Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (19 page)

‘You’ve got lots of time,’ Dorothy said airily. ‘I’m sure lots of parents will help out and I’ve signed you up for a two-day drama workshop during half-term. The Governors have very kindly approved the course fees.’

‘But …’

‘No need to worry about Christmas and Kwanzaa; the junior school will cover that. You will need to at least acknowledge Chanukah.’ Dorothy smiled vaguely. ‘Get them to sing a song about it or something.’

‘Chanukah?’ Hope repeated. ‘But I don’t know anything about Chanukah. I don’t even know anybody Jewish!’

Dorothy shrugged. ‘Can’t you look it up online?’ She fixed Hope with a stern look. ‘Fortune favours the brave and
the
Governors favour staff who go the extra mile. Remember, there’s no “I” in team!’

This new development meant there was no point going home with all guns blazing. Not when she’d have to wheedle and nag Jack to take time off work to supervise Jeremy who couldn’t be left on his own in London for two days. Once Mrs Delafield had let him and his best friend go to Manchester for the day and they’d ended up in Hull. Besides, if she had it out with Jack and it didn’t go well, they could hardly have Jeremy to stay while they were acting out scenes from
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
?

As it was, Jack was home at a very respectable seven thirty to find Hope freshly showered after her step aerobics class and waiting for him with a nervous smile. ‘Hey,’ she said.

‘Hey,’ he said back, his own smile just as tentative. ‘What’s up?’

This was
not
going to be Hope’s cue to start an interrogation, the likes of which hadn’t been seen since the days of the Nuremberg Trials. Instead she got up from the computer where she’d been reading up on Chanukah so she could swing her arms nervously. ‘Do you fancy catching the bus up to Muswell Hill and getting fish and chips at Toff’s?’

Jack’s relief was palpable. Hope could have sworn he lost an inch in height as all the tension left his body. ‘Cool,’ he said, twirling his keys around. ‘You ready to go now?’

After haddock and chips at arguably the best chippy in London, they walked off the stodge by staggering down the steep hill towards Crouch End, which had much nicer, more gentrified pubs than Holloway. They found a quiet corner in the Queen’s, a cavernous Victorian pub full of nooks and crannies, and decided to kick it old skool by drinking bottles of cider – but posh artisan cider, rather than the Woodpecker of their youth. Hope was determined to keep the conversation light, and even now, when she wasn’t sure that Jack was being entirely truthful with her, she could still make him laugh as she told him about the morning at
Camley
Street Natural Park and how Blue Class would sell their mothers for a sticker.

She didn’t tell Jack about Wilson’s guest appearance, or how she felt sick every time she thought about the conversation they’d had, which was another facet of this new splintered phase in their relationship. They used to tell each other everything – she knew far more about the annoying quirks of InDesign that any non-design person should know – but talking about Wilson would inevitably lead to talking about Susie, which would even more inevitably lead to a row.

As Hope went to the bar to get the next round, she saw Jack whip out his phone and start tapping away furiously, but when she got back to their table, he tucked it away and looked up at her with the sweet, disarming smile that was her favourite out of all his smiles. It made Hope feel as if she was Jack’s reason for living and as she sat down, he took her hand in his and traced his finger along her heartline.

‘Things have been really weird with us these last couple of weeks, Hopita Bonita,’ he said softly. ‘Where did you go? I missed you.’

‘I don’t know.’ Hope took a sip of her cider. ‘Where did
you
go?’

‘I was right here all the time,’ Jack said, lowering his head to kiss the spot that his fingers had just stroked.

‘It didn’t feel like it,’ Hope admitted, trapping Jack’s hand between hers. ‘I wish … we are going to be all right, aren’t we? I mean, I’ve been trying so hard to get us back on track but I think I’m making a complete hash of it. I don’t know what to do to make us better.’

‘You don’t have to do anything.’ Jack smiled wryly. ‘Well, you could not try so hard. You’re either snarling or going all Stepford Wife on me. It’d be easier if you could find a point in the middle and stay there.’

‘I hate that there’s this atmosphere between us all the time, and I know I open my mouth and make it worse by
being
mean and generally behaving like a grade-A bitch,’ Hope said. ‘And believe me, I don’t like hearing myself act like that any more than you do, but Jack, please be straight with me, do I have a reason to act like that?’

‘No, no!’ Jack assured her, squeezing her hand so tight that Hope had to resist the urge to wince. ‘I love you. That hasn’t changed and it never will, I swear.’

‘Do you really love me?’ Hope begged, even though she loathed getting stuck in the role of the needy girlfriend. She liked to think that she had more stones than that.

‘I love you more than my Pantone book. And I love you more than Helvetica. And I even love you more than my signed copy of The Beatles’
Rubber Soul
on vinyl, though that’s a pretty close call.’

‘I still reckon it’s not their actual signatures,’ Hope said, a glint in her eyes that hadn’t been there for a while. ‘I mean, if it was, it would have been up for auction at Sotheby’s, not in a Sue Ryder shop in Leeds.’

‘Shut it!’ Jack snapped, but he leaned in to kiss her forehead. ‘Honestly, Hopey, I love you and everything will be all right, I promise. OK?’

Hope could tell when Jack was lying. It wasn’t anything he did, like scratching his nose or avoiding her gaze. It was more of a gut feeling, in the same way that she could spot a six-year-old who needed to go to the loo or she could tell that her mother was going to ring at the exact moment she’d sat down with a mug of tea and
heat
magazine. That was why she knew that Jack was telling the absolute truth and she could nod and smile and say, ‘OK.’ And just ‘OK’ wouldn’t do. ‘I love you too, you know,’ Hope said and she meant it more than she ever had before. This time she tried to say it with feeling because she did love Jack. Loved his smile and his sulky face. Loved the smell of him, the feel of him. Loved that he was her best friend as well as her lover. Loved that he doggedly persisted in calling her ‘Hopita Bonita’ even though it was the lamest nickname ever. Loved
that
he tidied up after her, without too much complaining. Loved the way he balled his fists like a baby when he slept. Still loved him despite the fact that there were dark days when she wasn’t sure if she trusted him any more.

Neither of them said anything. Jack looked at Hope and Hope looked right back at him. And there was an unspoken question on his face, which she tried to answer in the sweep of her lashes and the curve of her smile and the dogged, determined devotion she was sure was oozing from her every pore.

Then Jack raised his bottle of cider and the spell was broken. ‘So, just between us, there had to be a moment this morning when you looked around to make sure there weren’t any witnesses and thought about pushing snotty Stuart into the pond and holding his head under the water with your foot. Right?’

‘Of course not,’ Hope gasped, ratcheting up the fake indignation because she wanted them to get back to that place where they teased each other mercilessly. ‘Though if someone else from Blue Class had thrown him in I’d have turned a blind eye.’

‘You black-hearted wench,’ Jack sniffed. ‘I’ve a good mind to report you to the Board of Governors.’

‘Yeah, right after I tell the head of human resources that you leaked that story about the Keira Knightley cover shoot to Holy Moly,’ Hope rapped back, and Jack, who had still been holding her hand, now dropped it so he could dig her in the ribs to make her squeal, and Hope let herself believe that they were going to be all right.

And maybe they were. It wasn’t like those first frantic days of non-stop sexual acrobatics after Hope had caught Jack and Susie together. And it wasn’t like the last fortnight of open hostility.

It was more like they used to be. They bitched and moaned at each other, but it was bitching and moaning
because
Hope had used the last of the milk then put the empty carton back in the fridge, or Jack had decided to re-shelve their books according to genre
before
he alphabetised them and Hope couldn’t find her copy of
French Women Don’t Get Fat
.

Hope only cooked tea when she could be bothered and Jack didn’t come home at seven thirty every night, but at least he called to say that he was going to be late. And they had sex and sometimes they talked about having sex but ended up watching
True Blood
instead.

It was how they used to be. Kind of predictable and a little bit boring, but after the last month, Hope was a little bit in love with kind of predictable and a little bit boring.

Jack had agreed to take two days off work during half-term to babysit Jeremy and take him to the IMAX cinema and a
Doctor Who
exhibition. Hope had got through the Harvest Festival with only five tins of marrowfat peas to be donated to the poor and needy of the borough (last year it had been
nine
) and a minor spat with one of the Trustafarian mothers who couldn’t understand why the poor and needy didn’t want the five elderly courgettes that had been left over from her weekly Ocado delivery, even if they were organic.

Perhaps it had been going too well, and when a large manila envelope, with her name written on it in a vaguely familiar hand, turned up by recorded delivery it was actually a timely reminder that there were still hairline cracks in Hope and Jack’s version of normal.

Hope gingerly opened the envelope as if she suspected there might be anthrax inside, and not several contact sheets and six large glossy photographs. Hope fanned out the black-and-white images; there were group shots of her class beaming gummily; two adorable pictures of Sorcha and Timothy crouching down to study some plants; a shot of Javan pretending to jump into the pond with Sirhan and Luca grabbing on to his arms; and a photo of her sitting on the bench.

As far as Hope could remember she’d been studiously scribbling in her notebook, but Wilson had snapped her staring pensively into the middle distance, eyes cloudy, mouth set in a tight thin line. She looked sulky as anything and at least ten years older.

There was also a handwritten sheet of paper with Wilson’s scrawl on it. He’d once admitted, under duress and much baiting from Susie, that he had to write in block capitals to ensure that people could decipher a single word.

HOPE,

HEREWITH PHOTOS FROM CAMLEY STREET NATURAL PARK. I PRINTED UP THE ONES I PREFERRED, BUT HAVE INCLUDED THE CONTACT SHEETS SO YOU CAN PICK OUT YOUR FAVOURITES TOO. LET ME KNOW WHICH PRINTS YOU’D LIKE.

HOPE ALL ELSE IS GOOD WITH YOU.

REGARDS,

WILSON

Considering that their every encounter went from showdown to stand-off within five minutes, it was actually a sweet (if stilted) note, but it still sent Hope into a tailspin.

When it had just been her and Jack trying to move forward it was all right. Better than all right. But now Wilson’s note reminded Hope of why she and Jack were trying to move forward in the first place.

Hope stuffed the envelope in her tote bag to take to school with her. It was time that she left for work, except Jack was still in bed and refusing to get up. There was nothing new about this; it simply meant that Hope would leave the house late, run to catch the bus, then run all the way to school from the bus stop and arrive hot and sweaty just before the bell rang with no time to gather herself or her lesson plans.

She stuck her head round the bedroom door to see a lump under the duvet, just the top of Jack’s head visible.

‘Come on,’ she wheedled. ‘It’s time to get up or you’ll be late and you’ve already made me late.
Again
.’

There was an indistinct grunt, which Hope correctly translated as, ‘Just five more minutes and then I’ll get up, I swear.’

Except five minutes would pass, then he’d want another five minutes, and now that Wilson’s presence by way of the Royal Mail had watered the seeds of doubt and suspicion in Hope’s mind, she didn’t feel inclined to indulge Jack.

‘This is your five-second warning,’ Hope said firmly. ‘I’m counting to five and then I’m going to work.’

This time the grunt sounded plaintive, which meant that Jack was mumbling something about having to have worked late the night before. Or had he? Maybe working late really meant sucking face with Susie. Or even one of the impossibly pretty girls from
Skirt
’s fashion department.

Just the mental image
that
conjured up was enough to make Hope bite out, ‘Onetwothreefourfive!’ super quickly, which was against the rules of counting up to five, but then Jack hadn’t cared about the rules when he kissed Susie.

She’d gone over to the dark side once more, and as Jack hadn’t stirred, despite fair warning, he could be late for work and suffer the consequences. Though as he was one of only three straight men in the
Skirt
office and all the female staff doted on him, the consequences were never that dire.