Goodnight, Beautiful: A Novel by Dorothy Koomson

coats.”
    “You don’t have to leave now,” I said. “I’ll be all right getting home by myself. I do it all the time in Oxford.”
    “What kind of friend would I be if I let you go home all alone?” he replied.
    “One who’s as subtle as a brick smacked around your head,” I mumbled as he disappeared into the crowd.
    We got the night bus home and we tried. We really tried to be normal. To be us. But the magic that had showered our day with happiness, fun, laughter and all that hope I had for the future was gone. In its place gestated the uncomfortable creature that had finally been born this morning, and had named itself “Last Night.”
    “You know that you’ll always be my number one girl, yeah?” Mal said to me as we stood by the coach I would be catching, the two of us still and awkward amongst the frantic comings and goings of the coach station.
    I stood on tiptoes, took his face in both hands. “And you’ll always be my number one cutey doggy, yeah?” I replied, shaking his head as I would a dog. I’d started doing that to him when Mum and Dad said we couldn’t get a dog. “What do you need a dog for, we’ve got Malvolio?” Cordy had said. I’d decided the instant she said it that he probably was a pooch in a previous life: I could vividly picture him as a big, gangly Labrador that would bound all over you to cheer you up when you were sad, or would lie mournfully by your side, its features drooping to show it was sad, too, depending on the type of sadness it was.
    We had to joke about it. I had read the whole thing wrong,and if I wasn’t careful, this could come between us. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t feel that way for me. That I wasn’t good enough in his eyes. We had so much else—a shared history, a family, so many years together—that was far more important than some misguided romantic notion of us getting together, having a long-distance relationship for the next two years and then what, getting married? At our age? No, he was right. Friends shouldn’t be lovers. Friends shouldn’t even entertain the idea of it.
    If I could keep doing that, keep rationalizing it, then I would be safe, at least until I got away from London. If I dared to feel about it, for even a fraction of a second, the chasm of pain would open up and swallow me whole. I had to consign it to the realm of the mind. To logic. To seeing the bigger picture. And make a joke of it.
    “Are you getting on this coach, love?” the driver asked.
    “Oh, yes,” I replied. Mal slung my rucksack off his shoulder and handed it carefully to the driver. The middle-aged, portly driver, with his white, short-sleeved shirt and tie, took my bag as though it was the most precious item he’d ever been handed, then flung it into the coach’s luggage compartment, before approaching another couple to ask if they were getting on board. I shook my head and looked away, unable to believe what I’d just seen. The framed photos Aunt Mer gave me would be in pieces, as would the Pyrex bowls of food, while the Vimto bottle Mum had pressed upon me would be leaking sticky liquid all over my clothes. All in all, a wonderful thing to be taking back to Oxford after everything. I could hear Last Night smirking at me.
    “Now, does the cutey doggy want to play a quick game of fetch before I leave, or give me a hug?” I asked in my speaking-to-a-dog voice.
    Rolling his eyes, he came into my open arms. We hugged andI counted the seconds, each one a lifetime, before I could reasonably end this part of the torture. I had to play the game. Be normal. If I tried hard enough to be normal, it would be normal again. Soon. Soon I wouldn’t have to think twice about hugging him, touching him, looking him in the eye.
    “I’ll come see you soon, yeah?” he said as we came out of the hug.
    “No, don’t,” I said.
    His eyes searched mine, desperate to know why I was rejecting him.
    “I know what you’re thinking,” I said, with a huge grin. “And