Nine Uses for an Ex-Boyfriend

by Sarra Manning

  At least it made Jack come to his senses. He grabbed Jeremy before he could hit the floor, then looped an arm round his shoulders and tried to ruffle his hair as the younger boy struggled away. ‘It’s all right, Budly,’ Jack said gently, a shadow passing over his face when Jeremy refused to look at him. ‘Sometimes Hopey and I fight. It’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘I heard you.’ Jeremy looked over at Hope, who tried to smile, tried to show that it wasn’t the end of the world, not exactly, but she obviously didn’t succeed because Jeremy turned back to Jack with an ugly scowl on his face. ‘You’re a fucking bastard!’ He said it quickly and bravely, like it was the very worst thing he could ever think of calling someone. It probably was, and this time the ache Hope felt was for her little brother, because she had a horrible feeling that he’d just come of age right there in her bedroom. His hero had come crashing down off his pedestal, and even if he’d only suspected it before, he now knew that grown-ups were shitty and mean and not worthy of his adulation.

  ‘It’s OK, Jerry,’ Hope said, standing up so she could give him a hug. ‘It’s all going to be fine.’

  It wasn’t going to be fine. Jeremy was hugging her back for one thing.

  Jack tried again. ‘Let’s go down the park and have a kick-about, Budly.’

  Jeremy stiffened in Hope’s arms and turned round so quickly that he almost fell over again. ‘I’m not five!’ he said scathingly. ‘Stop calling me that stupid nickname, and I hate football and I hate you and I don’t want to go anywhere with you ever again, so just fu … just go away!’

  ‘You’ll probably feel better for some fresh air,’ Hope said, because this wasn’t about her (that was certainly becoming a general and overriding theme), this was about Jack and Jeremy.

  ‘I hate fresh air too!’ Jeremy shouted. ‘I hate everything!’

  Hope wouldn’t have believed it was possible, but she and Jack shared an exasperated eye-roll, and being so in tune with him, if only for a brief moment, felt bittersweet. Actually, more bitter than sweet.

  ‘Maybe you should go?’ Hope suggested hesitantly to Jack with an apologetic smile. ‘And Jeremy will see you tomorrow. You could go to the skate shop and then the IMAX, and isn’t there a sushi place on the South Bank?’

  Jack played along. ‘Yeah, there is. We could go there for lunch.’

  ‘No, we couldn’t, because I’m not going anywhere with you,’ Jeremy said belligerently. ‘I know what you did and you’re trying to make out that it’s all Hopey’s fault. She’s right, you’re disgusting.’

  ‘Look, Budly, it’s not as simple as that,’ Jack said and his voice wasn’t gentle any more, but strained, like he was barely managing to control his anger. ‘You’ll understand when you’re a bit older.’

  Yeah, you’ll understand that adults do really terrible things and then refuse to accept any responsibility for them, Hope wanted to say, but instead she smiled tightly.

  Jeremy wasn’t buying it either. ‘No,’ he said, shaking his head violently. ‘No. I thought you were cool, really cool, and you’re not. You’re crap.’

  There was no point in arguing with Jeremy when he had his cob on. It was like trying to wade through treacle in gumboots. Jack had obviously reached the same conclusion. ‘Fine, whatever,’ he snarled as he zipped up his holdall. ‘I don’t fucking need this.’

  ‘Don’t take it out on him,’ Hope warned in a low voice, because it worked both ways. If she had to choose between placating Jeremy and placating Jack, then Jeremy was going to win every time. And not just because Jack was doing his utmost to make Hope hate him. Jeremy was her baby brother and he held great sway with her mother, too. There was no contest.

  Hope made a subtle shooing motion to Jeremy but he stayed where he was, arms folded, like he was her bodyguard and was going to stay right where he was in case Jack turned nasty. Or nastier.

  ‘This will all be fine,’ Hope said, mostly to puncture a hole in the tense, thick atmosphere, rather than because she believed it any more. ‘You’ll see.’

  ‘No, Hopey, it’s not going to be fine,’ Jack barked, hoisting up his bag with a vicious movement. ‘I only really came round to get some stuff, and you know what, Budly, I’ve got better things to do with my days off than babysitting you.’

  He bumped shoulders with Hope on his way out of the room, Jeremy standing aside to let him pass, and Hope realised she was holding her breath and she couldn’t exhale until she heard the front door slam shut behind him. Then she let out the breath she was holding and turned round so she wouldn’t have to see the look on Jeremy’s face.

  She nearly screamed when she felt Jeremy’s arms awkwardly wrap around her, while trying to avoid touching her boobs. ‘There, there,’ he said gruffly. ‘You’re better off without him.’

  It was so like something that her father would say – in fact, Hope was sure that her father had said something very similar when she’d been sacked from her first Saturday job in the local chemist for daydreaming and trying out the nail-varnish testers when she should have been working – that she stifled a giggle.

  Jeremy must have thought it was a stifled sob and decided to redouble his efforts. One heavy hand landed on her head and attempted to stroke Hope’s hair, which was tangled and knotty, because Hope’s second-day hair was always tangled and knotty, and his fingers got stuck. The other arm continued to clasp her, but it felt less like a hug and more like the Heimlich manoeuvre.

  This time Hope did laugh and Jeremy tensed up. ‘You’re not hysterical, are you?’ he asked fearfully.

  ‘No, no,’ Hope assured him. ‘I’m fine. Really I am.’

  Then she burst into tears.

  Jeremy had no idea what to do with a sobbing female once he’d exhausted the awkward hugging and hair-stroking, but he tried his best.

  As Hope curled up in a forlorn heap on her bed, hiccupping and spluttering in a futile attempt to choke back the sobs, Jeremy disappeared into the kitchen and returned half an hour later with a mug of very sweet, very milky tea, some chargrilled toast and half a bar of cooking chocolate.

  It was very sweet and just made Hope cry harder.

  Eventually she was able to stumble to the lounge and curl up on the sofa where Jeremy brought her a pint glass full of white wine, because he really had no idea about these sorts of things.

  Or maybe he had exactly the right idea because when the glass was half empty (Hope was definitely in a glass-half-empty mindset), she did feel a bit better.

  ‘I’m sorry about all that,’ she said to Jeremy, who was sitting next to her, watching Extreme Makeover Home Edition without a murmur of complaint. ‘I’m sure we’ll work our way through it.’

  Jeremy made an indistinct sound, not his usual grunt, but something wordless that seemed to convey his deep scepticism that Jack and Hope would work their way through it.

  Hope ploughed on regardless. ‘If you want to hang out with him tomorrow and Tuesday, I’m sure he’d love that. I know he said that he didn’t want to, but he was just angry. Not with you, with me,’ she added.

  ‘I don’t,’ Jeremy said baldly. ‘Not after what he said and, like, the things he’s done. Y’know, the cheating and stuff.’

  He must have heard every single shouted word, Hope thought to herself, as she struggled to appear calm. ‘You don’t need to worry about that and if you don’t want to hang with Jack, well, I’ll take you out. I’ll phone up the drama-workshop people and pretend I’ve got flu.’

  Jeremy looked utterly scandalised, like he thought only Jack had the monopoly on duplicitous behaviour. ‘You can’t do that. You said it was important and the school was making you go.’ He swallowed manfully. ‘It’s all right, Hopey. I can just stay here and play on the Xbox.’

  Poor, poor Jeremy. Packed off to London under extreme duress and now confined to quarters. ‘What if I find some other people to take you out?’

  ‘I’m not some little kid!’

  ‘I know you’re not,’ Hope said quickly, patt
ing one plump knee, then snatching her hand away because it was hard to know where Jeremy’s personal-space boundaries started and finished. ‘But you can’t stay indoors for two days solid playing Warcraft III, and I do know some cool people, FYI.’

  ‘If you say so,’ Jeremy huffed, but then he nudged her with his elbow and Hope realised that was meant to be a joke.

  Though once she was in the kitchen scrolling through her contact numbers it was painfully obvious that the number of cool people she knew who would be happy to ferry Jeremy around town was limited. All artboys were obviously out of bounds as they were Jack’s friends. Elaine, Simon and their two tearaway teen daughters were camping in Devon. Allison was willing to take him but she could only do two hours on Tuesday morning, when he could tag along with her to a craft fair at Olympia, and Hope didn’t think that either of them would enjoy themselves. Lauren had gone back to Whitfield to see her parents, and it transpired that Jack had prior claim on all their other cool friends because he’d met them first.

  Hope had hit the W section of her contacts when she saw Wilson’s number, though she could have sworn she’d deleted him from her phone. Actually, she couldn’t even remember putting his number into her phone in the first place, but there it was, and hadn’t Wilson mentioned that he was also closely acquainted with a grunting teenage boy?

  Hope’s finger hovered. Did she really have the balls to phone him up and throw herself on his tender mercy, when his mercy was usually the absolute opposite of tender?

  The sounds of ancient warcraft were clearly audible from the lounge and anything had to be better than Jeremy cooped up indoors playing violent computer games, and Wilson could say no if he wanted to, and well, it was worth the longest of long shots …

  Wilson answered just as Hope thought the call was going to roll to voicemail and she’d have to leave a garbled message.

  Still, his ‘Hello? Hope?’ sounded surprised and a little forbidding.

  ‘Hi,’ she squeaked. ‘Is this a bad time?’

  It wasn’t, or Wilson said it wasn’t, though it sounded like a football match was going on in the background.

  ‘I called to thank you for the photos,’ Hope said, although she really hadn’t, much to her shame. She should have phoned to thank him for sending the photos anyway. After half-term, she’d have to remember to get Blue Class to make Wilson a thank-you card. ‘The kids were really excited and they’ve chosen their favourites, and they’re going to be part of a special nature display on the headmaster’s notice board.’

  ‘Good,’ Wilson said. ‘Email me the numbers from the contact sheets, I’ll get them printed up for you. Probably end of the week. Is that all right?’

  ‘Well, it’s half-term, so no rush.’ Hope bit her lip and tried to rehearse what she needed to ask in the three seconds before Wilson said:

  ‘Great. So anything else …?’

  He was usually hard to talk to, but even worse on the phone. ‘So … you know you said that your nephew worked with you …?’

  ‘I’d hardly call it “work”. More like flounces about and argues with me every time I ask him to do something,’ Wilson said dryly. ‘Fancy taking him off my hands for an afternoon? Not sure you can motivate him with the promise of stickers, but it might work with lager and crisps.’

  Hope picked up a flyer for the posh pizza place that she only ordered from just after payday. Once this call was over, she was so treating herself to a huge Quattro Formaggi thin crust with extra toppings.

  ‘I think I might have mentioned it, but I actually have a surly teenager of my own for this week,’ she began cautiously. ‘My little brother, Jeremy, and he’s not so much surly as fifteen and angst-ridden.’ She hoped that Jeremy couldn’t hear her pithy summing-up of his character. ‘And the thing is, he was going to spend tomorrow and Tuesday with Jack, except that’s kind of not really going to happen now.’

  ‘Oh, why not?’ Wilson asked in surprise.

  ‘We decided to spend some time apart.’ It hurt to even say that much, like a nagging toothache that she’d only just got under control, then forgotten about, and bitten on something hard so the raw throb was rearing up all over again. ‘Well, it’s complicated, and I don’t want to bore you with all the details.’

  ‘And this surly younger brother can’t be left unattended?’

  Hope was so grateful that Wilson didn’t probe the subject of her and Jack any further that she immediately launched into a long account of Jeremy’s disastrous trip to Covent Garden, which was a little disloyal of her, especially as, ‘He’s not that surly. Not all the time, and he can also be really sweet, and I’ve been roped into this two-day drama workshop, and I wondered if maybe your nephew could show him round town or something,’ she finished weakly, because why would Wilson’s nephew want to get stuck playing guide for some kid he didn’t know when he was meant to be working, and what was it about Wilson that made Hope yammer and yammer until she felt short of breath?

  ‘I need Alfie at the studio Monday and Tuesday,’ Wilson said, and he didn’t even sound the slightest bit apologetic, but why should he? ‘Doing a big two-day shoot for one of the Sunday supplements and he needs to shift his scrawny arse and do some work for once.’

  ‘Well, I figured it was worth a try,’ Hope said brightly, though she felt distinctly un-bright. ‘And really, thanks again for the photos.’

  She was all set to ring off and ask Jeremy if he’d like to come to the drama workshop with her, if she paid him fifty quid to sit quietly in the corner with a book, when Wilson coughed. ‘This shoot I’m doing … it’s ten new bands recreating classic shots of old bands, like The Beatles on the zebra crossing outside Abbey Road Studios, and that Who shot with Pete Townshend in the Union Jack jacket.’

  ‘That sounds like a lot to get through,’ Hope said politely. ‘No wonder you need Alfie around.’

  ‘The thing is, I could probably do with an extra pair of hands. Is your brother any good at making tea?’

  Hope thought back to the milky abomination Jeremy had presented her with a couple of hours ago. ‘He’s a champion tea-brewer.’

  ‘It’s an early start. He has to be at the studio at eight sharp, and if he doesn’t get in my way and doesn’t annoy me by asking anyone for their autograph, I might have him back on Tuesday, too.’

  ‘He’ll be as good as gold, I promise,’ Hope assured Wilson fervently. ‘Thank you so much. He said he’d be all right here but I don’t think it’s healthy for him to spend so much time playing computer games, and he’s had a pretty rotten time in London so far. It’ll mean …’

  ‘Just as long as you’re not sticking me with a younger version of Alfie,’ Wilson warned her. ‘And I’ve never heard of half of these bands and Alfie just sneered when he saw the list, so maybe – Jeremy, is it?’

  ‘Jez,’ Hope said firmly.

  ‘Well, maybe he can fill in some of the blanks for me.’

  Wilson made Hope write down a list of the bands, and she promised that Jeremy would be on his absolute best behaviour and if he wasn’t, she’d come and pick him up immediately. Then the football-match background noise increased in intensity and volume and Wilson said he had to go.

  ‘Thanks again,’ Hope bleated inadequately. ‘You’ve been so kind with the photos and now this … You have to let me make it up to you.’

  ‘You don’t have to do that,’ Wilson said rather stiffly. ‘I’m sure you’d do the same for me.’

  Hope wasn’t too sure about that. Unless Wilson knew a six-year-old who was having trouble tying their shoelaces or needed help with their two-times table. Once she’d rung off, she decided that if Jeremy didn’t make a complete nuisance of himself and Wilson didn’t put the fear of God into him, then maybe she’d invite Wilson and Alfie round for dinner on Friday night, as a little farewell send-off for Jeremy. Then she remembered what had happened the last time she threw a dinner party and shuddered. Taking them out for a curry would work just as well.

  GETTING JEREMY UP at
six thirty was almost as bad as trying to get Jack up for eight o’clock. Though Jack never spent ages in the bathroom applying eyeliner and using almost an entire tube of Hope’s Frizz-Ease serum on his hair.

  Hope had ironed his favourite black T-shirt, which was identical to all his other black T-shirts, and though he’d done a very undignified jig when Hope had told him about Wilson’s offer and shown him the list of bands, this morning he was sullen and jumpy. He’d even told Hope to ‘piss off’ when she tried to make him eat some breakfast before they left the house to make the journey to Kentish Town.

  Sitting uncomfortably between a joiner’s yard and a shabby office complex that looked as if it hadn’t had a paint job since the 1970s was a five-storey, red-brick building with huge lead-glass windows and an engraved keystone over the heavy metal door giving the year of construction as 1897. Wilson’s studio was on the fourth floor. Although it was ten to eight and Jeremy wanted to lurk for ten minutes, ‘because we can’t turn up on time. It’s so lame,’ Hope ignored him and pressed the buzzer. As they climbed up the stairs, Jeremy’s face was ashen rather than ruddy. ‘It’s very exciting,’ she told him. ‘Making tea for all those bands.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘And think of the bragging rights when you go back to school next week,’ she insisted, as they reached the fourth floor.

  ‘Like, anyone will even believe me!’ Jeremy snapped, as they stepped through the open door into the studio, which was a huge stark white space. One wall was almost entirely made up of windows so the studio was full of natural light. It was also full of activity.

  There were several scruffy young men manhandling lights, ladders and huge cable spools. Caterers were assembling a substantial breakfast buffet on a trestle table, and beyond them in an alcove that led to a small dressing room was a bevy of girls unpacking clothes and arranging them on rails.