Getting Over Mr. Right (4 page)

This devastating tidbit was accompanied by a graphic of a tiny red heart in two pieces.

You can imagine my reaction. I spat tea onto my keyboard. Michael Parker is no longer in a relationship? What the hell did that mean? I quickly sent him a message via the site: “Wot’s with the relationship update?” And then I sent him a text for good measure: “Just saw your Facebook page. No longer in a relationship? Very funny. Ha ha ha.”

It had to be a slip of the mouse or, at worst, a very bad joke, but Michael responded to neither request for an explanation. I called his mobile. He didn’t pick up. I put that down to the fact that since he’d been made a partner, he’d moved to an office on the other side of the building and the mobile reception was patchy there, but when I called his direct line, he didn’t pick that up, either.

“He’s just gone into a meeting,” said Tina, his unnecessarily gorgeous assistant.

“Will you tell him to call me as soon as he gets out?”

“Of course.”

I felt a little relieved by that exchange. There was nothing in Tina’s voice that suggested anything was awry. But three hours later Michael still hadn’t phoned me back and I was starting to get anxious. It began to dawn on me that Michael might be serious. I ran through all the possible reasons why Michael might be in a bad mood with me. Was he still upset about the small disagreement we’d had a couple of nights before, when I’d asked him if he wanted to go halves on renting a country cottage with Becky and Henry over the August bank holiday and he said he hadn’t thought that far ahead? Or maybe he was
angry because I’d questioned why he was spending so much time at the gym when I loved him just the way he was: slightly soft around the edges. In retrospect, I could see it was a mistake to have used those words.

All those little things suddenly seemed like perfectly good reasons to start a passive-aggressive fight by changing your relationship status on stupid Facebook. But it was about to get worse.

When I logged back on to Facebook to send Michael a message asking if he could elaborate on what I might have done wrong, I discovered that Michael was no longer on my friends list. I had been
unfriended
.

Unfriended by my own boyfriend! It was the ultimate humiliation. And still Michael refused to get in touch with me. I needed another girl’s view. I called Becky, who was a teacher, and had her pulled out of an A-level history class to talk to me.

“What’s happened? Are you hurt?”

Becky had told all her friends that she could
never
talk during work hours unless something had gone
seriously
wrong. I had always respected her request, but that day … Well, this was serious in my opinion.

“Michael has unfriended me.”

“What?”

“Becky, I think I’ve been dumped.”

“Ashleigh! What are you talking about? The school secretary said it was an emergency.”

“And being dumped by the love of my life isn’t?”

“When did he dump you? And how come you’re not sure that he did? What on earth is going on?”

I explained exactly what had happened, hoping that Becky would tell me I had overreacted. She would read between the lines and come up with some other explanation. Of course Michael hadn’t dumped me, was the answer I was hoping for. It was clear he was just messing around. Or Facebook had been infected by a computer virus that had wiped everyone’s relationship status clean. I should check my own status for a start. But Becky had no such good news for me. She dismissed out of
hand my idea of a brain tumor that had altered Michael’s personality and said that the simplest explanation is usually accurate. As far as she could see, the simple explanation was that I had really been dumped.

“Though it is pretty unbelievable,” she admitted. “I’ve never heard of anyone over the age of fifteen being dumped by Facebook.”

“Then there’s no way that’s what happened. He would have told me.”

“But he has told you. He’s told all his Facebook friends. Incredible. I can’t believe he’s been such a shit.”

“I’m going to go to his flat to find out what he’s thinking,” I said.

“Do not go to Michael’s flat,” said Becky.

“But I have to. I have to know what’s going on!”

“But you know what’s going on. The selfish, thoughtless idiot has dumped you. On Facebook. Like a total coward. Even my year sevens show more sensitivity. You’ve left him messages and you’ve sent him texts and emails asking for an explanation. The next step is up to him. He has to get in touch with you and tell you what is happening. At the very least he needs to call you and give you an apology for being so … so thoughtless.”

“But I can’t wait that long,” I told her.

“Sweetheart, you have to. If this is going to have any kind of happy ending, you absolutely have to remind him that the way he’s behaving is not nice or right at all. If and when he rings up or comes around, you have permission to give him hell. Nothing else. You must do nothing else, do you understand?”

“But—” I whined.

“No buts,” said Becky. “Stay strong. If he’s going to act like a child, you have to treat him like one. You have to show him that you’re not to be messed around with. If you don’t do what he’s almost certainly expecting, if you don’t go around and sit
on his doorstep, howling at the moon like an abandoned dog, that just might get him wondering whether he’s been so clever after all.”

“Do you think so?”

“I know so. The first time Henry started bleating about being unsure whether he was ready for a relationship, I simply told him that I was
absolutely
ready and if he wasn’t up to the job, I would start looking for a new boyfriend. He soon got his act together.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“I didn’t need to. Henry’s wobble lasted less than two hours.”

As she said that, I heard the voice she used for the children in her class at school. It was the voice that said
no nonsense
and got exactly that.

“Now, are you feeling any better?” Becky asked. “Do you want me to come around and sit on you to make sure that you don’t do anything silly?”

“No,” I said.

“Okay. Here’s what you should do. Concentrate on your work for the rest of the day. Then, when you get home, make yourself a cup of tea and sit down in front of the television. Watch
The Apprentice
. Watch your DVD boxed set of
Lost
if you have to. But do not contact Michael again. Definitely
do not
go to Michael’s flat. You have to promise me that. Because this is a waiting game now and I want you to win it.”

“Thank you,” I said in a tiny voice.

“I’m sure everything will work out. Now I have to get back to my year twelves and the Reformation. A teacher’s work …”

“Right. Thanks. I’ll do what you suggested.”

But there was no chance that I would be able to concentrate on work. I had to get out of the office.

I told Ellie, my assistant, that I thought I had food poisoning. She told me I didn’t look any worse than usual but agreed I should go home at once. The positive aftereffects of Becky’s pep talk lasted for, oh, at least three-quarters of an hour after I got back to my flat. About as long as it took me to make a cup of tea and go through my DVD collection looking for that
Lost
boxed set. Whereupon I realized that I didn’t have my
Lost
boxed set because Michael did. We had once spent a whole weekend tucked up in his bed watching the series from the very beginning. Even with Michael’s learned commentary, I didn’t have a clue what was going on, but I had so enjoyed being under the duvet with him for a whole forty-eight hours, getting out only to accept a pizza from the delivery boy.

The memory of that weekend assailed me like a chimpanzee with a sledgehammer. Feeling suddenly quite weak with the shock of my Facebook dismissal, I lay on my back on the sheepskin rug from Ikea and stared at the ceiling until the tears came. And come they did, racking my body until I was a sniveling, snot-faced shadow of the girl I had been when I set out for work that morning.

What on earth was happening? I struggled into a sitting position and wiped the snot away on the back of my shirtsleeve. Was I really dumped? How was it possible that Michael wanted to end things? Anyone seeing us together that
Lost
weekend would surely have placed money on our being together for a very long time. Forever, in fact. I remembered how Michael had smoothed my hair from my forehead and kissed the tip of my nose, telling me that I made him feel like a shy sixth-former again. He made me feel the same way. I was giddy with the kind of love you can only feel when you’ve never been hurt before because, somehow, being with Michael had cleaned the slate. Being with him had magically blanked out all those years of disaster and rejection.

Those feelings can’t be faked, can they? I had felt sure that
when Michael told me that he loved me, he meant it. Why would he have stopped meaning it? His strange behavior had to be due to something else. Perhaps he was suffering from an undue amount of stress at work and I just hadn’t noticed. Perhaps I hadn’t been supportive enough. I knew that lately I had been moody, too. Things in my own office hadn’t been so great and it was possible that Michael was getting fed up with me bringing home my worries when he had so many of his own. I could change that. I could buck myself up to help him. I would do whatever it took.

But I had to go there to convince him. Becky’s strategy may have been right for most relationships, but it wasn’t right for Michael and me. We had something that shouldn’t be sullied by game playing and strategic withdrawals. If Michael needed me, I was going to be there beside him, regardless of whether he thought he wanted me there. I was going to make everything all right.

Becky sent me a text: “I hope you’re not at Michael’s.”

I sent her a text back: “Of course not.”

Seconds later I called a mini-cab to take me to the apartment block where Michael lived. As I sat in the back of that taxi, taking half as many breaths as normal to avoid inhaling too much toxic air freshener, I planned my approach. I juggled my iPhone from one hand to the other. Should I call him to tell him that I was on my way? Should I text? I decided against it. Michael had yet to respond to any of that day’s frantic messages from me, so I had very good reason to believe that if he saw my number illuminate the screen of his phone, he would send me straight to voicemail. Even if he did pick up, if I told him I was coming over, he would almost certainly tell me not to. I couldn’t risk that. I had to see him before I went insane.

As the taxi pulled up outside the block, I panicked again. If I rang Michael’s doorbell, he might not let me in. What could I do? River Heights was a very exclusive development with a high level of security. According to Michael, an oligarch had bought the top two floors of the main building for his chauffeurs. The guy at the gate wasn’t supposed to let anyone in without the approval of the person they were visiting. I knew that, in general, the security staff stuck to that rule rather rigidly. I’d tried to turn up with a surprise cake for Michael’s birthday and they’d insisted on letting him know I was there. “Might be a cake, might be a bomb,” the straight-faced guard at the gate had told me.