Charlotte Butterfield - Crazy Little Thing Called Love

‘It’s very you.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, your personality shines through everywhere you look. I love it.’ And Tasha meant it. She hadn’t had much of an input at all into the decoration of her own home. As a well-meaning surprise, her husband Alex had thrown an obscene amount of money at one of London’s most well-connected interior designers who had transformed the once tired townhouse into a glittering show home. The end result was stunning, just if not exactly to her taste; but there was no way she could have acted anything other than over-awed and incredibly grateful at the big reveal, such were Alex’s good intentions.

Tasha ran a finger along the spines of Leila’s books – even having books on display would be wonderful, but Patricia-the-designer said they would look untidy and mess up her scheme. Her scheme. So, what books they had were hidden behind the ‘concealed storage’ doors. Apart from the massively heavy hardback book on Chanel that was gathering dust on the big glass coffee table. Glass. In a house with three kids in it. That was a clever purchase Patricia.

‘Honestly Leila, this is perfect for you, it’s just beautiful.’ Tasha said as they stepped out into the garden. Leila had flicked the outdoor gas heater into life and despite it being early February, it was a beautifully crisp day. Tasha didn’t need too much persuading to celebrate it being a Saturday without her kids by indulging in a glass or two of the champagne she’d brought with her. She reached over and touched her sister’s wine glass with hers. ‘I’m buying you champagne flutes as a housewarming present by the way.’

‘But I don’t drink champagne normally.’

‘Well then, at least you’ll have them ready for the next time I come over,’ Tasha smiled. The sisters were sat at the little round white wrought iron table in the garden. What was left of the afternoon’s sunlight was dappling the flagstones with specks of light. ‘You seem very together, considering.’

‘Considering, what?’ asked Leila.

‘Freddie. I know you liked him.’

‘Not anymore.’

‘Well no, obviously, but it’s ok to be honest with yourself and grieve for a future you’re not going to have.’

‘Wow, a future I’m not going to have! Alright, Ms Doom and Gloom, I’m not terminally ill!’

‘I know! I just mean, I know you, and in your head you’d have arrived in India thinking that he was going to twirl you around until your feet left the floor’ – at this, Leila looked a little sheepish – ‘before he booked the rest of the week off work and whisked you to the Taj Mahal where you’d get photographed on the same bench where Princess Diana sat, and then he’d take you to a Maharaja’s palace where he’d booked a candlelit meal on a roof terrace festooned with fairy lights, which is where he’d propose. Am I close?’

Leila stuck her nose in the air. ‘Not remotely.’

‘I had it spot on, didn’t I?’

There was no point pretending otherwise to her sister, she could always see straight through her.

‘But he wasn’t right for you Leila,’ Tasha continued earnestly. ‘You do this, you hop from boyfriend to boyfriend, pinning unrealistic expectations onto each of them. Writing the script in your head of what you want them to say and how you want them to act, and if you keep doing that you’ll always end up being disappointed.’

‘Ok, oh wise one. How have you stayed married to Alex all these years then? What’s the secret to finding and keeping the right one?’ That stopped Tasha in her tracks. Running through Tasha’s mind was the old predicament, to tell the truth or the heavily edited soft-focus version she usually wheeled out. The trouble was, Leila was the only one in the family who knew exactly how she and Alex got together seventeen years ago, and had kept the secret too, so fobbing her off with platitudes almost never worked. If their parents ever found out that their daughter had been Alex’s mistress for a couple of years and was the reason for the breakdown of his marriage they’d be horrified. They didn’t even know their son-in-law had been married before, let alone that he’d got Tasha pregnant which is why he had to divorce his first wife to marry her. But, that was fifteen years ago, so absolutely no point raking it all up now.

‘Top me up before I answer that,’ Tasha held out her empty glass, ‘and can I just say how impressed I am that you have an ice bucket.’

‘Thank you. Now stop changing the subject. You and Alex, what’s your secret?’

Tasha sighed. ‘Oh God Leila, I don’t know. We don’t expect too much from each other I guess.’

‘That’s romantic.’

Tasha laughed. ‘I mean, we don’t conjure up ideals that we know the other one can’t live up to. We just get on with it, and have a lovely life, and don’t think too much about the stuff we can’t change.’

‘Like what?’

But that was it. The shutters had come down and Tasha shook her head, ‘Look at me, getting all deep and serious. But you need to move on from Freddie Leila, you’ve been hibernating here since you got back from India and it’s not right or healthy.’

‘I have not been hibernating! You don’t see me sat here in tracksuit bottoms and unwashed hair sipping super-strength cider through a straw do you?’

‘Well, no, but you missed the last family Sunday roast, and that’s unheard of.’

The once-a-month family roast dinner was sacrosanct. It had had a strict compulsory attendance order slapped on it for as long as Leila could remember. Making the trek from her university in Bristol down to Dartmouth every month for a slap-up free feed was a welcome respite from her usual daily diet of Super Noodles and breakfast cereals, but now she lived in London, the journey, and the time away from her friends, and boyfriend, when she had one, was a bit annoying sometimes. Not that she needed to worry about having a boyfriend now. Or ever again.

She knew that it was a cop-out, but heading down to her parents’ hotel in Devon to be guest of honour at a pity-party just a couple of weeks after the Jaipur fiasco was not something Leila wanted to put herself through. Her mother Judy would no doubt have had her head on the side for her entire visit, while repeating the words ‘plenty of fish’ and her dad would simultaneously give her a smile and a wide berth should her emotions suddenly get the better of her. Her brother Marcus would have found it impossible not to make lots of barbed references to her disastrous love life, and while she normally would have batted these back quickly and effortlessly, this latest dating catastrophe had affected her more than any of the others. Not that she was able to say that out loud yet.

‘So are you here as Mum’s spy to report back on the state of my sanity then?’ Leila asked.

‘No! Not at all! Not really. No. Well, maybe a bit. But mainly I wanted to see my little sister and offer my shoulder, should you need it. It’s ok to show your emotions you know Leila, you don’t need to pretend everything’s alright, when it’s not.’

Later that afternoon, when the sun had disappeared for the day, two empty champagne bottles were upended in the ice bucket and Tasha had reluctantly left, Leila thought about what her sister had said. She was known amongst her friends as the Bounce Back Queen, never letting anything get her down, being ridiculously cheerful in the face of adversity, but she absolutely never wanted to feel as stupid as she did leaving that hotel in Jaipur again. It was mid-afternoon on Christmas Day in England when she had skyped her parents from India. Her mum, dad, sister, brother, nephew and nieces all squashed their faces onto the small screen, colourful cracker hats adorning each one of them. She should have been there. She should have been working her way through her dad’s wine cellar with them, playing silly board games and listening to Radio Devon’s festive party mix. But instead she spent the day alone, huddled on a grimy corner of the airport praying for a standby ticket to get her home.