Free The Butterfly Effect by Julie McLaren

for their only child than that she would follow in their footsteps. Growing up, it had been such a part of my life, as it stretched out before me, that it had become a reality almost without my knowing it. It was something of a minor miracle that I loved it, that they had been right.
    So, it was no surprise that they didn’t notice how happy I was, any more than they would have noticed if I’d been sad. Emotions were not discussed in our house unless it was absolutely necessary, so nobody remarked upon the sparkle in my eyes or the glow on my cheeks and I wasn’t going to spoil it by presenting them with the opportunity to find a fatal flaw in my rosy vision of the future. I could imagine Mum’s lips pinching together in the way that always heralded a criticism. Deep lines had formed around her mouth, although she had never smoked, carved out by a lifetime of disapproval.
    “Are you sure that’s wise?” she would have said. “It will be very difficult if you split up, being in the same school.”
    Or something like that, I don’t know. I didn’t give her the chance to think of some other reason why Richie and I would not be happy together, because I knew we would be. I knew it with a certainty I have felt about little else, and that got me through the rest of the day unscathed.
    As I remember, it wasn’t as bad as I had feared. There appeared to be a lull in hostilities between my parents, most of the time anyway, and they seemed to like the presents I had bought them. Naturally, their gift to me was destined to sit in my bedroom until a decent enough period had elapsed for me to take it down to the Oxfam shop, but I had expected nothing more. Dad left all the Christmas shopping to Mum, and she relied entirely upon a catalogue that featured a range of young women wearing middle-aged women’s clothes, so there was little hope of a happy outcome there. I smiled as I held up the horrendous lilac jumper she had chosen for me, and said all the right things. If we all lived long enough, maybe the Christmas would come when I would wear such a thing, so at least there was that to look forward to.
    Richie laughed when I showed it to him the next day. We hadn’t been able to see each other for several days, but now, as we sat snuggled up on the sofa in my flat, we shared our respective family Christmases and vowed this would be the last time we would ever spend Christmas Day apart. That’s how it was. We’d only been together a matter of days, but we were able to talk about being together in a year without any feelings of awkwardness as if one of us was rushing things or making assumptions. I got a little shiver when I remembered how I had felt when Greg’s mother had talked about Christmas dinner. That had only been a couple of weeks into the future but it had felt creepy and intrusive. Now here we were, still getting to know each other, but in no doubt about how that would happen. I pushed Greg and his mother out of my mind and leaned closer into Richie.
    “I think I quite like you,” I said.
    The rest of the holiday passed as holidays do. Quickly. New Year was a mad round of his friends and mine, as we were both at that stage when you are desperate to show off your new love to everyone you know, and there was nothing to burst our bubble. Olga was delighted, and told Richie he’d better be nice to me or he would have her to deal with, laughing and hugging us both as she did, and then we left that party and went on to another at about 11. He whisked me around, smiling this huge smile and introducing me to his friends, some of whom I recognised but none of whose names I could have remembered then. That was almost certainly the first time I met Nat. I’d had quite a lot to drink by that time, and although I love him to bits, Nat isn’t the kind of bloke I would normally even register, but I’m sure he must have been there. He was Richie’s best friend and they had known each other since uni, so I can’t see them