Page 109 of In the Same Boat

‘Do you think you could have that with Hank?’ I ask.

‘I doubt that now,’ she replies with a sigh. ‘What do you think?’

‘I think, if you like him, you can see past all of that,’ I tell her. ‘I think you can figure anything out, make anything work, with the right plan of action.’

‘It felt real to me, even if we were pretending at first,’ she says. ‘But the lies are a different issue. When I found out about the yacht, about him not owning it, I felt so foolish. Not because of the money. I don’t care about the money.’

‘I know,’ I reassure her.

‘It made me wonder what else wasn’t real,’ she says. ‘But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you about the mixed messages in that respect.’

Something in my chest tightens. I don’t really want to talk about this part now. Mum and I are good; that’s all I really care about. Better to get it out of the way, right? Leave my excess baggage here on the plane, go back to my real life much lighter.

A week ago, I would have said that if something starts fake, it stays fake. But I’m not sure that’s true now – I’m not sure if we were pretending at all, to be honest.

I can still feel his hand on the back of my neck. I can see flashbacks of the two of us in the club toilets; I can literally still smell his aftershave on my hair. It’s hard to move on, when he’s still on me.

‘Sammie…’ she prompts me.

‘It’s more complicated with Nico and me,’ I insist.

She waits. Her patience has always been her most effective weapon against me. When I was a teenager, it made me confess things I hadn’t even done yet.

‘Yeah, okay, I did really like him,’ I admit. ‘But that doesn’t mean he was right for me.’

‘The only part I care about is that you really liked him,’ she says. ‘But… is it really past tense?’

I sigh.

‘I don’t know what tense it is.’

But the feelings are present enough to hurt.

‘He’s not my type, so it doesn’t matter.’

Mum raises an eyebrow.

‘Isn’t he?’

I shake my head.

‘Handsome, funny, clever, clearly besotted with you…’

‘Mum…’

‘Sorry, darling, but it’s true,’ she says.

‘That’s everyone’s type,’ I point out. ‘But I want someone stable, someone serious, someone I can settle with.’

‘Nico seemed stable.’

‘He was like a big kid,’ I remind her. ‘Hank made it sound like he needed looking after. Like he wasn’t the settling-down type. Like he needed a woman to sort him out – I didn’t want to be his mum, and that’s what it sounded like he needed. I have enough projects at work, thanks.’

‘Darling, Nico isn’t a project, and he very much has his life together,’ she corrects me.

‘Is that why he still lives with his dad?’ I reply.

‘Nico doesn’t live with Hank,’ she says. ‘Hank lives with Nico.’