As Hope picked her way down the steps that led to the basement flat, she could hear the front door opening and by the time she reached the bottom, Jack was standing there, waiting for her.
His face had been as familiar to her as her own reflection, but now Hope felt as if it had changed. Something irrevocable had happened in the few hours that she’d been absent.
She didn’t know the secret heart of him any more. Wasn’t sure that she ever had. And the way he was looking at her, his big blue eyes wide and wary, was shiny and new, too. Maybe he’d changed before now, and she hadn’t even noticed because she’d stopped really looking at him and had simply seen the familiar Jack shape with Jack’s features, and hadn’t bothered to delve any deeper.
They stood there staring at each other, until Hope dropped her eyes to stare at her feet and the chipped nail polish on her big toe because she couldn’t bear to look at him any longer.
‘You’re home … I was worried about you,’ Jack began brokenly. ‘Where have you been?’
‘Well, Wilson gave me a lift into town and I spent the night in Bar Italia,’ Hope said shortly, as she moved past Jack, all of her tensed in case she accidentally made contact with him in the process. ‘Like you even care where I’ve been.’
‘Hopey! Please, don’t be like this,’ Jack said, touching her shoulder as he followed her into their flat, but letting his hand drop away as soon as he felt the rigid set of her muscles. ‘You have to know … I never meant to hurt you.’
‘Never meant me to find out, you mean,’ Hope countered, and she wasn’t sure why she was getting in an argument, when all she really wanted to do was demand dates and facts. When did it start? How did it start? Why did it start? Was it my fault? Did I drive you away? Is she better in bed than me? Do you think she’s more beautiful than me? Do you love her?
She looked around her. The living room was no longer a dining room, and over Jack’s shoulder, Hope could see that the kitchen was back to its usual pristine state. Or rather, it was far more pristine than if she’d been clearing up. Perhaps Lauren and Allison had stayed behind to help or, more likely, given the gleam on the stainless-steel bread bin, Jack had done it. Had he coaxed Susie back after she’d stormed off, and after having sex in Hope’s bed, they’d scrubbed down the kitchen together?
Hope decided that the bathroom was her only viable place of retreat. Normally she’d have stripped off on the way, but she didn’t want to be naked and vulnerable in front of Jack, especially as he’d compare her body to Susie’s, and that was another battle that Hope would lose.
‘Are we over?’ she asked hoarsely. ‘Now that you don’t love me any more.’
Jack’s aghastness was momentarily gratifying, but only for one very brief moment. ‘What? No! Of course we’re not over!’ He gave her a cowed look, like a dog expecting to have its nose wiped into the area rug that it had just soiled. ‘You don’t really think I’ve stopped loving you, do you?’
She hesitated. Because, yes, she did really think that. Didn’t want to, but all the evidence suggested that Jack had stopped loving her some time ago and she hadn’t even realised it.
‘I love you, Hopey,’ he said, moving forward to wrap her up in a desperate embrace. ‘I never stopped loving you, even when she …’
‘Don’t say it,’ Hope begged, but she couldn’t not be held by Jack, enveloped in the toasty smell and warmth of him, and not feel all right. One of her hands was creeping up to tug the little tuft of hair at his nape and stroke the back of his neck.
That was the deal with loving someone. When they hurt you, they were the only one who could take the hurt away.
‘I never slept with her, I swear,’ Jack whispered in her ear. ‘It was just one stupid, drunken kiss that I wish I could rewind and erase.’
‘That wasn’t a one-off kiss,’ Hope insisted, but she wasn’t struggling to get free, but resting her head on Jack’s shoulder as he rubbed her back like he was trying to wind her. ‘It looked like you two had kissed countless times, usually without any clothes getting in the way.’
‘I don’t care what it looked like. It has never happened before and it will never happen again. You have to believe me, Hopey.’
‘But why did it happen at all?’
‘I don’t know!’ Jack gave a bitten-off groan. ‘I was pissed and Susie and I always have that flirty thing going on, and it was just one of those things you suddenly find yourself doing and you’re not sure how or why.’
It didn’t even come close to being a good enough excuse and Hope pulled away so she could look Jack in the eye. He looked like her Jack again, pouting slightly, brow knitted in a pleading frown. ‘She was my best friend. You didn’t just cross a line. You crossed about a hundred lines.’
‘I know I did,’ Jack said as he grabbed Hope’s hands and held them tight like he would never let go, until she yelped in pain as he pressed against the burn on her palm. ‘Sorry! It was, like, five minutes of madness that I’ll always regret for as long as I live. Please say that you understand.’
Hope wanted to more than anything, except she needed to be certain of one thing. ‘You do still love me, don’t you?’ she begged. ‘I know I was a bitch yesterday with all the stress of the dinner party and I know I nag you and that I’m messy and …’
‘Oh shut up, you stupid cow, of course I love you,’ Jack burst out, and it wasn’t the nicest way he’d ever said it, but Hope didn’t think he’d ever said it with so much feeling. ‘I wish I had a time machine and I could go back to last night and make sure that the kiss didn’t happen, but I can’t. All I can do is keep telling you that I love you until you believe me.’
‘I do believe you,’ Hope said slowly, and when she sat down on the edge of the bathtub, Jack sank to his knees so he could gaze up at her, and maybe her heart wasn’t broken, because it did a little loop-the-loop just from the sight of Jack, with his hair falling into his eyes and his little lopsided smile. ‘Are we still unofficially engaged, then?’
Jack gently lifted up Hope’s injured hand so he could kiss the three silver rings on her finger. ‘God, you don’t get rid of me that easily, Hopita,’ he said, and now his smile wasn’t so lopsided but brighter and sunnier, and it was impossible for Hope not to smile back. ‘I will make this up to you. Anything you want, name it, it’s yours.’
Hope wouldn’t have minded Jack’s blessing in moving the three silver rings to the third finger of her left hand, because she really needed that kind of reassurance. But when they went from pre-engaged to properly engaged, she didn’t want it to be because they were making up from a fight. And as it was, now she was starting to feel a little foolish that she’d made such a scene about one kiss. If it had been just one kiss. But Jack couldn’t look at her like that and be lying to her. He just couldn’t. She knew him better than that.
‘Do you … will you promise that you … that both of us will never see Susie again? Or Wilson,’ she amended hastily, because she never wanted to see his sneery face ever again as long as she lived.
Jack actually sighed in relief. ‘Of course. Goes without saying.’ He patted Hope’s thigh in a consoling manner. ‘Was he a total wanker to you?’
‘Well, he did come and find me and give me a lift,’ she mumbled. ‘And he was nice for maybe five minutes, but mostly he was rude, patronising and just unspeakably vile.’ Hope was all set to tell Jack that Wilson had accused her of imagining things when she realised that if she believed Jack’s version of events, like she really wanted to, then actually she had been imagining things. Which meant that Wilson had been right and Hope had been up to her elbows in wrong, but that aside, he’d still spent most of last night being a total bastard. ‘I hate him.’
‘So, anything else I can do to make it up to you?’ Jack asked, because he was obviously already bored with talking about Wilson, which suited Hope just fine.
‘You could run me a bath,’ Hope said, because she wanted this whole heart-wrenching episode to be done with and for boring, blis
sful normality to reign in their home once again. She gently pulled herself free from Jack who was still clutching her hands. ‘Lots of bubbles, please.’
‘Coming right up.’ Jack bustled past Hope to get to the taps. ‘I’ll even go out and get the Observer so you can read the magazine while you soak.’
Hope nodded. It was best like this instead of having some painful post-mortem that would make the situation drag on and on. But … ‘You … like, you and her, you haven’t? Not ever?’
‘How can you even ask me that?’ Jack demanded, his aghast face firmly reattached, his hand, which had been whipping up a frenzied froth of L’Occitane Green Tea scented bubbles, stilling.
‘How can I not?’ She leaned against the sink. ‘You have to promise me.’
‘I promise you!’ Jack said, and he sounded as if he was nearing the very zenith of his contrition. ‘And I promise that I’ll never see her again. OK?’
‘OK,’ Hope agreed, because she needed to let this go – even she was getting sick of the clingy desperation in her voice.
‘Now can we drop the subject and talk about something else, like me staying to wash your back?’ Jack offered with a leer that was a shadow of his usual leer. ‘If you wanted.’
Hand-holding and bath-running were all very well, but a quick bout of make-up sex definitely wasn’t going to be happening any time soon. It would take at least a week for any lingering Susie DNA to be eradicated from Jack’s skin, and though Hope had said the two of them were AOK, saying it and making herself genuinely believe it were two very different things. ‘I think I need some alone-time,’ she murmured as she stared at their two electric toothbrushes standing neatly side by side.
Within two weeks of moving in together, it had been established that Hope’s alone-time was sacrosanct. It either meant that she’d had a hellish day at school or she was between days twenty-three and twenty-eight of her cycle. Or, in worst-case scenarios, she’d had a hellish day and her special lady-time was imminent. It was her Get Out Of Jail Free card, and Jack respected Hope’s alone-time absolutely because he really didn’t like to suffer the spitting, furious consequences if he failed to heed her warning.
Maybe that’s why he was nodding in an understanding fashion. ‘That’s fair enough,’ he said, but he still wasn’t leaving the bathroom so Hope could wallow in bubbles and self-doubt. ‘Hope?’
Her head shot up at the sound of the plaintive, wheedling note in Jack’s voice. ‘What?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘Hopey, I know I don’t have the right to ask, but you won’t tell your mum about this, will you?’ Jack screwed his eyes shut. ‘Or my mum, come to that,’ he added weakly.
‘God, no!’ It was a relief to be on exactly the same page again. ‘You don’t deserve that. I don’t deserve that. They’ll be calling on the hour, every hour, to make sure that we haven’t split up.’
Hope and Jack stared at each other in mounting horror.
‘I think we can deal with this ourselves without any outside interference,’ Hope said firmly, because as hideous as the situation was, their mothers would make it even worse. They’d been best friends and next-door neighbours for twenty-nine years, and had been planning Jack and Hope’s nuptials ever since Caroline Delafield’s twenty-week scan had told her that after eight years of trying and three sons, she was finally going to have a use for that bottom drawer full of pink babygros and frilly dresses. ‘Otherwise our only chance of escape from the maternal jackboot is a joint suicide pact.’
‘You bring the pills, I’ll get the razor blades,’ Jack said.
‘Rather have a copy of the Observer and some orange juice, please.’
‘OK, OK.’ Jack held up his hands in surrender. ‘I’m going.’
Hope waited until Jack left the bathroom before she bolted the door, stripped off and slowly sank into the scented bath water. Jack always ran the bath slightly too hot and she had to ease herself in.
She ducked her head under the water, then emerged spluttering, hair streaming out behind her. Hope could hear Jack whistling, which always set her teeth on edge, then scoop up his keys and call out a cheery, ‘See you in five,’ before the front door slammed behind him.
Hope focused on the spot of mildew on the windowsill that no amount of Cillit Bang or vinegar could shift, then stretched out her legs so she could prop her feet up on either side of the taps. She could beat herself up over and over again because Jack had kissed her best friend. Or because if she’d been satisfying him then Jack wouldn’t have even contemplated kissing someone else, no matter how drunk he was. Or that he was never going to ask her to marry him if he wanted to have the freedom to kiss other girls.
There were all these ‘ors’ that she could obsess about or she could just … not. She’d told Jack that everything would be fine and they could put the whole sorry mess behind them, and they could.
If they loved each other and they wanted to stay together, grow old together, run the risk of the red-hair gene not being so recessive after all and bringing up a horde of ginger kids, then Hope had to build the world’s biggest bridge and get over this. And she had to stop being so argumentative and disorganised, and slobbing out as soon as she got in from work so that when Jack arrived home he was usually met by the less than scintillating sight of Hope in her pyjamas eating cereal straight from the box as she did her lesson plans.
Hope lay there, occasionally and adroitly pulling up the plug with one foot to let the water drain a bit, then adding more hot water, until her fingers and toes were so pruney that they started to hurt. Her head also hurt, but she couldn’t tell if it was from sleep deprivation or from chasing all the facts round and round in her head until they made her dizzy.
She was on the verge of hauling herself out of the bath when she heard Jack returning at the same time that her iPhone began to chirp faintly with Blondie’s ‘Call Me’, which was her current ringtone.
‘Shall I get that for you?’ he called out, and she grunted an affirmative reply as she began to slather on body lotion.
Then her stomach lurched and Hope thought that she might actually throw up, because what if it was Susie phoning to apologise and getting Jack instead of Hope? Hope strained her ears. Jack was talking in a low murmur, not raising his voice, and she was sure that she even heard him chuckle at one point. If it was Susie, he should have hung up by now, and she was all set to charge out of the bathroom and shout at him when Jack suddenly banged on the door.
‘How much longer are you going to be in there, anyway?’ he complained. ‘Someone wants to talk to you.’
Hope yanked a bath sheet off the towel rail. ‘Who?’ she demanded. ‘Who wants to talk to me?’
‘Your beloved deputy head wants to remind you to make brownies for tomorrow and, also, if it’s not too much trouble, can you make them gluten-free?’
Her suspicions were instantly forgotten as Hope unbolted the door with a scowl on her face. ‘No, I can’t,’ she hissed at Jack, who grinned and handed over her iPhone.
‘I’ll make coffee,’ he said, swatting her on the arse with the Observer as he walked away from her and Hope guessed that they were back to normal.
WHEN HOPE HAD decided to become a teacher, it wasn’t to follow in her parents’ footsteps, and it certainly wasn’t a grand calling to shape young minds.
Even before she’d acquired her 2.1 degree in History from Leeds University, Hope had had enough sense to know she didn’t have the creative skills to become a writer, or any discernible musical ability that meant she could join a band and live out all her rock ’n’ roll fantasies. So, between her mother extolling the virtues of teaching, Jack nagging her to come down to London before the ink was dry on her final exam paper, and Lauren suddenly deciding that she wanted to become an educator ‘because you get, like, twenty weeks’ holiday a year’, Hope figured there was no harm in doing a School Centred Initial Teaching Training course while she thought long and hard about what she wanted to do when she grew up.
Hope
had trained in a rough inner-city school in Lambeth and spent every night of the first month wondering what the hell she was doing. The children were terrifying, the National Curriculum was daunting, and she doubted her numeracy skills were up to the challenge. Then, during her second month, she had a lightbulb moment as she did some one-to-one reading with a seven-year-old girl called Angel – who had her own lightbulb moment when she suddenly stopped laboriously sounding out syllables and actually began to read, a huge, gappy smile on her face. That was it. Hope had been bitten by the teaching bug and besides, teachers did get a hell of a lot of holidays.
So Hope wasn’t entirely despondent about the new school year. It also helped that she could ease into it with two inset days. First, she was briefed about the new curriculum by Dorothy, the deputy head, who looked after the day-to-day running of the infant classes at Balls Pond Primary School, which was known locally as The Bull Pen. Then Hope bitched about the new curriculum with Elaine, who taught the year above hers, the Yellow Class. She also met Marta, who’d just finished her SCITT and would be teaching the tinies in the Red Class, and was in a state of morbid terror after her induction with Dorothy.
Mostly Hope organised her classroom, pinning up all the Guardian wall charts of British songbirds, wild flowers and trees that she’d religiously saved during the year, sorting out the detritus of dried-up paint pots and hard brushes in the art corner, and taking custody of four grasshoppers, three goldfish and Herbert, the class hamster, who’d all spent the summer with Saeed, the caretaker.
It was the calm before the storm and, as Wednesday morning approached, Hope could feel herself getting more and more nervous. This was her third year teaching, which was nothing compared to Dorothy, who was approaching her quarter-century, or Elaine, who could remember when inset days were called ‘Baker days’, and the prospect of thirty six-year-olds staring her down and trying to sniff out her weak spots, of which there were many, filled Hope with dread and uncertainty.