Free The Accidental Family by Rowan Coleman Page A

thing, from your first memory onward, because it’s all part of what makes you you and I love you and I think if I know more about you, I’ll feel more …secure.”
    “Secure? I’ve just asked you to marry me. How secure do you need to feel?” Louis asked her, perplexed.
    “All right, not secure then—closer to you. The more I know about you, the closer I feel to you.”
    “I’ve often found that naked kissing and stuff is the best way to achieve that.” Louis’s lips curled into a smile, but Sophie was adamant.
    “No, no kissing. I want to know, tell me about her. Tell me about Wendy, please.”
    Louis sat back on his heels and sighed.
    “Fine,” he said with a shrug. “You want to know about Wendy. Well, Wendy was my first proper girlfriend, my first love, I suppose. I’d had this crush on her from the minute I set eyes on her when she first arrived at our school. I was thirteen and she was twelve. This gingery hair and …well, she was the first girl in her year to have curves, put it that way. I saw her and I thought, that’s her, that’s the girl I’m going to marry one day.”
    “Oh.” Sophie was taken aback by the sudden flare of jealousy in her chest. “And?”
    “And?” Louis shrugged. “And that’s it. Wendy was my first love. Who was your first love?”
    Sophie thought for a moment, but just then she didn’t want to tell Louis that it was him. “That can’t be it, you met her when you were thirteen, but you knew her for at least three more years. What happened next?”
    “Do you want a daily or monthly account?” Louis’s tone was sardonic. “Only it was a long time ago and I might have forgotten some of the details. How many sugars she had in her tea—that sort of thing.”
    “Louis, I’m serious!” Sophie told him, trying to wrestle the frustrated tone out of her voice. “You went out with her, for how long and when?”
    Louis sighed and stood up, crossing over to the armchair where Artemis was perched. The two of them regarded each other for asecond like gunfighters in a spaghetti western and then, realizing who was by far the more superior animal, Louis sat down on the floor in front of the fire, crossing his legs like a schoolboy on a camping trip.
    “So I carried a torch for her.” Louis smiled to himself. “God, I loved her. She never talked to me, never looked at me. We weren’t in any of the same classes or anything, so I had to try and bump into her in places where I thought she might be. I remember once walking round and round this park near her house, until it got dark, on the off chance she might turn up, but she never showed.”
    “Which park?” Sophie asked him, hungry for details so she could more clearly picture the lovesick thirteen-year-old Louis. “The one near the guildhall?”
    “What? No, no, this was in Newquay. Wendy and I grew up in Newquay.”
    “Did you?” Sophie asked him. “I never knew that about you.”
    “It’s not that important, is it?” Louis asked her. “It’s just a place. I don’t think about it as home, this place is home. Wherever you are is home, which is why it would be so much better if you moved in here with me.”
    “Tell me what happened next. How did you get together?” Sophie pressed him, even though her heart shied away from knowing. Louis’s answering smile was fond and full of warmth.
    “We were both at the end-of-year party; I knew she was going to be there and I knew that might be the last chance I’d have to talk to her. I was leaving school and it was the summer holidays. I gave myself a deadline—I’d either tell her I loved her that night or never at all, typical teen dramatics. It sounds silly now, but when I think about it, I can still feel it, that tight band around my chest whenever I thought about her or looked at her. Wendy and those red curls and the way that—” Louis caught the look on Sophie’s face that matched the thunderous skies outside the window and caughthimself. “Anyway, I