Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (23 page)

‘That’s it. I’ll never find another boyfriend because I’m boring and fat and ginger and I’m shit in bed,’ she’d sobbed, tearing off another wad of loo roll so she could blow her nose. ‘I’m unloveable.’

Lauren and Allison had been the stuff of legends. Hope had seen the pair of them through countless boyfriend-related traumas and even though she’d completely ruined their night out, they’d hugged her and wiped her face and said supportive things like, ‘He’s a fucking bastard and you’re well shot of him. He’s probably riddled with disgusting STIs by now.’

And, ‘Of course you’re not a bad person for taking his iPhone and going through his stuff. Wanker left you no choice. Honestly, Hopey, any girl with half a braincell would have done the exact same thing.’

They’d even travelled to Holloway with her, held her hair back while she puked into a bin outside Argos and seen her safely home, before catching a ruinously expensive minicab back to South London. ‘It’s no trouble,’ they’d kept saying each time Hope apologised. ‘It’s what friends are for. And remember to prop your pillows up so you don’t choke on your own vomit and die in the night.’

Hope wished that she
had
died in the night and then she wouldn’t have had to wake up with a splitting headache, sore ribs and a sandpaper throat from all the throwing-up and crying. And those ailments barely registered compared to the sucking chest wound where her heart used to be. She burrowed under the duvet to warm up her cold and clammy skin as she stuck one hand out to hunt for her phone.

It was probably either Lauren or Allison phoning to check up on her and remind her to put all of Jack’s stuff into bin
bags
and throw them into the nearest skip. Then she was meant to call a locksmith to make sure he could never come home again. They’d both been very clear about that.

But just when Hope thought that life couldn’t get any worse, she saw that it wasn’t a missed call from Lauren or Allison but a text from her mother:
Just put Jeremy on the London train. Arrives at Euston at 10.10 a.m. Must be there to pick him up. Dread to think what trouble he’ll get into if you’re late. Love Mum (and Dad)

It was all the motivation Hope needed to sit upright, although she wished she hadn’t. ‘Oh, shit, shit,
shit
!’ she exclaimed, as she flung back the duvet, placed two very shaky feet on the floor and staggered to the bathroom, clinging on to the wall and pieces of furniture as she went.

A stinging-hot shower and hairwash didn’t make her feel remotely better. Neither did a mug of tea and three ibuprofen. In fact swallowing anything made Hope feel as if she was about to die, and then she remembered what had happened yesterday and decided that something in her was already dead anyway.

Instead of getting dressed, she got back into bed and curled herself into a small miserable ball at the thought of all the days that would make up the rest of her life, and how she’d spend them without Jack. Then she wondered how she could still love him after everything he’d done. Maybe loving him, despite all his many faults and shortcomings, was preferable to being alone. The most time she’d ever spent on her own was maybe forty-eight hours, and usually it was just the journey to and from school and the two hours before Jack came home.

How did single people manage without anyone to talk to or share the washing-up with? They couldn’t all live in flat-shares, so some of them must have to spend serious time on their own. Not Hope’s brand of alone-time when she took lots of hot baths and ate chocolate, but days upon days of alone-time because they had no other choice. How was she
going
to get through the next week without even the distraction of teaching?

Another text message from her mother was a salient reminder that she wasn’t going to be alone.
Why haven’t you replied to my last text message? Have you left for the station? Best to get there early, just in case. Love Mum (and Dad)

It was nine thirty. Hope had only forty minutes. She got dressed in what she could find on the floor, which were jeans, a green T-shirt, which was speckled with poster paint, and her red cardigan – and yes, the whole ensemble clashed and she wasn’t wearing a bra and she’d gone back to bed with damp hair so it was sticking up in all directions, but it would have to do.

The lack of bra meant that Hope couldn’t run to the tube but she arrived at Euston only five minutes after Jeremy’s train, which surely wasn’t late enough for him to have already been spirited away by white-slave traders.

He hadn’t been. He was sitting on a huge rucksack in the middle of the concourse, looking utterly miserable. Welcome to my world, Hope thought as she plastered a smile on her face and hurried towards him.

Jeremy had gone emo since she’d seen him briefly last Easter, except he was too ruddy-faced for the guyliner and his thighs were far too beefy for skinny jeans, which might have been why the crotch was somewhere around his knees as he stood up. He’d also grown at least six inches in as many months and towered over Hope.

‘You’re late,’ he grumbled, shying away as Hope tried to hug him.

‘Only five minutes,’ she said, as she settled for squeezing his arm instead. ‘Did you have a good journey? It’s
so
good to see you! We’re going to have so much
fun
!’

Jeremy pulled a face. ‘I didn’t want to come. Mum made me. I could have stayed home and been responsible and not wrecked the house. ‘Sides, my best mate is having a party and everyone’s going, except me.’

Hope wasn’t sure how she was going to get through seven days of Jeremy’s adolescent, high-school melodrama. ‘You think you’ve got problems?’ she wanted to scream at him. ‘I’ll give you problems!’

But then again, Mrs Delafield had obviously woken him up at the merest sliver of dawn to catch the seven o’clock train and emo teenagers needed a lot of sleep, so he couldn’t really be blamed.

‘Yeah, but you get to spend the week in London,’ she reasoned, gesturing at him to pick up his backpack because there was no way in hell that she was carrying it. ‘That’s pretty cool, and we’ll take loads of photos for you to post on Facebook and they’ll all be dead jealous.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’ Jeremy sniffed. ‘So, can we go to the skate shop in Covent Garden and then get some sushi?’

At the mention of sushi, Hope gagged, though she tried to pretend it was a cough. ‘Why don’t we go home and dump your stuff first?’ she suggested brightly. ‘I haven’t been shopping because I don’t know what you like to eat, so we should probably hit up Morrisons at some stage.’

Jeremy’s scowl kicked up a notch. ‘I can go to Morrisons in Rochdale!’

‘OK, we’ll go to Waitrose then,’ Hope said and by now her smile and her temper were wearing pretty thin.

Thankfully, a brief trip on the tube was a welcome distraction. Jeremy refused to sit down or indicate in any way that he and Hope were together, even though it was too soon for him to have mastered the art of standing up and not holding on to anything.

At least when they got to Holloway the eclectic mix of bookies, greasy spoons, dodgy pubs and shops selling discount toiletries, household items and tacky clothing met with Jeremy’s approval. When you lived in a small village outside Rochdale and the most thrilling event in the local calendar was the monthly Youth Club disco, the Holloway Road was positively exotic.

Jeremy’s happiness didn’t last long. As soon as he walked through the door of the flat, his face screwed up. ‘It’s really small. I didn’t think it would be this small,’ he complained, because he had no freaking idea about London property prices and how the cost of this ‘really small’ flat would have bought Hope and Jack a three-bedroomed house back North. And talk of the devil. ‘Where’s Jack?’

Hope stared at him, her mind racing. ‘Well, he’s not here. Um, he’s working this weekend and we decided it’d be best if he stayed at a friend’s while you were down. I mean, you’re right. The flat is
really
small.’

It was obvious she was lying. Obvious unless you were a self-obsessed teenager who hero-worshipped your sister’s cool boyfriend who had a cool job on a cool magazine and hooked you up with cool bands that your friends had never heard of, and you didn’t want to believe that the object of your affections didn’t want to spend time with you. ‘But I thought I’d get to hang out with him.’ Jeremy threw down his backpack in a fit of ruddy-cheeked pique. ‘It’s the only reason I agreed to stay with you.’

‘I think Mum would see it differently,’ Hope snapped, because God, she did not need this. ‘You know, Jerry, you might actually enjoy yourself if you stopped making such a concerted effort to pick holes in everything.’

‘Jez.’

‘Jez what?’

‘Jez, that’s my name. No one calls me Jerry. Old men are called Jerry.’

Their mother had called Jeremy – sorry, Jez – ‘Jerry’ repeatedly during her phone call the previous Sunday, but Hope decided not to share that. ‘Jez?’ She tested out the word. It didn’t suit him at all. ‘OK, Jez. You’re here for a week. Might as well make the best of it.’

‘So, when’s Jack coming back then?’

‘Not sure,’ Hope said. ‘You get settled in and I’ll ring him.’

Once Jeremy was settled with a cup of tea and a mound
of
toast and jam, Hope cloistered herself in the bedroom to ring Jack. Except, it was hard to ring someone whose phone had been smashed to pieces less than twenty-four hours ago.

She had to settle for ringing round Jack’s friends, who claimed to have no knowledge of his whereabouts, but the sheer hostility and disapproval in their voices made it painfully obvious that they knew
exactly
where he was and were Team Jack all the way. Only Otto was a little more forthcoming.

‘But you smashed his iPhone, Hopey,’ he explained tremulously. ‘I mean, was there really any need to do that?’

‘It was a heat-of-the-moment thing,’ Hope said through gritted teeth, because as far as she knew iPhones were replaceable, hearts weren’t. ‘Compared to what Jack’s done to me, I think he got off pretty lightly, don’t you? I mean, I’m in bloody pieces over wh—’

‘Yes, well, don’t want to get into that. Conflict of interest, you know?’

Hope ground her teeth harder. ‘Where is he?’ she asked baldly. ‘If you know that I smashed his iPhone then you must have spoken to him recently, and you also know what I’m capable of doing to
you
, if you insist on withholding information.’

‘I think he’s staying with a friend.’

‘Which friend?’

‘You know which friend,’ Otto muttered unwillingly. ‘And don’t say you heard it from me.’

Of course Jack was staying with Susie. Why sleep on a friend’s sofa, when he could sleep with Susie and have wild, experimental sex on tap?

Even though she’d deleted Susie’s number from her phone, Hope’s fingers tapped over the right keys in the right order without her even having to think about it. If she
had
stopped to think about it, then the very last thing she’d want to do was to call Susie. So far, all her rage had been
focused
on Jack, but Hope was sure that she still had vast, untapped pools of rage ready to unleash in Susie’s direction once she got her second wind.

Susie obviously hadn’t deleted Hope from her phone because she answered warily, as if Hope’s name had flashed up and given her a nasty fright.

‘Is he there?’ Hope demanded, ignoring Susie’s ‘Hello?’ because she wasn’t ringing for a chat. ‘I need to talk to him.’

She heard Susie’s sharp intake of breath. ‘Hang on.’ Hope strained her ears to catch the muffled conversation, but she couldn’t make out even a single word, unless the word was fllggpmhwrt. ‘I’m sorry, he can’t come to the phone right now,’ Susie eventually said, like she was a secretary refusing to put an irate caller through to her boss. ‘Is there a message?’

‘You’ve got to be kidding me!’ Hope snapped. ‘Put him on the line.’

There was another indecipherable exchange of words. ‘He says he doesn’t want to speak to you,’ Susie relayed. Hope felt a momentary flash of embarrassment that Susie had been put in the untenable position of piggy-in-the-middle. Then again, it was the
very
least that Susie deserved.

‘Tell him that Jeremy’s down for the week and that he promised he’d take him out on Monday and Tuesday,’ Hope said tightly. ‘I need to know if he’s going to turn up or if he’s going to break that promise as well and let down my baby brother who actually seems to be looking forward to spending time with him.’

Hope wasn’t very good at emotional blackmail, especially when it had to be passed through a very partial third party, but she waited while Susie passed on the message.

‘He says he’ll come round tomorrow before lunch to see Jeremy.’ Susie paused. ‘Um, like, maybe it would be best if you weren’t there.’

‘As if I even want to see him.’ It was a pity that Hope couldn’t turn her love off like a stopcock, because Jack was
doing
everything he could to make her hate him. ‘Believe me, the moment he turns up, I’ll be out of the door.’

‘You know, it won’t always be like this,’ Susie said. ‘I get that it’s all come as a bit of a shock, but I did try to warn you, Hopey. When you’ve calmed down, there’s no reason why we can’t all just chillax and be cool.’

‘There’s every reason. There’re about a million reasons,’ Hope spluttered and she actually had to stop spluttering and do a quick mental review of the facts at hand to see if she was being completely unreasonable, given the circumstances. No, she was being entirely reasonable. Some would even commend Hope for her restraint. Yes, she’d trashed an iPhone and slapped Jack around the face, but when they’d been doing their teacher training, Lauren had got up close and very personal with one of the tutors and then keyed his car once she found out that he was also up close and personal with half a dozen other wannabe teachers. Even Elaine in her wilder, rock ’n’ roll days had smashed Simon’s vintage Les Paul guitar and had climbed up on stage at a gig in Aylesbury to kick him in the nuts when one of his groupies looked like she was becoming a permanent fixture.