Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (51 page)

The Winter Pageant started eleven minutes late, which was the least late it had ever started. Hope thrust a microphone at Mr Gonzales, then shoved him up the three steps on to the stage so he could introduce the Pageant. He made a very poor job of it as far as Hope was concerned, and next time,
not that there was going to be a next time
, she’d definitely write him a script and insist that he stuck to it.

Hope stayed rooted to her post at the side of the stage, pulling and pushing people on and off it, prompting, miming and glaring at children waiting to go on who refused to wait quietly.

There were many, many things that went wrong. The Red Class’s interpretative dance to ‘Jingle Bells’ was a disaster. They forgot most of the words, so made up for it in the chorus with a lot of enthusiastic shouting, and a good three-quarters of them still couldn’t tell their left from their right. There was also a problem with the living-flame hats for Yellow Class’s human menorah, and Shona from Year Six,
wearing
a metric tonne of glittery body powder, was hopelessly miscast as the Virgin Mary.

It didn’t seem to matter, though, to an indulgent, doting audience who laughed and clapped and whooped, and when the entire school wriggled on to the stage to sing ‘God Only Knows’ as the closing number, there were muffled sobs from all corners of the hall. Hope cried all over Marta, who kept telling her to pull herself together, and it wasn’t just because if she did ever get married, she planned to walk down the aisle to ‘God Only Knows’, it was from relief and exhaustion and because on so many levels she
was
scared and unhappy, just like Angela had said.

Hope was trying to repair the damage done to her eyeliner and wasn’t listening to Mr Gonzales thank the PTA and announce the raffle winners, so she gave an alarmed shriek when Javan suddenly took her sweaty hand and yanked her up on stage.

It was one thing to be backstage bossing people about, quite another to suddenly be on stage and blinking uncertainly at a sea of faces.

‘And can we have a big round of applause for our very own Simon Cowell, Ms Delafield, who’s been responsible for our wonderful Winter Pageant,’ Mr Gonzales said, which was a back-handed compliment if ever Hope had heard one. ‘I’m sure the PTA will rest easy tonight knowing that she won’t be phoning them up to demand they sell more raffle tickets.’

That wasn’t a back-handed compliment, it was an outright slating. Hope came forward, and to her horror, she could feel more tears welling up and she was going to cry on stage in front of the whole school. She looked down to make sure that she was actually wearing clothes, because she was sure she’d had this nightmare several times.

Mr Gonzales handed her the microphone and she stumbled her way through a long list of thank yous, from the dinner ladies who’d finished the lunch service and then
started
making mince pies, to Saeed, the caretaker, and his trusty glue gun, to the PTA and Rabbi Rosenberg. The only two people she didn’t thank were her mother for giving birth to her, and Sarah, who had been telling people backstage that she’d been heavily involved in the Pageant until medical problems had forced her to step down unwillingly. Since when did a skimpy list full of question marks rather than hard information, on two pieces of double-spaced A4, count as ‘heavily involved’? Since never.

Hope finished with a heartfelt plea for any unwanted books to replace Blue Class’s water-logged collection, then handed back the microphone to Mr Gonzales, who gingerly put an arm around her shoulders in a way that couldn’t be deemed as sexual harassment and said, ‘But joking aside, there wouldn’t have been a Winter Pageant without Ms Delafield, who’s worked tirelessly on it for weeks. Now, can we have Blue Class up on stage?’

Blue Class bounded on stage like thirty very excitable puppies, with much shoving and pushing, and Hope would have stopped them in their tracks with a significant look and a muttered aside about stickers, but Caitlin and Maryam were presenting her with a huge bouquet of roses and lilies, followed by Timothy with a small Selfridges bag, and bringing up the rear was Luca with a big box of chocolates that looked as if several small hands had been trying to rip off the shrink wrap. Then every member of the class came forward to give Hope an enthusiastic hug – even Stuart, though Hope tensed every bone in her body and prayed that he didn’t try and wipe his nose on her dress.

As Hope helped them off stage, Sorcha burst into tears because, ‘Now nothing nice is going to happen for ages and it’s still eight sleeps until Christmas.’ Then the girly girls decided to cry too, and there were long moments until mothers were fetched and coats and shoes were found and finally all the pupils were off the premises, all the mince pies had been eaten, and Saeed was pointedly
jangling
his big bunch of keys because he wanted to lock up.

Jack was nowhere to be seen, and Hope wondered if he’d gone to the Midnight Bell with Simon as soon as the last shepherd had trooped off the stage, though she hoped he hadn’t and had been there to see that some people adored her, even if they were aged seven and under. She retrieved her iPhone from her desk and saw, with dismay, that she had ten missed calls, five texts and three voice messages from Jack. She knew exactly what they’d say.

He was drunk. He was drunker. He was drunkest. ‘Oh, Hopey, Hopey, Hopey, don’t be mad at me,’ he slurred on the final voicemail. ‘I’m at Shoreditch House, I’ve been drinking for hours, and now the fashion and beauty girls have turned up and it’s cold and you wouldn’t be so mean as to make me leave and come to your carol concert, would you? It’s only a carol concert, and I’ll buy you an extra special present to make up for it.’

Hope was all set to call him back and shout, ‘Only a carol concert? Only a bloody carol concert? You have got to be fucking kidding me! How could you let me down? Again?’ Then she’d segue seamlessly into a huge list of his faults and be angry and confrontational and probably bring up the fact that he’d screwed Susie – and repeat to fade.

In the end Hope settled for stubbing her fingers on her touch screen as she sent him a text message:
It wasn’t a carol concert. It was a WINTER PAGEANT, which you’d have known if you’d bothered to turn up. Lots of love, Hope

She looked around the empty classroom and wondered how, after tomorrow, she’d get through three weeks without the distraction of work. Normally she loved Christmas, well, she didn’t love going home, but she liked the food and presents part of it, and she loved coming back to London and visiting friends and raging so hard on New Year’s Eve that it took her forty-eight hours to recover. This year Hope
had
a horrible feeling that on New Year’s Eve the only raging she’d be doing was at the horrible mess she’d made of painting the kitchen skirting boards.

She heard a noise behind her and, startled, she turned round to see Wilson standing in the classroom doorway. ‘Oh! Your money,’ Hope said, inwardly cringing as she unlocked her desk drawer again to pull out an envelope containing six dog-eared five-pound notes and the box of crackers. ‘I’m sorry it’s not very much.’

Wilson stepped forward to take the envelope. He looked just as embarrassed, and suddenly thrust it back at Hope. ‘Look, why don’t you keep it? Put it towards some new books or hamster food or something.’

Hope couldn’t even protest, because handing over thirty quid in used notes was far more insulting than keeping it. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again. ‘And thank you. Did everything go all right? I’m sorry that you got lumbered with it in the end, but thank you, I do really …’

‘Are you going to say anything other than “sorry” and “thank you”?’ Wilson asked with a small smile as Hope tucked the envelope away again.

‘Sorry.’ It popped out before Hope could pop it back in. ‘You off, then?’

‘Yeah, going to grab something to eat …’ Wilson didn’t finish the sentence but Hope was sure that he was looking at her meaningfully. Or maybe she just wanted him to be looking at her meaningfully.

‘So am I,’ Hope said slowly, as an idea began to form. ‘I’m meeting Elaine and Marta, she teaches Reception, at a pub round the corner for our unofficial Christmas dinner. They do really good savoury pies.’

‘Sounds nice.’ It was the dictionary definition of non-committal.

Hope gathered up her handbag and coat, looked longingly at her Uggs but decided she could do another two hours in her heels if she got a cab home, then ushered Wilson out of
the
classroom. ‘It’s partners too,’ she remarked casually. ‘Except Jack is otherwise engaged.’

‘Oh! Like that, is it?’

‘It’s not like anything,’ Hope muttered. ‘He’s pickling his liver somewhere in Shoreditch. And well, I already paid for the meal in advance, and if you have to eat anyway …’ Now it was Hope’s turn to trail off, though she was sure that her look wasn’t that meaningful. More like desperate because she’d missed hanging out with him, and having to sit around a table with Elaine and Marta and their life partners like a gigantic gooseberry was a punishment she didn’t deserve. ‘You’d like Elaine’s husband, Simon. He used to be in a band and he has his own recording studio in their back garden.’

Hope didn’t know if that was what sealed the deal but Wilson nodded. ‘OK,’ he said.

She waited for him to elaborate a little further but he just adjusted his camera bag and waited for her to start walking.

THE ONLY THING
more blissful than the sudden warmth and smell of home-cooking when Wilson pulled open the heavy wooden door of the Midnight Bell, was the bowl-sized glass of red wine waiting for Hope at the table where Elaine, Marta, Simon and Marta’s boyfriend, Iban, were sitting.

She quickly introduced Wilson as she squeezed past Marta so she could sit down and pick up her glass. ‘Cheers,’ she said, then downed the contents in three swift swallows. ‘Christ, I needed that.’

Wilson sat down next to Hope, opposite Simon, which was good, rather than opposite Elaine, which would have been really bad, because once she had a few drinks all discretion and reason disappeared. He immediately offered to get a round in.

‘No! No! It’s all paid for. We did a deal with Al, the landlord. Twenty-five quid a head for all the food and drink we can manage,’ Hope clarified, as she poured herself another glass of wine.

‘The rate you’re drinking, he’ll be bankrupt by the end of the night,’ Wilson said.

‘Nonsense. He makes a fortune out of us the rest of the year,’ Elaine argued. ‘But if you’re going to the bar, can we have another bottle of red, a bottle of white, and what do you want? Lager, cider, champagne?’

By the time her steak and ale pie arrived and she fell on it with eager little cries, Hope was halfway to happy. It
wasn’t
just the three large glasses of red wine, either – all the tension and the strain of the last week was ebbing away thanks to good company, good friends, good times. Which was rather hokey, but she was rather drunk.

Wilson and Simon had bonded over obscure indie bands of the 1980s and were happily discussing French New Wave cinema. Elaine was asking Iban deeply personal questions now it had been revealed that he and Marta were regulars at the Torture Garden, and that Iban had a piercing where no man in his right mind should have a piercing.

‘But can you still pee standing up?’ she kept asking him. ‘Isn’t there an issue with spray?’

And Hope was happily bitching with Marta about Dorothy and Sarah and the mothers that they couldn’t stand. ‘That child was still in nappies on the first day of school,’ Marta complained bitterly. ‘And when I told his mother that we expected all children to be toilet-trained, she said that they believed in child-led continence, and she wasn’t going to hamper his emotional development to appease the Education Authority.’

‘Poncey Islington mothers.’ Hope pushed away her plate after a few mouthfuls, because if she was eating, then she couldn’t be drinking.

‘Eat,’ Wilson ordered, pushing the plate back in front of Hope, who pouted at him. ‘You need something to mop up the rivers of booze.’

‘I had a mince pie earlier,’ Hope protested.

‘Eat your pastry and your potatoes,’ Wilson said. He looked around the table at Marta and Elaine who were also in an advanced state of inebriation. ‘Aren’t you three meant to be working tomorrow?’

‘Frankly, darling, I’m only going in to get the loot from parents grateful for my attempts to shape their children’s tiny brains,’ Elaine said grandly.

‘Yes, I see a long day of colouring-in for Red Class,’ Marta
added.
‘Very quiet, very hard colouring-in. What about you, Hope?’