When I heard the water start running, I was still standing by the wardrobe, wrapped up in my leggings-slash-scarf-slash-straitjacket, bristling with anger.
‘Forty-eight hours to go,’ I muttered to myself as I yanked the leggings from around my neck. ‘Then you never have to see him again.’
‘I just think it must be such a shallow existence,’ I said to Sanjit, gesticulating wildly with my second drink and eyeing Joe across the garden. He was laughing uproariously at something one of Mum’s aqua aerobics friends said and pretending not to notice her subtly squeezing his bicep. ‘Look at him. All that flirting. It must be exhausting, he looks exhausted. Don’t you think he looks exhausted?’
‘I don’t know, he looks pretty good to me,’ Sanjit replied. ‘Sophie, have you had anything to eat today?’
‘Percy Pigs and a biscuit.’
‘All the major food groups covered then,’ William commented.
The barbecue was a small gathering, just like Mum said it would be, a couple of close friends who were staying the weekend and our unfortunate family, but the limited number of people only made Joe’s massive presence stick out like a sore thumb. A great big massive unbearably attractive sore thumb.
‘That man is an Adonis,’ my brother disagreed, all three of us openly staring now. ‘He hasn’t missed leg day since birth, has he? Must’ve been doing squats in the womb.’
‘Yes, but it’s not about looks,’ I insisted, tapping one finger against my temple a little too hard, a little too fast. ‘He’s fake. He tells everyone whatever he thinks they want to hear, whatever it takes for him to get what he wants out of them, and if that doesn’t work he sulks like a baby.’
‘And what exactly is it he wants out of seventy-three-year-old Lesley over there?’
The two of them clinked their glasses together in a toast that I couldn’t quite hear but from the laughter that followed was the funniest thing anyone had ever heard.
‘He wants to make me jealous,’ I replied, throwing back a gulp of my drink. ‘He wants me to see him having an amazing time because he doesn’t care what I think. Except he does, he totally cares.’
William flashed an ‘unlikely’ look at his husband. ‘Nice to see a girl with confidence.’
‘Not because I’m so incredibly fit he can’t help himself,’ I replied, stumbling only very slightly over my words. ‘Men like him only want what they can’t have. He knows he can’t have me. It’s all a game to him.’
That was the conclusion I’d come to while he took such a long shower there was no hot water left for me and I was sticking to it. Not that a cold shower was such a bad thing. I probably would’ve dialled the temperature down on myself anyway after he came strolling through the cottage, dripping wet and wearing nothing but a towel.
‘He can have me if he wants,’ Sanjit said. ‘No offence, William, but given half the chance I would climb that man like a tree.’
‘None taken,’ my brother, his husband, replied. ‘I’d hold the ladder for you.’
But I was unmoved.
‘You both need your heads checked. Did I tell you Mal said he’s a cad? And a bouncer. I mean, a bounder. He could be a bouncer though, couldn’t he? He’s big enough.’
‘Soph, seriously, how much have you had to drink?’ William plucked the glass out of my hand and gave it a desultory sniff. ‘And what the fuck is in here in the first place?’
‘It’s only my second,’ I hiccupped defensively as he took a sip. ‘It’s just Pimm’s. With a dash of Malibu. And a shot of vodka. Pimm’s is hardly even booze, is it? More like pop.’
‘This tastes like something I would’ve knocked back in the student union on a bet,’ he replied, pulling a face before passing it to his husband. ‘You need something that isn’t ninety-seven percent sugar.’
‘And something to drink that isn’t ninety-seven percent proof,’ Sanjit added, screwing up his face as he swallowed. ‘Are you sure this isn’t paint stripper?’
‘It’s one match away from being a Molotov cocktail. If we need something to get the bonfire going later, I’ll know where to go,’ William said, dumping it out onto the grass before the pair of them led me away, one on either side, like they were escorting me from a very shit club. ‘Now what are you having: chicken, hotdog or a burger? Don’t get too close to the barbecue, you’ll go up like a nuclear bomb.’
Behind the grill, I saw my dad, resplendent in a chef’s hat and a black apron that said ‘Mario Puzo’s The Grillfather’, a bookish-barbecue pun I might’ve found funnier if I’d been allowed to finish my cocktail but it was still nice to see him looking so happy.
Or at least it was until I saw who was standing beside him.
CJ.
One look at him and I was stone-cold sober.
‘Shall we get this over with?’ William asked. ‘Or do you need to pop inside first and find a suitable weapon?’
‘I don’t need a weapon,’ I replied as my ex grabbed the barbecue tongs and pretended to snap them at my mother’s arse. ‘If I wanted to, I could dismantle that man in under thirty seconds, handsfree.’
