Page 91 of The Little Board Game Café

Neither, it seemed. Emily found Kate lying face down on the sofa. She was fully dressed, and, judging by her outfit, she’d been there all night – that tight black dress was hardly Sunday morning attire. As Kate looked up, Emily saw that her friend’s eyes were red raw.

‘What’s happened?’ Emily said, though she could guess. She’d seen this so many times before. Kate flung herself headlong into a new relationship. Fell in love. Decided this was The One. Ploughed all her energy into him. And then things ended and she fell apart. Emily didn’t understand why she didn’t take things more slowly.

Yes, okay. A bit rich given how she’d leapt into bed with Ludek the previous night.

‘Freddie said …’ Kate sniffed and Emily handed her a tissue. ‘…just a bit of fun…time we call it a day…before we develop feelings…’ Kate blew her nose. ‘Only I had already developed feelings. I love him. And he doesn’t love me.’

‘I know, Kate, I know,’ Emily said, putting her arms around her friend and rocking her.

Usually they didn’t reach this stage quite this quickly. Often Kate would be with them for a few months. On one occasion, it was two years. But the end result was the same.

Emily made a pot of tea and they sat on the sofa, Kate sniffing and sobbing her way through the Kleenex, Emily stroking her back and her shiny dark hair and wondering how many times she’d have to do this before Kate either met the right one or stopped letting herself become quite so smitten with the wrong ones.

This was normally an evening thing – well, perhaps it had been an evening thing and Kate had come home last night to an empty house. Emily felt a pang of guilt for not being there. On previous occasions, by the time the cardboard oval was ripped off the second box of Kleenex, it would be time to open the wine. But it wasn’t even nine a.m. Bit early even by their standards.

After another pot of tea, the conversation followed its usual course. As quickly as she’d fallen in love in the first place, Kate went from loving the man in question and despairing that she’d never see him again to snorting with laughter as she regaled Emily with a long list of his faults. Freddie was lambasted for snoring, banging on about the cricket scores and miserliness when it came to tipping in restaurants.

The trick, Emily knew from experience, was to stop her here, because soon she’d be tearful again, imagining how beautiful their babies would have been, then howling because her biological clock was ticking and she’d never meet anyone else in time to have children, beautiful or otherwise.

Emily had never experienced a break-up like this. From the outside looking in, it resembled grief. No one had died, but you’d never guess that looking at Kate with her puffy eyes and her snotty nose. Emily thanked her lucky stars that she wasn’t the kind of woman who fell so hard when she met a man. All her break-ups had been relatively untraumatic. Yes, it was sad when something came to an end. She was sad this morning, after what had happened with Ludek – really sad – but she’d pick herself up and life would go on.

Whereas Kate would be miserable for weeks now. Were those few weeks of excitement and happiness when she’d first met Freddie worth the heartache and agony that followed? Surely not.

‘So where were you last night?’ Kate asked.

‘Ludek’s.’

‘Good one. I knew he was your type the minute I saw him. So, you two are an item now?’

‘Not exactly,’ Emily said. She didn’t intend to tell Kate what had happened, but as they went into the kitchen to make yet another brew and find some breakfast, it all spilled out.

‘You idiot,’ Kate said, pouring some berries into a bowl and adding yoghurt and a sprinkling of nuts. ‘Why the hell would you want to leave?’

‘I don’t know. I like him but…it was a feeling. An instinct almost.’

‘Was he crap in bed? Because if he was, that could be fixed. I’ve got a book you could…’

‘No, it wasn’t that.’

‘And now he assumes you’re not that keen on him so says you should just be friends. Bit of a pattern here.’

Emily shook some cornflakes into her own bowl. ‘I’ve no idea what you mean.’

‘One word,’ Kate said. ‘Greg.’

*

Greg had been Emily’s first love. She’d lost her virginity to him – she was a bit of a late starter in the sex department – and for three months, they went everywhere together. He’d proposed, presenting her with a cubic zirconia ring bought from Argos and promising to replace it when he got a better job.

‘You’re supposed to spend a month’s salary,’ he said. ‘And, believe it or not, my wages are so low that almost was a month’s salary for me. But I’ll work my way up, buy you a proper one.’

Emily didn’t doubt it for a minute. Greg was a grafter. Even Dad was impressed with him.

She read bridal magazines. She and Kate spent their Saturday shopping trips trying on designer white wedding gowns in posh shops where you had to make an appointment to go in, instead of rummaging through the sales rail at Topshop. She spent ages in front of the bathroom mirror, straightening her hair, curling her hair, putting her hair up, putting half her hair up and leaving strands of it dangling down the sides of her face, trying to work out what was the best look for her big day.

And then, one Saturday, she got back after another marathon dress-trying-on session to find her dad ashen-faced.

‘You’d better sit down,’ he said, handing her a cup of tea.