Nine Uses for an Ex-Boyfriend

by Sarra Manning

  In the end, Hope pulled on her trusty black support-leggings, a fine-knit mossy-green shirt dress with long sleeves and a chunky black coatigan, and rummaged under her bed for hat, scarf and gloves in the plastic crate where she’d packed away all her cold-weather gear. Finally she emerged for Jeremy’s impatient inspection. ‘You look like a bruise,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah? Well, Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts’ Club Band called and they want their stupid red jacket back,’ Hope snapped as she checked she had her Oyster card.

  Jeremy didn’t storm from hall to lounge in a huff like he’d have done at the beginning of the week. Instead he gave Hope another once-over, then frowned. ‘So, girls in London are still wearing Uggs? Right. OK. Whatever.’

  She knew when she was beaten. ‘Oh, piss off,’ Hope said to a grinning Jeremy, as she pushed him towards the front door.

  Being dragged around a skate shop, then having to stand and watch as Jeremy fell off his board in the little skate park on the South Bank wasn’t something that Hope was particularly looking forward to. She also didn’t know how she was going to get through the day with Wilson being all sneery and perceptive when she wasn’t firing on even one cylinder. Her legs felt as if they were made of rubber, her jaw ached from the constant teeth-grinding and her hands were clammy inside her woollen gloves as she and Jeremy fought their way to the ticket barrier and then emerged from Covent Garden station in a tight press of people.

  ‘It’s so busy,’ Jeremy said, then gave a joyous yelp. ‘There’s Alfie!’

  Hope looked over and yes, there was Alfie, in a bright-red hoodie the same shade as Jeremy’s jacket so they’d be easy to spot if they wandered off, along with two girls, in skimpy T-shirts, tight black skirts that could have doubled as belts, fishnet tights and Converses, who’d turned looking nonchalant into an artform. And finally, raising a hand in greeting, was Wilson, wearing dark-blue 501s, a black jumper and black leather jacket, and still managing to look less bruise-like than Hope.

  The four of them were standing outside Oasis, clutching cups of coffee, as Jeremy bounded over, followed more slowly by Hope. She felt completely out of her depth, like a proper stuffy grown-up compared to the four teenagers (it turned out that Belle and Lucy were sixteen and eighteen respectively and nieces of Wilson and cousins of Alfie). She had more in common with him than she did with them, Hope thought, as Jeremy was welcomed into the fold and she was left to fall into step with Wilson, as they crossed over Long Acre and slowly walked down Neal Street, accosted by Big Issue sellers, chuggers and touters from the local hairdressing salons who all wanted to know where Hope got her hair cut.

  She pulled her hat down over her hair that hadn’t seen the touch of a professional hairdresser in well over a year and tried to think of something to say to Wilson. ‘So, is this your sum total of nieces and nephews?’

  He shook his head. ‘I left the London-based under-sixteens at home.’

  What with four full siblings, two half-siblings and five step-siblings, Wilson had nearly twenty-three (his half-sister Louise was due to give birth any day) nieces and nephews scattered from London to Preston and all points in between.

  It was amazing that Wilson came from such a large family yet remained so taciturn. Maybe he’d never been able to get a word in edgeways, Hope mused as the pair of them were banished from the tiny skate shop (‘Hopey, you’re just getting in the way and asking stupid questions’) and had to sit shivering outside in Neal’s Yard drinking excellent coffee from the Monmouth Coffee shop just around the corner.

  Then it was a slow walk through Covent Garden to the Strand and across the Thames on Jubilee Bridge. The South Bank was heaving with people: gangs of kids on half-term, tourists wrapped up warmly as they took pictures of each other by the sculptures, lunchtime joggers weaving through the crowd and people braving the cold to sit at the tables outside the restaurants beneath the Royal Festival Hall.

  There was some problem with adjusting the new wheels on Jeremy’s skateboard, which Wilson helped with, so Hope was left with Belle and Lucy who asked what she did for a living and then shied away in horror when she confessed the awful truth. In the end she left the five of them to it while she browsed the second-hand book stall, picking up a pristine Winston Churchill biography, which would make an excellent Christmas present for her dad, and a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit for Blue Class’s book corner. Then force of habit made her pick up a book about The Beatles, which she knew Jack didn’t have. Hope hesitated, then slotted the book back into place, and as she did it she shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the wind whipping past her, but because that small gesture seemed to prove that their relationship was dead.

  It was one of those fatal thoughts that she didn’t want to think, so Hope deliberately and ruthlessly pushed it away as she reached for the new Jilly Cooper. Comfort eating wasn’t doing her any favours so maybe comfort reading would be kinder to her waistline.

  As she was about to pay, Hope spotted a Diane Arbus biography, about whom she knew practically nothing except that she was an American photographer who’d taken gloomy but beautiful black-and-white pictures of odd-looking people. She could give it to Jeremy to give to Wilson to say thank you for going absolutely above and beyond what could possibly be termed as doing someone a favour.

  Hope glanced over her shoulder. Alfie and Jeremy were finally on their skateboards. Jeremy was surprisingly adept at twisting and turning and flipping off the end of ramps and slopes without falling off. It was rather lovely to see him take such absolute delight in what he was doing, and Hope was glad to see Wilson snapping away at the pair of them on a small fiddly-looking digital camera.

  Belle and Lucy were nowhere to be seen, and Hope was surplus to requirements so she drifted over to the river’s edge and gazed out over the water. To her left was the London Eye and past that the Houses of Parliament, and to her right, the City skyline: St Paul’s Cathedral, the NatWest Tower, the Gherkin and other buildings that were familiar to her, even if she couldn’t name them. It was a view that never failed to stir her, the old in harmony with the new, the city evolving and growing and changing before her eyes. Hope still didn’t really think of London as home, but when she came down to the river, she felt as if she was part of London, even as she was humbled by it at the same time.

  Just looking at the cityscape and the backdrop of blue skies and fluffy clouds that looked as if they’d been painted on was making big, sad emotions well up in Hope. Emotions that made her swipe a gloved hand under her eyes to mop up tears that she couldn’t blame on the wind. She almost screamed when she felt a hand on her shoulder, but it was just Wilson who gave her one of his patented squinty-eyed, penetrating looks but didn’t say anything other than that their four teenage charges wanted to get sushi for lunch.

  The day dragged on and on and on. There were a few moments of light relief, like Jeremy coming to the swift realisation that he hated sushi apart from the crispy salmon skin and despatching Hope to Pret A Manger to buy him a sandwich. She also had to bite her lip many times to suppress the giggles because Jeremy, Alfie, Belle and Lucy’s conversation consisted of one of them suddenly announcing, ‘Ha! Simon Cowell!’ or, ‘Urgh! Legwarmers!’ or even, ‘Cupcakes are so sad,’ and then they’d all make sneery comments about the item in question. The four of them were getting on famously, which was more than could be said for Hope and Wilson.

  Hope had never known him so monosyllabic. Not even the first few times that she’d met him when he’d been her newish friend’s new boyfriend and Susie had already said that she didn’t think he was a keeper. What with the strain of making forced conversation, the constant threat of tears because of the stupid book about The Beatles and the wind smacking her in the face as they walked down to Tate Modern, browsed through Borough Market, then ended up at the Design Museum, Hope felt as if steel bands were slowly crushing her skull. Her head throbbed in time with every step she took and when they got to London Bridge tube it was only six o’clock. The
gig didn’t start until eight, so it would be hours before Hope could go home and not sleep, perchance to dream.

  Jeremy was adamant that they had time to go to Oxford Street so he could visit Niketown and take photos for the kids back home, and Belle and Lucy wanted to go to ‘Topshop and Urban Outfitters and we might as well go to American Apparel while we’re there’. It was all Hope could do not to sink down on to the pavement and refuse to take another step.

  ‘Well, you need to have some tea before the gig,’ she murmured weakly.

  ‘Yeah, but we don’t need to be there the minute the doors open,’ Alfie said scathingly. ‘And the first support band suck.’

  ‘Yeah, they really suck,’ Belle and Lucy said in unison, while Jeremy nodded in agreement.

  ‘Shut up,’ Wilson suddenly growled at the four of them. ‘Just about had enough of you lot.’

  ‘Yeah, but …’

  ‘Shut it, Alfred,’ Wilson said in a way that sent shivers down Hope’s spine but Alfie just grinned slyly, as if he was used to having his God-given name snarled at him like that. Wilson pulled out his wallet and handed his nephew a couple of twenty-pound notes. ‘Go to bloody Oxford Street, then use this money to get some dinner, and I want receipts and change.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I want proof that you didn’t spend the money on tacky shit and pick and mix.’

  ‘We so wouldn’t do that,’ Lucy breathed, but Hope knew she so would. It was exactly what she used to do whenever she’d got slipped a tenner by an unsuspecting grandparent.

  Hope reached for her own purse and put another twenty pounds in the kitty. ‘For pudding and soft drinks,’ she said with a significant glare that made the steel bands tighten. She wanted to weep tears of unrestrained joy as the four of them trooped into the tube station – until she realised that she and Wilson were the last two standing. Or drooping, in her case.

  ‘Shall we get a taxi?’ Wilson asked, already hailing a black cab.

  Hope thought about putting up a fight because she’d been spending money like she had a huge trust fund to fall back on, but her head and feet were killing her, and in the end it was easier just to say, ‘Thank you,’ when Wilson held the door open for her, and sink gratefully on to the seat.

  Hope pulled off her hat and rubbed her forehead, as Wilson sat down beside her.

  ‘I told him to go to Kentish Town,’ he said. ‘Unless you’d rather go home and I could pick Jeremy up later and drop him off?’

  Hope thought about spending hours in her empty flat with not much else to do but unleash the onslaught of tears that had been threatening all day. And Wilson had already done her so many favours and she needed to man up, get over herself, take some ibuprofen and treat him to a slap-up meal. Or at least a curry and a couple of bottles of beer.

  ‘Kentish Town is fine,’ she said, and it was meant to come out firmly but her voice wavered and she had to swallow hard. ‘Though we’ve got hours before they need picking up.’

  Wilson stared straight ahead. ‘Fancy coming back to mine for a cup of tea?’

  No, because that would be weird. Very weird, but it was still better than being home alone. ‘Tea sounds fine too,’ Hope said, and she sat there, her muscles stiff and tense as she tried to think of something else to say.

  It took a while. Finally she managed, ‘Well, they all seemed to get on, didn’t they? Like, they really bonded over slagging off stuff, don’t you think?’

  ‘You don’t have to talk,’ Wilson said. His lips twisted as Hope cringed. ‘I mean, the silence won’t kill us, and you look like you’ve got a headache.’ He lightly touched the spot between her eyebrows where the pain had centred. ‘You’ve had a little furrow there for the last hour.’

  Wilson’s hand moved up to cover her forehead. Hope didn’t think she was running a temperature but the feel of his cool fingers on her head was kind of soothing, or maybe it was the small, unexpected pleasure of someone being concerned about her. ‘I just need some painkillers,’ she muttered. ‘I have some in my bag, but I can’t take them dry.’

  She was no good at silence, never had been, but at least Wilson’s hand was back on his lap. The concern had been nice but it had also made her even more likely to start weeping. Hope shut her eyes and leaned her head back and let the steady put-put-put of the engine lull her into a gentle doze that was only disturbed when they had to stop at a red light or went over a speed bump.

  Wilson wouldn’t let Hope pay for the cab. He even went as far as batting her hand away when she proffered a crumpled ten-pound note. There was nothing else to do but follow him through the door of his building, up the stairs and through the dark studio.

  He paused at the bottom of the iron spiral staircase that led up to his apartment. ‘I’m just going to nick some milk out of the fridge in the studio kitchen, but you go up, you know the way.’

  Hope did know the way from her only previous visit, which had been to pick up Susie en route for a night drinking martinis and dancing at the Hideaway in Tufnell Park. Then she’d only had a vague impression of metal joists and industrial light fittings, as Susie had hopped about on one foot in her underwear, squawking because the strap had broken on her favourite pair of sandals.

  Upstairs was similar to downstairs: a vast expanse of white walls, big windows and knotted, untreated floorboards, with a galleried bedroom up a small flight of slatted stairs. There was a galley kitchen running along the back wall and a brushed-steel dining table with matching chairs around it, but Wilson, coming up the spiral stairs with a carton of milk, was gesturing in the direction of a huge leather Chesterfield. It was a weathered tan colour and so big that two people could have lain on it quite happily, but Hope perched uncomfortably at one end and looked over with some trepidation at Wilson who was already in the kitchen and busy with the tea-making.

  Hope watched surreptitiously as Wilson filled the kettle and got down mugs, humming a jaunty tune as he worked. He was being really nice, or rather he hadn’t said anything sarcastic for at least an hour, and it was very discomfiting.

  As she heard the whistle of the kettle (why couldn’t Wilson have a regular plug-in kettle like a normal person?) Hope was composed enough to be able to look at her surroundings in more detail.

  On the wall opposite her were three poster-sized, tinted photos of sights that were instantly familiar to her: Blackpool Tower all lit up, the retro ’50s ice-cream van from Morecambe which bore the legend Everyday is Like Sundae, and Southport Pier. All three photographs made her think of those long childhood summers of day trips to the seaside and fighting with her brothers as they made huge sand castle cities with their own complex drainage systems, then driving home to Whitfield, sleepy from too much sun and ice-cream. God, life had been so much simpler when all Hope had worried about was trying to mastermind the downfall of her three older, bossier brothers, Adrian, Luke and Matthew.

  Hope was just remembering the time they’d buried her up to her neck in sand for hours and told their parents that she had run away, only confessing to their crime once the police had been called, when Wilson emerged from the kitchen with a laden tray.

  Hope struggled upright from her despondent slump to accept a steaming mug of tea with a muttered ‘Thanks’. Wilson sat down right next to her, not saying anything as she took two ibuprofen – normally Hope hated Wilson’s silence because he wielded it like a weapon, but right now it was such a relief not to have to talk.

  Maybe that was why when she finished her mug of perfectly brewed tea, Hope found herself struggling not to let her head loll on to Wilson’s shoulder. Her eyes would drift shut and she’d tune out, only to come back to full consciousness a few seconds later.

  She struggled to stay awake, blinking her gritty eyes furiously, and caught sight of her bulging tote bag perched on the floor. ‘I got you something,’ she said, and she realised that they’d been sitting in silence for at least twenty minutes. ‘To say thank you.’

  ‘We’ve been through this,’ W
ilson sighed, leaning forward to put down his empty mug. ‘You don’t need to say thank you for anything.’

  ‘Well, I want to and I saw this’ – Hope pulled out the Diane Arbus book – ‘and I thought you might like it.’

  Wilson opened his mouth, probably to make a stuffy speech about how she had no reason to be beholden to him, so Hope just shoved the book at him so he had no choice but to take it. He glanced down at the cover and a slow smile crept over his face. It was a warm, unguarded smile that Hope had never seen from him before.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said simply. ‘This has been on my Amazon wishlist for ages.’

  That wasn’t so difficult, was it? Hope was tempted to say but for once she managed to hold her tongue. She settled back against the cushions with a contented little sigh as Wilson began to flick through the book.

  SHE MUST HAVE dozed off again, because Hope only woke up when the pillow she was snoozing on shifted and someone patted her shoulder.

  ‘If we want to get something to eat before we pick up the awful foursome, we should probably get going,’ Wilson said, as Hope’s head shot up from where it had been resting on, as she now realised, his chest.

  Face flushed, she put a cautious hand to her hair, which felt alarmingly tendril-like. During the day, if it wasn’t tightly contained, her hair attracted tangles like ball bearings to a magnet.

  To mask her confusion and to gauge exactly how bird’s-nesty her hair had got, Hope fished her make-up bag out of her tote and hunted for her pocket mirror. As she suspected, it looked as if someone had plugged her into the national grid and a big, ugly spot was getting ready to hatch on her chin. All this stress was making her lose her looks.