Forget Me Never

think you have, but it always stays with you.’
    I had realized a lot in that moment. I’d always known Sophie had had pretty rubbish luck in life. She never bleated about it, but over the years I’d picked up enough to know that you don’t bounce back easily from what she’d been through. It messes with your sense of self-worth and your ability to trust. Most people thought Sophie was prickly and had a bad attitude, but I knew better. She looked after herself because she didn’t trust anyone else to.
    I also suddenly knew that it was really important not to give up on her.
    Looking back, I probably should have told someone at the time, but it seemed like I’d be betraying Soph. I knew now the reason she was feeling so rubbish. A couple of months earlier had been the anniversary of her mum and aunt dying and she’d been to the cemetery to visit the graves for the first time. The loss of her mum had really hit her then. She’d started remembering how her life used to be with her mum, and feeling guilty that she’d been taken into care, as if it had been her fault, and she kept having nightmares about cars crashing. I wasn’t sure what to say or that I even understood. I hadn’t known I had it in me to be so patient. Over autumn half-term I made her do stuff with me every day and I called and texted when we weren’t together. By the time December came she had started taking more of an interest in things.
    One day in the Christmas holidays we went to the funfair at Ally Pally and we bumped into some girls from Broom Hill. One of them was Zoe Edwards, whom I couldn’t stand. She’d always picked on Sophie in the kind of way teachers didn’t notice – nasty comments here and there, elbow pokes when Soph walked down the corridor, false rumours.
    ‘Ooh, we’ve interrupted their date,’ Zoe sneered. The other girls tittered as though she’d said something clever. ‘How’s it feel to have a crazy girlfriend, Reece? You could do so much better.’
    ‘Is that an offer?’ I’d asked. ‘In your dreams, Zoe. Why don’t you get lost? Not in the mood for a slagging match.’
    ‘I’m not slagging her off. I’m just, you know, stating the obvious.’
    ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘Come on, Soph.’
    ‘Guess it does look like we’re on a date,’ Sophie said as we walked away. ‘They don’t get how things are.’
    She was talking as if I knew what she meant. Suddenly I wasn’t sure I did. ‘And how is that?’
    Sophie shot me a surprised look. ‘You know – mates.’
    ‘Duh,’ I found myself saying. My reaction was totally at odds with what my heart was saying. ‘What do they know anyway? I want a girl who’s shorter than me, obviously – else I’ll develop a complex.’
    ‘Yeah, and you’ve enough of mine to deal with.’ Sophie nudged me, and I smiled. As we whirled on carousels and shot at plastic ducks and frittered coins on arcade machines I came to the realization that this ‘just mates’ thing wasn’t working for me. If I was honest, it hadn’t been for a while.
    The problem was what to do about it.
    I still wasn’t sure now and it was almost a year on. During the months I hadn’t seen Sophie it had been easy to forget about all that, trick myself into believing it didn’t mean anything. But we had spent enough time together this week for me to be pretty sure those feelings hadn’t gone away.
    Sophie snorted with laughter. Bond had just sent one of his foes flying out of the back of the helicopter, with a typically cheesy one-liner.
    ‘Hey.’ She glanced across. ‘You didn’t laugh. You OK?’
    ‘Uh-huh,’ I said, with a big fake smile.
    Sophie made a face at me. ‘Don’t look OK.’
    I considered telling her. But what good would it do? The thought that I might be interested in her as more than a mate hadn’t even crossed her mind. And I still didn’t understand why she’d cut me out of her life for so many months. Who was to say she wouldn’t do the same again?

SOPHIE
    When I woke up the next morning I wasn’t sure where I was. I could feel soft pillows around my head and smell sweetness in the air. As I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, it came back to me. I was in Reece’s house, and I’d slept better than I had in a long while. I took my time showering, trying out each of the shower gels in the en suite, posh brands, which, to my approval, were all free from animal testing.
    I got out, wrapping myself in a huge fluffy towel that matched the light green tiles,