There was only one child that Hope didn’t like: Stuart, of chesty-cough fame. His yummy mummy Saskia was convinced that her little darling was a delicate flower with ADD, but it soon transpired that Stuart was the class bully, dispensing Chinese burns and wedgies wherever he saw fit. Plus he always had a ring of encrusted snot under his nose, and it was all Hope could do to disguise her utter loathing of the child, as she repeatedly reminded him, ‘Hands are for helping, not hurting.’
Apart from snotty Stuart, this year’s Blue Class would do very nicely, Hope decided, after a rousing singalong to ‘Single Ladies’, which they’d earned by being relatively quiet for the half hour it had taken them to do a spatial-reasoning quiz.
It was three thirty on the Friday of her second week back at school. After saying goodbye to tiny Sorcha (tiny not just because she was six, but because, Hope suspected, she had a growth-hormone deficiency) Hope locked away her laptop, made sure everyone’s chair was neatly stacked on the tables, and tried to ignore the feeling of doom in the pit of her stomach. That same feeling of doom she had at going-home time every day because the thought of going home didn’t please her.
It wasn’t Jack. He was still on his best behaviour. Still buying her flowers and blagging high-end cosmetics and skincare products from the Skirt beauty cupboard on her behalf. He’d even made a concerted effort to get up when the second alarm went off, instead of repeatedly hitting the snooze button, so that Hope was forced to interrupt her own frantic morning routine to bully him out of bed.
Hope had also been a paragon of girlfriendly behaviour. Or, rather, she’d been acting like the perfect ’50s housewife: having dinner ready as soon as Jack came home, which was bang on seven thirty every night. Before The Susie Incident, Jack had worked late because copy hadn’t been filed on time, or there was an emergency with the repro house or the printers. Now he stayed half an hour late to show that he was a team player, then came straight home for a proper cooked tea (no ready meals) with pudding. Hope even made sure that there were always a couple of bottles of Budvar chilling in the fridge.
They’d also been having sex. Lots and lots of sex. It was perfectly nice sex, though its frequency didn’t match the ferocity of that time on the fake-granite worktop, though Hope longed for a night off from the sexual gymnastics. But generally, things were back to normal with Jack. Or actually better than normal, because they hadn’t had a single argument, not even a little one about whose turn it was to take out the recycling. Still, the thought of going home to cook him dinner and tidy the flat didn’t exactly put a spring in Hope’s step. For all the sex and all the being solicitous of each other’s wellbeing, things weren’t right. During the day, Hope was wrapped up in school and trying to coach her class through the two-times table, but when it was just her and Jack and an endless round of ‘I don’t mind if you want to watch America’s Next Top Model,’ and ‘No, it’s OK, you can play on the Xbox while I read the Times Educational Supplement,’ she felt a nagging sense of unease.
Hope was now convinced that all there had ever been between Jack and Susie was some heavy flirting that had got out of hand, and she’d made everything a hundred times worse by turning it into a HUGE THING, when she should have simply laughed it off. So now, when they weren’t watching TV or having sex, their conversation was stilted and awkward in a way that it had never been in all the years they’d known each other. It was as if the words they were speaking about menu plans and television-viewing schedules were just inadequate substitutes for all the words that they really wanted to say.
It was no wonder that she didn’t want to go home, Hope thought as she trailed miserably down the corridor towards the staffroom. She couldn’t even find solace in a quick bottle of wine with Elaine, because she was already on the way to Cornwall for her niece’s wedding.
The staffroom was empty as Hope collected a wad of boring-looking memos from her cubbyhole and retrieved her jacket from her locker. Stuffed right at the back was her gym bag, which she’d brought in with her last week when she was full of good intentions to do an hour’s workout each night after school. She hadn’t even managed to walk home, even though it only took half an hour, and with the school lunches and a home-cooked dinner and pudding every night, the ten pounds she’d put on over the summer were fast becoming a stone.
Hope checked the time. If she got a move on, she could make the five o’clock yoga class. It wasn’t an intense cardio workout, but it was best to ease back in gently.
SHE MADE IT to her gym on the other side of Highbury Corner with ten minutes to spare and had just enough time to squeeze into her yoga bottoms and vest (which had been a lot less snug eight weeks ago) and join the little knot of women waiting outside the main studio.
Hope exchanged smiles and hellos with some of the regulars and was just loudly lamenting the effect that yoga would have on her non-existent abdominal muscles the next morning, after missing so many sessions, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
She turned round, saw Susie and heard herself say, ‘Oh, hi,’ because that was her immediate reaction on catching sight of that familiar, sleekly pretty face. Her immediate reaction lasted all of three seconds, then Hope was taking a step back and glaring.
‘Hopey … God, please don’t look at me like that,’ Susie said plaintively, even reaching out a hand to touch Hope’s arm, then thinking better of it, when Hope made a warning noise in the back of her throat. ‘You can’t still be mad at me. I’ve really missed you, and Lauren and Alli aren’t talking to me either.’
‘What are you doing here?’ Hope spat out, not even caring that everyone was staring at them. Usually, pre-class chat consisted of desultory talk about where people had been on holiday, so this was undoubtedly the most exciting thing that had ever happened in the five minutes before yoga class started. ‘Have you no shame?’
Susie’s face creased in confusion. ‘But you know I always duck out of work early on a Friday so I can come to yoga … with you,’ she added with heavy emphasis. ‘Then we go down the pub, because we get pissed quicker after controlling our breathing for an hour.’
‘Never mind that,’ Hope snapped, hands on her hips to stop them seizing Susie around her neck and throttling her … except, even though she was doing her best to whip herself up in a frothing, furious rage, Hope mostly felt sad. She’d wiped Susie out of her life, removed all traces of her. There’d been no goodbye. No last drink. One moment Susie was there, cracking dirty jokes and giving her fashion advice, then she was gone, and for the last two weeks Hope had felt acutely aware that Susie was missing – as if the other woman was a phantom limb, a part of Hope that had had to be amputated due to infection, because even just a drunken kiss with your best mate’s boyfriend was the worst possible violation of the girl-code. The only thing worse was if Susie had actually shagged Jack, so Hope was going to be angry with her, even if she had to fake it slightly. ‘You have no right to be here when you know that this is my regular yoga class.’
‘But you weren’t here last week,’ Susie protested in a small voice that didn’t suit her.
‘Maybe I was too upset to come last week, what with you trying to get off with my boyfriend and all.’ It was so satisfying to say it out loud, say it to Susie’s face, so that the other girl had to confront what she’d done. Maybe that’s why Susie looked so scared and unsure, which didn’t suit her either. Hope could have done without the audience and the collective gasp, but it was also satisfying to see their condemning looks. ‘You have a real nerve showing up like this.’
‘Look, why don’t we go somewhere else and talk?’ Susie suggested, and she actually dared to take hold of Hope’s wrist so she could tug her away from the onlookers and the previous class that was now streaming out of the studio.
‘No! No!’ Hope wrenched her arm free of Susie’s hold. ‘What the hell have we got to talk about? You knew that Jack was my boyfriend. I mean, what part of “we live together and have been dating for thirteen years” was ambiguous? You knew,
and you were meant to be my best friend, but you still went ahead and kissed him, didn’t you?’
‘I didn’t mean for it to happen, Hopey,’ said Susie earnestly, and Hope wished that Susie would be flippant and off-hand like she normally was because it would make it much, much easier to hate her. ‘Of course I knew you and Jack were together and pre-engaged and all that shit, but I was really drunk and so was he, and you have to admit that you’re not that happy with each other. Like, you bitch about him constantly.’
Hope shook her head incredulously. ‘It’s what friends do! They moan about their boyfriends! You’d know that if you had any other girlfriends – it doesn’t mean anything. It certainly doesn’t mean that things are so crap between us that you can make a play for him!’
Susie had been taking everything that Hope threw at her, but now her regular, much bolshier nature began to reassert itself. She drew herself up to her full height, which meant that she still had to look up at Hope when she drawled, ‘Oh, believe me, I didn’t come on to him while he tried to fight me off. It was completely mutual.’
‘How … how can you stand there and say that to me?’ Hope spluttered, absolutely unable to come up with anything better, because Susie’s confession wasn’t a surprise. It was what Hope had secretly suspected all along, despite Jack’s protestations that he’d practically been an innocent bystander who’d slipped and fallen on to Susie’s mouth.
‘I didn’t break you two up,’ Susie insisted, her voice softer now that she’d made her point and rendered her opponent powerless and almost incapable of speech. ‘You’re still together, so stop being such a fucking drama queen about it, OK?’
At least that was something, Hope thought. They hadn’t broken up, but their current state of malaise couldn’t last for ever either.
Hope snapped out of her funk as a woman pushed past her to try and break the bottleneck that had formed at the door to the yoga studio. Everyone was talking in unnaturally loud voices, their embarrassment tangible, and even their unflappable yoga teacher was proclaiming noisily about turning off the air conditioning and opening the windows so they could work with the sound of birdsong and cars tooting in the background.
It was just Hope and Susie left, then Susie sighed and turned round so she could stomp into the studio … except Hope caught hold of the end of Susie’s rolled-up yoga mat.
‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘You tried to take Jack away from me – you’re not getting to have our yoga classes too.’
Susie tried to yank her mat out of Hope’s clutches but Hope held on tighter. ‘Dude, really? It’s only fair that I get custody of yoga in the split if you’re having Jack.’
‘I always had Jack and you … you … you were just … I know you threw yourself at him! He told me!’ Hope hissed, though Jack had never said any such thing.
‘Oh did he? I bet he left out the part where I didn’t have to throw myself very hard,’ Susie growled, as she tried to shake Hope off. ‘For fuck’s sake, let go of my mat.’
‘You are not ruining yoga for me like you tried to ruin my relationship,’ Hope insisted, though really she didn’t care that much about yoga, and after two years of attending rather sporadically she still couldn’t do a side plank or a one-legged shoulder bridge, but it was a point of principle.
‘What did I ruin? You’re still together, aren’t you? But I’ll tell you something for nothing, Hopey: it’s not going to be for much long …’
‘Are you two coming in, or are you going to stay out here and spread your toxic vibes into a room full of people who are trying to concentrate on their alignment and breathing?’ It was Georgie, their fifty-something unflappable yoga instructor, who was looking pretty flapped. ‘Are you coming in or taking this somewhere more appropriate?’
‘I’m coming in,’ they both said in unison, and to Hope’s eternal shame, both she and Susie tried to elbow each other out of the way as they fought to get into the studio first.
In the same circumstances, Hope would have put two of her six-year-old pupils in a time-out and she couldn’t really blame Georgie for employing the same tactics. She frogmarched them both into the studio, made them place their mats in opposite corners and instructed them to do nothing more than sit cross-legged and focus on their breathing.
It was only after ten minutes that they were both allowed to move on to sun salutes. Hope soon realised that she couldn’t even get as far as the plank pose, not when she wanted to leap up from her mat and bash Susie over the head with a bar bell, especially as the other girl was already doing a perfect upward dog.
As soon as they’d finished their cooling-down stretches, Susie was at Hope’s side. ‘Look, I’ve been an out-and-out bitch and what I did was beyond wrong,’ she said quickly while Hope was still opening and shutting her mouth and unable to make anything come out of it but huffs and puffs of sheer indignation. ‘Can’t you find a way to forgive me so we can go back to being friends again? Please.’
‘How? How are we meant to be friends?’ Hope asked incredulously. ‘Do you really think that we can go back to how we were before? Like, we’ll just go down All Bar One and have a laugh and maybe compare notes on Jack’s technique? Do you really think we can do that?’
Susie shook her head impatiently so her glossy dark hair fanned out around her. ‘It doesn’t have to be like that. I promise I won’t see him ever again … I mean, I haven’t … Not since …’
Whether she had or she hadn’t suddenly didn’t seem to matter that much, because Hope was sick of the whole subject. Fed up with feeling sad or angry or guilty, and more usually a gut-churning combination of all three. ‘It wouldn’t work,’ she said. ‘Everything’s spoiled now. Look, you can have yoga.’
‘I don’t care about yoga,’ Susie insisted, and if Hope didn’t know Susie better, she’d have sworn she was on the verge of tears. ‘I care about us. Please, Hope, you know I find it hard to make friends with other women.’
No wonder, if you try to steal their boyfriends, Hope thought to herself. ‘You can have yoga,’ she repeated, turning away as a new class entered the studio. ‘You’d probably better go now, I’m staying for step aerobics.’
‘You hate step aerobics,’ Susie scoffed, but Hope ignored her as she hurried to the corner of the studio to claim a step and drag it to a part of the room where she was guaranteed to get regular cold blasts from the air-conditioning unit.
‘Hopey … we can’t let it end like this.’
Hope stood behind her step and began marching on the spot, staring fixedly at herself in the mirror so she could see Susie shoot her one last exasperated look and her own thighs wobbling. Maybe if her thighs didn’t wobble and she lost the extra pounds, then Jack would never so much as look at another girl again – and maybe life wasn’t that simple. Because as Susie shut the studio door behind her and the aerobics instructor started up some truly awful thumping dance music, Hope felt like a little piece of her heart was gone for ever. She loved her friends, but Jack had always had the lion’s share of her love, demanded the greater part of her time and affection, and when friends had drifted away as some friends did, it hadn’t mattered so much and anyway, they were still there on Facebook posting status updates about how hungover they were and showing off their holiday snaps.
But breaking up with Susie was the hardest thing Hope had ever done. The first time she’d ever had to tell someone that there was no room in her life or her heart for them any more. And it was Susie … Not someone from school or university or work, but a friend she’d chosen solely for herself, someone who got her like hardly anyone else did, except Jack.
Hope scowled at her reflection and began to pump her arms as she jumped on her step, then jumped back down again. What if it wasn’t that Jack and Susie understood her better than anyone else? What if Hope wasn’t even in the equation and it was Jack and Susie that got each other? What if it hadn’t been just a kiss? What if there really had been something going on between them? What if it was still going on?<
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These were horrible thoughts to have, especially when accompanied by a soundtrack that segued from ‘Bad Romance’ to ‘Toxic’. Hope pumped her arms even harder and made sure she touched her elbow to her knee when they did repeaters, much to the delight of the instructor.
The pain wasn’t even a little bit gone after an hour so Hope stayed for kickboxing and when she finally got home just after eight, after walking all the way, she still hurt and could barely feel her legs. The bits of her legs she could still feel ached beyond the telling of it.
Jack was waiting for her at the door with a cross expression on his face. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked querulously. ‘I thought you were making dinner.’
Hope threw her gym bag at his feet by way of reply. ‘I do have a life of my own outside school hours, you know. A life that doesn’t revolve around having a two-course meal ready for you when you get home. Jesus!’
‘But you said you were cooking dinner,’ Jack reminded her carefully, not sure how to react to a Hope who was snapping and snarling and completely contravening the rules of their non-aggression pact. ‘You actually mentioned the words “beef”, “stir” and “fry”.’
She had. Jack was right, which was infuriating and way off-message when there were more important things to discuss like, ‘I saw Susie earlier,’ which Hope flung over her shoulder at Jack as she stomped through to the bedroom so she could peel off her sweat-soaked gym clothes. ‘Mutual throwing yourself at each other? Mutual?’