The Spare Bedroom: A totally heartwarming, funny and feel good romantic comedy

by Elizabeth Neep

  ‘Jess?’

  Slowly and without turning round, I closed the fridge door and, half asleep, I got down onto all fours and crawled underneath the kitchen table. Shit, shit, shit. I thought they had gone to sleep. But no, I should have known. After watching a romantic movie (okay, well, some action film with a couple of love scenes – this was Sam after all), they would have cosied up, laughing fondly about how lovely it was to be able to give back to the community by taking in the riffraff. He would have looked into her eyes and said, ‘You know how beautiful you are, J?’ and she would have forgiven every annoying thing he had done that day and let him take her in his arms and kiss her, kiss her harder, and then her neck and then her collarbone and then… stop it, stop it, stop it. And now they were there, entwined on the sofa, naked bodies pressed together. And I was here, on my hands and knees underneath their table having just tried to rob them of their leftovers in broad fridge-light. I had to get out of here. I could just see the archway leading to the hall; if I was quick I could make it back to the box room and deny being awake in the night at all costs. Slowly, on my hands and knees, I began to crawl in the direction of the arch. Suddenly the room filled with light and I stopped still, looking up into the face of my puzzled ex-boyfriend once again.

  ‘Jess?’ Sam gazed down at me in his girlfriend’s slinky pyjamas. Kill me, kill me right now. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked, rubbing a hand to his sleepy disbelieving eyes.

  ‘I, erm… got hungry.’

  ‘So, you decided to lick the floor?’

  Slowly I unfolded myself to stand, dreading having to face Jamie in her own slinky pyjamas or worse, even less. I looked over to the sofa; there was no one there, only a messy set of sheets and a single set of pillows. ‘No I… I didn’t think you’d be in here,’ I said. ‘Where’s Jamie?’

  ‘She’s in her room,’ Sam responded, his voice in a whisper, his hair all fluffy and cute.

  ‘Her room?’ I asked.

  ‘Jess, I— about earlier…’ he said, still in a whisper, eyes darting to the archway into the room to double-check Jamie wasn’t about to appear. Was he finally about to explain what he couldn’t bring himself to say when he had first brought me back here? Why he brought me back here? I looked again at Sam’s single set of sheets. Now I wanted this explanation even more.

  ‘Jess, yesterday when I saw you…’ Sam followed my distracted gaze to the sheets and then looked back at me, allowing his sleepy eyes to drift down to where Jamie’s silk cami was slightly puckering over my chest, his cheeks pinkening as he took another step towards me, like a sleep-drunk moth dreaming towards a flame.

  ‘Jess, you look…’ A smile circled the corner of Sam’s mouth as all talk of yesterday, and explanations and Jamie melted away, his gaze on mine. But I didn’t want to melt, not now. I wanted to know why Jamie wasn’t nestled up right next to him.

  ‘Isn’t her room your room?’ I asked in confusion, smoothing down my pyjamas, forcing Sam’s heavy eyes back to my face and breaking the spell of whatever lingered between us.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ Sam replied, now moving past me and towards the kitchen cupboards. I looked again at the sofa where Sam had been sleeping alone, confusion rising along with a glimmer of hope. Maybe I had got this all wrong after all?

  ‘Well,’ I said with a dramatic pause. ‘We’ve got nothing but time.’

  ‘Jess, it’s three o’clock in the morning,’ Sam sighed, eyes lingering on the lace of my top once more before shaking his head. ‘Go to bed.’ He turned around to thrust a tube of original Pringles into my hand. Finally, a result I was after. ‘I’ll explain in the morning.’

  9 December 2017 – London, England

  ‘… over and over and expecting a different result…’ Zoe shouted the definition of insanity across the table before trudging the sticky venue floor to slide into the equally sticky booth beside me. It was kind of ironic, given that I was also stuck – not to mention a little bit insane. I looked up from my phone, barely registering my best friend trying to shake me free.

  ‘He’s there with someone. I know he is, if I can just…’ My sentence evaporated at the intensity of her stare. I held up my screen displaying a photo of Sam and Austin, suited and booted with berry-red flowers in their buttonholes. Thankfully, his caption made clear it wasn’t his shotgun wedding. That and the traditional church pews behind him. Sam had never wanted to get married in a church. He’d told me, around the time he told me that he wanted to get married to me. What the post didn’t make clear was who owned the cut-off arms slung around Sam and Austin’s shoulders from either side, cropped for the very tiny square that seemed like such a bloody great big deal to me.

  ‘Jess, you need to stop this now.’ Zoe held my gaze, eyes wide with empathy. I knew she wanted her friend back, but all I wanted was Sam. My best friend, my future. Zoe placed a steady hand on my shaking arm. ‘Everyone else has moved on.’ She looked down at the two faces we had once spent every moment with. ‘Can’t you see that no amount of watching his stories is going to change yours?’ I hated to admit it, but I knew she had a point.

  ‘It’s just so hard though,’ I argued, as I surrendered my phone to Zoe, desperately in need of a detox. I took another sip of my vodka and Coke.

  ‘No one said break-ups were easy.’ Zoe held my arm a little tighter.

  ‘Sam seems to be doing okay.’ I nodded to the phone in her hands, not letting myself think the worst thought of all: this could be the last time I see him.

  ‘Yeah, on Instagram,’ Zoe scoffed, always knowing how to make me feel better. ‘Trust me, Jess, there’s no one way of handling a break-up. I think we all just muddle our way through.’ Easy for her to say; she’d never been in love. She didn’t even want to be.

  ‘But what if he’s with someone else?’

  ‘He might be for a time, and then he might not.’ She shrugged, casting one last look down at Austin and Sam, both friends of hers she used to know so well. ‘Some relationships are just meant for a moment, others are meant to be for forever.’ She smiled. ‘And somehow, some way, those ones find their way back together again.’

  Chapter 6

  2 August 2020 – Sydney, Australia

  Pots and pans clashed and the smell of pancakes wafted in as I roused myself from sleep. Sam’s pancakes. Sam’s explanation. I’d had about two hours’ sleep but felt wired, my mind oscillating through the various explanations Sam and Jamie could have for not sleeping in the same room. They were having a fight, one of them was sick, they weren’t really a couple – just really close friends who kissed on the mouth. Stranger things had happened. My being here, Exhibit A.

  I rolled over to face the empty pillow beside me. Or they’re breaking up – it made more sense after yesterday. What kind of man bumps into his ex-girlfriend and invites her to stay with him and his current girlfriend unless he wants to put the final nail in the coffin? Or nail something else completely. All that ‘Bub’ and ‘Bubby’ bullshit, the overenthusiastic way she welcomed me, the photo of the two of them territorially displayed on the bedside. Is that why Sam didn’t tell me? Why he couldn’t possibly explain with her in the same room? It would make sense of the awkwardness, the momentary tensions, Jamie’s attempts to be so kind – to both of us – as they sorted out the logistics they needed to finally move out, move on.

  I reached out to the frame sitting on the table and tilted the happy couple face down. But why should I care? I felt Zoe’s presence reverberate from her unread messages side-swiped on my phone. Why should I care whether Sam was single, after all this time? I shouldn’t. Everyone else has moved on; I remembered Zoe’s words from the last time we had looked at his social media together then blocked him together – back when the two of us used to do everything together. Everyone else had moved on. I had come to Sydney to do the same. I was moving on, I would move on. I wouldn’t hang around long enough for Sam to reject me; not this time.

  Slinking out of bed for the second time that morning, I st
epped over to gaze in the full-length mirror. Still pale as snow, but traipsing around Coogee’s undulating streets for weeks had done wonders to my legs. I smoothed down my bed-hair, straight and brown, nothing like Jamie’s sun-kissed locks. Mascara stains removed, skin Clinique-d, my unmade face showed no trace of the shitter-than-shit day I’d had yesterday. Taking a deep breath, I pushed open the door and followed the smell of pancakes all the way to the kitchenette.

  ‘Morning,’ I said, a little too seductively as I turned the corner, part of me still longing to create final memories more flattering than the ones Sam and I currently shared. Not one but two flawless females looked up at me with surprise, caught in the middle of a conversation they clearly didn’t want me to hear. The stranger narrowed her striking blue eyes for a moment before smiling. Pushing brown waves from her perfectly proportioned features, she turned towards Jamie, whose own fresh face made mine feel weathered in comparison.

  ‘Morning, Jess!’ Jamie stood on ceremony, more than a little on edge. ‘This is Alice.’ She gestured towards her friend, now leaning her slender elbows on the table I had hidden under only hours before. ‘She’s a doctor too,’ Jamie added, as if I wasn’t intimidated enough. Alice held her smile: a severe case of the gorgeous-doctor epidemic. ‘Did you sleep well?’ Jamie asked, a smirk dancing around her bee-stung pout as she shot a look to Alice.

  ‘Yes thanks, I was… very, silky.’ I hesitated, unable to gauge the room.

  ‘And hungry?’ She stifled a laugh, as her friend did the same and I tried not to blush, shame filling my stomach. ‘Sam told me he caught you heading for a little snack.’

  ‘Yeah, he—’ I began, all of a sudden confused. Confused about their sleeping arrangements and that she didn’t mind me knowing. Surely, whatever reason they had for that was private. Unless she was getting over it now? Ready to finally move on herself?

  ‘I’m so sorry we didn’t get a chance to give you a proper meal before you went to bed.’

  ‘Oh no, don’t worry. I was so tired,’ I said, trying to read Jamie’s expression. What had she and this Alice girl just been saying about me? About Sam? About both of us?

  ‘Yeah, I figured. That’s why I let you sleep this morning. We went for a quick run, but I thought you’d rather the lie-in. Maybe tomorrow?’ she asked, looking me up and down as I tried to subtly hold in my stomach; something told me I wasn’t up to scratch.

  ‘Yeah, maybe.’ Maybe when Elle Macpherson wants to lend me ‘The Body’.

  Alice nodded in my direction, entirely unfussed, as I tried not to clock how different I’d look post-run. They were dressed head to toe in Lycra, not a single drop of sweat between them – just like Jamie had arrived home yesterday, back when I thought I was the only ex-girlfriend in the room. Would she tell me what was going on with her and Sam if I asked? I had so few answers, so many questions.

  ‘Pancakes?’ Jamie asked me, sliding a perfectly circular one onto a plate to complete the stack.

  ‘Is the Pope a Catholic?’ I smiled, taking a seat and searching the room for sight of Sam. Jamie must have caught me looking as she smiled, handed me the short stack, answering my unspoken question, a brief moment of sadness flashing across her face before she recovered her smile once again. ‘He’s already gone to the surgery.’

  ‘The surgery?’ I looked from the pancakes to her.

  ‘You know, for work,’ Jamie replied, smile still pinned to her annoyingly attractive face.

  ‘No, it’s just, Sam said he’d rather die on the hospital floor’ – bad choice of words – ‘than work in general practice.’ He had loved the pace, the prestige and the drive of working in a hospital – mostly because it made him feel like House.

  ‘Things change.’ Jamie shrugged. Yes, things did change – but to what? My mouth hung open, wanting to ask but knowing that all my questions were meant for Sam. He’d brought me back here for a reason and my guess was that these ‘changes’ had something to do with it. After all, things changed but people didn’t. And I was still the same girl he fell in love with.

  ‘Anyway, he finishes at six and then we thought we’d go out for dinner.’ Dinner? If they were on the rocks they were handling it better than Sam and I ever did. But I couldn’t do dinner with the two of them – not yesterday, not today – not until I worked out what the hell was going on – in their lives and in mine.

  ‘So, you’re not at work today?’ I asked, looking from Jamie to Alice, hoping they’d be disappearing soon. I needed to find a job, any job, and get myself some accommodation without them finding out I’d lied. An improbable task made all the more impossible by Jamie lounging around.

  ‘She’s not, but I am.’ Alice pushed back her empty plate and stood to go, her legs all Bambi in width, Amazonian in length.

  ‘Dinner later?’ Jamie asked Alice, sitting down across from me, a stack of pancakes piled high – surely she wasn’t going to eat that. So this dinner was a group vibe, a doctor vibe? Maybe Joshua would be there too? Not that anyone had said he was a doctor. I just assumed. I guess I had assumed a lot of things.

  ‘Sorry, plans.’ Alice didn’t sound sorry at all, reaching for her gym bag before heading towards the door, managing to exude coolness without lacking warmth.

  ‘No worries, I’ll invite someone else,’ Jamie said, taking another bite. Alice rolled her eyes before locking them on me.

  ‘Seriously, Jess, don’t let her set you up with anyone. This girl needs to learn that singleness isn’t an illness to be cured,’ she said to me, every word meant for Jamie, their playful openness laced with a hint of sincerity. Was Alice the break-up support that Zoe had been to me? Before I used up my credit. I gulped like the gooseberry they so clearly thought I was as Alice turned to exit the room and Jamie’s phone buzzed to life.

  ‘Sorry.’ She mouthed an apology my way as she picked up the call. From the other side of the room I could hear clipped parts of her one-sided conversation.

  ‘Calm down… it will be okay… I’m off work today… we could grab a coffee… take a breather.’

  I took another bite. Who was she talking to? Was this her new boyfriend? My stomach tumbled with something like hope. Hanging up the call, she said, ‘Sorry about that. That’s our friend Tim. He’s a curator, puts on exhibitions in galleries…’ Yes, I know what a curator is, Jamie. ‘He’s putting on an exhibition at CreateSpace, they kind of host travelling exhibitions and pop-ups and stuff…’ Yes, I know what CreateSpace is, Jamie. I smiled through gritted teeth. After years of sifting through the archives of Art Today, booking in the editor-in-chief’s Skype calls so she could hobnob and leech off the other editors around the world, even the Sydney galleries were on my radar. And to be fair, CreateSpace managed to punch above its weight. It was such a cool space, all red-brick and high ceilings and known for hosting some of the best up-and-coming talent – up-and-coming talent our editor-in-chief would get wind of, feature first and pass off as her own. And why would anyone argue with her? As far as art scenes go, London was notorious and Sydney couldn’t help but feel a little out of the loop. Back when I was painting, the only scene I cared about was the one in front of me. Sadly, the industry didn’t feel the same.

  ‘But he’s struggling, you know?’

  I nodded, even though I didn’t know. After months and months of not being listened to at work, I’d elected to let the details wash over me. It was hard to be in the loop when it was clear people didn’t want you in it.

  ‘He and his partner – professional and personal – they broke up,’ Jamie went on, as I searched her face for any flinches at the b-word. ‘And now he’s grappling to make the exhibition work alone,’ she looked genuinely worried for her friend. Her kindness prompted the same sinking feeling: man, I’m such a bitch. The woman was living with a maybe-ex or almost-ex and she still seemed more concerned about her friend’s break-up. Clearly, she was a saint.

  ‘Can’t he just advertise for an assistant?’ I asked, looking far too interested in my pancakes. />
  ‘He did.’ Jamie sighed, taking a bite of her own. ‘Put an ad out for one ages ago but it’s just a bad time of year for it, I guess?’

  I looked up from my breakfast to catch Jamie shrug and took another bite in attempt to bite my tongue. It wasn’t like I could apply. As far as Jamie was concerned I already had a job. Not that I would be qualified, anyway. Working for an art magazine had ironically meant I hadn’t set foot in an actual gallery in years.

  ‘He’ll be fine. He’s just stressed.’ She changed tack, returning the topic to me. ‘Anyway, tell me about Art Today Australia,’ Jamie encouraged. There really wasn’t much to say. Nothing in fact – not as far as my working there went. I put down my fork, suddenly less hungry. ‘You’re a painter, aren’t you?’

  ‘Used to be,’ I corrected a little too quickly.

  ‘We have your painting in our room,’ she continued. Your room, I thought; Sam called it your room. ‘It’s a pity you have a job lined up; you’d be perfect for this CreateSpace role.’

  If I didn’t know any better I’d think she was mocking me.

  ‘Yeah, it’s a shame,’ I said, all appetite now evaporated in the awkwardness. I didn’t want to work there, but it was a job. And that was more than I had right now. I really needed a job.