The Summer We All Ran Away

It won’t be easy, but so what? I love him and I’m happy. What else matters?”
“You look happy,” Diane admitted. “God, you even look like you belong. I feel like a complete freak! Literally everyone else here is famous. Everyone! I can see them looking at me and trying to work out who I am. How did you know who to invite?”
“Oh, I asked his manager. He said it was a good idea. Well, actually first of all he said he didn’t care if Jack was rotting away in a ditch. But I told him there was a new album, and then he said it was a good idea.”
“That’s hobnobbing,” said Diane. “My best friend is hobnobbing with music industry moguls. Crazy.” She picked up Evie’s left hand and played idly with her ring finger. “Any chance of...”
Evie laughed. “It’s still early days.”
“I bet he’s a handful to live with.”
“No, actually he’s great. Anyway, he’s working a lot of the time.”
Diane stroked the heavy brown

“Jesus, Jack, if you die falling out of a tree I’ll...”

“Kill me?”

“You’re too good to be true, you are.”

his rucksack between his knees

“Look, you’re not causing any aggro, so I’ll leave you alone if you want. But you’d do better to sort it. If you’re getting hit, we’ll help, but you have to ask. Alright?”

“Running away’s bloody hard, you know. You might think it solves everything, but it mostly makes it worse.”

Bit early to be drinking, isn’t it? Not even lunchtime yet.”

“Bit early to be drinking, isn’t it? Not even lunchtime yet.”

Still, it almost felt like enough, to have got this far, to have made this strange, difficult journey to another place, another world, another life.

The policeman looked thoughtfully at the rucksack.