Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (46 page)

As soon as she walked into the Lord Palmerston, Hope was forced to tug off her winter gear as she was enveloped in a fierce heat from the roaring log fire, all the radiators going full blast, and everybody in the pub turning to glare at her until she shut the door.

Susie had grabbed a sofa in a little nook beyond the bar, and had a bottle of Pinot Noir and two glasses ready and waiting. ‘Wasn’t sure you were going to come,’ she commented dryly when Hope sat down next to her. ‘Bet Jack wasn’t too happy about it.’

‘What makes Jack happy isn’t my biggest priority right now,’ Hope said with matching dryness, until she remembered that it was their anniversary, they were in couples therapy, and what made Jack happy was actually her biggest priority at the moment. Unhappy people made bad decisions. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to talk about Jack with you.’

‘What else are we going to talk about? Don’t tell me you aren’t
dying
for a debrief, because I know I am.’ Susie chinked her glass gently against Hope’s. ‘You’re the only person who knows what I’m going through.’

I went through it because you fucked my boyfriend
sang the familiar refrain in Hope’s head, and she was all set to shout and snap and maybe flounce out until she looked at Susie.

She was still the same beautiful Susie. Wearing exquisitely cut tweed flares, a sloppy silk blouse and a sloppier fine-knit cardigan, which would have made any other girl look like a hot sloppy mess, but made Susie look pulled together and elegant. Expertly made up: eyebrows in a perfect sweeping arch and wearing the careless smile that she
did
so well; but Hope knew Susie better than that, even if it had been a while. She could see how hard it was to blend in heavy concealer when the skin under your eyes was raw from crying. Could see the waxy, dull cast to Susie’s face, and that her sleek, dark hair seemed to have lost a little of its glossiness. All in all, she was a little bit less than she used to be.

They sat there in silence. It was impossible to act as if nothing had happened, and that they could happily discuss the new season of
Glee
, what festivals they were planning to attend next summer and Jennifer Aniston’s latest dating travails, because something
had
happened.

‘The thing is, Hopey, I fucking love him,’ Susie suddenly said. ‘I knew it was wrong, and I knew that you were going to get hurt … I knew all three of us would get hurt, but I couldn’t help myself.’

Hope was sick and tired of that same old tune. Love didn’t sweep away everything in its path, including good reason and common decency. Not the love that she knew, anyway. ‘Well, maybe you should have tried a little harder,’ she said acidly.

Susie looked even more dejected. ‘Doesn’t matter anyway, does it? He came back to you, so you won in the end.’

As Hope’s last sight of Jack had been him clumsily attempting to physically prevent her from leaving the flat, for the first time she had to acknowledge that maybe Jack wasn’t such a prize. Or if he was, it was the kind of prize that came with four couples-therapy sessions and God knows how many weeks of no sex. She fidgeted uncomfortably. She wasn’t being fair. Their relationship had improved immeasurably since they’d been having counselling: Jack was finally able to see that they had a future together, and today had been perfect until Susie had started leaning on the doorbell.

‘You used to say that love was for losers,’ she reminded
Susie.
‘And you also said that you didn’t even know what love felt like.’

‘Now I am in love and it feels awful. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, and if you and Jack had a pet rabbit, I’d have tried to boil it by now,’ Susie spat, threading her hands through her hair. ‘I don’t know who I am any more, and I don’t know why I love him when he’s such a fucking coward.’

‘We can’t talk about him,’ Hope said firmly. ‘He’s not up for discussion.’

‘Oh, please,’ Susie drawled. ‘The reason you’re sitting here is because you feel like you’ll go mad if you don’t talk about it. I mean, the way Jack has played us both; same shit, different girl. And do you want to know how he dumped me in the end?’

‘No, I really don’t,’ Hope gasped.

‘Well, I’m going to tell you anyway!’ Susie almost shouted, shifting around until she and Hope were almost bumping noses. ‘He waited until I’d gone to work, and then he packed up all his stuff, sent me five rambling text messages about his dad and your dad coming down for the weekend and how it was all complicated, blah blah blah, and then I get a text at one on a Monday morning, saying that he was going to have couples counselling with you and it was probably for the best if he didn’t see me. Then the fucker turned his phone off.’

Oh Jack, what have you done?
Hope thought sadly. ‘So, he never called to explain things properly?’ Hope asked, though she already knew the answer.

‘Did he, fuck!’ Susie supplied. ‘And now I hate him and I love him and I’ve turned into one of those girls from a really cheesy rom-com. I even tried eating chocolate.’

‘But you
hate
chocolate,’ Hope said, because Susie normally couldn’t stand the stuff. It had actually been a serious black mark against Susie, because a person who didn’t like chocolate was obviously a person who was seriously flawed, until Susie had started shagging Jack and
the
black mark had become so big, it had obliterated everything in its path.

‘I hate chocolate and I hate long, hot baths with scented candles and listening to Adele and shopping as retail therapy and all the other lame things you’re meant to do to get over someone,’ Susie ranted. ‘None of them work, and I still feel like shit, and the worst thing of all is that I still want him – and I’m sorry, Hope, I really am, but I know he wants me too.’

‘Wanting isn’t the same as loving,’ Hope countered, even as she tried to process that Jack –
Jack!
– could arouse such deep passion. But that kind of passion simply couldn’t endure for thirteen years, not without both parties suffering from nervous exhaustion and frequent UTIs.

‘You’re frowning,’ Susie noted. ‘I’ve pissed you off, haven’t I?’

‘Of course I’m pissed off with you,’ Hope insisted, and it was the truth, but she was only a little bit angry these days, which might have something to do with the counselling and Angela’s attempts to encourage her impulse control, and because there was no need to be angry any more. Jack had said they were going to be fine, and it was the only thing he’d said in the last few months that Hope had believed. The soft, melting way he’d looked at her last night before he said it had cut through all her doubt and mistrust, so she could afford to be magnanimous. ‘But it doesn’t matter any more. I’m not glad it happened, and if I could erase what you did, I would, but Jack and I are closer than we’ve been in ages.’

‘Yeah, but you’re not very good at reading Jack, are you?’ Susie pointed out belligerently.

‘I can read him just fine,’ Hope rapped back and actually she
was
starting to get angry now. ‘I’ve known him my entire life. I’ve been his girlfriend for half that time so I understand Jack better than you ever could.’

‘You’re so good at understanding him that you didn’t
even
know he was cheating on you!’ Susie shook her head as if she couldn’t believe the depths of Hope’s delusions.

‘Well, I’m not going to make that mistake again, am I?’

‘Ha! Ha!’ Susie jabbed her finger in Hope’s direction. ‘So you
do
think that Jack will cheat on you again.’

‘Who do you think you are? Judge bloody Judy?’ Hope slammed down her glass, then folded her arms tightly so she wouldn’t be tempted to use them for hurting. ‘For fuck’s sake, Susie! Just get over it. Get over Jack, because it’s finished. If he wanted to be with you, he’d be with you. Find someone else. Go back to Wilson, if he’ll have you, though I very much doubt it.’

‘Yeah, right, like that’s ever going to happen when Jack is the only man I want to be with,’ Susie scoffed, and she seemed to be calming down now, almost as if she knew that she’d never be able to match Hope’s rage, so there was no point in even trying. ‘Actually, Wilson’s been really understanding about the whole thing. Well, when he wasn’t telling me what a selfish, home-wrecking bitch I was.’

The only reason that she wanted to talk about Wilson, Hope told herself, was because she couldn’t bear to talk about Jack any longer. ‘Wilson and I hung out a bit,’ she said casually, making sure that she absolutely looked Susie in the eye. ‘Before Jack and I started counselling. Y’know, hanging out as mates.’

From the searching look Susie gave Hope, it was obvious that her casual voice hadn’t worked. ‘Just mates? I wouldn’t have expected that.’

‘No, neither did I, but he’s quite a nice bloke when you get to know him.’

‘I can’t believe I ever went out with him,’ Susie said, and Hope waited for her to follow through with her usual comments about Wilson’s prowess between the sheets. And right on cue: ‘We had nothing in common, except we both liked it when I sat on his dick—’

‘Please, shut up,’ Hope said, closing her eyes and trying to
scrub
her brain of the image that Susie had just conjured up. ‘So, listen, I don’t want to argue with you any more. This whole thing, it’s over, and you need to move on and you need to let Jack and me move on … together.’

Susie’s lips twisted. ‘How long is this going to go on for, Hopey? Have you got some sort of timetable in place to decide whether or not it’s working? Or are you going to keep letting Jack walk out, then come back, for the next twenty years?’

‘It’s going to work. It
is
working! We’ve only had four counselling sessions and we’re back together and everything’s great.’

‘So, what? Like, you’re properly engaged now, are you? Have you set a date?’ Susie asked, looking pointedly at the three silver rings on Hope’s right hand.

‘When we do, you’ll be the first to know,’ Hope said, scowling because that little dig had wormed its way right through to her heart. ‘Actually, you’ll be the last to know because this is it, Susie. It’s so over between you and Jack that he doesn’t want anything to do with you, which is why I’m sitting here having this conversation with you.’

‘But he can’t just end things without even saying goodbye properly,’ Susie protested. ‘I can’t believe that you and him are settling back into bland domesticity, not when he said that …’

‘What? What did he say?’ Hope challenged, her eyes flashing.

The other girl shrugged. ‘I don’t like to kiss and tell.’

Hope counted to ten. Then twenty. It wasn’t until she got to twenty-five that she was calm enough to say, ‘Stop trying to wind me up.’ She was even calm enough to pick up her glass again without worrying that she’d snap the stem. ‘This is so silly. We’re both grown women and we’re fighting over a guy like we’re still at school.’

Susie smiled slyly. It was a look that Hope knew only too well. A look that had led to both of them getting up to all
kinds
of no good, from buying skunk from a dodgy bloke in a pub to going skinny-dipping on a Cornwall beach at three in the morning. It was a look that Hope had really missed. ‘I’ll tell you what would be really funny,’ she said, gently nudging Hope’s elbow. ‘What would Jack do if we both decided to kick him to the kerb?’

Hope didn’t even have to think about it. ‘He’d have another steady girlfriend within a fortnight,’ she said, ‘A month, tops.’

‘Nah, he’d go wild chasing after anything in a skirt. No way would he settle down so quickly.’

‘He totally would,’ Hope argued with absolute certainty. ‘He might jaw on about how he’s too young to settle down, but he went straight from living with me to living with you. Didn’t even think about getting his own place or establishing any kind of independence.’ She smiled a little smugly at Susie, who was still giving Hope her sceptical face. ‘Jack’s a settler. He hates changes, hates taking risks, unless they’re forced on him, and he’d hate the unpredictability of being with a different girl every week.’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ Susie mused.

‘No maybe about it,’ Hope said, and suddenly it felt so right to be sitting in a pub with Susie. Men were meant to come and go, but best friends were meant to be there for ever.

‘The crappy thing is that when this whole situation settles down, however it settles down, you and me, we’re not …’ Susie tucked a stray lock of hair behind Hope’s ear. ‘We’re not going to be cool again, are we? Not like we were.’

‘There’s no way we can. Not after everything that’s gone on …’ Hope couldn’t finish the sentence because Jack and Susie were over, and she was sick of having to acknowledge that they’d ever been together. ‘It would be too weird. And how would it make you feel having to look at Facebook photos of romantic dinners and mini-breaks and stuff?’

‘It might not be that weird,’ Susie said. ‘My nan was
engaged
to my granddad’s brother before she married my granddad.’

‘Oh, right. Did your granddad’s brother die in the Second World War or something?’ Hope asked gently.

‘No! He went to Margate for a week with his work, and my gran copped off with my granddad while he was gone.’ Susie stuck out her chin. ‘And they all got over it. Used to go down the pub every Friday and Saturday night with Great-uncle Arthur, who ended up marrying this divorcée called Brenda. She was a bit of a goer. Listen, shall we get another bottle, before they call last orders?’