Loveless(76)

Unfortunately, Gran liked to pry. ‘And what about friends? Have you made any nice friends?’ She leant towards me, patting me slyly on the leg. ‘Or met any nice young men? I bet there are lots of lovely boys in Durham.’

I didn’t hate Gran for being like this. It wasn’t her fault. She had been raised to believe that it was a girl’s primary aim in life to get married and have a family. She had done just that when she was my age, and I think she felt very fulfilled because of it. Fair enough. You do you.

But that didn’t stop me from being deeply, deeply annoyed.

‘Actually,’ I said, trying as hard as I could to keep the irritation out of my voice, ‘I’m not really interested in getting a boyfriend.’

‘Oh, well,’ she said, patting my leg again, ‘plenty of time, my love. Plenty of time.’

But my time is now, I wanted to scream. My life is happening right now.

My family then launched into a conversation about how easy it was to get into a relationship at uni. In the corner, I spotted my cousin Ellis, sitting quietly with a glass of wine and one leg crossed over the other. She caught my stare, smiled a small smile, and rolled her eyes at the group around us. I smiled back. Maybe, at least, I would have an ally.

Ellis was thirty-four and used to be a model. A legit fashion model who did runway shows and magazine adverts. She gave that up in her mid-twenties and used the money she’d saved to spend a couple of years painting, which, as it turned out, she was very good at. She’s been a professional artist ever since.

I only saw her a couple of times a year, but she always caught up with me when we did see each other, asking me how school was, how my friends were, if there’d been any recent developments in my life. I’d always liked her.

I don’t know when I started to notice how Ellis was sort of the butt of the joke in our family. Every time she and Gran were in the same room, Gran would manage to drag the conversation back to the fact that she wasn’t married yet and hadn’t provided the family with any cute babies for them to coo over. Mum always spoke about her like she had some sort of tragic life, just because she lived by herself and had never had a long-term relationship.

I’d thought she had a super-cool life. But I guess I had always wondered whether she was happy. Or whether she was sad and alone, desperately wishing for romance, just like I had been.

‘No boyfriend, then?’ Ellis asked me as I slumped down next to her in the conservatory that evening.

‘Tragically, no,’ I said.

‘Sounding a little sarcastic there.’

‘Maybe so.’

Ellis smiled and shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about Gran. She’s been saying the same things to me for the past fifteen years. She’s just scared she’s going to die without a great-grandchild.’

I chuckled, even though this was something I thought about and felt a little bad about. I didn’t want Gran to die unhappy.

‘So …’ Ellis continued. ‘There haven’t been any … girlfriends? Instead?’

It took a moment for me to realise that she didn’t mean ‘girlfriend’ in the platonic sense of the word. She was asking me if I was gay.

Which, you know, massive props to Ellis. If I had been gay, this would have been a bloody amazing moment for me.

‘Um, no,’ I said. ‘Not really interested in girlfriends either.’

Ellis nodded. For a moment she looked like she was going to ask something else, but then she just said, ‘Fancy a bit of Cuphead?’ So we turned on the Xbox and played Cuphead until everyone went home or went to bed.





The Warrs are one of those terrible families where Christmas Day present-opening is banned until the late afternoon, but that year I didn’t mind too much, having other things on my mind. I hadn’t asked for anything in particular, so ended up with a big stack of books, an assortment of bath products I’d probably never use, and a sweatshirt from Mum featuring the phrase ‘Fries before guys’. The family had a good laugh about that one.

After presents, the grandparents all fell asleep in the conservatory, Mum got into an intense chess match against Jonathan while Dad and Rachel prepared the tea. Ellis and I played a bit of Mario Kart before I snuck off to my bedroom to chill out and check my phone.

I opened my Facebook message chat with Pip.

Georgia Warr

merry christmas!! i love you, hope you had a good day yesterday xxxxx It was still unread. I’d been drunk when I sent it midway through Christmas dinner. Maybe she just hadn’t seen it yet.

I checked her Instagram. Pip’s family celebrated Christmas primarily on Christmas Eve, and she’d been posting a lot of Instagram stories. She’d posted a photo in the early hours of the morning – her family walking along the street on their way back from Midnight Mass.

i fell asleep in church lol

And she’d posted another photo half an hour ago of her in her family kitchen, putting a doughball into her mouth.

leftover bu?uelos get the FUCK inside my belly

I thought about responding but couldn’t think of a funny thing to say.

Since she posted that half an hour ago, she had probably seen my message on her phone. She was just ignoring me.

She still hated me, then.

I was tucked up in bed by 10 p.m. Overall, not a bad Christmas Day, despite having lost my best friends and the way my singleness was becoming an ongoing family joke.