To go or not to go, that is the question…
School reunions suck, everyone knows this, but Serena Carlisle has put herself down as a “maybe.” Maybe she’ll stay home and cry into her ice cream, or maybe she’ll put on her big-girl pants and show her old classmates that she’s managed to make something of herself.
Marc di Gregorio is Hollywood’s hottest property, and Serena’s getting paid to kiss him on stage every night. A dream job, right? It would be if not for Owen Cadwallader, the man she last saw eight years ago as she was loaded into the back of a police car at the school prom. The teenage crush she’s never been able to forget. He’s a “maybe” too, but will Serena manage to hold her nerve and face him again? Or should she take the easy option and drown her sorrows with a handsome heartthrob instead?
A Very Happy Valentine is a standalone romantic comedy novella.
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A sneak peek at Chapter 1…
My name is Serena Carlisle, and I’m a fraud.
There, I said it.
I’m a fraud.
My brother passed the gravy, and I poured it over my roast potatoes.
“So, how’s the new apartment?” he asked.
“On the small side, but it’s in a great location. Only one street away from the Tube, and there are plenty of restaurants nearby.”
“Did it come furnished?”
“It’s rather minimalist, but I’ll only be there for six months.”
When I was eight years old, Kate Hodgson told me I could only sit at her lunch table if I was a vegetarian, and since Kate’s mum was a yoga teacher and her dad was a TV chef and she was therefore the closest thing to a celebrity that Fairoaks Primary School had, I’d sworn blind that I didn’t eat meat. Then I’d spent the next four years picking the ham out of my sandwiches on the way to the bus stop each morning, and even now, I still glanced behind me out of habit every time I bit into a burger.
I’d been pretending ever since.
Like now, for example. My new apartment in London was a dump. Seriously. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the roaches that lived under the kitchen sink packing their bags and moving out. By “minimalist,” I meant that the only furniture was a coffee table with one leg shorter than the others, a single bed, and a musty-smelling couch, the last two of which I’d covered in sheets because I couldn’t bear to touch the actual fabric. And by “plenty of restaurants,” I meant it was above a kebab shop and opposite a Chinese takeaway.
But it was within my budget, and that was the important thing.
“Six months is a long time without creature comforts,” Liam said. “Sure you don’t want me to bring some of your furniture? I could rent a van.”
“No, no, it’s fine. Honestly. London’s a long drive.”
“Only a couple of hours.”
“Don’t you have packing to do?”
“Tickets, money, passport, swimming trunks. It’ll take me five minutes.”
“What about actual clothes? Aren’t you planning to leave the hotel?”
My brother glanced at his girlfriend, and her cheeks turned scarlet.
“No?” he said.
“Okay, okay, spare me the details.”
Liam had been dating Marissa for a little over a year now, or a little over two years if you counted the initial one-night stand gone wrong. The “gone wrong” part had inadvertently been my fault, not that anyone had realised it at the time. Luckily, the hand of fate—and a broken hip—had given them a happy ending. Our parents were thrilled. Thrilled and relieved. “Marissa’s remarkably normal,” Mum had told me. “Not the kind of girl I thought Liam would end up with at all.” Of course, the “normal” comment had come two days before Marissa realised she’d won the bloody lottery. Now they were off to the Caribbean to get some winter sun.
“We’re staying in a suite,” she said. “I only booked a regular room, but Mrs. Finnegan’s niece works at the hotel, and she finagled us an upgrade. There’s meant to be a whirlpool tub and a coffee machine.”
You wouldn’t know Marissa was a multimillionaire. Apart from the fact she’d taken driving lessons and upgraded her bicycle to a Volkswagen Polo, her life had barely changed. She still worked part-time in a care home because she liked chatting with the old folks, she shopped for yellow-label items at Tesco, and half of her clothes came from Vinted. Old habits died hard, she said, although Liam mentioned she’d donated a tidy sum to the cat rescue they’d adopted their new kitten from. The shoelace-obsessed little furball eyed up my feet from across the room, and I tucked them farther under my chair.
“Have you met Marc yet?” Marissa asked.
“He’s flying in tomorrow.”
“Are you nervous?”
I waved a hand. “Nervous? Oh, no, I’ve met so many actors that they all start to look the same.”
Yes, I’d managed to turn my talent for faking it into a career. Not a particularly illustrious one, if I was honest, at least until three years ago, but I’d gone from regional theatre to three seasons of playing a ditzy police constable on Whispers in Willowbrook. The BBC mystery drama looked good on my CV, even if my job was far less glamorous than most people imagined. Early mornings, late nights, a lot of sitting around in the converted double-decker bus that served as our rest area in between scenes.
But on Boxing Day, I’d received the best slightly late Christmas present ever—a phone call from Patrick Sheridan. Visionary, acclaimed playwright, and last year’s Tony Award winner for Best Director of a Play. And he’d wanted me to audition for a job.
Me!
Apparently, he was a big fan of British crime drama.
It wasn’t such a great Christmas for Virginia Portman, who’d tripped and broken her leg while leaving a party on Christmas Eve, or her stand-in, who’d gone down with glandular fever, but I’d still danced around my cottage when I hung up the phone. Then stubbed a toe on a chair. It was at that point I considered that maybe the production of The Other Woman was jinxed, but I couldn’t afford to turn down work. Acting didn’t pay much. Usually, I recorded audiobooks in the off months when I wasn’t communing with corpses, because the bills wouldn’t pay themselves.
The Other Woman didn’t have much of a budget, but it did have Marc di Gregorio. Hollywood superstar, media darling, and old college roommate of Patrick Sheridan. He didn’t want to get typecast, apparently, which was why he’d agreed to star in Patrick’s play for peanuts instead of playing yet another action hero. The entire run was sold out already.
No pressure, then.
And Marissa didn’t seem convinced by my blasé attitude.
“They all look like Marc di Gregorio? But Imagine magazine said he was one of a kind. Do you think you’ll be able to get us backstage passes?”
“That’s not really a thing in theatre, but if we have a wrap party, you can definitely come as my date.”
“I’m being ditched for my own sister?” Liam asked, but he was smiling. “Speaking of parties, are you going to our high school reunion?”
Any joy I might have felt made a dash for the door, and the tension squeezing my belly ratcheted up a notch. Some fool in Liam’s year had gone all American and decided Fairoaks Grammar simply must have a high school reunion. Except because our classes were relatively small, she’d invited the two years above and the two years below to make up the numbers. Unfortunately, that included me.
“No, I’m not.”
“Because of the Carrie thing?”
The Carrie thing. Liam made it sound so innocuous, but having blood thrown over me at the school prom had been anything but trivial to eighteen-year-old me. I’d been ridiculed, I’d been arrested, and I’d lost a good friend over the incident.
“Yes, because of the Carrie thing.”
“That was just one night.”
“A night that ruined my life.”
Of course Liam wouldn’t understand. He’d always been one of the popular kids.
“Libby Sieber probably won’t even go. I heard she’s in the middle of a nasty divorce.”
“Really? Well, she always did have terrible taste in men.”
Our feud had started when she accused me of flirting with her boyfriend, which was crazy, and I told her so. Darren Hendon was a creep. The last thing I’d wanted to do was attract his attention.
Despite her constant sniping, I’d actually been looking forward to the prom. The end-of-year bash at a local golf club promised a chance to dress up, to say goodbye to old classmates, and to sample the results of the “design a graduation cocktail” contest, even if alcohol had lost some of its allure once I was old enough to buy it legally.
In hindsight, I should have realised that fate was trying to send me a message. First, a shop assistant had torn my dream dress while trying to remove a stubborn security tag, then I’d accidentally dyed my hair orange, and before I could beg a local stylist to fix the problem, Damon Clarke dumped me in a row over popcorn—we’d split the cost of a tub fifty-fifty, but apparently, I’d eaten more like seventy percent. Never mind the fact that I hadn’t wanted to see the millionth instalment of the Fast and the Furious anyway, but— Whatever. Why hadn’t I taken the hint?
Stupid, stupid me.
Instead of tearing up my prom ticket and acting as if I’d never wanted to go in the first place, I’d sniffled down the phone to my friend Owen, and Owen had felt sorry enough for me that he’d offered to drive back from university and pretend to be my date. Owen, the nerd who’d never quite fitted in at Fairoaks Grammar either. Owen, who’d spent hours helping me with my homework when he used to live next door. Owen, who’d moved to Cambridge to study computer science on a full scholarship and left a gaping hole in my life. He’d even promised to hire a tuxedo.
I should have said no.
I should have bought a pint of chocolate ice cream and cried over Netflix.
I should have bought one of those customised voodoo dolls with Damon’s face and burned it on a tiny funeral pyre.
But instead, I’d tearfully accepted Owen’s offer, then been forced to avoid him forever when his rented tuxedo got ruined and Libby and her cronies turned on him too. The last time I’d seen him, he was on the phone with my parents, trying to explain why I was being loaded into the back of a police van.
Did you know it’s possible to get expelled after your final exam? No, neither did I.
“You should consider going to the reunion,” Liam said. “Hold your head high. I bet you’ve done better for yourself than all those idiots who used to hang out with Libby.”
A year ago, my answer would have been “No way,” but today, a finger of smug satisfaction poked me in the forehead. Libby Sieber was going through a bad break-up while I was footloose, fancy-free, and about to star in a play with one of Hollywood’s hottest properties. There would be a ton of PR, and didn’t dumb-ass reporters after a story always spread rumours of romance between colleagues? Lucas Collins had held a door open for me at an awards ceremony once, and the next thing I knew, there was a picture of the two of us on Twitter. Serena’s secret smile—is romance on the cards for Detectives Cartwright and Hosier? Although I’d watched most of his movies, I’d only ever said one word to him—“thanks”—and if I remembered rightly, the smile had been because I could finally go back to the hotel and get out of my awful bloody heels. And I’d only been there because Viola, my ride-or-die bestie through theatre school who’d decided she preferred being backstage, had been nominated for Best Hair & Make-up.
“Technically, I didn’t graduate,” I told Liam. “I’d feel like a fraud.”
“It’s not an official school event. And you passed your exams, didn’t you? That’s what matters.”
“Fine, I’ll think about it. Can you send me the link to the Facebook group? I deleted it.”
Liam nodded. “Go show them that you made something of yourself. My famous big sister.”
Marissa reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “Liam might not say it often, but he’s so proud of you.”
As it always did, a guilty chill ran through me because all I did was pretend. Pretend to be a cop. Pretend people’s judgment didn’t bother me. Pretend to be happy. Liam was an actual doctor. He saved people in real life while I faked it on TV.
But just as I’d practised a hundred times, I acted coy and smiled.
“Thanks, little bro. I’m proud of you too.”
“Happy New Year.”
He held up his glass in a toast, and I clinked it.
“Let’s hope it’s a good one.”
