Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (10 page)

She hesitated. Because, yes, she did really think that. Didn’t want to, but all the evidence suggested that Jack had stopped loving her some time ago and she hadn’t even realised it.

‘I love you, Hopey,’ he said, moving forward to wrap her up in a desperate embrace. ‘I never stopped loving you, even when she …’

‘Don’t say it,’ Hope begged, but she couldn’t not be held by Jack, enveloped in the toasty smell and warmth of him, and not feel all right. One of her hands was creeping up to tug the little tuft of hair at his nape and stroke the back of his neck.

That was the deal with loving someone. When they hurt you, they were the only one who could take the hurt away.

‘I never slept with her, I swear,’ Jack whispered in her ear. ‘It was just one stupid, drunken kiss that I wish I could rewind and erase.’

‘That wasn’t a one-off kiss,’ Hope insisted, but she wasn’t struggling to get free, but resting her head on Jack’s
shoulder
as he rubbed her back like he was trying to wind her. ‘It looked like you two had kissed countless times, usually without any clothes getting in the way.’

‘I don’t care what it looked like. It has never happened before and it will never happen again. You have to believe me, Hopey.’

‘But why did it happen at all?’

‘I don’t know!’ Jack gave a bitten-off groan. ‘I was pissed and Susie and I always have that flirty thing going on, and it was just one of those things you suddenly find yourself doing and you’re not sure how or why.’

It didn’t even come close to being a good enough excuse and Hope pulled away so she could look Jack in the eye. He looked like her Jack again, pouting slightly, brow knitted in a pleading frown. ‘She was my best friend. You didn’t just cross a line. You crossed about a hundred lines.’

‘I know I did,’ Jack said as he grabbed Hope’s hands and held them tight like he would never let go, until she yelped in pain as he pressed against the burn on her palm. ‘Sorry! It was, like, five minutes of madness that I’ll always regret for as long as I live. Please say that you understand.’

Hope wanted to more than anything, except she needed to be certain of one thing. ‘You do still love me, don’t you?’ she begged. ‘I know I was a bitch yesterday with all the stress of the dinner party and I know I nag you and that I’m messy and …’

‘Oh shut up, you stupid cow, of course I love you,’ Jack burst out, and it wasn’t the nicest way he’d ever said it, but Hope didn’t think he’d ever said it with so much feeling. ‘I wish I had a time machine and I could go back to last night and make sure that the kiss didn’t happen, but I can’t. All I can do is keep telling you that I love you until you believe me.’

‘I do believe you,’ Hope said slowly, and when she sat down on the edge of the bathtub, Jack sank to his knees so he could gaze up at her, and maybe her heart wasn’t
broken,
because it did a little loop-the-loop just from the sight of Jack, with his hair falling into his eyes and his little lopsided smile. ‘Are we still unofficially engaged, then?’

Jack gently lifted up Hope’s injured hand so he could kiss the three silver rings on her finger. ‘God, you don’t get rid of me that easily, Hopita,’ he said, and now his smile wasn’t so lopsided but brighter and sunnier, and it was impossible for Hope not to smile back. ‘I will make this up to you. Anything you want, name it, it’s yours.’

Hope wouldn’t have minded Jack’s blessing in moving the three silver rings to the third finger of her left hand, because she really needed that kind of reassurance. But when they went from pre-engaged to properly engaged, she didn’t want it to be because they were making up from a fight. And as it was, now she was starting to feel a little foolish that she’d made such a scene about one kiss.
If it had been just one kiss
. But Jack couldn’t look at her like that and be lying to her. He just couldn’t. She knew him better than that.

‘Do you … will you promise that you … that both of us will never see Susie again? Or Wilson,’ she amended hastily, because she never wanted to see his sneery face ever again as long as she lived.

Jack actually sighed in relief. ‘Of course. Goes without saying.’ He patted Hope’s thigh in a consoling manner. ‘Was he a total wanker to you?’

‘Well, he did come and find me and give me a lift,’ she mumbled. ‘And he was nice for maybe five minutes, but mostly he was rude, patronising and just unspeakably vile.’ Hope was all set to tell Jack that Wilson had accused her of imagining things when she realised that if she believed Jack’s version of events, like she really wanted to, then actually she
had
been imagining things. Which meant that Wilson had been right and Hope had been up to her elbows in wrong, but that aside, he’d still
spent
most of last night being a total bastard. ‘I hate him.’

‘So, anything else I can do to make it up to you?’ Jack asked, because he was obviously already bored with talking about Wilson, which suited Hope just fine.

‘You could run me a bath,’ Hope said, because she wanted this whole heart-wrenching episode to be done with and for boring, blissful normality to reign in their home once again. She gently pulled herself free from Jack who was still clutching her hands. ‘Lots of bubbles, please.’

‘Coming right up.’ Jack bustled past Hope to get to the taps. ‘I’ll even go out and get the
Observer
so you can read the magazine while you soak.’

Hope nodded. It was best like this instead of having some painful post-mortem that would make the situation drag on and on. But … ‘You … like, you and her, you haven’t? Not ever?’

‘How can you even ask me that?’ Jack demanded, his aghast face firmly reattached, his hand, which had been whipping up a frenzied froth of L’Occitane Green Tea scented bubbles, stilling.

‘How can I not?’ She leaned against the sink. ‘You have to promise me.’

‘I promise you!’ Jack said, and he sounded as if he was nearing the very zenith of his contrition. ‘And I promise that I’ll never see her again. OK?’

‘OK,’ Hope agreed, because she needed to let this go – even she was getting sick of the clingy desperation in her voice.

‘Now can we drop the subject and talk about something else, like me staying to wash your back?’ Jack offered with a leer that was a shadow of his usual leer. ‘If you wanted.’

Hand-holding and bath-running were all very well, but a quick bout of make-up sex definitely wasn’t going to be happening any time soon. It would take at least a week for any lingering Susie DNA to be eradicated from Jack’s skin,
and
though Hope had said the two of them were AOK, saying it and making herself genuinely believe it were two very different things. ‘I think I need some alone-time,’ she murmured as she stared at their two electric toothbrushes standing neatly side by side.

Within two weeks of moving in together, it had been established that Hope’s alone-time was sacrosanct. It either meant that she’d had a hellish day at school or she was between days twenty-three and twenty-eight of her cycle. Or, in worst-case scenarios, she’d had a hellish day
and
her special lady-time was imminent. It was her Get Out Of Jail Free card, and Jack respected Hope’s alone-time absolutely because he really didn’t like to suffer the spitting, furious consequences if he failed to heed her warning.

Maybe that’s why he was nodding in an understanding fashion. ‘That’s fair enough,’ he said, but he still wasn’t leaving the bathroom so Hope could wallow in bubbles and self-doubt. ‘Hope?’

Her head shot up at the sound of the plaintive, wheedling note in Jack’s voice. ‘What?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘Hopey, I know I don’t have the right to ask, but you won’t tell your mum about this, will you?’ Jack screwed his eyes shut. ‘Or my mum, come to that,’ he added weakly.

‘God, no!’ It was a relief to be on exactly the same page again. ‘You don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve that. They’ll be calling on the hour, every hour, to make sure that we haven’t split up.’

Hope and Jack stared at each other in mounting horror.

‘I think we can deal with this ourselves without any outside interference,’ Hope said firmly, because as hideous as the situation was, their mothers would make it even worse. They’d been best friends and next-door neighbours for twenty-nine years, and had been planning Jack and Hope’s nuptials ever since Caroline Delafield’s twenty-week scan had told her that after eight years of trying and three sons, she was finally going to have a use for that bottom drawer
full
of pink babygros and frilly dresses. ‘Otherwise our only chance of escape from the maternal jackboot is a joint suicide pact.’

‘You bring the pills, I’ll get the razor blades,’ Jack said.

‘Rather have a copy of the
Observer
and some orange juice, please.’

‘OK, OK.’ Jack held up his hands in surrender. ‘I’m going.’

Hope waited until Jack left the bathroom before she bolted the door, stripped off and slowly sank into the scented bath water. Jack always ran the bath slightly too hot and she had to ease herself in.

She ducked her head under the water, then emerged spluttering, hair streaming out behind her. Hope could hear Jack whistling, which always set her teeth on edge, then scoop up his keys and call out a cheery, ‘See you in five,’ before the front door slammed behind him.

Hope focused on the spot of mildew on the windowsill that no amount of Cillit Bang or vinegar could shift, then stretched out her legs so she could prop her feet up on either side of the taps. She could beat herself up over and over again because Jack had kissed her best friend. Or because if she’d been satisfying him then Jack wouldn’t have even contemplated kissing someone else, no matter how drunk he was. Or that he was never going to ask her to marry him if he wanted to have the freedom to kiss other girls.

There were all these ‘ors’ that she could obsess about or she could just … not. She’d told Jack that everything would be fine and they could put the whole sorry mess behind them, and they could.

If they loved each other and they wanted to stay together, grow old together, run the risk of the red-hair gene not being so recessive after all and bringing up a horde of ginger kids, then Hope had to build the world’s biggest bridge and get over this. And she had to stop being so argumentative and disorganised, and slobbing out as soon as she got in
from
work so that when Jack arrived home he was usually met by the less than scintillating sight of Hope in her pyjamas eating cereal straight from the box as she did her lesson plans.

Hope lay there, occasionally and adroitly pulling up the plug with one foot to let the water drain a bit, then adding more hot water, until her fingers and toes were so pruney that they started to hurt. Her head also hurt, but she couldn’t tell if it was from sleep deprivation or from chasing all the facts round and round in her head until they made her dizzy.

She was on the verge of hauling herself out of the bath when she heard Jack returning at the same time that her iPhone began to chirp faintly with Blondie’s ‘Call Me’, which was her current ringtone.

‘Shall I get that for you?’ he called out, and she grunted an affirmative reply as she began to slather on body lotion.

Then her stomach lurched and Hope thought that she might actually throw up, because what if it was Susie phoning to apologise and getting Jack instead of Hope? Hope strained her ears. Jack was talking in a low murmur, not raising his voice, and she was sure that she even heard him chuckle at one point. If it was Susie, he should have hung up by now, and she was all set to charge out of the bathroom and shout at him when Jack suddenly banged on the door.

‘How much longer are you going to be in there, anyway?’ he complained. ‘Someone wants to talk to you.’

Hope yanked a bath sheet off the towel rail. ‘Who?’ she demanded. ‘Who wants to talk to me?’

‘Your beloved deputy head wants to remind you to make brownies for tomorrow and, also, if it’s not too much trouble, can you make them gluten-free?’

Her suspicions were instantly forgotten as Hope unbolted the door with a scowl on her face. ‘No, I can’t,’ she hissed at Jack, who grinned and handed over her iPhone.

‘I’ll make coffee,’ he said, swatting her on the arse with the
Observer
as he walked away from her and Hope guessed that they were back to normal.

WHEN HOPE HAD
decided to become a teacher, it wasn’t to follow in her parents’ footsteps, and it certainly wasn’t a grand calling to shape young minds.