The Things That Matter Read online

  The Things That Matter

  Andrea Michael

  One More Chapter

  a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

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  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

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  Copyright © Andrea Michael 2021

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  Cover design by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

  Cover photographs © Adrian Muttitt / Arcangel Images (main image) and Shutterstock.com (flowers)

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  Andrea Michael asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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  A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

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  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

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  Source ISBN: 9780008370237

  Ebook Edition © May 2021 ISBN: 9780008370220

  Version: 2021-04-23

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  Content notice: miscarriage

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you for reading…

  You will also love…

  About the Author

  Also by Andrea Michael

  One More Chapter...

  About the Publisher

  For my husband:

  Above all else, adventures.

  Damaged people love you like you are a crime scene before a crime has even been committed.

  They keep their running shoes beside their souls every night, one eye open in case things change whilst they sleep.

  — Nikita Gill

  Prologue

  2006

  Aylesbury Prison and Young Offenders Institute

  He looks different.

  That’s all I can think as I see him walk out of the prison and into the fresh air. His dark brown hair is cut short, and he’s muscled, like he’s a troubled American teen from the movies, returning from military school.

  He holds himself differently, taking up space. Squared shoulders, like he’s daring anyone to bump into him or look at him the wrong way.

  The Dan I knew before was lithe, his sixteen-year-old body showing only the faintest muscle beneath pale skin. Now, even though it’s only been a few months, he looks… he looks like a man.

  It’s happened so gradually, I shouldn’t be shocked. But it’s different seeing him out here in the world.

  I’ve been visiting every week since he was sent here, bunking off lessons whenever I needed to. School have been pretty understanding about ‘everything that went on’ and if I’ve learnt anything from my mother, it’s that you’ve got to take advantage of that kindness when it comes along. People don’t give it often. It’s reserved for when something really bad happens.

  The journey from Luton took me about an hour and a half each way; three buses and a walk either end. But I didn’t mind. All I wanted to do was see him. To smile so he’d know I was okay, to tell him funny stories and keep his mind off everything. To give him a countdown of the days until he was out and back to me again.

  I put every last bit of energy I had into making him happy, or as happy as he could be in there. I counted his smiles on each visit, collecting them like it was a video game, a little ‘ding’ in my head when I made one appear.

  Dan was trying hard for me too, I knew. He didn’t ask me about the foster home they’d tried to put me in after everything happened, because there was nothing he could do. When I told him Sharon next door had agreed to take me in, at least until I could finish my GCSEs, he breathed a sigh of relief and his smile was like sunshine.

  Three months. It didn’t seem that much, not really. But for a nice boy from a nice family, who’d done nothing wrong, three months seemed like a lifetime. Especially when the nice family didn’t want to know Dan after everything happened – they couldn’t handle the embarrassment.

  People like us don’t do things like that, Daniel. Your father’s business, his contacts, you know how people are. How they talk. We can’t risk it, you must understand. Be reasonable, Daniel.

  I’d been there when his mother said it, when she explained why she wasn’t coming to court the day he was sentenced. How he didn’t hear anything from them, not his parents or his brother or sister. I didn’t ask about his family any more. We were each other’s family now, that was the promise we made.

  He looks across the yard at me in the bright daylight and holds up a hand to shield his eyes from the sun. He looks… strong. Strong and capable and yet, somehow like a stranger. Fear clutches at me, just for a moment. Has he changed? Have our plans, a teenage romance and big dreams of escape and new starts, have they been foolish? Are we just stupid kids like everybody said?

  ‘How will you make money Natasha? Love doesn’t feed an empty belly, or pay the gas bill,’ Sharon said this morning when I packed my backpack with the few things I owned and hoisted it onto my shoulders. I knew I wouldn’t be taking the three buses back to Luton again.

  ‘I know how to survive, don’t worry about that.’

  She hadn’t looked convinced. I wanted to tell her I’d been looking after myself for most of my life. That it had been years of rifling through coat pockets at school for change to buy dinner, or making a Mars bar last two days. I knew all about food banks and clothes exchanges and every single way there was of surviving. And I would teach Daniel. If he wanted to learn.

  Daniel, who was used to living in a four bedroom detached home, and had never once considered that he wouldn’t have a hot meal and a pressed school uniform. Who had never gone to bed hungry and angry. At least, not before prison.

  He never blamed me. Even as we stood in that court room and the judge declared he was guilty of manslaughter, even as his face lost all colour and his knees buckled. It took less than a second for Dan to compose himself, smile at me and hold me close as he told me it was worth it.

  In that moment I had promised myself that I would do everything I could to make it up to him, to make it true. To be worth it.

  Dan approaches me, suddenly within arm’s reach, and he smiles that same soft smile. That hasn’t disappeared. Neither have the butterflies in my stomach or that voice in my gut that says, ‘This one, this one is for you.’

  We stand looking at each other awkwardly.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re finally here.’

  ‘Me neither. The outside world. First thing I want to do is eat a huge steak and chips. Or a burger. Oh, or Thai food!’ He grins at me, those beautiful blue eyes still warm and lov
ing, unchanged. He’s still here, he’s still mine. ‘Actually, no, this is the first thing I want to do.’

  He kisses me, and I know. I know I’ve been right all along. That every time I fell asleep on the bus home from the prison and missed my stop, or every time one of the other inmates had leered at me during visiting hours, or the number of times Dan’s mother had called me a ‘grubby little bitch who ruined everything’ whenever I pleaded with her to visit her son. It was worth it, it had all been worth it.

  Dan takes the backpack from me, putting it over his shoulder, and taking my hand in his as we start walking in no particular direction. Just, away. Our fingers interlink the way they always did, his thumb tracing my palm. Even that simple gesture feels like home.

  ‘So, what now? Where do we go?’ He kisses my hand.

  ‘Anywhere we want,’ I say, desperate to be that little ray of sunshine, to make this moment everything he’s been dreaming about for the last three months. ‘Anywhere we want. We go and we build a life. Where do you want to go?’

  ‘Anywhere! Somewhere brilliant. Shall we flip a coin? Find a globe to spin?’

  I want to tell him it won’t be easy. That we’ll have to work and struggle. That he’s never really had to think about it before. But that sounds negative. In many ways I’m so much older than him.

  I need to give him the option. I stop walking.

  ‘There’s still time to back out, Dan. Go home, apologise? See if they’ve changed their minds?’

  He tilts his head as if it’s a trick question. Those blue eyes meet mine and he shrugs.

  ‘I’ve had as much time as they have to think about this. If they don’t want me, then I don’t want them. Let’s… let’s go live good lives, Taz. Great lives! And one day they’ll come crawling back and I’ll tell them to do one. Because we’re each other’s family now, that’s the deal, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  He’s still in there, the dreamer, the one who sees the good, who sees the light. The one who reaches for happiness above all else. They didn’t take that away.

  We’re going to be okay.

  Better than okay.

  We’re going to be perfect.

  Chapter One

  2020

  London

  ‘Are you almost ready to go?’

  Angela raised a perfect eyebrow and tapped the Champagne flute with her nail. She was annoyed with me, that much was clear.

  ‘What’s your hurry?’ I said. ‘Pre-drinks were your idea, so we could catch up. I haven’t seen you in forever.’

  ‘And whose fault is that?’ Angie flicked her dark hair over her shoulder and fixed me with a stare.

  ‘Well, you run a tech empire and I don’t work, so I’m going to say yours.’ I smiled at my friend, bumping her with my hip. I felt like I was doing well, keeping the smile on my face, staying light and happy. It was exhausting, but I was managing it.

  I was determined that today I was going to do better, be better. I was going to be the friend Angie deserved.

  I leaned across the kitchen island and topped up her glass, willing her to let it go. But that wasn’t Angie’s style. We’d been friends for about four years, ever since she waltzed into a 6 a.m. yoga class still in her clothes from the night before, fell asleep on the mat for the whole hour, snoring loudly, and without a whiff of shame thanked the teacher for such a ‘rejuvenating savasanna.’

  I thought she was absolutely mad, and really we made no sense as friends except for the fact that we both loved shopping in charity shops, mocking the rich and famous, and proving people wrong. Although Angela, as some sort of heiress, was kind of at a disadvantage with the rich and famous thing – they were her people.

  But these days we moved in the same circles and sometimes you really needed someone who was willing to join in mocking the woman who spent fifteen grand on a dog house for her toy poodles. You just needed back-up. A spark of reality in with the excess.

  ‘You took a call from the Wah Wah centre when I arrived and were gone for forty minutes!’

  ‘Don’t call it that.’

  One of the few things Angie and Dan agreed on was that I spent too much time helping on the grief helpline. They thought it wasn’t good for me.

  But I was helping people. That’s what they couldn’t understand, that I desperately needed to do something useful, something good. Something that wasn’t sitting around miserably feeling guilty.

  We could have Champagne any time. We could spend any day we wanted sitting in my huge Hampstead flat and drinking expensive wine out of expensive glasses and talking about things that didn’t matter. The people who called me had real problems.

  ‘They needed help, I was there. I’m sorry I ignored you, okay? I’ve put the phone away and we’re focusing on you.’ I tried to soothe her and Angela snorted into her glass.

  ‘It’s your birthday, moron! We’re meant to be focusing on you!’

  ‘Well, I’d quite happily skip it, thanks.’ I smiled tightly, trying to make it sound like a joke. ‘Who’s excited for thirty, anyway?’

  I sounded ungrateful, I knew. I was trying so hard to seem okay again after everything. To have enough time pass that people didn’t tilt their heads and wince when they asked how I was. To not have them exclaim in those pitying tones that it was really awful, what happened. And then you have to say sorry, or thank you, or some other weird thing to make the conversation end.

  And then if you’re me, you take your drink and you hide in the toilet until your husband comes and gets you, makes excuses and takes you home.

  Unsurprisingly, Dan hadn’t taken me out much in the last few months. I can’t quite be trusted on the corporate dinner party circuit anymore. The offers that used to pour in, ski trips to Chamonix and weekends in Monaco, they’ve dried up. I can’t say I’m disappointed. But I think Dan might be.

  The only person I liked out of that group was Angela anyway, and she still dropped by every week with huge takeaway cups of coffee to chat and moan about how awful they all were. At the beginning I didn’t even say anything, just gripped the coffee cup with both hands and stared at her face, but it was honestly the best thing anyone did for me. Just came into my day, asked nothing of me, and told me stories.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe who was there, Taz, this woman was wearing so much gold she may as well have been carried in on a lounger.’

  ‘Taz, honestly, I think everyone got food poisoning. Must have been the sushi. I heard later in the evening there was projectile vomiting!’

  ‘Oh god, babe, you know Nicola’s best friend Yvonne? Her wanker banker husband had an affair with the cleaner and now they’ve run off to Mauritius!’

  She didn’t require anything from me. She didn’t talk about life before. She didn’t talk about Dan, who still had to go and build his career and play nice for his daddy. Show him that nepotism really did pay, that it was worth it to let him back in, to promote him to that nice corner office, even with his council estate wife.

  I’m not quite over it yet, in case that wasn’t obvious.

  The huge bouquet of birthday flowers Dan sent me was on the side in the kitchen, and every time I looked at them I noticed some other extravagant detail. They were huge, colourful, audacious things. Exactly the kind of thing Dan would have bought me when we were younger, if we’d had a spare seventy quid to spend on things that weren’t food or rent.

  It made me feel better, that he picked something fun. He’d been tip-toeing around me for so long that seeing something bold felt hopeful. The card said, ‘To my darling Taz, happy birthday. You deserve all the good things this year. All my love, Dan.’

  Something in there hinted at pity and survival, just a little, but I wasn’t going to dwell. I was incredibly lucky, I had a lot to be grateful for. Thoughtful husband, beautiful home, good friend looking at me like she was about to drop a bombshell…

  ‘What?’ Please don’t be pregnant.

  ‘I feel like I should tell you something, but Dan to
ld me not to…’ Angela untangled one of the huge gold hoop earrings stuck in her hair, and I snorted, relieved. Poor Ange. Never could keep a secret. And my lovely Dan, always plotting and planning, as if he’d let my birthday pass quietly, even this year.

  ‘He’s throwing me a surprise party.’

  She raised an eyebrow, ‘You knew?’

  ‘No, but it’s a Dan way to approach things.’ To try and fix things. ‘He’s a go big or go home type. My husband has never found an over the top gesture he didn’t like.’

  Angela looked at me like I’d grown two heads. ‘Taz, you hate big events and fancy parties. You hate having to dress up and pretend to be interested in the stock market whilst frat boys in suits look at your boobs and your husband pretends he likes these people. It’s why we get along so well.’

  I laughed and shrugged, sipping my wine. ‘I know.’

  ‘So why wouldn’t you be annoyed?’

  ‘Because he wants to do something nice for me. Even if I would rather stay home in my pyjamas and eat pizza—’

  ‘—which he knows because you’ve been married since you were children—’

  ‘Babe, this is how Dan shows love. He likes to make a big show, he feels like it means more if he has an audience.’