Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (25 page)

‘Yeah, right,’ Jack sneered. ‘If you say so.’

‘Wow! That’s kind of mean,’ Hope said to Jack’s back as he began packing clothes neatly into his bag. ‘Can we try and be civil to each other?’

‘You weren’t civil to me on Friday, were you?’ Jack still sounded bullish, but then he turned round and looked at her. Hope was proud of herself for standing there and looking right back at him calmly. She didn’t even have to ping her elastic band. As she stood there and Jack could see that she was really trying and not about to make any sudden movements with concealed weapons, Hope watched the
fight
go out of him. ‘Yeah, you’re right, we should try and be grown-ups about this.’

Hope nodded. ‘So, what’s going on, then? Are you moving in with Susie … permanently?’ She had to swallow round the last word, and it hung in the air like an invisible barrier between them.

‘Well, I can hardly stay here with you. That’s not an option, is it?’

Hope looked up at the ceiling as if she might find inspiration there. ‘If you were unhappy with me, you should have said something ages ago, not started an affair with my best friend because you were too chickenshit to end it any other way.’

Jack closed his eyes like he’d suddenly been struck. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said tightly. ‘This thing, it’s not about you and me. It’s about me and Susie.’

Now it was Hope’s turn to close her eyes. ‘But you and her aren’t a for-ever kind of deal. I mean, Jack, we can’t be
over
. Not like this.’ She sank back down on the bed. ‘We’ve been together for thirteen years and …’

‘I know! I fucking
know
. Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think that doesn’t keep me up at night?’ Jack now started stuffing clothes into his bag furiously, without any of his usual fussy precision. ‘Thirteen years, when it really comes down to it, doesn’t mean anything. It’s just a bloody long amount of time.’

‘It means
everything
. And don’t
I
mean something?’ Despite all her good intentions and the way that Jack’s anguish was tugging at her heart – even though he had no right to act like he was suffering too – Hope could feel the anger bubbling up. ‘God, you haven’t even said you’re sorry!’

‘Well, of course I’m sorry!’ Jack said, like it was obvious when it really, really wasn’t. ‘It goes without saying.’

‘No, it doesn’t. You should have at least, at the very least, said you were sorry. Are you sorry? Are you?’ Hope didn’t know why she was getting so riled up about saying sorry,
when
Jack’s failure to say sorry was the most minor of all his crimes.

‘How can you even ask me that?’ Jack demanded and he sounded as if he was also losing his grip on behaving like a calm, reasonable adult. ‘I might not have said those exact words but …’

‘Well, you should have, because they’re fucking important words,’ Hope snapped and she was never going to get over this, because she’d never be able to bury the hurt deep enough, it would always be lurking just below the surface, ready to rise to the top and scream out its pain. ‘You should have said sorry for fucking her and lying, God, you’ve lied so much … You’re disgusting!’

Jack threw his phone charger across the room. ‘I did a disgusting thing, that doesn’t make me a disgusting person,’ he shouted back. ‘You ever thought that maybe if everything was good between us I wouldn’t have even looked twice at Susie? But things haven’t been good for ages, and that’s just as much your fault as it is mine. Maybe more, because you’re the one with this pathological need to get engaged and you use sex as a bargaining tool and then there’s the way you …’

Hope sank down on to the bed and clapped her hands over her ears because she couldn’t bear to listen to this. It was all her worst fears realised. She let Jack’s words become white noise, a static, chaotic screeching in her head, and it took her some time to realise that Jeremy was standing in the bedroom doorway, his mouth open, and she shook her head just in time to hear him roar at Jack, ‘Don’t you dare talk to my sister like that!’

Then he charged at Jack with an angry bellow, while all Hope could do was stare in frozen horror, until Jeremy tripped over the laundry basket she’d left in the middle of the floor and the moment shifted from high-octane drama to slapstick, as Jeremy windmilled his arms and pedalled his legs in an effort to stay upright.

At least it made Jack come to his senses. He grabbed Jeremy before he could hit the floor, then looped an arm round his shoulders and tried to ruffle his hair as the younger boy struggled away. ‘It’s all right, Budly,’ Jack said gently, a shadow passing over his face when Jeremy refused to look at him. ‘Sometimes Hopey and I fight. It’s not the end of the world.’

‘I
heard
you.’ Jeremy looked over at Hope, who tried to smile, tried to show that it wasn’t the end of the world, not exactly, but she obviously didn’t succeed because Jeremy turned back to Jack with an ugly scowl on his face. ‘You’re a fucking bastard!’ He said it quickly and bravely, like it was the very worst thing he could ever think of calling someone. It probably was, and this time the ache Hope felt was for her little brother, because she had a horrible feeling that he’d just come of age right there in her bedroom. His hero had come crashing down off his pedestal, and even if he’d only suspected it before, he now knew that grown-ups were shitty and mean and not worthy of his adulation.

‘It’s OK, Jerry,’ Hope said, standing up so she could give him a hug. ‘It’s all going to be fine.’

It wasn’t going to be fine. Jeremy was hugging her back for one thing.

Jack tried again. ‘Let’s go down the park and have a kick-about, Budly.’

Jeremy stiffened in Hope’s arms and turned round so quickly that he almost fell over again. ‘I’m not five!’ he said scathingly. ‘Stop calling me that stupid nickname, and I hate football and I hate you and I don’t want to go anywhere with you ever again, so just fu … just go away!’

‘You’ll probably feel better for some fresh air,’ Hope said, because this wasn’t about her (that was certainly becoming a general and overriding theme), this was about Jack and Jeremy.

‘I hate fresh air too!’ Jeremy shouted. ‘I hate everything!’

Hope wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but she and
Jack
shared an exasperated eye-roll, and being so in tune with him, if only for a brief moment, felt bittersweet. Actually, more bitter than sweet.

‘Maybe you should go?’ Hope suggested hesitantly to Jack with an apologetic smile. ‘And Jeremy will see you tomorrow. You could go to the skate shop and then the IMAX, and isn’t there a sushi place on the South Bank?’

Jack played along. ‘Yeah, there is. We could go there for lunch.’

‘No, we couldn’t, because I’m not going anywhere with you,’ Jeremy said belligerently. ‘I know what you did and you’re trying to make out that it’s all Hopey’s fault. She’s right, you’re
disgusting
.’

‘Look, Budly, it’s not as simple as that,’ Jack said and his voice wasn’t gentle any more, but strained, like he was barely managing to control his anger. ‘You’ll understand when you’re a bit older.’

Yeah, you’ll understand that adults do really terrible things and then refuse to accept any responsibility for them
, Hope wanted to say, but instead she smiled tightly.

Jeremy wasn’t buying it either. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head violently. ‘No. I thought you were cool, really cool, and you’re not. You’re crap.’

There was no point in arguing with Jeremy when he had his cob on. It was like trying to wade through treacle in gumboots. Jack had obviously reached the same conclusion. ‘Fine, whatever,’ he snarled as he zipped up his holdall. ‘I don’t fucking need this.’

‘Don’t take it out on him,’ Hope warned in a low voice, because it worked both ways. If she had to choose between placating Jeremy and placating Jack, then Jeremy was going to win every time. And not just because Jack was doing his utmost to make Hope hate him. Jeremy was her baby brother and he held great sway with her mother, too. There was no contest.

Hope made a subtle shooing motion to Jeremy but he
stayed
where he was, arms folded, like he was her bodyguard and was going to stay right where he was in case Jack turned nasty. Or nastier.

‘This will all be fine,’ Hope said, mostly to puncture a hole in the tense, thick atmosphere, rather than because she believed it any more. ‘You’ll see.’

‘No, Hopey, it’s not going to be fine,’ Jack barked, hoisting up his bag with a vicious movement. ‘I only really came round to get some stuff, and you know what, Budly, I’ve got better things to do with my days off than babysitting you.’

He bumped shoulders with Hope on his way out of the room, Jeremy standing aside to let him pass, and Hope realised she was holding her breath and she couldn’t exhale until she heard the front door slam shut behind him. Then she let out the breath she was holding and turned round so she wouldn’t have to see the look on Jeremy’s face.

She nearly screamed when she felt Jeremy’s arms awkwardly wrap around her, while trying to avoid touching her boobs. ‘There, there,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’re better off without him.’

It was so like something that her father would say – in fact, Hope was sure that her father had said something very similar when she’d been sacked from her first Saturday job in the local chemist for daydreaming and trying out the nail-varnish testers when she should have been working – that she stifled a giggle.

Jeremy must have thought it was a stifled sob and decided to redouble his efforts. One heavy hand landed on her head and attempted to stroke Hope’s hair, which was tangled and knotty, because Hope’s second-day hair was always tangled and knotty, and his fingers got stuck. The other arm continued to clasp her, but it felt less like a hug and more like the Heimlich manoeuvre.

This time Hope did laugh and Jeremy tensed up. ‘You’re not hysterical, are you?’ he asked fearfully.

‘No, no,’ Hope assured him. ‘I’m fine. Really I am.’

Then she burst into tears.

Jeremy had no idea what to do with a sobbing female once he’d exhausted the awkward hugging and hair-stroking, but he tried his best.

As Hope curled up in a forlorn heap on her bed, hiccupping and spluttering in a futile attempt to choke back the sobs, Jeremy disappeared into the kitchen and returned half an hour later with a mug of very sweet, very milky tea, some chargrilled toast and half a bar of cooking chocolate.

It was very sweet and just made Hope cry harder.

Eventually she was able to stumble to the lounge and curl up on the sofa where Jeremy brought her a pint glass full of white wine, because he really had no idea about these sorts of things.

Or maybe he had exactly the right idea because when the glass was half empty (Hope was definitely in a glass-half-empty mindset), she did feel a bit better.

‘I’m sorry about all that,’ she said to Jeremy, who was sitting next to her, watching
Extreme Makeover Home Edition
without a murmur of complaint. ‘I’m sure we’ll work our way through it.’

Jeremy made an indistinct sound, not his usual grunt, but something wordless that seemed to convey his deep scepticism that Jack and Hope would work their way through it.

Hope ploughed on regardless. ‘If you want to hang out with him tomorrow and Tuesday, I’m sure he’d love that. I know he said that he didn’t want to, but he was just angry. Not with you, with me,’ she added.

‘I don’t,’ Jeremy said baldly. ‘Not after what he said and, like, the things he’s done. Y’know, the cheating and stuff.’

He must have heard every single shouted word, Hope thought to herself, as she struggled to appear calm. ‘You don’t need to worry about that and if you don’t want to
hang
with Jack, well, I’ll take you out. I’ll phone up the drama-workshop people and pretend I’ve got flu.’

Jeremy looked utterly scandalised, like he thought only Jack had the monopoly on duplicitous behaviour. ‘You can’t do that. You said it was important and the school was making you go.’ He swallowed manfully. ‘It’s all right, Hopey. I can just stay here and play on the Xbox.’

Poor, poor Jeremy. Packed off to London under extreme duress and now confined to quarters. ‘What if I find some other people to take you out?’

‘I’m not some little kid!’

‘I know you’re not,’ Hope said quickly, patting one plump knee, then snatching her hand away because it was hard to know where Jeremy’s personal-space boundaries started and finished. ‘But you can’t stay indoors for two days solid playing
Warcraft III
, and I do know some cool people, FYI.’

‘If you say so,’ Jeremy huffed, but then he nudged her with his elbow and Hope realised that was meant to be a joke.

Though once she was in the kitchen scrolling through her contact numbers it was painfully obvious that the number of cool people she knew who would be happy to ferry Jeremy around town was limited. All artboys were obviously out of bounds as they were Jack’s friends. Elaine, Simon and their two tearaway teen daughters were camping in Devon. Allison was willing to take him but she could only do two hours on Tuesday morning, when he could tag along with her to a craft fair at Olympia, and Hope didn’t think that either of them would enjoy themselves. Lauren had gone back to Whitfield to see her parents, and it transpired that Jack had prior claim on all their other cool friends because he’d met them first.