Dumped, Actually(61)

‘No! No! That’s not what I meant! I didn’t know she was in there!’ I look at Samantha with utter disbelief. ‘How is she here? Why is she here?’

Samantha grits her teeth and glares at me before answering. ‘Lindsay was kind enough to drive me home after you . . . you . . .’ She can’t bring herself to finish that sentence. ‘We struck up a friendship in the car on the way back.’

‘Oh.’

Well, at least I haven’t got to worry that there’s a mischievous and hateful deity above my head causing all of these godawful coincidences.

‘Hang on,’ Lindsay – mother of Lauren the bogey monster – says, looking at me properly for the first time. ‘Isn’t this Oliver? The bloke who asked you to marry him?’

‘Yes,’ Samantha says, shifting uncomfortably. This reminds me of why I am here today. I am extremely glad to see her shift around like that. She’s obviously still totally ashamed of what she did to me!

Lindsay regards me with a mixture of revulsion and pity. It’s quite something to behold, especially coming from someone who has a child who likes to wipe their nose product down people’s faces. ‘I’m going to take Lauren over to the café,’ she says, starting to back away.

‘Okay,’ Samantha says, smiling down at Lauren as she does.

The three of us watch the girl and her mother withdraw, and then regard one another again. This is starting to feel like something of a stand-off – and it’s very definitely two against one.

Samantha sighs. ‘You look . . . well?’ she hazards, trying to keep things polite.

I give her a flat stare. ‘Do I?’

She looks deeply uncertain.

It’s funny, but now I’m actually talking to her, I don’t feel anywhere near as scared. Anticipation is always worse than reality – Wimsy was 100 per cent right.

. . . though, I suggest you don’t apply that logic to sticking your hand in a gas fire any time soon.

‘Why have you come here, Ollie?’ she asks me, getting to the root of the matter.

‘I . . . I wanted to come here to ask you why, actually, Samantha.’

Her eyes narrow. ‘Could you please call me Sam, Ollie? Everyone else on the planet seems to have no problem with it. I’m not sure why you do.’

‘I thought you liked Samantha.’

‘Not really, no. It sounds so bloody formal.’

Well, that’s a shock. I genuinely thought she loved it.

Something deep within me shifts. I always believed I knew Samantha as well as anyone could know another person. In all the time we were together, I thought I’d come to know her completely.

Apparently not, though.

‘Okay . . . Sam.’ It sounds so alien in my mouth. ‘I came to ask you why.’

‘Why what?’

‘Why you did it to me, Sam.’ Oh dear. Starting to feel that anger now. And I don’t have a golf ball I can fire at Samantha, so I might as well just tell her how I’m really feeling, and get it over with. ‘Why you dumped me in front of all those people! Why you ended a beautiful relationship! Why you broke my heart, Samantha!’ I look at her incredulously. ‘Why did you break my heart?!’

Yes!

Look how taken aback she is! Look how guilty she is!

No!

Look how angry Riley is! Look how much taller and broader he is than me!

‘You’d better get out of here, mate, before I knock your fucking block off,’ Riley says, stepping forward.

I sneer at him. ‘You sure you want to go out with her, buddy? She’ll only end up dumping you too!’

‘You bastard!’ Samantha cries.

I’m amazed. ‘Me?? I’m the bastard?? I loved you, Samantha! I did everything for you! And you just led me down the garden path, didn’t you? I thought we were going to be together forever! You made me think you felt the same way!! You LIED TO ME!’

‘I didn’t bloody lie to you!’

‘Yes, you did!’ All the anger and frustration of the past few months is boiling over now. ‘You fucking dumped me! When I asked you to marry me! Who does something like that, Samantha? Who?’

Tears are starting to well up in her eyes now. Good.

‘I had to end things with you, Ollie!’ she wails. ‘It was all too much! YOU were too much! It was all going way too fast for me!’

‘Too fast?! Too bloody fast?!’ I scream. ‘We were in love! We were meant to be! We were together for all of that time!’

And now it’s Samantha’s turn to look at me with utter disbelief. ‘What do you mean all of that time?’

‘Oh God!’ I exclaim, exasperation filling every pore of my being. ‘All the time we were together!’

‘Ollie . . . we only went out with one another for THREE MONTHS!’

She screams the last two words so loud, they echo around the garden centre walls, and cause a couple of startled pigeons to take flight.

For a moment there is nothing but silence. And then I speak again.

‘SO?’ I scream back at her. ‘So bloody what? That was long enough, Samantha! That was more than long enough for me to know it was right! That it was perfect!’

‘Oh my God!’ she wails, head going into her hands.

‘Are you fucking mental?’ Riley interjects.