‘We always get to Scratchwood. It’s inevitable when you join the M1 at Brent Cross.’
‘No, I meant a metaphysical here,’ Hope said. ‘You and me together again. I mean, it was less than a week ago that I—’
‘Don’t say it,’ Jack said a little sharply. ‘I don’t ever want to think about that, about you and him, the fact that there was a you and him, even if it was just for one night.’
Hope sighed. ‘I’ve said I’m sorry. Repeatedly.’
‘I know you are, and I don’t want to get into all that again either.’ Jack quickly patted her knee, then put his hands back in the ten to two position on the steering wheel, before he could lose control of the car and have them hurtling into the path of a juggernaut. ‘But I’ll tell you one thing: the fear of losing you really made me get my shit together.’
She wasn’t sure exactly how she was meant to respond to that. It made her feel rather like a toy that Jack had outgrown, until he’d seen how much fun someone else was having with it. But maybe Jack’s reasoning wasn’t the issue here so much as the end result, especially as the end result involved Jack finding everything about her, including her hangover, endearing and saying stuff like, ‘You know, I could give you your present early, if you like. Because this present is so amazing that I think when the mums see it they’ll completely cave on the whole issue of us sharing a bedroom.’
‘This present sounds miraculous,’ Hope said with a giggle. ‘Does it also cure cancer?’
‘Well, it’s not quite that good.’ Jack turned into the slip road that led to Scratchwood. ‘Actually, your present is in two parts. You have to read the first part while I go and get our coffee, and then you can have the second part.’
‘It has parts? And one of the parts is readable?’ Hope was intrigued. Maybe the readable part was actually a ticket to a fairytale country cottage with full amenities and absolutely no Caroline Delafield in it.
‘That’s what I said.’ Jack parked the car. Then he pulled a crumpled sheet of paper out of the glove compartment, even as he unbuckled his seatbelt. ‘Just read it and then you can have the rest of your present.’
Hope reminded Jack that she wanted an extra shot of espresso in her coffee before he closed the car door, then glanced at the piece of paper. She’d seen it before. In fact, she’d ripped it out of the A4 pad she used for her lesson plans and given it to Jack last Sunday morning, when they’d gone to the Landsdowne Arms in Primrose Hill for lunch, and had agreed to sit there and take an hour to do their homework for Angela. Not rushing through it. Not doing it at the last moment. Not snarking about it. But giving it due care and attention.
She smoothed out the paper and began to read:
REASONS WHY I LOVE HOPE DELAFIELD
1. She’s my best friend.
2. I can’t imagine life without her.
3. But when I do try to imagine life without Hope it’s a lot less fun.
4. Her smile, especially when I’m not expecting it, still takes me by surprise.
5. She’s funny ha ha.
6. Also, she’s funny peculiar. Hopey freaking out about even looking up at a really tall building, let alone climbing a ladder, always cracks me up, and I’m sure she thinks little magical pixies put the music on her iPod for her.
7. She’s going to be an amazing mother. The kind of mother who bakes cakes and does arts and crafts projects and won’t care when mud gets tramped over her clean kitchen floor. (Well, she won’t mind too much.)
8. My mum and dad love her too. Maybe even more than they love me.
9. The thought of her with another man fills me with rage like I’ve never felt before, but it also makes me really, really sad.
10. How she eats yogurt off the back of her spoon. Can’t explain it any better than that.
11. She never complains when I make her listen to three different versions of a song and ask her to guess which one has been digitally remastered.
12. I want to grow old with her. I can see us forty years from now, side by side on our mobility scooters, still taking the piss out of each other, still able to make each other laugh.
13. Great tits! (They really are, Hope.)
14. She makes the best roast potatoes in the world.
15. I was fucking terrified of the idea of settling down, until I realised I was more terrified about the thought of losing Hope.
Hope read the list twice and she knew for certain that Jack really did love her. No matter how he felt about Susie, his love for her hadn’t disappeared. It had gone through some changes, but it was still there. He loved her and that was the important thing, it would keep them together, even though Hope wasn’t entirely sure that she recognised the Hope that Jack was in love with. His Hope seemed flaky and unsure of herself unless she was in the kitchen. Also, though he claimed he didn’t want any, he seemed awfully fixated on the subject of children lately.
Her phone beeped with a text from Jack. Stuck in a monster queue. Might be some time. Do you want a muffin?
While she was waiting, there was no harm in reading her own list to see how it compared, although hers was very much a work in progress. She’d thought she’d have no problem coming up with at least fifty reasons why she loved Jack, but last Sunday there had actually been a lot of pen-chewing and wondering if they should have done their lists after lunch, because she’d been finding it hard to concentrate while surreptitiously glancing at the menu written on the blackboard on the wall behind him. Still, she’d kept at it for the allotted hour with the idea that she’d revise and rewrite her list at a later date, and as Jack was probably going to be ages, now was the perfect time.
Why I love Jack
1. Because the sex is quite good and we DO have the potential to have really good sex, if we both work harder at it.
2. When I’ve had a bad day at work, he always cheers me up by doing his Cartman from South Park impression, and it’s still funny and it still makes me spit out my tea.
3. He always gives me backrubs when I have my period and goes out to buy me Green & Black’s chocolate even if it’s raining.
4. There’s so much stuff I don’t know how to do because he always does it for me, not just putting the songs on my iPod and taking them off, and changing lightbulbs because I start sweating if I even look at a ladder, but loads of other things too. Like, working the satnav and adjusting the time on the DVD recorder and the oven and changing the oil in the car … the list is endless.
5. Oh God, our mothers! The recriminations, the tears and the endless rounds of: ‘You don’t just bail out when things get a little tough, and this is going to kill your grandmother.’
6. Nobody else but Jack will ever call me Hopita Bonita. Nobody else would even be able to come close to thinking up a pet name like Hopita Bonita.
7. If we did split up then there’s no way we can sell the flat without taking up the tatty carpets and re-painting the walls and getting the dodgy living-room lights rewired and doing something about the oven smoking.
8. But I can’t imagine waking up and not seeing Jack lying there next to me, and it’s been thirteen years. How can I turn my back on thirteen years? Maybe this is just a phase we’re meant to go through and our relationship will be stronger and better for it.
9. I’m pretty sure he won’t cheat again, and I don’t think that he’ll ever see her, Susie, again.
It was only a rough first draft, but even so Hope was horrified. These weren’t reasons why she loved Jack; they were reasons for them to stay together against all the odds. Because the odds were saying very clearly that she didn’t love him. Not really. They were good friends. They were loving friends, even, and it was all too much of a faff to split up.
It was such a deep secret that she could barely form the thought, but Hope had always felt like the junior partner in their relationship. Jack was the cool one, the prettier one, the talented one, and the only way in which Hope was more than Jack was in the amount of love she had for him. She loved him more than he l
oved her, and that was just the way it was.
Love wasn’t a thing that could be measured out, but Hope knew that if she could weigh it on her kitchen scales, all the devotion, the regard, the passion and the need she had for Jack would always outweigh what he felt for her. Until now.
They’d both admitted that there had been problems in their relationship, problems that had crept up on them when they weren’t looking, but now it occurred to Hope that their biggest problem was that she didn’t love Jack enough any more.
Hope squinted her eyes and tried to see into the future, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t see Jack in it. If she was brutally honest with herself, then Hope had to admit that forty years from now, she still wouldn’t trust Jack. Every time he said he was working late or didn’t return a phone call in a timely fashion or he said he was going Crown Green Bowling with his pensioner mates, she’d be torturing herself by imagining him with other women.
She wanted to trust him, but wanting something wasn’t enough to make it actually happen. And Hope knew that Jack didn’t trust her now either, she couldn’t expect him to, and without trust, there was no happy-ever-after. Not when her love was peeling at the edges, and was no longer the glue that kept them stuck together.
Her phone beeped again, and even the thought that it might be Jack with an update on the monster-queue situation made Hope feel sick. Thankfully, it was only a text from Jeremy.
FYI. Ma has invited Vicar 4 Crimbo lunch. Says U need arseload of spiritual guidance. (She didn’t say arseload tho.) Jez x
Hope groaned out loud. She’d been dreading the visit back home as it was, without a guest appearance from the local vicar, an unmarried man in his late sixties who thought he was living in the nineteenth century. Hope still had cold sweats about the time he’d been drafted in by her mother when she’d realised that Hope and Jack were having sex out of wedlock. There had been a lot of talk about hellfire and Homes for Unmarried Mothers, even though he was meant to be United Reformed.
She’d have to get through the next week as best she could, Hope decided. Put a brave face on it. Smile through gritted teeth. Be vague and non-committal on the subject of marriage and babies, and when they got back to London, she’d talk to Jack. Definitely before December thirty-first, because she didn’t want to start the New Year the same way that they’d spent the old year – with doubt and uncertainty and crossed wires.
It was going to be awful, but staying together for the wrong reasons was worse, and surely Jack would realise it was for the best. That he didn’t love her like he thought he did, and that this sudden passionate love that he felt for her owed more to Hope spending the night with Wilson than anything else.
If they split up, or when they split up, Hope would be free to spend other nights with Wilson if she wanted to, or she’d be free to fall in love with someone else, or not get bogged down in all the trials and woes of another relationship but go on dates and have affairs and …
Hope nearly jumped out of her skin when there was a tap on the window and she saw Jack standing there with two Styrofoam cups of coffee and a huge grin on his face. She had a silly, childish urge to lock all the doors so he couldn’t get in the car, slide over on to the driver’s seat and leadfoot it until she ran out of motorway. But that was just stupid.
Still, she shuddered when Jack opened the door on the driver’s side, and it had nothing to do with the icy-cold air that whistled through the car.
‘Here you go,’ Jack said, handing over her coffee. ‘Extra shot of espresso, warm milk, no foam.’
‘Thanks …’
‘So, did you read it, then?’ Jack asked eagerly. ‘What did you think?’
‘It was really unexpected and very, very touching,’ Hope was able to choke out truthfully. ‘Not sure if I really live up to your PR, though.’
‘Oh, I think you do,’ Jack assured her and as Hope was wondering how she could steer the conversation on to a more general theme, he pulled something out of the pocket of his coat. ‘I had the naff idea of stashing this in the bottom of your coffee cup, but it is vintage, used to be my grandmother’s, and I was worried you might swallow it.’
‘What is it?’ It was obvious what it was, because only a ring would fit in the small, squat jewellery box, but maybe a ring was just a ring. ‘I mean, is that what I think it is?’
‘I also thought about trying to conceal it in a cracker for you to pull during Christmas dinner, but I had visions of it landing in the cranberry jelly. I suppose I could go down on one knee, but it’s fucking freezing outside,’ Jack said cheerily.
He opened the box with a grand flourish to reveal a simple diamond solitaire in an old-fashioned claw setting. ‘So, hey, Hopita Bonita, after thirteen years, shall we finally make it official?’
‘No! Oh God, no!’ Hope burst out, and she couldn’t be any kinder than that because the words didn’t even come from her heart, but her gut. The thought of being engaged, or being properly engaged, had been an overriding theme of the last year, but now the sight of a diamond ring destined for the third finger of her left hand filled her with horror. She’d just made a monumental decision that they needed to break up for their greater good, but Jack was forging ahead with plans for them to spend the rest of their lives together.
Hope thrust the box back at Jack. ‘Sorry, but no. I told you we should take things slowly, so why would you think this is what I want?’
Jack shook his head violently. ‘What? What the fuck? This is what you wanted. I know you came out with all that stuff last Friday because it seemed like the sensible thing to say, but you can’t deny it, Hopey, you’ve been gagging for me to propose.’
‘Maybe once I was, but now … This would be the worst idea either of us have ever had,’ Hope said. ‘You’re in love with the person who I used to be and an idea of the person you think I’m going to be, and neither of them is who I am any more.’ She shut her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see the bewildered look on Jack’s face or the ring he was still holding towards her. ‘I love you. I do, but I don’t want to marry you.’
‘Why the fuck not?’ Jack demanded. ‘Have you any idea how much I wrestled with this, and then you just throw it back in my face? It’s about him, isn’t it? I knew you’d fucked him.’
‘OH, GOD!’ Hope screamed in sheer frustration. ‘It’s not about him. It’s about you and me. We’re holding each other back. We will never be the people we need to be if we stay together.’
‘What kind of person do you need to be? You are what you are, Hopey, and you can’t change that,’ Jack bit out. ‘Like I can’t change who I am. I came back to you. I chose you. Doesn’t that count for anything?’
‘You’d never have had to choose, because you’d never have had an affair if you’d been happy with me, or getting what you wanted from our relationship,’ Hope said and she sounded and felt deathly calm now, because she knew that she was doing the right thing. One day – not now, because he honestly looked as if he might throw up – Jack would realise it too. He’d even thank her for it. ‘We have nothing in common any more.’
Jack stared at her in bemusement. ‘We have loads of things in common.’
‘We have thirteen years of shared experiences, but really, Jack, if you met me at a party and we got talking, I wouldn’t be the girl you’d end up taking home,’ Hope said sadly, because she wasn’t. Jack didn’t have any friends from back home or university like she had Lauren or Allison. He hadn’t done it callously or with any calculation, but he’d thrown them off as soon as he started working on Skirt and now he only hung out with other boys who worked as graphic designers and wore T-shirts with slogans printed on them in Helvetica type. They drank in Shoreditch, shopped at A.P.C. and American Apparel, and for all their urban edge, there was something confined and safe about their world.
Hope wasn’t like that. Or she didn’t want to be like that.
‘I would want to take you home,’ Jack insisted. ‘I love you.’
‘You lov
e me like you love The Beatles,’ Hope said as she impatiently wiped away the first inevitable tear. ‘You grew up with their songs and you know everything about them and they’re comforting. Like, you always listen to Rubber Soul or Abbey Road when you’re in a good mood, and when you’re feeling down, you put on The White Album, but they don’t hold any surprises for you any more.’
‘Don’t do this, Hope,’ Jack said quietly. ‘You’ll always regret this.’
‘No, I’m going to be sad. I’m going to be really, really sad, but if I do this now before we go down a path that’s hard to get off, then there’s an outside chance that we might still be friends. I’d regret not having you in my life, but I don’t want you to be at the centre of my life any more.’
‘Are you in love with him?’ Jack demanded, and Hope could only cover her face with her hands to stop herself from screaming again. It was like a horrible metaphor for their relationship that they were trapped in a cramped stuffy space, arguing because neither of them understood where the other one was coming from.
‘You’re like a scratched record. Wilson’s my friend and yes, I’m attracted to him, but I don’t love him, I don’t even know if I could love him and anyway, you said you loved Susie. Did you suddenly just stop loving her?’