Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend (64 page)

Hope lay there for a while, contemplating the rest of her life and how she’d never again wake up with Jack curled around her and snuffling soggily against her neck, his hold tightening as she made a bid for freedom. People always said that being on your own wasn’t the same as being lonely, but Hope knew it would be a while before she could tell the difference. Especially as right now there was no one to moan at until he got out of bed and put the kettle on.

She didn’t have a renewed sense of purpose, but Hope managed to paint a second coat on the lower kitchen cupboards, and she even managed to stand on the second rung of the stepladder for, ooooh, five whole seconds as she contemplated the feasibility of painting the cupboards above the worktop. Five seconds was all it took for her heart to start racing and beads of sweat to pop out along her forehead. Still, there were lots of other bits of wood she could paint, like the windowsill and the skirting boards, and she could even paint halfway up the walls. It wasn’t like she was
completely
useless.

She was just giving the skirting board a second coat of the duck-egg blue she’d chosen as an accent colour when Hope heard the satisfying thud of the post being dropped through
the
letterbox. It was just the distraction she needed, but the handful of stiff envelopes containing Christmas cards addressed to ‘Jack and Hope’ threatened to derail her, until she came to a large white Jiffy bag with only her name on it.

As far as Hope could remember all the Christmas presents she’d ordered on the internet had arrived, been wrapped and sent off, or were currently in Jack’s custody, so she couldn’t imagine what it was.

She sat cross-legged on the hall floor and tore into the parcel without any thought of carefully unpicking the flap so she could reuse the padded envelope. When she pulled out the card, it was obvious who’d sent it, because instead of a winter scene or a couple of fat robins in Santa outfits or even the Nativity tableaux favoured by her parents’ friends, the card featured Blue Class all wearing Santa hats and smiling goofily at the camera. Even though he’d been in a mood with her the evening of the Pageant, Wilson had still taken the time and effort to arrange this little photographic surprise for her. God, he’d even magicked up thirty Santa hats out of thin air or, rather, he’d sweet-talked them out of Dorothy who’d taken charge of the keys to the prop cupboard and had been very reluctant to let them out of her sight.

DEAR HOPE

HAPPY HOLIDAYS. HOPE (I WISH YOU HAD A DIFFERENT FIRST NAME, BECAUSE IT MAKES WRITING MESSAGES IN CARDS VERY TRICKY, BUT ONLY THE WORD ‘HOPE’ WILL DO) THAT THE COMING YEAR BRINGS YOU THE HUGE AMOUNTS OF LUCK AND HAPPINESS YOU DESERVE.

BEST WISHES

WILSON

As well as the card, there were also three CDs in the Jiffy bag with a typewritten note.

Hope

I asked the DJ at the Northern Soul Night to send me over a copy of his setlist so I could burn you a CD. I also burnt some other tracks that I thought you might like.

More importantly, here are detailed and, dare I say, foolproof instructions on how to put the songs on your iPod.

Wilson

He’d written out a bullet-point list that didn’t seem too onerous, and had even provided a couple of links to online video tutorials that Hope could watch if she didn’t understand a set of clear and concise instructions that even some of Blue Class could follow. Still, for now she could listen to the CDs on the DVD player in the lounge, and she’d be able to hear the music in the kitchen if she really cranked up the volume.

So, the second day after she left Jack turned out to be a good day after all. There was one minor wobble and a weep when she heard Irma Thomas sing ‘It’s Starting to Get to Me Now’ on one of Wilson’s mix CDs, but she managed to steer clear of all alcohol and tins of chocolates. And if she couldn’t get back to sleep after waking up for a pee at three in the morning, because she started to agonise that she’d made a terrible mistake and that Jack was probably at that very moment in a tacky Rochdale nightclub chatting up a nubile eighteen-year-old who was home from university for the Christmas break, that was only to be expected.

Then it was the third day after she left Jack, and there were lots of reasons to be cheerful. There was Elaine’s Christmas Eve party that evening, and when Hope bumped
into
Alice from next door on her way to buy yet more masking tape and white spirit, she invited Hope to join them for Christmas dinner, so she’d have someone to talk to who wasn’t aged twelve or under, or her husband Robert, or related to Robert.

Hope set off down the Holloway Road at a jaunty pace, ridiculously pleased when the staff at the DIY shop greeted her like an old friend. Then she stopped off at Waitrose to buy some nice bottles of wine for Elaine and Alice, and some posh treats for herself for tomorrow night and Boxing Day. Spending Christmas in London and flitting from one social engagement to another was a much better option than being stuck at home and having to peel Brussels sprouts under her mother’s exacting eye. In fact, Christmas Eve was shaping up very nicely until Hope wandered past the hairdresser’s in the shopping arcade. The fact that it was Christmas Eve and the salon had empty chairs should have been an indication that maybe it wasn’t a very good hairdressing salon, but Hope caught sight of her tangled, paint-splattered hair in one of the salon’s mirrors, and it was such a pain to have to tie it up in a scarf and it always got soaked with sweat when she was running, and if it was shorter and more manageable then she’d probably never have to have another comb-out for as long as she lived. Her thought process took less than five seconds, then she was pushing open the salon door and asking if they had any appointments free.

At least Hope hadn’t burst into tears in the salon. At least she’d spared herself that humiliation. No, she’d lied and said that she loved her new haircut, which was meant to have been layered and shoulder-length, but had ended up as an uneven jaw-line bob because the girl who’d been cutting her hair had been more interested in telling Hope what a complete bitch the salon owner was, and how she expected her staff to work until nine on New Year’s Eve, and that she and her husband were fiddling their tax return. Hope even
tipped
her ten pounds and wished her a Happy Christmas before she hurried out, felt the cold air rush to meet the newly exposed back of her neck, and
then
she burst into tears.

Back home, she did all the stupid irrational things that anyone does when they’ve had a terrible haircut, though as Hope understood it, terrible haircuts were a rite of passage that should have been over and done with by your sixteenth birthday. If only she’d listened to her mother who’d actually been right when she’d told her, repeatedly, to leave her hair alone, Hope thought, as she dunked her head under the cold tap and applied serums and mousses and straighteners. All her efforts amounted to nothing. There was no escaping the fact that she had a wonky bob that was shorter on the right side than it was on the left. Also now that she didn’t have so much hair, what she did have left looked more ginger than auburn or red or Titian. And Hope had never noticed how much her ears stuck out, or how weak her jaw was.

It was barely worth wrapping a scarf around her head so she could get on with the painting, because some buttermilk matt emulsion could only improve her coif, Hope thought as she dipped the roller into the paint tray, and then the day went from bad to much, much worse as the bulb in the kitchen light blew and tripped the fuse at the same time. Sorting out the fuse was a simple matter of flipping a switch, but the lightbulb was another matter entirely.

It was only just past lunchtime but the vague promise of daylight was already fading. There was no question of painting, or even making a cup of tea without electric light. Hope went as far as taking a new lightbulb out of the drawer and fetching the stepladder from the little lean-to by the back door. Then she eyed the lightbulb and the top step of the ladder on to which she’d have to climb to change it. The top step, which meant there’d be nothing to hold on to as she extended her arms up towards the light fitting.

Hope’s first instinct was always going to be to call Jack, but as soon as he answered the phone with a weary, ‘Hey, what’s up, Hope?’ she wished that she’d waited for her second instinct to come along.

‘The lightbulb’s blown in the kitchen,’ she explained, again realising too late that she should probably have started the proceedings with a gentle enquiry about his emotional health. ‘And it tripped the fuse, which I sorted out, but I can’t change the lightbulb. But, anyway, how are you?’

‘How do you think I am?’ Jack demanded. ‘And you know what? You’re the one who fucking turned me down when I proposed, so you don’t get to phone and ask how I am, and you don’t get to call me just because you need help changing a sodding lightbulb.’

He was right. And Hope was wrong, and flushed with shame and mortification. ‘Jack, I’m sorry. I didn’t think. It’s just I’m so used to calling you and I know I started wittering on about the lightbulb, but I’ve been thinking about you a lot.’ Hope sighed. ‘I pretty much think about you all the time. How are you holding up?’

‘Oh, I’m just
great
. I feel like I’m on top of the fucking world, especially after I found your list on the floor of the car and the only reason you supposedly loved me was because I was good at doing stuff,’ Jack sniped. ‘It comes to something when the love of your life is only with you because you put songs on her iPod and go to the shops for ice-cream.’

‘It was only a first draft,’ Hope protested. ‘It was a shitty first draft, and if I’d written it six months ago, it would have been a completely different list, you …’

‘What the fuck ever!’

Jack was furious with her, and Hope knew that he was well within his rights to feel like that, though she wondered if it wasn’t his pride that hurt as much as his heart, because nothing he was spitting at her was inclined to make her change her mind. ‘I’m really not the love of your life,’ she
reminded
him softly but with just a soupçon of acid to go with it. ‘If I had been, you wouldn’t have shagged someone else.’

‘I might have known you’d bring that up. We’ve been on the phone for what? Three minutes. Great restraint there, Hopey.’

Hope stopped feeling guilty or sorry for Jack, because he was forgetting some very important details about why she’d broken up with him. Instead of blaming her, Jack should have been ruminating on all the pain he’d caused her so he never made the same mistakes again with the next girl who was supposed to be the love of his life. ‘Just for the fucking record, Jack, I don’t need you any more!’ Hope shrieked. ‘I can do stuff by myself. In fact, I’m getting off the phone because I can’t stand talking to you for a second longer, and I’m going to change the bloody lightbulb on my own!’

Hope ended the call without bothering to find out if Jack had got the message, but as she’d been yelling, she was sure he’d picked up the highlights and then, while her blood was still up (and currently rushing to her head) she grabbed the lightbulb, marched over to the ladder and was on the top step before she even realised what she was doing.

Don’t look down
, Hope told herself, as she firmly planted both feet on the step, sucked in her tummy muscles and reached up to unscrew the duff bulb. She could hear her frantic breaths as she dithered, wondered if she might actually throw up, and finally took stock of the fact that she was on top of the ladder. She froze, all her limbs stiffening, because she had a bulb in each hand and if she came down the ladder to get rid of the old one, Hope knew that she’d never be able to climb back up.

Right on cue, she felt the sweat breaking out, her hands going clammy as she wobbled for one alarming second, but then managed to right herself.

You can do this. You can do this. You can do this
. Except she couldn’t do this, and now she couldn’t get down either,
because
she was paralysed at the top of the ladder, both hands occupied, so she couldn’t even go down a step and grip the bar at the top.

Hope tried to rationalise the situation. She was on top of a six-foot ladder, and what would be the worst thing that would happen if she fell off? OK, she might bang her head and die. That would be very bad, but it would be much worse if she fell off, broke several limbs so she was unable to reach her phone, and had to lie in her own urine on the kitchen floor until Jack came home on or around the twenty-eighth of December. Though maybe Alice from next door might realise that something wasn’t right when Hope didn’t turn up for Christmas dinner and come round to check that everything was OK.

Of course, there was another option. Maybe Hope didn’t fall off the ladder but stayed on it long enough to change the bloody lightbulb. Because it wasn’t just a lightbulb, it was a metaphor for her life, her future, for not being with Jack but being single and taking charge of her own destiny.

This time the voice in her head was a lot more forceful.
If you can’t change a simple bloody lightbulb, then you are screwed. How are you going to lead a normal, fulfilled and independent life if you can’t even get up a ladder to perform a simple act of household maintenance? So, stop being such a big baby, suck it up and change the fucking lightbulb, Hopey! Change it right this fucking minute!