‘I’m going to check on pudding,’ Hope said loudly, scraping back her chair and standing up. Her voice was perilously high and her face felt as if it was on fire. ‘And I’m going to find out why Jack’s taking so long to bring us more booze.’
With that, Hope squeezed past Allison and fled from the room without even pausing to pick up any of the dirty dishes.
BEEEEEEPPPP! BEEEEEEPPPP! BEEEEEEPPPP!
The sound of the oven timer pierced the air and Hope jumped back, just as Jack and Susie tore themselves away from each other.
It was strange that when Hope’s world was falling into pieces, tiny, torn pieces that couldn’t be stitched back together, she still had the presence of mind to scurry out into the hall so she could re-enter the kitchen and even bang a saucepan lid down on the worktop as if she was in a tearing hurry to turn off the oven before her pudding burnt.
BEEEEEEPPPP! BEEEEEEPPPP! BEEEEEEPPPP!
Hope could hear Susie and Jack talking over the sound of the shrieking alarm but it was impossible to know if they were panicking because they’d seen her jump back from the door, or if they were congratulating themselves for fooling her yet again – and God, just how long had this been going on, anyway?
There were a million thoughts racing through Hope’s head, a million fragments that she needed to trace back to their original source but …
BEEEEEEPPPP! BEEEEEEPPPP! BEEEEEEPPPP!
‘Fuck off!’ she screamed at the oven, scrabbling to turn off the timer as she wrenched open the door and yanked out the Pyrex dish.
‘Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!’ she howled, dropping the dish on the floor so she could clutch her burnt hand to her mouth. ‘Fucking fuck!’
Jack was already rushing in through the back door, closely followed by Susie. ‘Hopita! What’s up?’
Hope couldn’t speak. She just stared at him with eyes widened in pain and horror that had nothing to do with pulling a blisteringly hot dish from an oven without the aid of a glove or even a wadded-up tea towel.
‘Shit! Poor baby,’ Jack cooed, trying gently to take hold of Hope’s arm, but she flinched away. ‘You look like you’re going to faint.’
Susie had already pushed past him, so she could take the teetering pile of crockery out of the sink and start running the cold tap. ‘Come here!’ she ordered sharply.
Hope blinked at her. Everything looked strange and frighteningly hyper-real, from the congealed pesto on the worktop to Susie and Jack’s concerned faces and the red and white mess of her own hand. Even the hum from the fluorescent strip light sounded deafening.
‘Is everything all right in there?’ said a voice from the hall and Hope looked over Jack’s shoulder to see five anxious faces staring back at her.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Susie said, grabbing a handful of Hope’s dress so she could drag her over to the sink, seize her wrist in a punishing grip and force her hand under the gushing tap.
Instantly the pain became less inner and much more outer and Hope almost welcomed the stinging agony of icy-cold water sluicing against her damaged flesh. The skin on her palm had blistered and bubbled and the sharp waves of pain were beginning to fade into a nagging throb that Hope focused on, matching her breaths to the rhythm of each pulsation, because if she had to think about anything else, what she’d just seen … what she’d heard … the two of them …
‘Stop touching me,’ she said in a low voice, still firmly looking down at her hand, because even glimpsing the peach silk of Susie’s top out of the corner of her eye made Hope forget that she was trying to be all Zen about her pain and instead long to gouge Susie’s heart out with the potato peeler. ‘Get off me.’
‘You have to promise you’ll keep your hand under the tap,’ Susie demanded, but she was already letting go so Allison could take her place and rub Hope‘s back in soothing circles.
‘You OK?’ she asked Hope softly.
Hope shook her head. ‘Alli, everything’s so fucked up,’ she whispered.
‘No, it’s all good. Really. The pudding’s still intact,’ Allison told her cheerfully. ‘You’d think the dish would have shattered.’
‘It’s going to get cold,’ Hope said, trying to get away from the sink so she could salvage something from the evening, even if it was just her brioche bread-and-butter pudding. ‘I need to put it back in the oven.’
‘Where do you think you’re going? I’ll sort it out,’ said Lauren, sifting through the kitchen debris to find the oven gloves, then crouching down to pick up the dish. ‘You need to keep your hand under that tap for ten to twenty minutes, then we need to wrap it in clingfilm.’
‘Yes, thank you, Florence Nightingale,’ Allison snapped, even though her hands were gentle as she continued to rub Hope’s back. ‘You’re not the only one who’s a qualified first-aider.’
‘Are you sure you’re all right, Hopita?’ asked Jack, and Hope swivelled round again to see him standing by the back door, next to Susie, and the depth of his deception struck her anew and the pain rose up again and roared.
‘Do I fucking look like I’m fucking all right?’ she shouted, wrenching away from Allison and the cold water. ‘Do I really look like everything in my world is sunshine and rainbows right now?’
Jack reared back but he didn’t look guilty. He looked concerned, as if Hope’s pain was his pain. ‘C’mon, Hopey, stiff upper lip,’ he said gently. ‘Do you think you need to go to A&E?’
Everyone was looking at her warily, as if they were waiting for another flash of temper, and Hope knew that this wasn’t the time or the place. She turned away and stuck her hand back under the tap so she didn’t have to look at anyone. ‘I’m fine,’ Hope insisted, slightly astounded at how steady her voice was. ‘It’s just the shock that’s making me act like a crazy lady.’
There was an almost indecent stampede by some of her guests to leave the scene of the crime, and once Jack and Susie had gone back to the dining room after several more updates on the state of Hope’s mental and physical health, only Allison and Lauren lingered. ‘You sure you’re OK, Hopey?’ Allison asked again. ‘I mean, you’re not usually such a pain wimp.’
‘Yeah, you’re very stiff of lip,’ Lauren added, as Hope finally turned off the tap, cast a cursory look at the raised welts on her hand, which still stung like a swarm of angry wasps had done their worst, and started rooting in the kitchen junk drawer for the clingfilm.
‘It’s just … well …’ Hope paused. She knew that she could tell Allison and Lauren anything, but this shameful secret was so large that she was scared to give it a voice in case it swallowed her whole. And the thing about best friends, real to-the-death best friends, was that sometimes you had to lie to them and they wouldn’t be fooled for a second, but they’d understand. ‘I just wanted everything to be perfect and it’s not. I’ve burnt my hand and thrown a hissy fit and everyone thinks I’m a gigantic tool and I’m pretty sure that my brioche bread-and-butter pudding resembles charcoal by now.’
‘You silly, silly cow,’ Lauren said, and Hope was surrounded on all sides and gathered into a gentle hug that was mindful of her injured hand, as Lauren and Allison murmured soothing words and petted her.
It was established that the pudding was fine. Maybe a little dry, but nothing the mascarpone and the clotted-cream ice-cream couldn’t hide. Also, by the guffawing and chink of glasses coming from the former lounge, the getting drunk was back on course, and it was essential ‘for someone to have a meltdown at a dinner party, especially the hostess’, Allison explained earnestly, as she finished dressing Hope’s hand. ‘It’s the entertainment between courses. It’s expected, Hopey, and quite frankly, I’ve seen better hissy fits than that.’
‘Thrown them, more like,’ Lauren muttered darkly. Allison gasped in outrage, which Hope knew was faked, but she smiled all the same and it was as if her smile, no matter how frayed at the edges it was, was the cue the other two had been waiting for, because they picked up the pudding and accompaniments and chivvied Hope out of the kitchen.
/>
It took only three steps, not even big steps, to get from the kitchen to the other room, but to Hope it felt as if she was walking the Green Mile. She wasn’t sure how she was going to get through the next five minutes, never mind the next hour. She hesitated in the doorway but that was because Allison had to tuck her chair in so she could get through the door.
‘Pudding looks amazing,’ Marvin said when Hope had resumed her place at the head of the table. She picked up a serving spoon in her uninjured left hand, which was going to make things tricky, but she needed to wrest some control back.
‘Do you want me to take over?’ Allison asked.
‘I’m fine,’ Hope insisted.
‘Really, it’s no trouble. You’ve had a nasty shock. C’mon, I’ll do the slicing.’
‘I can manage, Alli, but if you want to be helpful you can pour me a really, really large glass of wine,’ Hope told her as she looked down the length of the table. Allison, Lauren, Otto and Marvin were all watching her anxiously but they’d had so much to drink that the concern was making them go cross-eyed, and she couldn’t even bring herself to look at Jack and Susie. Instead her gaze rested on Wilson who, to be fair, had got up from the table to make sure that she hadn’t been maimed for life, but now that the crisis had been temporarily averted he was more interested in fiddling with his iPhone, which was kind of rude.
Actually, being irritated by Wilson made Hope feel better, or at least feel halfway normal again. Like she was back in her own skin, and it was the push she needed to find the courage to look at Susie and Jack, who at that precise moment were sharing a smile and a raised eyebrow.
That look, that complicit look, was enough to make Hope instantly forget all her honourable intentions of dealing with Susie and Jack at some unspecified time in the future, once she’d become acclimatised to all the horror and hurt and could trust herself not to burst into loud, snotty tears. Also, at this unspecified time in the future there wouldn’t be any witnesses to Hope’s utter humiliation and despair, but that wasn’t right or fair. Why should they get off scot-free?
The serving spoon left Hope’s hand before she even realised that she was throwing it in the direction of Jack’s head. It was either good or bad that her right hand was out of action and the spoon missed its target. Still, it managed to tear Jack’s attention away from Susie so he could stare at Hope with mounting horror.
‘I saw the two of you,’ she spat out, almost tripping over the words. ‘And I know why it took you two hours to get back from Waitrose – you were shagging each other, weren’t you?’
There was a terrible hush, as if everyone in the room was holding their breath. All Hope could hear was the pounding of her heart. No one was looking at her, preferring to stare down at their empty bowls, except Wilson. He was looking right at Hope, then at Susie, then at Jack, and back to Hope again. For once Wilson didn’t look bored but angry and hurt and betrayed – all the things that Hope was feeling too.
He also seemed surprised, not at Hope’s revelation, but with Hope herself, as if she might actually have some hidden depths and he was interested to see how far she was going to take things. Hope shot Wilson an angry, defiant look because if he was a nicer person, a better boyfriend, then Susie wouldn’t have to steal other people’s almost fiancés. But even as she narrowed her eyes, Hope knew that this wasn’t Wilson’s fault, and her gaze switched to the top of Jack’s bent head. She’d never known silence like this; so thick and charged.
Then Lauren giggled nervously, Allison hissed at her to shut up and the spell was broken.
‘I haven’t …’ Jack began automatically, even though it was obvious that he had. That they had. ‘I went to B&Q and Waitrose, you know I did, and the traffic was a bitch and I really did just meet Susie coming down the road, but we just sat in the car and talked. I swear!’
‘I don’t believe you,’ Hope hissed. ‘I saw the way you were kissing. It wasn’t even kissing. It was … It was … You know exactly what it was.’
Susie coughed. ‘Look, we’d both had a bit to drink and ended up having a drunken snog. End of,’ she said quietly, looking down at her hands, her manicure still in pristine condition because doing the washing-up had been the last thing on her mind when she’d left the table.
There was more to it than that, Hope was sure of it, but she knew what she’d seen, but what if she hadn’t seen what she thought she’d seen? Maybe, just maybe, this whole awful, world-shattering nightmare was Susie’s idea of a joke, and she’d persuaded Jack to go along with it – and his sense of humour was decidedly suspect. Like, Hope had caught him giggling over repeats of One Foot in the Grave on UK Gold on numerous occasions, yet he could remain completely stony-faced when she showed him something on LOLCats, which had made her spit tea down herself. Maybe they hadn’t been kissing and groping but just pretending to be kissing and groping. Maybe.
Hope actually crossed her fingers behind her back, the skin on her damaged hand tightening painfully, which gave her something real, something tangible to focus on until eventually, reluctantly, Susie raised her head to look at her.
‘I’m sorry that you had to see it, though,’ she said. There was no bravado, no bluff, she looked genuinely, sickeningly ashamed, which was all the proof that Hope needed, because usually Susie prided herself on having no shame.
‘You know what you can do with your “sorry”? You can shove it up your arses,’ Hope said, and she walked out of the room because she couldn’t stay there and have to look at them, at Jack and Susie, any longer.
USUALLY WHEN HOPE stormed out of the lounge it was because of a minor disagreement, like Jack refusing to turn off Grand Theft Auto so she could watch Glee in High Definition, or because he was mocking her for getting all sniffly and teary-eyed while she was watching Glee in High Definition. Hope would flounce as far as the bedroom, where she had a secret chocolate stash hidden at the back of her knicker drawer and could watch the show on the crappy TV they’d inherited from Jack’s parents.
But this wasn’t a minor disagreement. It was The End of Days, and Hope headed for the front door because having to ride out an emotional tsunami in the cramped confines of their flat in front of their closest friends was too much. She needed fresh air to clear her head. If that didn’t work, then she needed to find a steep hill, climb it and scream and scream and scream.
Jack appeared in the lounge doorway as Hope fumbled with the latch. ‘Hopey … Hope. Don’t go. Not like this.’
There were so many things wrong with what he was saying that Hope didn’t know where to start, so she settled for an indistinct sound that was half growl, half sob, as Jack reached her side.
‘Don’t. Please don’t,’ Jack said urgently, right in Hope’s ear because he was that close, his long fingers splayed out on the door, just centimetres away from where Hope’s hand had stilled on the latch. ‘I screwed up, I know that, but if you go now … what will everyone think?’
It was interesting, Hope thought to herself in a detached way, that Jack might not want her to leave, would even plead with her to stay, but he wouldn’t touch her. He’d known her for every single one of her twenty-six years and he knew better than anyone that once the rage was upon her, when she was this mad, feeling so thoroughly unhinged, that if he touched even the tip of his little finger to her bare arm, she’d punch him.
Hope wished that Jack had the guts to touch her, because, God, she really wanted to punch him. But Jack didn’t touch her. In fact, he stepped back as she succeeded in getting her nerveless fingers to open the door. Stumbling out into the night and away from him felt portentous and over-whelming, as if Hope was relinquishing all her rights to him.
‘We have to talk,’ Jack called out as Hope recovered from her first faltering steps and began to pick up speed, hurrying up the steps and down the front-garden path. ‘Running away isn’t going to help.’
Hope ignored him as she took a decisive right turn out of the gate and stomped down the street, not in the direction of H
olloway Road and the beered-up gangs of teenagers that congregated there on a Saturday night, but cutting through the square on which they lived, and giving a wide berth to the people drinking outside the gastropub, which was the only drinking establishment in the area that wasn’t an old man’s boozer.
She didn’t know how long she’d been walking but after what seemed like hours, Hope realised that her Stella McCartney leopard-print platform wedges were not adapting well to life outside. They hadn’t been too painful when Hope was wearing them indoors, but now she had hard pavement underfoot; the shoes were chafing and pinching and generally making their displeasure felt.
The pain was good, or so Hope tried to tell herself. The pain meant that she could still feel, even though the anger had died down and she wasn’t feeling much of anything else, apart from lost. It wasn’t even a metaphorical lost-ness but an actual ‘I don’t have a clue where I am and I didn’t have the foresight to pick up my iPhone when I stormed out so I can’t even use Google Maps to find my way home.’ Just the thought of home made Hope’s stomach clench, and it was probably better to concentrate on being lost than have to concentrate on all the other shitty stuff that she didn’t want to think about.
Hope stood at the junction of three identical roads of Victorian terraced houses, unable to decide which one to take. If she didn’t want to go home and she didn’t have money or credit cards or phone, then what were her other options?
The wall she sat down on to rest her sore feet was as good a place as any to regroup. It was a still, sticky night. Hope could hear the distant roar of traffic and the low throb of music and conversation all around her. The air was thick with the lingering scent of chargrilled meat as the last-Saturday-of-the-summer-holidays barbecues were all winding down now.
It was terribly unfair that the inhabitants of the neighbouring gardens sounded as if their Saturday nights had been all fun and frolics, when Hope had just had the worst Saturday night of her life. Bar none. No contest. Even the time when she was sixteen and she and Lauren had sneaked off to Leeds to see the White Stripes and she’d had her purse stolen and they’d missed the last train home and had spent the night sitting on a park bench, wide-eyed and terrified that they were either going to be murdered by a beered-up bunch of random homicidal maniacs who might be passing, or murdered by their parents when they finally got home (though more likely grounded for a year). That didn’t even come close to the agonies Hope had suffered tonight, and now that she wasn’t in forward motion but just sitting there, she had no choice but to start re-living each horrible moment that had revealed all the cracks in her fairly boring but fairly happy little life.