Very Nearly Normal Read online

  VERY NEARLY NORMAL

  Hannah Sunderland

  Copyright

  Published by AVON

  A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Copyright © Hannah Sunderland 2020

  Cover design by Ellie Game © HaperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

  Cover illustrations © Shutterstock.com

  Hannah Sunderland asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008365707

  Ebook Edition © May 2020 ISBN: 9780008365714

  Version: 2020-02-24

  Dedication

  For Mom, Dad and for anyone who has ever felt like a failure.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Acknowledgements

  Keep Reading …

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  The bevy of children and teens, freshly released from the shackles of school, moved against me and as usual I was swimming against the current. Not too long ago, I had been just like them; full of entitlement, the idea of failure ridiculous, the thought of ageing impossible, and death was just a fictitious destination. But now – after years of unadulterated disappointment – entitlement had transformed into self-pity, failure was inescapable, ageing was in full swing and death seemed like a quiet holiday.

  The question I had asked myself over and over since graduating from one of those carefree young creatures to a bitter, twisted, ne’er-do-well, was How could such big dreams amount to so little? I’d wanted to write and be read. I’d wanted to see someone reading my book on the train and feel pride swell in my chest. I’d wanted one of those little recommendation cards that sit on the shelves in Waterstones. I still wanted all of those things. I had a finished manuscript sitting beneath my bed, the words obscured by dust. I’d sent it out into the world in an attempt to achieve that dream, but life hadn’t quite played out the way I’d planned.

  By all accounts, I was a failure.

  I failed at everything I touched.

  You could gift me the rarest, most beautiful flower in the whole galaxy and it would be compost in my hands within ten minutes.

  Failure had always been what I was best at, but funnily enough, my first failure hadn’t even been my own. It had been my parents’ when they had chosen to burden me with the world’s most ridiculous name. My full name is Matilda Effie Heaton, but I’d refused to be called by my first name since I was eight, after years of people telling me to showcase my telekinetic powers and asking me why Miss Honey wasn’t picking me up from school. But the actual name wasn’t the failure, no, the real failure was the initials and what they spelled when put together. That’s right; my name literally spells the word meh.

  Meh:The universal, millennial term for anything uninspired and unexceptional.

  I’d thought about changing it a couple of years ago, and foregoing the ‘Matilda’ part altogether, but the process had seemed complicated and, in the end, I simply couldn’t be bothered. No one ever used that name anyway unless it was for something official or if I’d angered my mother – which happened to be quite often – and in those cases she would be certain to use my full name, just to piss me off.

  As I approached Bobby’s corner shop, I reached into my pocket and withdrew my purse. I glanced down at my bank card and saw my full name printed across it in blocky silver letters. I stabbed my PIN into the buttons with my flaking dark green painted nails and pressed the button for twenty quid. The machine almost laughed at me as it rejected my withdrawal and offered me ten instead.

  ‘Fine!’ I spat through gritted teeth and snatched the ten-pound note from the slot.

  That was another thing I’d failed at, building any kind of savings in either of my pitiful accounts.

  But, don’t worry, it doesn’t stop there. These are by no means my only failures.

  I’d failed to do anything other than coast through three uneventful years of university and at the ripe old age of twenty-eight I had failed to move out and begin my own life. I’d simply returned like a homing pigeon to the town I’d been born in, a suburb on the outskirts of Birmingham, famous for producing Emma Willis, having a very large park, and less famous for being within two miles of what may or may not be the oldest traffic roundabout in the UK.

  My failures wouldn’t have been so pronounced, however, had it not been for the ocean of people around me who seemed to effortlessly succeed to sickening levels. I saw them, with their smug faces plastered all over the internet. I’d stay up into the early hours, slowly torturing myself by browsing through the endless photos of my successful ‘friends’ posing on their London apartment balconies. They’d always be holding sparkling glasses of Cristal as they toasted their promotion, all whilst draped over the arm of their fiancé, who had cool ice-blue eyes and the torso of Khal Drogo. One of those loathsome people just happened to be my ‘best friend’, Kate, who at this very moment was on her way to the same café that I was, probably with a sexy new haircut and some exciting news to tell me about all the things that she was most recently excelling in.

  What did these people know that I didn’t? Had I been sick from school when they’d taught the How Not to Suck at Life portion of the syllabus? Or did I just innately lack the talons that everyone else seemed to use to claw their way to the top?

  Everything in my life had fallen short of expectation. Every endeavour doomed from the outset.

  Failure was and always had been my default setting. In fact, the only thing I’d excelled at in any way, was staying alive long enough to witness every single crushing disappointment; which I hoarded like the greedy giant atop the beanstalk.

  A young girl sauntered in my direction, her long chestnut hai
r flowing lustrously over one shoulder. She flirted easily with the sliver of a boy beside her who listened intently to her every word. Her skin was flawless, as mine had been at her age, before those little lines had appeared in my forehead after years of frowning. The girl’s skirt was strategically rolled at the top to achieve the optimum amount of peeping thigh, the rolled-up fabric making her stomach look rounded and floppy.

  In a few years she’d need no help getting herself a muffin top, I thought pessimistically. As I passed the two young lovers, the boy’s shoulder knocked into mine. His eyes barely lingered on me for a second, before his mouth curled back into a smirk and he returned his attention to a more interesting subject matter.

  If she was lucky, the romance would end before the summer holidays came. Short and sweet was the way to handle an adolescent romance. Otherwise, ten years from now, that happy teen would find herself with two squalling brats and a council flat that her partner never spent any time in because he was forever off working nights at the depot and having an on-the-side fling with Kathy from despatch.

  I’d always thought that the idea of falling in love at fifteen and staying that way for your entire life would be one of the most depressing things ever. Sure, the idea was romantic, but it left no time for making mistakes and sometimes mistakes were the most interesting part of life.

  At least love was one thing I was happy to have failed at, especially when I look back at the saddening array of boys I’ve attempted to love in the past. I don’t know if it’s because I’m too picky or if I’m simply never destined for the music-swelling, grand-gesture kind of love that Richard Curtis had fooled me into believing existed. Maybe life is different for you if you look like Keira Knightley, but I’d never had someone turn up on my doorstep with placards, declaring their undying love for me.

  I turned away from the lovers and headed towards the high street; the sound of thumping incessant grime music from a passing car masking the calming sounds of the indie-folk playlist that I had stuffed into my ears.

  Now, I hope you don’t think I was one of those insufferable children who were told that they could be anything, do anything, that the world was theirs for the taking. I mean I was, but I never have and never will have any grandiose ideas about who I am or what I’m capable of. In all seriousness, if I get through a day without severely injuring someone, breaking something or accidentally insulting someone, then I take that day as a win. I have found, from years of personal experience, that once you accept that you are a loser, a failure, a flop, a piece of white dog turd adhered to the side of a shoe, you will be altogether more prepared for what your loser life throws at you.

  Not every person is meant to change the world, despite what everyone told us as we grew up. If we were, then the world would be in an even greater mess than it already is. Maybe being a failure was a blessing in disguise. Maybe my inability to change the world in any way was my gift to humanity.

  Being a failure wouldn’t even be so hard, had I managed to perfect the art of giving zero shits about anything. But the point was that I gave far too many shits, and therein lay my downfall. I gave a shit about my mother and the way she ate with a cacophony of smacks and slurps. I gave a shit about my ‘friend’ Kate and her fancy-schmancy job and her penthouse apartment (that I had never set foot in, purely on principle). And I gave a shit about my own shittiness, which was reflected and magnified by the shits that no one else seemed to give. I didn’t know how they did it, breezing through life like it was a path already laid out for them and all they had to do was walk forward and the path would find their feet. I had never seen my path. It was hidden beneath the failures that lay at my feet like long-dead leaves.

  There was something about seeing the café that made me feel like a dog being dragged to the vets to be neutered. I could see Kate inside through the window, playing with a silky strand of her hair as the sun fell over her face. My stomach tightened with regret before I’d even stepped through the fingerprint-smeared glass door. I moved inside, the aggressive heat from the overhead fan hitting me square in the face. I’d never been in this café before, mostly because it intimidated me with its repurposed furniture and copious choice of coffee beans.

  I saw Kate up ahead, sitting at what looked like two lidded school desks that had been pushed together to form a table. She sat casually with her long dark hair pulled up into an effortlessly neat high ponytail and her nose inches away from the screen of her phone. She sipped glutinously at the foam of her cappuccino, her face glowing blue in the light that emanated from the screen.

  So, here’s what you need to know about Kate.

  We’d been best friends since we were four years old. When we met, we were both weird and otherwise friendless, so we latched on to each other and it suited us both well for a while. But as time wore on Kate began to acclimatise to the rest of the world, finding a best friend in the most popular girl in school, Eloise ‘Fucking’ Kempshore (not her given middle name, obviously, but it was what I’d called her since the day in year seven when the teacher had left the room and she’d stood up in class and picked on me about my red hair).

  To be fair, Kate hadn’t climbed the social ladder without trying to carry me along with her, but I had proven to be a less than willing passenger and after struggling for a year or so, Kate all but cut the line and dropped me back into the social abyss that I should have never left in the first place. Kate had always known the right clothes to wear and the right way to do her hair. She never clammed up in conversation or thought of the most inappropriate thing to say and then accidentally said it instead of keeping it to herself.

  Eloise had stolen Kate away about eleven years ago now and since then we had started to feel obligated to remain in contact, just so long as I remained separate from her other friends, her other life. We became interested in wildly different things, Kate with her popular clique and her Ken doll boyfriend, and me with my writing, introversion and hating the world. It wasn’t uncommon for friends to grow apart, I knew that, but unlike most people Kate and I simply didn’t have the balls to admit that it was over.

  I walked over to the table and pulled out the chair while Kate’s eyes remained fixed to the screen that glowed in her palm. Kate has always had this annoying habit of becoming so engrossed in her phone that she often forgets she has company and rousing her from it is like trying to wake Sleeping Beauty without giving her a quick snog first.

  I managed to take off my coat, sit down, cross my legs and heave a sigh before Kate even noticed I was there.

  ‘Effie! You’re here!’ she gushed, placing down her phone, the screen still open and showing the other conversations she was having on the side – it was like being blatantly cheated on. She grinned widely at me, her eyes darting to her phone, then back to my face. I wished she’d stop pretending to be excited to see me; we both knew she wasn’t. ‘I didn’t know what you drank these days, so I just got something for myself.’

  I desperately tried not to grimace and roll my eyes.

  I’d only been drinking lattes for ten years, but then how would someone who still insisted on calling me her ‘best friend’ know that?

  ‘No worries,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘I’ll go and get it myself.’

  She didn’t notice my passive aggression and happily went back to phoneland while I got up and joined the queue.

  The guy at the counter was pretty, in a grubby hipster kind of way. He had a thick black beard, which I instantly deemed unhygienic to have dangling that low over the tray of exposed pastries beneath, and wore braces that held up his burgundy drainpipe jeans.

  He greeted me with an overly enthusiastic ‘Hi there!’ and waited for my order. I ordered my latte and looked longingly at a cinnamon bun that sat close enough for me to catch a whiff of its sickly sweet goodness. I thought about ordering one, then looked over my shoulder at the slim and beautiful Kate and decided to forgo the calories.

  I looked down at the barista’s name tag; it read Bernard.
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  I couldn’t help but wonder if Bernard was his actual name or if, like Catholics, you got a new name when confirmed into the fold of Hipster.

  ‘Which of our coffees would you like today?’ Bernard asked.

  I looked up confused.

  He took this as an invitation to elaborate. ‘You could have our house coffee, which is a dark roasted bean with a bitter finish and hints of raspberry and chocolate or our guest coffee, which is a medium roast with a velvet finish and caramel undertones.’

  I looked at him with confusion, wondering when ordering a coffee became like the general knowledge round of Mastermind.

  ‘Which would you recommend?’ I asked, trying to hide that I was out of my depth.

  ‘It depends entirely on your palate, madam,’ he replied, unhelpfully.

  I flinched at his use of the word madam. It made me feel like an old biddy or the proprietor of a whorehouse.

  ‘Erm, the cheapest one.’ The rising intonation at the end of my sentence made me sound like I was asking a question.

  He gave me a pitiful smile, as if he thought me a complete philistine, and took my money.

  When I returned, Kate had a smile plastered over her sickeningly made-up face. I found it difficult to do the most basic of tasks, like draw matching eyeliner flicks for both eyes without making my entire face look lopsided, but somehow Kate had managed to become the Rembrandt of cosmetics.

  ‘So.’ Kate grinned and splayed her manicured hands out on the table. ‘I have massive news.’

  ‘Really? Do tell,’ I replied, as eager to hear her news as I was to have an unnecessary root canal.

  ‘I’ve been asked to go to Toronto for three months and broker a deal between my company and some fancy Canadian firm. If they approve the deal, then I can pretty much retire at thirty.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said, jealousy building inside me like Vesuvius, ‘are you taking it?’

  ‘Am I taking it?’ she scoffed. ‘What kind of question is that? They’re practically begging me to go. I mean, the flight, the hotel and every ounce of food and wine will be paid for. It’s basically a free holiday with a tiny bit of work thrown in.’