Just My Luck(68)

‘Keep your voice down, the neighbours.’ Lexi should just turn around, walk away from this private mess but she crept further up the path so she could see her friends, not just hear them. She was only human. She saw the couple face one another, like warring gladiators, every muscle tense. Ready to pounce or run. Lexi could see the tension pulse in the tendons of Jennifer’s neck.

‘I don’t care about the fucking neighbours,’ snarled Fred.

‘Then Ridley.’

‘You should have thought of Ridley before you started fucking Jake fucking Greenwood.’

No, no, no. NO! Lexi’s bones turned fluid. Her body sloshed about underneath her. Jake, her Jake? No. That can’t be right. Fred had got this wrong. Jennifer was going to tell him so. This was ludicrous. The moment stretched out to an eternity. Jennifer did not say anything to correct her husband. She didn’t say anything at all. Lexi couldn’t tear her eyes off Fred’s face, which looked swollen with betrayal and despair. She didn’t know it but her own was twisted with shock. The birds tweeted merrily, oblivious to the noxious words that were being thrown, each one a blade, hacking at their lives. A neighbour’s dog barked repeatedly, indicating they weren’t at home after all. Lucky Jennifer, she didn’t have to worry about her neighbours overhearing the domestic. Lucky bloody Jennifer.

‘I followed you, Jennifer. For fuck’s sake. I didn’t want to be right but week after week the same bill from the same hotel.’

‘I told you, it’s the cost of spa treatments. That’s the cost of a massage and a manicure.’

‘Stop fucking lying, Jennifer. I checked. The hotel doesn’t have a spa. It’s the cost of a room. I’ve been paying for the room that my best friend fucks my wife in every Tuesday.’ Lexi was sitting on the ground. She didn’t remember sitting down, but perhaps her body had known she might fall and had protected her. She dropped her head into her hands. She couldn’t look at them. This couple who were ripping her life apart with their accusations, their lies. She heard the sound of breaking glass. Maybe Fred had thrown or dropped his glass. She heard him sob. A grown man crying was always a hideously painful sound. Tuesdays? Jake always worked late on Tuesdays. A greenfly landed on Lexi’s arm. She flicked it off and found herself momentarily concerned for Jennifer’s roses; might they get infected? Because that is how it had always been; they were concerned for one another, they looked out for one another. Then Lexi’s brain caught up with her instincts and she wished a blight on Jennifer’s roses, her home, her family, her whole rotten life.

The adrenalin surge that Lexi had felt as she’d stormed up the back-garden path had vanished as quickly as it had arrived. She didn’t feel bolshie, she was broken. It felt like someone was hitting her repeatedly in the chest. Her knees were shaking as she forced herself to stand, she hurried back to the car, her breath jagged, catching in her throat. She sliced through a cloud of midges that hung in the air. No, no, no. Fred had this wrong. He had to have it wrong. Jake having an affair with Jennifer? She would know that about her husband. She would have found out. People who had affairs were always found out, weren’t they? The thought was ludicrous because as it formed in her head, she simultaneously realised that was exactly what had just happened. She had found out. She wanted to vomit. She wanted to scream. Pull out her hair. Lie on the road. She flung herself in the driving seat and fought the urge to bang her head against the steering wheel, over and over again, until she could gain some clarity. She did not. Instead she slowly turned the key in the ignition and drove away.





29


Emily


Saturday, 25th May

I am wearing a pair of bed shorts that I got from Jack Wills when I was about twelve. Back then, Mum chose nearly all my clothes and she bought everything big and comfortable. Now they are tight, like a second skin, but I still like them even though they are frayed and faded. I wish Mum had not washed Ridley’s hoodie. He left it at my house just before we broke up because he had been kicking a ball around in the garden with Logan and then they used their hoodies for goalposts. He went home in his T-shirt and forgot all about the grubby hoodie. Mum popped it in the wash along with my clothes, but now I wish I had stopped her because I miss the smell of him. I wear it at night anyway. But it doesn’t smell of him now, it smells of me. Sweat from restless nights where sleep eludes. Although my smell is strangely unfamiliar to me. Am I imagining it or is there a strange new hormone?

Oh hell.

Oh, bloody hell.

Bloody, bloody hell. How can this be happening?

I can’t sleep at night or through the day. In a way I’m glad I can’t. If I did, I’d have to wake up and remember the reality all over again. My reality.

The win – yippee!

A baby – fuck me!

I can’t have a baby. I’m a baby myself. I know this. Not just because Mum calls me her baby but because I just am. But how do I stop having it? I mean I know about abortions and stuff. I’m not a fucking idiot. But how do I go to a doctor and tell them that’s what I need?

I am a fucking idiot.

Will he be prosecuted? Technically underage sex isn’t just that anymore, is it? It’s paedo stuff. It’s a big deal. I don’t want Ridley to go to prison but on the other hand if he was in prison, he couldn’t do the things he used to do with me to anyone else. But even so, no. I don’t want him to go to prison.