Ten Years On

First published in Great Britain in year of 2012 by

Quercus

55 Baker Street

7th Floor, South Block

London W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2012 by Alice Peterson

The moral right of Alice Peterson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

eBook ISBN 978 0 85738 496 6

Print ISBN 978 0 85738 325 9

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Also by Alice Peterson

Fiction

Monday to Friday Man

You, Me and Him

Look the World in the Eye

Non-Fiction

Another Alice

M’Coben, Place of Ghosts

To Robert Cross

(1925–2011)

His reassuring voice continues to encourage me to write.

PROLOGUE

New Year’s Eve, Winchester

‘Ten, nine, eight …’ we all shout in Kitty’s crowded sitting room. Kitty is my oldest school friend.

‘Three, two, ONE …’

I hear Big Ben chiming on the television in the background. ‘I love you, Becca,’ Olly says, lifting me into his arms.

I’m laughing, so happy. ‘I love you too.’

Soon the television is turned off, replaced by music. There’s drunken dancing on the sitting-room floor, everyone singing. I hear fireworks.

From the other side of the room, I catch Joe watching Olly and me dance. I beckon him over. He smiles, before being pulled away by one of Kitty’s admiring friends.

*

It’s three in the morning when Olly, Joe and I stagger back to my parents’ home. We cut through the water meadows, the river glistening at night. I’m singing, ‘Happy new year.’ Olly puts a hand over my mouth, tells me we’ll be arrested.

‘That could be fun,’ I say, pushing him away. ‘Who was that girl you were with all night, Joe?’

Olly catches my arm, steers me away from the edge of the river.

‘Yeah, I saw you too,’ he says. ‘She was cute, Lawson.’

‘What’s her name? Or can’t you remember?’ I hiccup.

‘Juliet, actually.’

Olly turns to Joe. ‘You should have stayed, Romeo.’ Kitty had urged us to crash there for the night, but Olly and I wanted to head home. My parents are away and my sister, Pippa, is out, so we have the house to ourselves.

‘Romeo, Romeo …’ I pretend to look for Joe from my balcony.

‘I didn’t feel like staying.’ He shrugs. ‘I took her number though.’

‘Wherefore art …’

‘Shut up, Becca.’ ‘…

thou Romeo?’ I finish, twirling myself round the next lamp post.

‘Christ, she’s a liability,’ laughs Olly.

‘Let’s pretend we don’t know her,’ suggests Joe.

Back home, we head outside, deciding another drink and cigarette are needed before bed, along with a packet of chocolate biscuits. We sit, huddled, on the bench in the stone-paved area of my parents’ garden. I’m in the middle. We raise our drinks to each other. ‘To us,’ Olly says.

‘To us,’ Joe and I repeat.

Olly, Joe and I share a flat in Clifton, Bristol. We’re in our second year at university. Joe’s reading medicine; Olly and I English. Olly and I have been going out for nearly a year. I started to take real notice of him in the second term, after I’d heard his band, ‘Stanley’, playing in the student union bar. He played the piano. He was tall, slim, wore baggy jeans and somehow made a navy cardigan look cool. His hair was light brown with soft strands that flicked across his forehead. As I watched him play, every now and then he’d turn to the lead singer, flaming red hair and wearing the shortest black dress with lace-patterned tights, and he’d smile, mischief in his eyes. Suddenly I wanted to be her and was determined to attract his attention. Before our next English tutorial I washed and styled my long thick hair, applied
foundation, blusher, mascara, lip-plumper … wore my suede miniskirt, Wonderbra, low-cut top and cowboy boots. I love those boots – they work every time. Of course, all this grooming meant I was late. I rushed into the crowded lecture room with one other latecomer, saw a seat free, and, oh my God, it was next to Olly. It was fate! I flew towards the desk, plunged my books on the table, dived into the seat …

‘Back to Bristol soon,’ says Joe half-heartedly.

‘Let’s not think ’bout that just yet,’ I say. ‘Ugh. Work.’ I gulp down some water.

‘You don’t work, Becca,’ Joe points out in that cool, controlled way of his. Even when he’s been drinking, rarely does he seem drunk.

‘I do.’

‘Well, not very hard,’ Olly encourages Joe.

I ignore them laughing at me. ‘What’s the best thing that’s happened last year?’ I prod Olly’s shoulder. ‘You go first.’

‘Playing in a few gigs, going out with you.’

‘Ah,’ I sigh, kissing him. ‘Me too.’

‘Oh God.’ Joe stubs out his cigarette prematurely. ‘I think I’m off.’ He also lives in Winchester, though neither Olly nor I have visited his home over the Christmas break. He says it’s about as relaxing as visiting the dentist.

‘Sorry, Joe, no more public displays of affection,’ Olly promises him, pushing him back down on to the bench. ‘Stay the night.’

‘How about you, Joe? Top thing that’s happened?’ I ask.

He runs a hand through his thick dark hair. ‘Meeting Olly.’

Olly smiles. ‘That was a good night.’

Olly had met Joe at the beginning of our second year. ‘Moving into your flat,’ Joe continues. He had needed somewhere to live; we had a spare room … ‘Realizing I’d met a top guy.’

‘Shall I leave you two to it?’ I say, feeling like a gooseberry.

Joe turns to me. ‘And a top girl.’

‘Group hug,’ I suggest, throwing my arms around both of them. We sit like this for a while, happy, gazing at the stars.

‘What d’you think we’ll be doing in ten years?’ I ask, finally breaking the silence.

‘Ten years on?’ Olly repeats, as if it’s impossible to see that far ahead.

‘It’ll come round quickly, I bet.’ I cross my arms. ‘Before you know it, we’ll be fifty,’ I exclaim, as if fifty is on the verge of false teeth and decrepitude.

Joe shakes his head. ‘Can’t imagine being fifty.’

‘Ten years …’ Olly thinks out loud. ‘OK, I’ll live in a London pad with a view ’cross the river, I’ll be a famous writer, or maybe I’ll be the next Mick Jagger or Bob Dylan …’

‘Take drugs and trash hotel rooms,’ Joe says.

‘I’ll be far away from here,’ I predict, thinking of myself as a podgy little girl, long hair in plaits, on the top floor of my parents’ house, painting day after day in the school holidays. ‘I want to travel the world, go to India, China, Mexico …’

‘Uh-oh, she’s off.’ Olly rolls his eyes.

‘I’ll live in Florence or Venice … speak
Italiano
,’ I say, exaggerating my accent, ‘I’ll learn a ton of languages, and I’ll definitely be painting. My work will sell for millions! You, Joe?’ I nudge his arm.

Olly and I wait. Joe could do anything he wanted. Like my sister, he’s talented at sport; he excels at rugby and has the muscles to show for it. He’s handsome in a rugged way: dark hair, stubble, moody grey eyes. He drives women mad because they never know what he thinks of them. Joe has the ability to make you feel like you’re the only person he cares about in the world, but in the next moment you’re nothing, no one. Christ, I’d hate to be in love with him. I’d never eat, I think to
myself as I grab a biscuit. In the short space of time that I’ve known him, already he’s broken hearts. Take that girl tonight. Juliet. She’ll be sitting by the phone all day, waiting for him to call. ‘Ten years, Joe. What d’you think you’ll be doing?’

‘Ruling the world.’ He lights another cigarette. ‘I don’t like doing this, Becca.’

‘Spoilsport.’

Olly ends up agreeing with Joe. ‘Let’s face it,’ he says. ‘None of us know what’s going to happen tomorrow, let alone in ten years’ time.’

1

Ten Years Later

‘He will live on in spirit, forever with us,’ Kitty says tearfully. After her reading, she returns to her seat.

Olly’s mother, Carolyn, sits next to me, my father on my other side. I stare ahead. This can’t be happening. I want to stand up and scream, tell my family and friends to go. There’s been a terrible mistake.

‘Mrs Sullivan?’ I see the policeman standing at our front door that evening. It was late, about eight o’clock, and I couldn’t understand where Olly was, since he’d promised to be home by six thirty. ‘I’ll pick up a bottle of wine on the way,’ he’d said in his message.

‘May I come in?’ the policeman asked.

He refused a cup of tea.

‘I’m so sorry, I’m afraid I have bad news,’ he said.
‘Your husband was involved in a road accident earlier this afternoon.’

Carolyn touches my arm, encouraging me to stand for the next hymn, ‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’. She looks frail, her fine brown hair scooped back from her face with a comb, tears in her pale-blue eyes. Her skin is ashen. Halfway through the verse she grips my hand, as if we will get through this together. But any moment now, I will wake up and the only touch I shall feel is Olly’s arms around me. I’ll be able to tell him how vivid my dream had all seemed; how the church was packed with friends and family. How sad Olly’s father Victor had looked in his suit and glasses. He appeared smaller, greyer, stooped in grief, and I saw deep regret in his eyes. It was too late for him to get to know his son. There was a price he’d paid for putting work before his family.

‘You’re making it sound scarily real,’ Olly will say.

We’ll laugh and hold on to one another, kiss, make love, stay in bed for at least another hour. Then we’ll go for a walk in the park, enjoy a lazy lunch, and I won’t take anything for granted again.

I am brought back to reality when I hear the sound of footsteps echoing against the stone floor. Simon, Olly’s elder brother, is walking to the front of the church,
clutching notes. He’s a bigger build than Olly, darker hair. He gave up the police force to move his wife and two children to Northumberland a year ago, to be closer to Carolyn and Victor. ‘He was always the action man, and the bossy one,’ Olly used to tell me.

I like him. He’s brave. I could not stand up there today.

‘Olly was the musical one in our family,’ he begins. ‘He started learning the piano when he was six. There was I, busy playing army and building dens in the garden when Olly was playing Chopin and composing music in his head. His other passion was writing.’