‘Oh, Joanne,’ from Malcolm.
This is what Jo had hoped for. They are sitting at a small table in a café that is set into the bay window of the deli.
‘Oh poor Lucy,’ Reverend Ruth says with feeling.
‘Yes, indeed, poor, poor Lucy,’ Malcolm echoes.
Jo thinks,Notpoor Lucy. What aboutme? You’re supposed to be on my side.
Ruth seems to catch some of what Jo is feeling and bumps her shoulder up against Jo’s. ‘Yes,andpoor Jo.’
Jo feels as if she has been caught out like a spoilt child looking for attention.
‘She should have told me’ is all she can think of to say.
‘I expect she tried,’ Ruth suggests.
‘And she did go to see that rotter James, and I am sure that took a lot of courage,’ Malcolm insists.
Jo gives up, and continues with a shaky laugh. ‘You’re on her side, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t think it is a matter of sides, Joanne,’ Malcolm says, soothingly.
‘What would you have done in her position?’ Ruth cuts in.
‘Sanjeev would never cheat on Lucy,’ Jo tells them categorically.
‘But if he did?’ Ruth presses.
‘Well, I suppose I would go and talk to him …’
‘And if he didn’t have the courage to tell her himself …’ Ruth leaves it hanging.
Would she have told Lucy? She thinks so. She hopes so. But would Lucy have believed her, and if she did, wouldn’t it have ruined their friendship?
‘Oh, I’ve got it all wrong,’ Jo groans, looking from one to the other. ‘It was just the thought of the two of them, Lucy and Jemima, talking about me. I couldn’t bear it.’ She knows she is trying to excuse herself.
‘Oh, don’t make too much of it,’ Ruth says, bracingly. ‘You’ve just been bitten by the green-eyed monster.’
‘I thought I’d outgrown all of that,’ Jo replies.
Ruth laughs out loud at this. ‘You think!’ She shakes her head at Jo, and Malcolm joins in. It reminds her of her vision of Lucy, Wilbur, Jemima and Finn, pursing their lips, crossing their arms and shaking their heads at her over James. At least with this image comes the clear thought: I willnevergo back to that man. She thinks again of Malcolm’s words …Joanne, he was never your friend.
‘Okay,’ she demands, turning to her friends, ‘tell me what to do.’
‘I think, to start with,’ Ruth suggests, ‘you need to see it from Lucy’s point of view.You’rejealous?How do you thinkshefeels?’
‘Indeed, my very thoughts,’ Malcolm says, taking over. ‘It seems to me she will have been jealous of you spending time with James’s friends,’ as an aside, he adds, ‘quite frankly I struggle to call them “friends”, let’s say his posse …’
‘Oh no, please let’s not, Malcolm,’ Ruth says, grinning, ‘but you’re quite right, Lucy lost you to them. Then she lost you to London. And now she’s frightened you’re going to stay here and she will lose you to us.’
‘She probably felt she couldn’t make a fuss, having herself spent time abroad with her husband,’ Malcolm adds, perceptively.
‘But I was always going home,’ Jo says, in surprise.
‘Were you?’ Malcolm asks, and Jo can hear the regret in his voice.
‘Well, at some point,’ she replies, thinking of the times she wondered if her future was in Uncle Wilbur’s shop. There had been doubts, but now? She knew home was not London.
