“I want to learn to cook,” I told him.

“My mum can show you how. She’s a wonderful cook.”

“I’d like to learn to sew, too. I want to knit as well.”

“Mum can sew. I don’t know about knitting, but she has a sewing machine. She used to make us clothes when we were little, but she doesn’t do it anymore. She’d show you how to use it.” He paused, “Lance knits. For real. He’d teach you.”

“I want to make you dinner one night. Something fabulous. Something you love.”

“I have something I love.”

I felt my heart flutter. Had he just said he loved me? I didn’t ask. Instead I just turned my head toward him, “Someday,” I whispered, “I am going to make you so happy.”

“You do make me happy,” He whispered in reply and kissed my nose, “Every day.”

We sat there in that park for I don’t know how much longer. We sat there until the grass was soaked with dew and the moon was in the middle of the sky. It was very late when Alexander showed up and told us his parents wanted us inside immediately.

Ana was more than happy to show me how to cook and sew. I started coming down to Welshpool during the week when Oliver was working, absorbing all I could. I did better at the stove than the sewing machine. Ana and I had so much fun in that kitchen. We’d dig through her recipes and bake while she told me stories about how she learned to cook from her mum, aunties and Grandmother. It was amazing to me listening to her talk about her family. I thought big, happy families where people loved each other and passed down traditions existed only in storybooks. All of my grandparents had passed before I was even born. My step-gran had been the only one I’d known and she’d died when I was nine. My father had one brother that he rarely kept in touch with and I only had one cousin. I had been friends with him when we were little, but hadn’t seen him in donkey’s years. My mother had been an only child. Listening to Ana, it began to dawn on me how cold and empty my world had been until I’d met Ollie.

“We’ll have to take you to meet my mother,” Ana tapped her fingers against the page of a cookbook, “We need to pay her a visit soon. She’ll love you! She doesn’t live too far from your dad, actually. I’ll ring her up and see if she’s not too busy sometime before you go back to school. She’s seventy-two now and busier than she’s ever been since my dad passed away. I know she’d love to see the twins. She adores them.”

It actually freaked me out a little how included I was becoming in Oliver’s family. I realised that it was not just him I’d grown to love, but I loved them all. Ana was a lovely, sweet woman and the two of us had given each other something neither of us would ever have had. She gave me a mum love and I gave her a daughter's adoration. Her husband and I were developing a bond as well. You see, Eddie, like all men, enjoyed food above anything but sex, and he was thrilled when extra special things like pies, cakes, biscuits and breads were pouring out of his kitchen and on to his plate.

“You’re becoming quite the chef,” He told me one evening across the dinner table, “I love Italian. You’ll make an excellent wife one day.”

Oliver squeezed my knee under the table, but his mother said, “She’ll be more than a wife one day.”

“And she has lovely, excellent, huge, well-rounded...” Alexander began to speak, but trailed off, looking around the table for reaction. All eyes were upon him, expecting the worst. “Filthy minds, all of you!” He snapped, “I was going to say she has lovely, excellent, huge, well-rounded…” He cupped his hands in front of his chest, “Course backgrounds at comp to support her brains and talent, which will be excellent when she comes to her senses and marries me one day. Then she can cook and pay the bills both while I sit on my bum and play video games.”

“Keep dreaming, Little Brother,” Oliver told him as he reached for the milk, “Sil’s mine.”

“Damn it!” Alex ran a hand over his face, “Can’t you just let a man have his dreams?”

“In your case…no.”

I had to get my things together quickly after dinner that night in order to catch my train home. School was starting the day after next and I hadn’t even begun to organize. Oliver and I were heading out the door when he realised he’d forgotten his wallet in his room and dashed upstairs to retrieve it.

Eddie came out of the kitchen and saw me waiting by the door. He flashed a smile and asked, “Do you want to just move in, Silvia?” I wasn’t sure if he was serious or not. I stood in the entryway, blinking at him like a moron. He kept grinning kindly, “I know you can’t, but I think I’d like it if you did. I’ve never told you how fond I am of you, have I?”

“No, Sir, I don’t think you have.”

“Well, I am. You’ve become a real part of this family. I’m beginning to think of you as my own daughter. I can’t help it.” He paused and looked at me thoughtfully, “I’m hoping after you graduate you’ll move down so we can all be closer. Spend more time together, you know?”

“I’m planning on it,” It was impossible not to smile when Ed smiled and Ed was smiling at me. “Oliver and I have been talking about what we’re going to do after graduation.”

“Good,” He said firmly, “You’ll have to fill me in later. Now off with you! You’re going to miss your train!” But instead of wishing me a nice voyage as he normally did, he hugged me, and then kissed me on the cheek. I held him tight for longer than I needed to. I held on to him the way I’d always wished I could hold on to my own dad. When I finally let go of him, he held on to my hand. “Oliver!” He called his son, “Come on now, Boy! She’s going to be late!”

Oliver galloped down the stairs, “All right, I’ve got it! See you soon, Dad!” He pulled my hand from his father’s as if it were something that happened every day and took it into his own.

“Safe!” Ed said seriously as he closed the door behind us.

Oliver took me to my train. After a quick snogging, I went home as I always had to sooner or later. I got a taxi at the station and came into the house unnoticed. My father, per usual, was in his office working and my sister was sitting on the floor in the middle of the loo painting her toenails. I went into my bedroom and packed my bags for school, then lay on my bed and closed my eyes. I thought for a long time about the Dickinson’s and how blessed Ollie and Alex were to be born into such a family. How lucky they were to have had cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents, not to mention each other and two loving parents who always wanted to know where they were and what they were doing. They’d had all of that love their whole lives. I lie there and I cried thinking of all that warmth they’d gotten that I’d missed. All the hugs, all the kisses, the giggles and the jokes. Even the angry times when their father would shout and their mother would get so frustrated she’d make them stay in their rooms for hours seemed so wonderful to me. At least someone cared enough to be angry. My father never got angry.

I’d had none of that sort of love. It hurt to know it and it made me feel upset with my mother for dying and let down by my father for not seeing to it that I’d gotten it after she was gone. I was at home, in my own bed, crying my eyes out, and I knew no one was going to come and comfort me. I knew as well if I’d been in the bed in the extra room at Oliver’s that someone would have.

I made up my mind right then what I really wanted in my life. It was comfort of a home and a family. But more than that I wanted love. I wanted love to surround me. I wanted to swim in it. I wanted to hold it in my hand like heated sand and pour it through my fingers so it covered my feet. I wanted to taste it, I wanted to smell it. I wanted to wrap myself up in it like a blanket and stay safe and warm inside of it forever. And I wanted to give it. I wanted to drown people in it. I wanted to love with all my heart and be loved just as much in return.