it a whole heap of girls. Girls who hadn’t grown up alongside Joe, and seen him go through his awkward stage. He was new to them, exciting. The girls we’d grown up alongside didn’t even dare look at him because they knew I had some sort of claim over him—of course, it wasn’t really in the romantic sense, but that didn’t matter—but these new girls didn’t know about that.

  They saw what I did, plus a whole lot more too. They didn’t just grasp that he was kind, loyal, and very sweet. They also saw potential in the messy hair, a spark in those piercing blue eyes, and something to swoon about in the dimples that popped up when he smiled.

  Diana was the first one—his fi
rst girlfriend. She was tall and slim with long, flowing blonde hair. I couldn’t help but be jealous of her because she was everything teenage me wanted to be. She already wore a bra, she never seemed to have any spots, and she also didn’t ever appear to be plagued with the insecurities that all but swamped me.

  Of course, she had Joe too. I hated that with every inch of my being.

  Luckily for me, Joe continued on with our friendship in mostly the same way as before. Especially when we were at home. I got the impression Diana wanted him to stop speaking to me, but he never did. Maybe they argued over it, or maybe he was completely oblivious to her feelings—he never told me, and I didn’t ask.

  She didn’t last too long though, which was a massive relief for me. That was until Heidi came along. Heidi was even more beautiful than Diana, and she was older too, which made me feel even more crazy and possessive. I used to sit in my bedroom, screaming into my pillow, just imagining them together. Most of the time, I felt like I was going insane with it all, which was made worse by the fact I couldn’t talk to my best friend about it. This time, my confidant was the problem, and that was really difficult to come to terms with.

  Back then, I thought it was only his friendship that I missed. I thought my insane jealousy was purely because I didn’t like someone else sharing his focus. I preferred the days when his warmth was only directed at me.

  It was more—that became obvious later—but I couldn’t see that at the time.

  Heidi became an increasing problem as time went on. She didn’t just invade our time together at school; she started to encroach on our home life together too. She would come round for dinner, and charm the pants off our parents. The fierce passion I hated her with was incredible. I’d never felt so strongly about anything before, and that was tearing me up from the inside out. Every time I saw her I felt muddy and raw, which meant that I didn’t even give her a chance.

  Then again, she must have hated me just as much, because rumours quickly started flying around school that they kept fighting because of me, and when they finally broke up, I found myself under the intense scrutiny of the entire school—a place I didn’t feel comfortable at all.

  Suddenly people wanted to talk to me, to get to know me, and every whisper in the hallway was about my involvement. I quietly tried to reassure people that I was only friends with Joe, but that wasn’t what people wanted to hear. They wanted juicy gossip, so they started to make things up.

  If I hadn’t wanted to leave Joe with those vultures, I probably would have quit school just to get away from it all.

  All of that came to an abrupt end when Joe moved on with someone else. Then another girl, and another. After Heidi, no one seemed to last that long, as if they didn’t quite make the cut for him. This helped my confidence grow—those girls would come and go, but me and Joe were forever—and that was the way I liked it.

  Well…that was until the school camping trip.

  Everything started to disintegrate then…

  It was really starting to trouble me that I’d never experienced that sort of mental jealousy for Danny, the man who was supposed to be the love of my life. Why had I never felt like I would die without him? Why did I not despise every girl that was even in the same room as him? It was confusing. I’d never really thought about it before, I was confident our relationship was happy, but now it was all I could think about.

  I was comparing what I had with Danny to what I once had with Joe, which wasn’t fair on anyone because the situations could not have been more different.

  So why couldn’t I stop…?

  Chapter Five

  I angrily brushed the tear off my cheek, feelingly increasingly frustrated with myself with each passing second. How was it possible I found myself already so upset? I’d only been delving into the past for a short while, for crying out loud! I assumed it was because I knew where this story ended, and everything that I would unleash by doing this. But that wasn’t enough to stop me, not now…not when I’d already gotten so far in.

  “No, no,” I muttered to myself, standing upright. “Not today.”

  I was so unsettled by everything that this had made me think about already, and I knew it was only going to get worse the more I continued on. Looking back at what I once had with Joe was going to make me question every aspect of my current life—not only what I had with Danny—and there was no way I was emotionally equipped to do all of that in one day. I needed to pack it all away and come back to it before it drove me insane.

  I sighed deeply, feeling a cold sense of relief flood through me. Then, knowing that I couldn’t just leave it all in the attic now, I grabbed each and every one of the boxes and pulled them downstairs, ready for another day.

  Maybe once I was done with it all, once I’d looked through it, I would be able to just chuck it out and continue on with my life. With it downstairs, that would be much easier to do.

  Maybe…

  By the time I clambered into bed, exhaustion consumed me, and I all but blacked out the second my head hit the pillow.

  ***

  I honestly expected to feel better by the time morning rolled around, so it was a little shock to wake up still sickly and feeling like crap—emotionally and physically. It didn’t help that I hadn’t slept well. Nightmares of the past had plagued me all night, and now I was more haunted than ever.

  As my feet hit the bedroom floor, I felt a surge of energy burst through me. I couldn’t sit around and mope today, working myself up over something that was realistically no longer a part of my life. I actually had some weekend plans I really couldn’t cancel—a meeting with my mother. Sure, it was only going to be an awkward coffee, like we did every single month, but if I was focused on my strained relationship with my mum, then I couldn’t be worrying about anything else.

  Urgh, God…suddenly the thought of the weirdness with my mum was a little overwhelming, so I sent a message to Cici. If I had something to do with my best friend afterwards, then I could get through it.

  Lottie: Hey Cici, fancy going out for drinks later? Xxx

  I was pretty sure she would already have plans anyway—the social butterfly that she was—so it wasn’t at all unexpected when she quickly shot back telling me to meet her at a bar at eight p.m.

  “Okay.” I nodded to myself, trying to steel myself for what I needed to do today. “You can do this.” I was perfectly aware I was whispering to myself like a crazy person, but it was all I could do to sort myself out. “Just…get in the shower. Just get through this.”

  As I stepped into the shower and allowed the hot water to steam over me, my mind drifted off to another problem I hadn’t yet considered. My mum might not know about the potential engagement just yet, but Cici certainly did, and if Gabby—Baz’s girlfriend—was out with her like she normally was, then it was very likely I would have to suffer squeals and excitement about a wedding that I honestly wasn’t sure was going to happen. If me and Danny actually made it down the aisle, then we would be the first out of our friendship group, so it would be a level of madness that I was nowhere near equipped to deal with.

  I padded across the apartment, naked and wet, not even bothering to grab a towel. Sometimes I got so used to being in our home alone that I forgot it wasn’t just mine. The more popular Jax became, the less I saw of my boyfriend, which left me mostly on my own. Generally, I liked that, it suited me just fine. But at the moment it was like torture—the silence was painful, and driving me insane.

  I opened the wardrobe to look at my meagre clothing selection, remembering the words Danny spoke to me when we first moved in together:

  “You know, my money is yours too. If you want to buy yourself some new stuff to wear, I really don’t mind.”

  Looking back at it now, he probably thought he was being kind, but in the heat of the moment I flipped, and a massive argument ensued. Sure, I was much more comfortable in plain tees and skinny jeans, which probably made me look really boring, but that was me. I didn’t like feeling li
ke I had to defend myself and the way I looked to someone who had never seemed to have a problem with it before.

  I yelled that he must have been embarrassed by me, and that he wanted me to dress sluttier like Gabby and Craig’s random skanks, which made him backtrack very rapidly. Maybe I wasn’t so much hurt, but he hit a nerve. Whatever the case, I didn’t take him up on his offer, and I’ve continued to dress the same in defiance, just to be stubborn.

  However, as I stared at my reflection in the mirror, looking at my long red hair tied back, and my makeup-free face, combined with a baby blue tee, black skinny jeans, and trainers, I suddenly didn’t feel quite so settled. I wasn’t quite sure what the issue was, but I needed to do something to change it. I tugged my hair out quickly, watching it spill down my back, then I shook my head sharply, feeling that would have to do.

  I stalked out of the house quickly and made my way down the street to the coffee shop where I would be meeting my mum, thinking only of her. This wouldn’t be a fun catch up, like I was sure most mothers and daughters had, but there was nothing I could do to change that. Not now, it was far too late for that. Too much had happened, too much had been destroyed, and it was beyond fixing.

  This, what we currently had, was as good as it was going to get.

  At least she wouldn’t be with Malcolm—that would make things a million times worse. He hated me, and the feeling was mutual. If I really looked at it—which I tried not to do—then it wasn’t so much him that was the problem, it was the timing of their relationship. He came into her life when I really needed her, and I’d done nothing but resent him ever since.

  After almost five years of them being together, I really should have adjusted to it, but I wasn’t quite there yet, and I didn’t think I ever would be. It was much better for everyone if my relationship with Mum was kept separate from them.

  I sighed deeply, focusing on my shoes for a few seconds, before taking that next step and pushing the door open to step inside. There I found my mother, already waiting for me. She was sitting up dead straight in her seat, with her skirt draped pristinely over her legs and her very boring, very beige cardigan wrapped tightly around her. As I walked towards her, I had to physically bite my lip to keep all that I wanted to say inside.