Still Thinking of You Read Free

the essence of these people. She filled in the details with wishful thinking. She expected that the guys would be like Rich (although not as cute), they’d be charming and clever and funny and sporty. And she imagined that Kate and Mia would be like huge treasure chests – not only would they have interesting nuggets of information on Rich, but Tash just knew that she’d have two brand-new best friends as well.
    Rich decided to throw a dinner party to get everyone together and to celebrate their engagement. Despite his friends agreeing that it was a ‘fabulous idea’ and that they ‘couldn’t wait to meet Tash’ and were ‘almost breathless with anticipation’, it took six weeks to coordinate diaries and finally fix a date that was mutually convenient. Tash didn’t understand the problem; when her friends wanted to get together they just did so. They shopped, or played CDs and drank tea together. They didn’t have to coordinate diaries, and nor did they do anything elaborate in terms of catering. Usually they’d order a takeaway; often they’d make do with a packet of Kit Kats. Still, people did things differently, and she was cool with that. Life would be dull if everyone were the same. After all, it was exciting and out of the ordinary, throwing a proper dinner party with napkins and three courses, and separate wine glasses for red and white wine. And while Tash was a little bit daunted by the fact that she felt like her mum, as she arranged flowers and put shiny, black olives into a little bowl, she took comfort in the fact that Rich was acting like her dad. He’d spent the afternoon washing his car, and now he was decanting red wine to allow it to breathe. Tash wasn’t fond of olives; she didn’t really believe anyone was. It was her secret belief that people trained themselves to like olives because they were supposed to be sophisticated. Olives were the thirty-something equivalent to learning to smoke or having your ears pierced. So she bought a multi-pack of Walkers crisps from the garage, just in case.
    Tash took great pains in selecting her outfit for the dinner party; after all, it was sort of her engagement party. She’d dismissed the idea of keeping on her old pair of jeans and a T-shirt, the outfit she’d normally slob about in on a Saturday night, as Rich had spent nearly 200 quid in Tesco and a further fifty in Majestic Wine. This evening wasn’t a slob-out type of affair.
    It had been a very warm day and Tash was feeling 100 per cent summer, so she changed into a floaty, floral dress and painted her toenails a pretty pink to match. She looked in the mirror in Rich’s bathroom. Typical boy, he didn’t have a full-length mirror anywhere in his house, so she had to stand on the loo seat to get a half-decent view.
    The dress didn’t work.
    She looked like she was about to meet her boyfriend’s parents, not his mates. In fact, contrary to general expectations, when she had met Rich’s parents the whole event had been no big deal. They’d all met up for supper straight from work one night. Tash couldn’t even remember what she had worn. She just remembered having a good laugh and Mrs Tyler getting tipsy on Baileys.
    Both Mr and Mrs Tyler had fallen over themselves to be nice to their daughter-in-law-to-be. For a start she was easy to like, and secondly they were delighted that Rich had finally decided to settle down. Frankly, Tash could have had two heads and they’d still have believed that she was the best thing since the invention of the can opener. They thought this because – despite their son’s scathing dismissal of their relationship – they considered themselves very lucky and they wanted Rich to be as lucky. Neither were they the type to talk openly about their feelings all the time; it wasn’t done in their day. But they knew that they loved one another deeply, and their greatest wish was for Rich to find someone he could grow old with, someone who would take an interest in