The Other Woman(12)

She nodded in agreement, and reached out to touch my hand, for added reassurance.

‘So, what was his mum like? Do you think she liked you?’

‘Oh, she was just the sweetest thing. She went out of her way to make me feel welcome. I had a horrible thought, especially after the incident in the car going down there, that I was the latest in a long line of girls that he’d taken to meet her. But she actually took me aside as we were leaving and said, ‘You’re the first girlfriend he’s brought home in a long, long while . . .’

‘Okay, well that’s a big plus point right there,’ Pippa said matter-of-factly, trying to pull me back from the ex-thing that was nagging at my brain. ‘His mother loves you. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his mother.’

‘I thought it was through his stomach?’ I laughed.

‘Ah, that too, but we all know that it’s really via his dick!’

I choked on my wine, and she fell off the sofa.

There’s never a dull moment when Pippa’s around. Her ability to stick two fingers up at life when it isn’t quite working out is what drew me to her when we first met working at a shoe shop. Our old boss there, Eileen, didn’t quite appreciate Pippa’s feistiness, and it was only a matter of time before things came to a head.

‘I’m afraid I don’t have that boot in a size 40,’ she’d heard Pippa say to a customer, ‘but I do have this ballerina pump in a size 34, if that’s any good?’

Tears had rolled down my face, and I’d had to excuse myself from my customer to run to the stockroom. Pippa had quickly followed, with Eileen in hot pursuit.

‘A certain level of professionalism needs to be adhered to when dealing with clients,’ she’d said, wagging a finger. ‘You have both crossed the line today and I will be taking it up with my superior.’

‘Oh, Come On Eileen,’ Pippa had said, in a sing-song voice. ‘I think what you mean . . .’

My breath had caught in my throat, my face had turned red, and my bladder had threatened to collapse as Eileen, who happened to have dark curly hair, had glared at her. ‘If you think you’re being funny . . .’ she’d said.

‘Have you ever thought about dungarees . . . ?’ Pippa asked politely, before walking out. I had only survived a week longer before following suit, though I sensibly worked my notice. I’d have loved to have Pippa’s chutzpah, but I wasn’t quite as brave or bolshie as she was. I happened to believe that I needed a reference for where I was going, but Pippa didn’t give a stuff, and, to her credit, she was right. She’d got every bar job she’d applied for, and was in the middle of an Open University degree in healthcare.

We were so different, yet so alike. I couldn’t think of anything worse than going out to work at night, and I’d rather stick pins in my eyes than go back to school, but it made for the perfect set-up. I worked all day Monday to Saturday, with Wednesdays off, and she worked every evening at All Bar One in Covent Garden and studied during the day. We were never under each other’s feet, so it was always good to get together on a Sunday to catch up on what the week had thrown at us. It was invariably me that needed guidance and grounding, as most of life’s tribulations seemed to be water off a duck’s back for Pippa. She was much more happy-go-lucky than me, batting men into left field on a whim, and not one for kowtowing to the rules of the establishment. I’d have liked a little more of her abandonment, instead of being laden down with a crippling need to over-analyse every situation. But on the odd occasion I’d thrown caution to the wind, I’d invariably come unstuck, so maybe it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. It was wanting to be more like Pippa that had led me to act so out of character with Grant or Gerry – it had definitely started with a ‘G’ – at Beth’s twenty-first.

‘Why didn’t you stop me?’ I’d moaned the next day, as we lay on my bed watching Netflix, remembering him picking me up, my legs wrapped around his waist as he carried me outside. ‘It must have been so obvious. Everyone would have seen.’

‘That’s what’s so awesome,’ she’d said. ‘For once in your life, you didn’t care. You just did what you wanted to do, and didn’t give a fig about anyone else.’

That was the problem.

‘I’m never going out again,’ I’d groaned, burying my face in my hands, and right there and then, I’d meant it.





6

As much as I tried, I couldn’t keep Rebecca from nagging at my brain. I wanted to know who she was, and what had happened between them, but I was wary of opening a can of worms that I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted open. Adam also hadn’t seemed himself in the two weeks since we’d been to his mum’s, so I found myself still skirting around the whole ‘miss you every day’ conundrum, hoping that somehow, we’d stumble upon a way to talk about it.

My first chance came as Adam and I dressed the Christmas tree in my flat. He was worried that he was taking the job away from Pippa, but she didn’t have the patience for such a fiddly chore. I’d done it by myself three years running, mostly whilst she sat watching, throwing Maltesers up in the air and catching them in her mouth. She was always grateful though, and repaid me for my efforts with a bottle of Advocaat. It had become something of a tradition, though why she did it, neither of us was quite sure.