‘You can get anything on TikTok shop,’ she assured me. ‘You’re new to it but the best way to get through a situation like this is to be outrageously angry. Like, furious. Angrier than you’ve ever been.’
‘As angry as you were when Joel finished your Crunchy Nut Cornflakes last week and put the empty box back in the cupboard?’
‘Well, no, you’re an amateur. You’ve got to work your way up to rage like that.’
I clamped my lips down on my reply, another thing to add to my buried feelings box.
Joel’s head bobbed up and down behind the biscuit aisle, his bouncy stride considerably more relaxed, post-pee break.
‘And don’t get me started on the ex,’ Desi was still ranting as she tossed bag after bag of crisps into my basket. No point in me mentioning we were driving to London not climbing Everest. ‘What a wet weekend of a woman.’
‘No, don’t do that,’ I warned her. ‘We don’t blame other woman when things didn’t go our way. We’re not those people.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ she clucked, tucking her hair behind her ear. ‘Tomorrow can be for feminism, today is for blame.’
Joel rounded the corner, arms full of chocolate biscuits.
‘Who’s a feminist? I’m a feminist,’ he said, unloading them in the basket. My arms sagged at the considerable weight which neither of them made a move to relieve me of. ‘But just so I’m clear, why are we taking a day off?’
‘Because we’re slagging off Elsie and Shiv,’ Desi explained.
‘Oh, good,’ he replied joyfully. ‘That’s actually an important part of being a feminist. Recognising that women can, on occasion, be totally shit, but still supporting equality in general. I read it somewhere.’
‘You mean you saw it on TikTok.’
He slowly, deliberately, dropped an extremely heavy slab of Christmas cake into my basket while staring me straight in the eye. ‘And your point is?’
‘If anyone’s a bad feminist, she’s a bad feminist,’ Desi went on. ‘How could she take him back now? She’d have to be a masochist if she’s going to convince herself this nightmare was some sort of warped romance.’
‘Exactly. And what about him?’ Joel added. ‘If I’d known this was all some messed-up plan to get his ex back, I would’ve said, Laura, I would’ve said, do not go to Scotland with this man. Have angry sex with him on his kitchen counter by all means but do not enable his macho mind games by pretending to be his girlfriend.’
‘Just in case you were wondering if what Elsie saw last night was accurate,’ Desi muttered.
‘If Rory was straight, you’d have been on him like a rat up a drainpipe,’ he replied. ‘And that’s not important. Whatisimportant is that Callum should’ve been up front about the fact he’s still in love with his ex before he roped you into his mad little scheme.’
‘But he isn’t,’ I said, straining with the weight of our shopping.
‘Isn’t what?’ Desi asked, her attention somewhat consumed by the savoury snack options in front of us.
‘Callum isn’t in love with his ex.’
The muscles in my back ached, my biceps and triceps groaning. God, I was going to be one of those awful people who made a New Year’s resolution to join the gym, wasn’t I? Rolling my shoulders, I looked up to find Desi and Joel both staring at me.
‘What?’ I asked, blowing a strand of hair out my face.
‘What do you mean, he’s not in love with his ex?’ Joel asked politely.
‘He’s not in love with Shiv,’ I said. ‘That’s what I mean.’
Desi pressed her lips into a white line, eyebrows drawn together. ‘And you know this because?’
‘Because I asked him and he said he wasn’t.’
‘And you believe him?’
‘No reason not to,’ I told her. ‘He said he misses her because they were best friends but he didn’t feel that way about her any more, hasn’t for a long time.’
‘Then why fanny about with all this fake girlfriend stuff?’ she asked. ‘And don’t you dare say it’s complicated because the last time I heard that from you I got in the car and drove for ten hours only stopping once to wee in a paper cup on the side of the road and now I’m about to drive all the way backon Christmas Dayso I’m going to need a proper answer.’
