Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (40 page)

‘All right, I think I can muster up enough indignation on my own without you doing it for me,’ Wilson said. ‘When is it?’

‘Seventeenth of December. I know!’ Hope added, because once she was indignant it was very hard to rein it in. ‘Like you don’t have enough things to do the week before Christmas.’

‘Think I
am
going to be working every night that week,’ Wilson said, and bless him, he managed to make it seem as if he’d like nothing more than to photograph the Red Class doing an interpretive dance to ‘Jingle Bells’. ‘I could ask one of my assistants.’

‘Alfie?’

‘Christ, no! He’s not my assistant. He’s a minion,’ Wilson said in disgust. ‘But Dylan might be up for it. His girlfriend’s pregnant and he should probably see what he’s got to look forward to in a few years’ time.’ He shrugged. ‘You will have to bung him fifty quid, though.’

Hope did feel the tiniest bit disappointed that she wouldn’t have an excuse to see Wilson after tonight, but
she
was just being silly. She couldn’t have her cake and eat it too; besides, she was meant to be swearing off cake. ‘I’m sure I can squeeze fifty pounds out of Mr Gonzales, if Dylan’s up for it.’ She folded her hands in her lap. ‘Thanks, I really appreciate that.’

‘Bet you wish you hadn’t wasted champagne on me now.’ Wilson nudged her leg with his. ‘If I could, I would. Any time. You know that.’

Hope hadn’t known that and just three terse sentences from Wilson moved her far more than she thought possible. Enough that she was nudging him back. ‘I’m still glad we met up tonight,’ she said rashly. ‘It’s been … you’ve been … it’s been fun.’

‘Doesn’t have to end now,’ Wilson said. ‘We could have one more for the road and then …’

He didn’t say what would happen after ‘and then’, but Hope had a pretty good idea and ‘and then’ wasn’t ever going to happen. Not when Jack was the only person she wanted to ‘and then’ with, and her parents had just chipped in £250 towards six sessions with a relationship counsellor. ‘I’m up for one more for the road but the other … I can’t. It’s not right, because even though technically Jack and I aren’t together right at this very moment, it would still be cheating on him.’

She hated herself for mentioning Jack’s name because it would break the spell. But then Wilson’s hand was on the back of her neck again and this time it was deliberate because he leaned in to whisper in her ear, ‘Remember what I said about options? What about keeping yours open?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know exactly what I mean,’ Wilson said, and she closed her eyes as she felt his teeth lightly graze her earlobe. She squeezed her thighs even tighter together. ‘Shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket, so to speak.’

What Wilson was suggesting violated the whole spirit of
starting
over and having counselling and putting in the hard work to make their relationship stronger. But it sounded like a lot more fun than all of that. Except …

‘I still love Jack,’ Hope insisted. ‘Maybe I love him a little bit less than I used to, but I do still love him with all my heart. And don’t you think you deserve something more than being just a friend with benefits?’

‘Right now, I’m not in the mood for anything more than being a friend with benefits.’ Wilson picked up her hand and traced the heartline. ‘You’re so obsessed with doing the right thing. Doing the right thing never gets you anywhere in life.’

‘But it’s still the right thing to do,’ Hope said, then scrunched up her face in irritation when Wilson softly chuckled because she’d just proved his point. ‘I mean, you can’t just ride roughshod over other people’s lives because it suits you. If more people exercised a bit of self-control …’

Deep, deep down she knew Wilson was right. Jack and Susie had done exactly what they wanted without caring about the consequences. It was the same with her mother – what Hope wanted was immaterial if it got in the way of what her mother wanted. Even Justine, who’d taught the Red Class last year and had done a pretty poor job of it, was currently teaching in Sydney and sending Hope emails ‘from Bondi Beach. Finished teaching the little shits and now I’m working on my tan.’

‘The meek don’t inherit the earth,’ Wilson said, his fingers now sliding under the cuff of Hope’s dress so the sudden caress against the underside of her forearm felt shocking and wonderful at the same time. ‘They inherit sweet FA.’

His mouth was so close to her ear that technically he was kissing it, and Hope couldn’t believe the havoc Wilson could cause just from stroking a patch of skin that couldn’t measure more than two square centimetres at most. All she had to do was turn her head ever so slightly and they wouldn’t be able
not
to kiss. ‘I couldn’t have a one-night stand,’ she whispered. ‘I’m just not like that.’

‘Doesn’t have to be a one-night stand,’ Wilson said, but even though his hand was still on her arm, he was the one who moved his head so he was no longer murmuring sweet words of temptation into her ear. ‘Could be for however many nights we want, but if you really want to do the right thing by a bloke who’s treated you appallingly, well, more fool you. You say that you still love him, but surely love can’t be
that
blind.’

Hope shook Wilson’s hand off her arm. ‘We were having a really nice time, please don’t spoil it.’

Wilson didn’t say anything but looked at Hope as if she was the main exhibit on a Guess My Weight stall at a summer fête, then he signalled the waiter to bring the bill.

Of course, then they had to quibble over who was paying for what, but much sooner than she would have liked, Hope was wrapped up, not in Wilson’s arms, but in winter woollies and her tatty faux-fur coat, and standing shivering on the pavement.

She felt as if she might cry. Surely doing the right thing shouldn’t make her feel so wretched, she thought, as Wilson stepped out on to the street and braced himself against the sharp wind that was whipping around them. And if she loved Jack … No! There was no
if
. She
did
love Jack, so why was she having feelings for Wilson that she had no business to be having, when he’d made it plain that all he wanted was a brief affair, and Hope wasn’t made for no-strings-attached lack of commitment?

‘Well, it was nice to see you again,’ Hope said bravely, though her bottom lip felt very unsteady. ‘If you wouldn’t mind, can you pass my details on to your assistant?’

‘Hope?’

She ignored him in favour of folding her arms for added protection against the wind and staring pensively at her feet.

Wilson adjusted his scarf and sighed in exasperation. ‘Forget for one moment that I’d like to have sex with you – let’s just push that to one side and focus on the fact that
we’re
mates, and I’m trying to save you from making a terrible mistake. In the same way, I’d try to stop any of my mates from rushing into a burning building or playing with a loaded gun.’

‘OK, for starters, getting back with Jack is
nothing
like playing with a loaded gun and secondly, I don’t need you, or anyone else, to save me. I can save myself.’

‘Can you, though?’ Wilson obviously didn’t seem to think so. ‘When I first knew you I didn’t like you, because I thought you were a bolshie cow with more volume than sense.’

Hope was incapable of doing anything other than opening and shutting her mouth but nothing came out, except a tiny, ‘Oh, you …’

‘When we went to that all-dayer in Stoke Newington and I queued up with you to get fish and chips and they’d run out of tartare sauce, you shouted at the woman about false advertising until she agreed to give you a quid back and some extra ketchup.’

‘I did
not
shout at her. I merely pointed out that she shouldn’t be charging a tenner for a tiny piece of cod and soggy chips when she didn’t have any tartare sauce left, and that lemon wedge she tried to fob me off with was so dry, it was practically petrified and …’

‘See! Where’s that fire when you’re dealing with Jack? You’ve turned into a lightweight. You’ve let him treat you like shit and now you’re going back for more,’ Wilson said and he tried to cup Hope’s chin, but she pulled away.

‘I’m not just rolling over and playing dead. I’m fighting for him because I think what we had is worth fighting for.’ In her head there was still that picture-perfect memory of Jack coming through the front door and smiling when Hope said, ‘Hard day at the office, dear?’ like she did every evening, even though it had ceased to be funny the second time she’d said it, and had turned into just a habit that neither of them was inclined to break. That was what she
wanted
back; to feel safe and comfortable, and like everything in her world was where it was meant to be – not this crazy, chaotic state where she was alone, without Jack, and her stomach was constantly churning and she could taste fear at the back of her throat.

‘What you
had
, as in the past,’ Wilson pointed out, and he wasn’t even trying to be a little bit gentle with her any more. ‘You deserve better than him.’

‘You’re telling me to throw half my life away and I can’t do that,’ Hope said, and now the tears that she was brushing away with gloved fingers weren’t happy tears. ‘What he did … I can get over that, I know I can. He’s not the first man to have an affair, and if we can figure out where we were going wrong, if I can learn to trust him again, then our relationship might be stronger than it ever was.’

Wilson opened his mouth to – Hope was sure of this – argue the point, but she put her hand on his lips. ‘No more,’ she begged. ‘Please. There’s no point in discussing it. My mind is made up and there’s nothing you can say that will make a difference.’

They stood there for a long moment, Hope sniffing and wiping away each treacherous tear that threatened to run down her cheek. Wilson was illuminated in the street lights so when she looked up she could see the flecks of grey in his sideburns, and that he seemed resigned rather than angry or disappointed.

‘I think you’re a bloody idiot,’ he said at last, and just as Hope was bristling all over again, he added, ‘I’ll wait with you until you find a cab.’

‘I’m getting the bus,’ Hope argued, as she turned away from him and prepared to limp down Parkway in boots that she longed to take off and hurl into the nearest bin.

‘Fine, I’ll walk you to the bus stop, then,’ Wilson said, and he tucked his arm into hers. Hope wasn’t in a position to argue because their fight had left her feeling weak and shaky, and now at least she could lean against him and take
some
of the pressure off her poor feet, and he was shielding her from the worst of the gale-force wind. ‘For someone who’s decided to do the decent thing and stick with her childhood sweetheart, you don’t seem very happy.’

‘I thought we weren’t talking about it,’ Hope pleaded, which would have sounded more effective if she wasn’t burrowing deeper into Wilson and using him as a human windshield. ‘We’ve only got about ten minutes left in each other’s company so let’s not have another argument.’

‘Has Jack forbidden you from seeing me, then? When did we go back to Victorian times?’

No, I’ve forbidden myself from seeing you. Jack doesn’t care if I see you or not
. ‘I said that I didn’t want to talk about it,’ Hope reminded Wilson, as they walked past a crowd of people shivering in the queue outside the Jazz Café, then turned the corner into Camden High Street.

Hope was just about to tell Wilson that she could manage the last fifty metres to the bus stop on her own when two tramps suddenly lunged at each other and fell to the ground in a tangle of stained clothes and matted hair. One of them tried to bite the other one, and Hope decided, as Wilson adroitly steered her past them, that it probably was better if he stayed with her until she was safely on the bus.

The countdown board at the stop informed her that there was a 29 due in two minutes. Hope reluctantly unthreaded her arm from Wilson’s. ‘Well, I suppose this is goodbye,’ she said with a brightness that she didn’t feel.

‘You’re only going to Holloway,’ he said. ‘Not off to war.’

The dazzle of car headlights and neon shop signs reflected off his glasses so it was hard to read his expression. Hope tried again. ‘Well, then, I’ll see you around, I guess.’

‘I’m not going to wait for you …’

‘I never asked you to!’

‘I’m not going to wait for you,’ Wilson repeated with heavy emphasis. ‘But if you wise up to what a terrible
mistake
you’re making sometime in the not too distant future then you know where to find me.’

‘That’s mean,’ Hope said, because his words hurt like a thousand little paper cuts. ‘And if I was making a mistake, which I’m 99.9 per cent sure I’m not, then there’s no way that I’d want to jump straight in to a relationship.’

‘Who said anything about a relationship? I thought we already discussed a consecutive string of one-night stands, during which time we probably wouldn’t see other people.’ Wilson was giving her that flared-nostril, superior look of old. ‘How is that a relationship?’

‘You’re not funny! In fact, none of this is funny.’ To show Wilson just how unfunny it was, Hope clonked him in the chest with her handbag.

‘You’re right. It’s not funny. It’s sad. In fact, it’s tragic.’

Really the only way to shut him up was to kiss him. Or Hope could have got on the 29, which had just pulled into the stop, but she only had to take half a step to kiss Wilson and her feet
were
killing her.