Jack blanched as if the idea of Hope in a French maid’s outfit, complete with feather duster, wasn’t what he had in mind. ‘More sex, maybe,’ he said. ‘But nothing too kinky, and I’d never have dressed up in a Plushy costume no matter how much you begged.’
Now it was Hope’s turn to blanch and swat Jack with a cushion. ‘Ewwww! We can get better at sex,’ she said earnestly. ‘Look how good we got at running. I can do twenty continuous minutes now without feeling like I’m about to die.’
‘Honestly, Hopey, the sex was OK, I just wish there’d been more of it,’ Jack insisted as he put down his empty mug and stretched out so he could lie on the sofa with his head in Hope’s lap, which wasn’t the sign of a man about to disappear into the night with approximately one-tenth of all his worldly goods and chattels. ‘It was more that I felt like life was passing me by, and that I was already settled down, and the only thing I had to look forward to was being even more settled down when I should be doing wild and exciting things.’
Hope knew exactly what he meant. Occasionally when she got an email from Justine extolling the virtues of living five minutes away from the beach, smaller class sizes and rippling surfer dudes on every street corner, she had an urge to empty her bank account, jump on a train to Heathrow and buy a ticket for the next available flight to Sydney. Maybe even stop over in Thailand for a month and tour the islands … ‘Yeah, wild and exciting does sound good sometimes.’ She stroked her fingers through Jack’s thick, shiny hair. ‘You know, there’s nothing to stop us renting out the flat and spending two years somewhere else,’ she ventured. ‘If we wanted to mix things up a little.’
‘What? Like Manchester or Brighton?’ Jack asked, doubt wrapping around every syllable.
‘No! Like Sydney or New York, or even working with a charity and going somewhere like Haiti or Tibet.’
‘But we’d have to get shots and even then we might still get malaria, and what if the people we rented to trashed the place?’ Jack demanded, his limbs going rigid. ‘I’m a graphic designer. I don’t have transferable skills. I’d be no use in the Third World.’
‘It’s just an idea,’ Hope said in a soothing voice, though she really felt like making her voice extremely strident. Jack may have thought he was yearning for thrills and adventures, but actually he hated anything outside of his neatly aligned, alphabetised comfort zone. Whenever they went to a festival, he packed loads of anti-bacterial hand-wipes and moaned on about how it was absolutely guaranteed that every single food-stall employee didn’t wash their hands after they’d been to the loo.
When they went to the beach, any beach, be it in Ibiza or Lancashire, Jack whinged about sand between his toes and freaked out if a seagull came within six feet of him. He wouldn’t go ice-skating, had made Hope promise on Blue Class’s lives that she wouldn’t try out for Roller Derby, and when she’d wanted to take part in a charity sky-dive, he’d told her mum who’d then spent a week emailing her stories about people who’d gone sky-diving and ended up paraplegics.
When it came to wild and exciting, Jack absolutely sucked. So, having an affair with Susie must have been the very zenith of wild and exciting for him. It was about as wild and exciting as he was ever likely to get.
‘I’m just saying that being with someone for a long time doesn’t have to be boring. Look at Elaine and Simon. They go to festivals and they still smoke dope, and in the school holidays, they load the teen witches into the camper van and drive to Europe,’ Hope explained, as she began to check Jack’s hair for headlice. ‘You couldn’t call Elaine and Simon boring.’
‘I guess not,’ Jack agreed. ‘I just get scared that we’re going to turn into our parents.’
‘Take that back! The day you join a golf club is the day I bash your head in with a shovel,’ Hope snapped, and she wasn’t even joking.
‘I do take it back. I never said it. I’m trying not to even think it.’ Jack stilled. ‘Are you checking me for nits? There hasn’t been another outbreak, has there?’
Hope gently cuffed Jack’s head when he tried to move. ‘No! Just force of habit.’ She continued to rake her fingers through his hair. ‘I think you’re OK and, well, do you think we’re OK?’
‘Yeah.’ Jack sounded a little amazed. ‘We can walk through our problems without anyone shouting …’
‘… or having a snit and flouncing out,’ Hope finished for him. She grinned down at Jack. ‘If Angela was here, I think she’d say that we’ve just had a breakthrough.’
‘Talking of breakthroughs … I figured something out while you were in the pub,’ Jack said. His voice had suddenly become so strained, it sounded like forming words was painful for him. ‘Can I be honest with you?’
Now it was Hope’s turn to still and stop checking Jack for headlice. ‘Gosh, that sounds ominous,’ she said lightly, though her light voice wasn’t working very well. ‘But, yeah, sure, go ahead. And no, I won’t shout or yell,’ she added, because she knew Jack would want a firm disclaimer before he opened his heart.
‘I promised I’d take the therapy seriously and not have any contact with Susie because … well, I know it seems like I was being a right bastard about it but it’s just … it’s why I couldn’t see her tonight. Couldn’t walk to the front door and tell her to go away. I couldn’t because, well, because …’
‘Because what?’ Hope prompted gently, and she didn’t know if it was because of the rich hot chocolate and the vats of red wine she’d consumed, but all of a sudden she thought she might throw up. ‘Because she’s even more scary when she yells than I am?’
‘It’s not funny, Hopey. Not any of it, not when I have to tell you that if I’d seen Susie standing there, when just talking to her on the phone was torture, I’d have left with her. These last few weeks with you have been great, and I’m so glad we’re all right and we’re friends again … but I love her …’
‘But you said you loved me,’ Hope said, and she wasn’t yelling because even talking was hard enough. ‘You love me!’
‘I love you but I’m not …’
‘Don’t say that! Don’t you dare say it,’ Hope warned Jack, pushing his head off her lap so she could scramble to the other end of the sofa. ‘Don’t you fucking dare!’
‘But it’s the truth,’ Jack insisted as he sat up, swallowed hard and set his face in resolute lines. ‘I love you, but I’m not in love with you.’
‘Then try harder!’ Hope pleaded. ‘What you and Susie have is a fantasy. It’s sex and infatuation. As soon as you have to deal with real life, go to the supermarket together, set up a joint account, pick up her dirty knickers from the bedroom floor, it won’t last, I promise you!’
‘But what if it does last?’ Jack asked, and Hope didn’t know how he could stay so calm and unmoved when he was telling her that he loved Susie more than her. ‘And even if it only lasted a couple of months, I’d be happy just to have those two months, but it’s more than that. She gets me and when I’m with her, I’m a different person. I like being that person.’
‘But what if it did only last two months? Do you want me to wait? Because I will.’ Hope choked out and she was too shocked, lulled by the weeks when she thought they were finding their groove again, to yell or cry or show a little backbone. ‘Please don’t do this, not if you love me even a little bit.’
‘But I do love you,’ Jack insisted, trying to take Hope’s hand then stopping when she shrank back from him. ‘That’s why I’m doing this – because it’s not fair on you.’
‘And it’s fair to do this now, on our anniversary? You said you’d give us six weeks of counselling before you made your mind up, and we’ve still got two to go. A lot can happen in two weeks.’
Hope wasn’t aware of moving, but she’d curled herself into a little ball, and she couldn’t even get her hands free to ward Jack off as he slid down the couch so he was pressed up against her and began to stroke the rigid line of her spine with a steady, calming hand. ‘I’ll stay for another two weeks so we can use Ang
ela to help us end things like grown-ups,’ he conceded, though it wasn’t much of a concession. ‘I know you don’t believe me, Hope, but I love you – and I don’t want everything we’ve had together to be ruined because we have one of those really ugly break-ups. We’re worth more than that.’
‘But everything we’ve had together has been ruined because you fu—’
‘No!’ Jack bit out, even as he kept stroking her back gently. ‘Don’t start that again, Hope. It’s already been said, and I know what I’ve done wasn’t right, but going on about it all the time doesn’t change things.’
Hope peered out through a tangle of hair. ‘Please don’t, Jack …’ she whispered. ‘I can change. I can be the person you need …’ She could hear her rusty voice saying these things, and even as she said them, Hope knew that she couldn’t change. Her personality was pretty much fixed, good bits and bad, and she was stuck with it, even if Jack didn’t want to be stuck with it any longer.
‘I’m a different person now, Hopey, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want you in my life, because I do … Like, today has been perfect – but not once did it feel like we were a couple. It just felt like you were my best friend again, and you always will be.’
That was when Hope started to cry, though she didn’t know how she’d managed to hold the tears in that long. As soon as the first sob was wrenched from her, Jack’s arms were around her and he held her so tightly, surrounded her with the familiar feel and smell of him, that Hope wished that she could die right then, because she’d never have him like this again. Never have this again with anybody. ‘Will you promise me one thing?’ she hiccupped between sobs. ‘Promise me you won’t see her until after our last session. Will you give me that at least?’
‘Hopey …’ Jack groaned.
‘Can you just give me that? Just two more weeks where it’s just you and me?’ She didn’t care that she was begging and pleading and clinging to him with shaky limbs, because she was entitled to beg and plead and cling for this one last time. ‘Promise!’
‘I promise,’ Jack said, with what sounded like a sigh of relief, and Hope wondered how long he’d been building up to and dreading this moment, and now it was done and he’d got off relatively lightly. But she was ruined, and all she could do was cry so hard that for that night, at least, they slept together on the sofa that they’d never got round to pulling out into a bed, with Jack’s arms around her as he kissed her hair and her damp cheeks, and told her not to cry because everything would be all right.
ALTHOUGH SHE’D RAILED about it constantly for the last month, Hope was grateful during the next week to be stuck with the responsibility for Balls Pond Primary School’s Winter Pageant. Knowing that everyone was relying on her, from the tiniest member of the Red Class right up to Mr Gonzales and Jenny Jenkinson-Smythe, the Chair of the Board of Governors, meant that Hope had to push her heartache and her utter wretched misery to one side and throw herself into her work. She was even grateful to Sarah, who taught Year Six, for being such a feeble slacker, because organising and rehearsing and having meeting after meeting to discuss props, music and raffle prizes was all that was keeping Hope sane.
Then there was the time she spent trying to pin down Dylan, Wilson’s assistant. Every time Hope emailed him a definite plan of action, with times and logistics all clearly spelt out, Dylan would reply with a tepid, Yeah, let me get back to you on that. It was just as well every parent would turn up armed to the hilt with camcorders, cameras, phones and other recording devices even if there were no high-res official photos for sale.
There’d also been a leaking pipe over the weekend, which had drenched the book corner, and the classroom reeked of damp as Hope tried to save the least-sodden books by drying them on the radiators. Timothy had become so distraught about the soggy fate of The Velveteen Rabbit that Hope had had to send him to the school nurse.
On the Thursday, when the Council’s school inspectors turned up to do the threatened spot-check, Hope wasn’t the least bit surprised. It really was that kind of week: a week sent up from the very bowels of hell. Hope took the class through their two-times table and then decided that she might as well go for broke and bust out the ten-times table, which Blue Class managed, without prompting, for the first time ever. Hope suspected the look in her eyes, the look that promised no more stickers for the rest of their natural lives, might have had something to do with their stellar performance.
After Blue Class had aced their numeracy skills, they then had a heated debate about recycling, their hot-button topic, and it was hard to get them to stop ranting about ‘people who totally disrespect the planet by chucking their Coke cans in normal bins’.
‘It’s like shouting right in the planet’s face,’ they chorused.
Hope wasn’t sure that the two women from the Council agreed, but at least Blue Class had proved that they could grasp a concept and run with it, and the inspectors looked like two women whose ovaries were beating out an urgent tattoo when Sorcha formally introduced them to Herbert, the class hamster.
As far as Hope could tell, the spot-inspection had gone as well as could be expected. She was still gainfully employed at the end of the week, so she decided not to worry about it. There were so many other things to worry about instead. Like the kitchen cabinets she’d promised Jack she’d sand down while he was working late, which she hadn’t, because all she wanted to do when she got home was crawl into bed and stay there until she mummified between the sheets. Jack, of course, now had an ulterior motive in getting the redecorating of the kitchen underway. He’d even been to see Gary from upstairs to ask whether slapping white paint over every surface would be enough to fool a surveyor.
But, mostly, Hope worried about going to see Angela, because all too soon it was Friday evening again. She’d never noticed how quickly Friday evening rolled around each week, but here it was and here she was sitting on the chintz sofa, whose springs were becoming more unsprung with each session.
Jack was holding her hand, which was new. Or, rather, he was keeping it on his knee by placing his hand on top of it. Hope could see Angela looking at Jack’s hand resting on top of hers with a faintly puzzled expression, as if she wasn’t sure how her counselling sessions had helped them achieve such a rapprochement.
Maybe that was why she started scribbling furiously on her pad, before Hope could tell her that ever since Jack had decided that he didn’t want to spend the rest of his life with her, he’d become very touchy-feely. She glanced over at Jack to see if he was going to tell Angela his good news, but he just smiled vaguely at Hope and patted her hand.
Eventually Angela looked up and gave them both a nervous but approving smile. ‘So, how did you both get on with the homework?’
Hope looked at her blankly. Homework? As it was, every minute of her waking day was accounted for – and she was expected to remember to do Angela’s homework?
‘You were both going to tell me your five relationship milestones,’ Angela prompted.
‘There’s no point,’ Hope said, and as she heard herself speak she marvelled, as she had done all week, that she could talk and move her limbs and drink tea and brush her teeth, even though she was broken. ‘There’s no point to doing this any more, I mean. Jack’s finished with me. He wants to be with Susie.’
‘We both decided that it was the right thing to do,’ Jack added, though Hope couldn’t remember having a say in the decision.
Angela didn’t look that surprised. ‘Ah, I thought you were both on the verge of a breakthrough.’
‘Well, I think it was more my breakthrough than Hope’s,’ Jack admitted. ‘But I think we both know it was the right decision.’
Hope didn’t know why Jack kept saying ‘we’. There was no ‘we’. Never would be again.
‘And how do you both feel about this?’
‘Well, sad, obviously,’ Jack said, not even noticing when Hope removed her hand from his knee so she could fold her arms across her chest. ‘Yeah, really sad, and a bit o
verwhelmed and relieved, I suppose. Not relieved that we’re breaking up, but relieved that we don’t have to pretend any more and that we’re both being really civilised about it.’
‘We’ was now Hope’s most hated word, knocking ‘moist’ right off the top spot. She stared down at her shoes, because she’d found that if she focused on just one thing then it stopped her from bursting into tears.
‘And how do you feel, Hope?’ Angela asked gently.
Rejected. Unloved. Unloveable. Wretched. Heartbroken. Inside out. In the very pits of despair. These were just words, adjectives, that didn’t even come close to how Hope really felt. There were feelings that she couldn’t even let herself feel, because she knew that she’d break, and she wasn’t sure she could put herself back together again. So mostly she made herself feel numb. She lifted red-rimmed eyes to look at Angela who was peering over the edge of her pad at her.
‘What Jack said,’ Hope replied, and she knew she sounded glib, even though she certainly didn’t feel it, but she couldn’t help herself. ‘And as an added bonus, I’ve completely lost my appetite. Reckon I’ll be back in my skinniest skinny jeans by the end of next week.’
Angela frowned. ‘Sometimes we resort to humour when we’re trying to divert attention away from what we’re really feeling.’
‘Believe me, if you knew what I was really feeling, you’d have me sectioned,’ Hope said as Jack shifted uncomfortably next to her, but she was sick of ‘we’ and pretending to be on board the break-up train. It was all bullshit. Just like turning up here every Friday evening had been an exercise in bullshit. ‘We didn’t decide anything. Jack decided, not me, and the reason that he decided was because on Saturday night there was a ring at the doorbell …’ she began, but Jack started fidgeting furiously.