‘Always a good night,’ Peter says again, ‘perhaps you two could come along next year?’
‘Definitely,’ Dom agrees, without looking at me. ‘We should definitely do that.’
More silence.
‘Are you not enjoying your eggs, Nicole?’ Maureen asks.
* * *
They’re gone by eleven, heading back up the M1, back to civilisation. Yorkshire. The second the car pulls away from the pavement outside our house, Dom grabs me around the waist, kissing me passionately on the mouth.
‘Three days and not a single stand-up row!’ he says with a grin. ‘That must be a record.’
I smile ruefully, instantly feeling guilty for spending the two weeks before they came openly dreading their arrival.
‘It was good. It was nice to see them. It’s always good to see them.’ He laughs. ‘I mean it, Dom.’ And I do mean it, sort of. Peter’s a lovely man. And I don’t think Maureen means to criticise my every move. She just can’t help herself.
‘I know. I thought you did very well.’ We’re walking back to the front door, arm in arm.
‘I should try harder with her. Next time we should go to a show or something.’
Dom laughs again. ‘A show? Good god, woman, that’s above and beyond the call of duty.’
As I open the front door Dom puts his arm around my waist, pulling my body back against his.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ he whispers into my ear.
‘I had a bet with myself that it wouldn’t take you long to suggest sex,’ I say, laughing. ‘But less than thirty seconds after they leave! Impressive.’ Dom has a weird thing about not having sex when his mother’s in the house (just his mother, for some reason, sex with his dad around is fine).
‘Oh shut up and get your knickers off,’ he replies, slipping his hand into the waistband of my jeans.
We only make it halfway up the stairs. Afterwards, while we lie there comparing carpet burns, Dom asks about New Year’s Eve.
‘Where is this party exactly? At a bar, I take it?’
‘No, no no, darling. It’s at Karl’s new gallery. Much more glamorous.’
‘Ri-i-i-ght.’ Dom sounds dubious.
‘It’ll be fun,’ I say, kissing the point on his temple from which his sandy hair is fast receding.
‘It’ll be full of terrifyingly cool arty types,’ he grumbles. ‘We won’t fit in.’
‘What do you mean we?’ I ask, struggling to my feet. ‘I’ll fit in just fine.’
Dom grabs me again, pulls me back down beside him. ‘Oh is that right?’
‘It is. In any case, I’m sure Karl will have invited some other geeky and uncool people to keep you company.’
‘Right, bitch, you asked for it,’ he says, running his fingers lightly down my side, sending me into paroxysms of tickle-induced laughter. He doesn’t stop until I beg for mercy.
‘Let that be a lesson to you,’ he says, eventually, wriggling back into his boxer shorts.
‘Lesson learned,’ I assure him breathlessly. ‘But there’s just one thing I ought to say …’
‘What’s that?’
‘I just wanted to tell you that no matter how much I love you, no matter how good you are to me or how well you treat me I will never, ever go to the fucking golf club for New Year’s Eve.’
Chapter Two
New Year’s Eve, 1990
High Wycombe
Resolutions:
1. Start keeping a journal: write every day!
2. Read more! A Clockwork Orange, The Grapes of Wrath, On the Road, also some classics
3. Lose half a stone
4. Volunteer for a charity, do forty-eight-hour famine
5. Kiss Julian Symonds
I WAS GOING to my first-ever proper New Year’s Eve party. Okay, it was at my house – for the first time ever I was being allowed to join in my parents’ annual New Year bash – and okay, most thirteen-year-olds would sooner die than attend a party with their parents and their parents’ friends, I’m well aware, but I had an incentive, and his name was Julian Symonds.
Julian was a couple of years ahead of me at school; he was the son of one of Mum’s nursing friends, he was fifteen years old and he was bloody gorgeous. Tall and skinny with dark hair which was always falling into his huge, brown eyes, he had high cheekbones and long lashes, he wore lots of black and listened to the Velvet Underground, he was into art, he read Rimbaud and the Marquis de Sade, he was languorous, sulky, androgynous, rebellious, dangerous, a smoker. He was divine.
Under normal circumstances, I’m sure Julian would have had far better things to do with his New Year’s Eve than come to a party at my parents’ house, but he