Allison Pearson - I Think I Love You

ALSO BY ALLISON PEARSON

I Dont Know How She Does It

THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2010 by Allison Pearson

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and in Canada
by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered
trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published by Chatto & Windus,
the Random House Group Ltd., London, in 2010.

All acknowledgments to reprint previously published material
may be found at the end of the volume.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Pearson, Allison, [date]
I think I love you / Allison Pearson.1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59540-9
1. Teenage girlsWalesFiction. 2. Female friendshipFiction. 3. Cassidy, David, 1950 AppreciationFiction. 4. Fans (Persons)Fiction. 5. Middle-aged womenFiction. 6. ReunionsFiction. 7. Recollection (Psychology)Fiction.
I. Title.
PR 6116. E 17123 2011
823.92dc22 2010036710

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover design by Gabriele Wilson

v3.1

For my son,
Thomas Daniel
And in memory of my beloved grandfather
Daniel Elfed Williams

It panics him. He always keeps the drapes drawn.
They are out there, Mother, theyre out there.

EVELYN CASSIDY ,
on her son Davids reaction to his fans

T he wardrobe was double fronted, with a full-length mirror. Inside was her mothers tweed suit with the mink collar. There were tailored skirts and blouses on hangers. There were sweaters in soft colors, carefully folded, with layers of tissue paper in between. At the bottom were racks of shoes.

It was there that she found it, behind the racks. She wasnt looking for it. She wasnt looking for anything. She was reaching for a pair of black patent heels, the shine still on them after thirty years, when her fingers brushed against something colder than leather. She took it out. A tin with a lake and mountains on the lid. A Christmas gift from Austria. Inside, she found cards and photographs, and a sheaf of letters tied together with a red ribbon.

The pink envelope was out of place. It had smiley faces and a rainbow on the front. It was addressed to her, but there was something strange about the handwriting. It took her a moment to recognize it as her own. Not her own now, but the way she used to write, a long time ago, with flowery loops. The envelope had been opened and it was easy to slide out the letter inside. She read it for the first time in her life. Then she read it again to make sure.

She got up and walked across the landing and pushed the door into her old bedroom. The brown coverlet was still on the bed, soft and slightly damp to the touch. She knelt down, reached under the bed and pulled out a gray transistor radio. She flicked the switch.

H is favorite color was brown. Brown was such a sophisticated color, a quiet and modest sort of color. Not like purple, which was Donnys favorite. I wouldnt be seen dead in purple. Or in a Donny cap. How much would you have to like a boy before you went out wearing a stupid purple peaked cap?

Honest, its amazing the things you can know about someone you dont know. I knew the date of his birthApril 12, 1950. He was a typical Aries, but without the Arians stubbornness. I knew his height and his weight and his favorite drink, 7Up. I knew the names of his parents and his stepmother, the Broadway musical star. I knew all about his love of horses, which made perfect sense to me because when youre that famous it must be comforting to be around someone who doesnt know or care what famous is. I knew the instrument he learned to play when he was lonely. Drums. I knew the name of the dog he left behind when he had to move away from New Jersey. I knew that when he was a boy he was small for his age and he had a squint and had to wear an eye patch and corrective glasses, which must have been hard. Harder than for a girl even. I didnt wear my glasses if I could help it. Only in class for the blackboard, though I couldnt see well without them and it got me into trouble a few times when I smiled in the street at total strangers I mistook for members of my family. A few years later, when I got contact lenses, I was stunned by the trees. They had leaves, millions of leaves, with edges so sharp and defined they looked like God had made each one with a pastry cutter.

Basically, before I was sixteen, the world was one big Impressionist painting, unless I screwed up my eyes really tight to bring it into focus. Some things, as I would discover, were best left a blur.

Back then, I wasnt interested in the real world. Not really. I answered my parents questions, I gave the appearance of doing homework, I lugged my cello into school on my back, I went downtown on Saturday afternoons with girls who sometimes felt like friends and sometimes didnt, but I was living for Him. Each night, I spread my long dark hair out on the pillow and made sure to sleep on my back so my face was ready to receive a kiss in case he came in the night. It wasnt that likely, obviously, because I lived in South Wales and he lived in California, which was five thousand miles away, and he didnt even have my address, although I had once sent a poem for him to a magazine. Choosing the right color paper took longer than writing the actual poem. I settled on yellow, because it seemed more mature than pink. I thought all the other girls would choose pink and part of loving him was finding better ways to please him so he would know how much more I cared. They didnt sell brown writing paper or I would have used brown, because that was his favorite color. Sometime laterthree weeks and four days if youre counting, and I definitely wasa reply came in the post. It was seventeen words long, including my name. It didnt matter that the letter said they were sorry they couldnt publish my poem. In some crucial way, I felt as though I had made contact with him at long last. Someone important in London, someone who had been in the same room as him, had touched the yellow paper I had touched and then typed my name on an envelope and licked the stamp. No rejection slip has ever been more treasured. It took pride of place in my scrapbook.