Nine Uses for an Ex-Boyfriend

by Sarra Manning

  ‘So, are you hungry?’ Wilson prompted.

  ‘Yeah, I could eat,’ Hope said casually, when actually it had been at least five hours since she’d last stuffed food into her mouth and she was close to starving. ‘Do you still fancy a curry?’

  Wilson did and after Hope had retired to the bathroom to heap concealer on her nascent zit, they walked along Kentish Town Road to the Bengal Lancer. It was an Indian restaurant that had spurned the need for red flock wallpaper and big brass vases full of plastic flowers like the curry houses of Rochdale and, indeed, the Holloway Road, in favour of a slick, white minimalist interior. Wilson was obviously a regular as he was greeted cheerily by the staff and they were led to his ‘usual table’, which was almost by the window but not quite, which suited Hope just fine as she hated eating in full view of anyone who happened to be walking past, especially if that someone was a gang of teenagers.

  She was also relieved that the menu wasn’t as sleek and minimalist as the restaurant’s interior. On the contrary, it was full of dear and familiar spicy friends. Hope and Wilson quickly established that they could both do hot, and ordered accordingly. Soon they were both happily munching away on poppadoms heaped with mango chutney.

  They’d reached the lull between courses and the conversation had faded out. They couldn’t spend the duration of the meal in silence. Or Hope couldn’t, at any rate. ‘How did you get into photography?’ she asked. ‘Was it something you’ve always wanted to do?’

  Wilson pulled a face. ‘I will talk under my own steam if you let me.’

  ‘I know that,’ Hope said, although all evidence pointed to the contrary. ‘But I’m genuinely interested in how you knew that photography was your true calling. I just went into teaching because my parents were teachers and I didn’t have a clue what to do with my life.’

  ‘But you like teaching, don’t you?’ Wilson gestured at the last poppadom and Hope didn’t need telling twice. ‘You seemed to have Blue Class under firm control, anyway.’

  ‘It’s very easy to get six-year-olds to bend to my will.’ Hope fixed him with her most teacherly gaze, the one she pulled out when she wanted absolute silence from Blue Class and wasn’t getting it. ‘Anyway, that’s enough about me, I thought we were talking about you.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t have a lightbulb moment that I wanted to take pictures for a living, and I didn’t see Blow-Up at an impressionable age and think that being a photographer was a passport to orgies with models and the like …’ Wilson seemed to run out of steam and fidgeted unhappily as the waiter came to remove their poppadom debris.

  They both ordered more beer and Wilson seemed to think they were done talking about him, because he refused to look Hope in the eye and instead stared fixedly out of the window. His face was bright red, and though Hope felt sorry that bringing Wilson out of his shell was obviously such an ordeal for him, she was now determined to get to the truth.

  ‘So, no eureka moment or desire to emulate David Bailey …’ she persisted. ‘Come on, don’t leave me in suspense.’

  Wilson looked around the restaurant for inspiration, or at least the waiter coming with their main course, but when help wasn’t at hand, he reluctantly turned to Hope. ‘My step-dad’s best mate was a photographer,’ he said, face now redder even than Hope’s when she’d run the bath too hot. ‘Nothing fancy, just weddings, christenings, family portraits, stuff like that.’

  ‘And he took you under his wing?’

  He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t very good with people when I was younger.’ Every word sounded as if it was being dragged out of him with the assistance of a waterboard and an electrical current. ‘The school said it was Social Anxiety Disorder. My mam reckoned I was just shy so she persuaded Mike to let me tag along on some jobs. Thought it would bring me out of myself, having to interact with new people.’

  Well, that explained Wilson’s gruffness and why he took so long to warm up, Hope decided as the waiter placed a dazzling selection of piping-hot, aromatic dishes in front of them.

  ‘I suppose if you can handle doing wedding photography, then you can handle anything,’ she said. ‘Even taking pictures in the middle of a warzone. When my oldest brother got married, there was a punch-up in the car park between my next-oldest brother and one of the bride’s cousins. I thought my mum was going to kill both of them.’

  Wilson grinned, and there was a natural pause in the conversation as they passed dishes back and forth and realised they’d over-estimated how hot they could take their food when they’d ordered the Kalapuri chicken. Once all the toing and froing was over, Wilson went back to the subject in hand, though Hope had thought that she’d have to nag to get him talking again.

  ‘I realised that I loved framing shots and seeing people on their happiest days and I liked pottering away in the darkroom, and it got my mam off my back, which was an added bonus.’

  ‘I hear you,’ Hope muttered darkly.

  From assisting with bouncing babies and blushing brides, Wilson started doing the odd Golden Wedding party himself, then began building up a portfolio by shooting any band who played a gig in Preston. Then he started freelancing for the local papers and London-based music magazines. ‘I began a photography degree at Manchester School of Art but halfway through my second year, I was offered a staff job at the NME and I jacked it in. My mam had something to say about that, too,’ he added with a grin, and even waggled his eyebrows for good measure.

  ‘I guess when you’re photographing people either they’re the centre of attention or your camera is.’ Hope heard what she’d just blurted out and tried to backtrack. ‘I mean, I’m not saying that you still have Social Anxiety Disorder. Of course you don’t.’

  ‘I know you think I’m bloody-minded, I think I am too, but it’s like …’ Wilson took a ruminative swig from his bottle of Cobra beer. ‘It’s like when you listen to a recording of your own voice and it makes you cringe … Before I say something, I hear myself saying it and then I decide to just shut the fuck up instead. And when I do say stuff, it usually comes out wrong.’

  There! Hope knew it wasn’t Wilson’s fault that he was so horribly blunt and to the point.

  ‘Except when I do say something, can’t see any use in faffing about and taking ages not to say what I really mean,’ Wilson continued. ‘I’m allergic to bullshit.’

  ‘Are you like that with everyone?’ Hope asked, but what she really meant was, So you’re not just like that with me, are you?

  ‘Obviously not with everyone. Family, mates, girlfriends.’ Wilson put down his knife and fork. ‘Takes me a while to warm to people. And vice versa. Guess you and I must be pretty toasty by now if I’m telling you.’

  ‘I guess we must be,’ Hope agreed, ridiculously pleased that Wilson had confided in her, even if it was because she’d badgered him until he’d spilled his secrets.

  There wasn’t much left in the bowls, but Hope scraped out the residue of the tandoori sauce with the last piece of naan bread, because Wilson had pushed his plate away and obviously didn’t intend to eat any more. Hope wished that she had the same kind of restraint.

  ‘So, what’s going on with you?’ Wilson asked, when there was finally no more food left for Hope to eat, which was just as well as it felt as if she might split the seams of her support leggings.

  She shrugged. ‘Nothing much. Back to school on Monday, worse luck!’

  ‘I mean, what’s with you and Jack?’ Wilson clarified. ‘Can’t be too good if he wasn’t around to help out with Jerry.’

  ‘He had to work,’ Hope snapped reflexively, then stopped. What was the point of pretending? Wilson pretty much knew what had happened – God, did he ever know! If it wasn’t for him, then she’d never have stolen Jack’s phone, and that one act of madness led to the fact that it was Friday night and she was out with Wilson on a non-date, even if the waiters kept shooting them approving smiles. Hope decided to try again. ‘No, he didn’t have to work. You were right. He’s still seeing Susie. Or rather,
they’ve been having a full-on affair for months, though I had to steal his phone to discover that because he sure as hell wasn’t going to tell me. And then I confronted him about it and smashed his phone and now he’s moved out. So, well, that’s what’s up with me and Jack.’

  The horrible lump-in-the-throat, ache-in-the-heart, throb-in-the-tear-ducts feelings from before swept over Hope again. She also felt like she was going to throw up from a surfeit of curry.

  Wilson rested his elbows on the table. ‘So where is Jack, if he’s not at your place?’

  Hope stared down at her hands. She had sticky yellow sauce on her fingers, which she started to lick off absent-mindedly, until she realised how disgusting that was and wiped them on a napkin instead. ‘Well, he’s with Susie,’ she said. ‘And until I know what he wants to do, until we have a chance to talk about it properly, I’m stuck in this holding pattern.’

  ‘He’s with Susie – I think it’s pretty clear what he wants to do,’ Wilson said, and Social Anxiety Disorder nothing, it was such a savage summation of the wretched days and the sleepless nights Hope had endured, that she flinched. ‘Anyway, why does it have to be his decision? Can’t you make up your own mind?’

  ‘Of course I can! It’s just not so cut and dried,’ Hope explained, because she didn’t want it to be cut and dried. She wanted some ambiguity and doubt behind Jack’s sudden and swift departure, because then he might still come back to her.

  ‘Listen, Hope, can I be brutally frank with you?’

  Hope summoned up the ghost of a smile. ‘Um, when are you not brutally frank with me?’

  Wilson dipped his head in acknowledgment of this truth, then his expression grew serious. ‘Speaking as someone who’s been both dumped and dumper, I’m going to give you the benefit of my years of experience.’

  It was nice that Wilson was giving her advice, like they were friends. And in a strange way, a really strange way, they were, Hope thought to herself. They’d been thrown together by the circumstance that was their partners screwing each other and at least Hope had someone to share the pain with. Except, she just needed to clear up one point. ‘Well, Jack hasn’t dumped me,’ she explained. Yes, he was with Susie right now, but that was because she and Jack were going through a bad patch. True, it was the worst bad patch since records began, but nobody had actually dumped anyone … yet. ‘And when he comes home, we are going to have to seriously …’

  ‘He fucked Susie,’ Wilson said rather gently, all things considered. ‘He’s still fucking Susie. Q E fucking D.’

  ‘You know that thing you do when you think about what you’re going to say, then you decide not to say it? That would work just fine for me.’ Hope put her head in her hands, even though her hair would end up reeking of mango chutney and tandoori sauce until she washed it. ‘We were both angry. We both said things that we shouldn’t have, but once we’ve both calmed down, then I’m sure Jack will see that he’s making a terrible mistake.’

  ‘And what if he doesn’t? Then it’s down to you to start dealing with it and the longer you put it off, the longer you’re going to feel like shit.’ Wilson smiled ruefully. ‘Bet you preferred me when I only talked in monosyllables.’

  ‘Kind of,’ Hope admitted with a rueful smile of her own. ‘This decision … it’s a no-going-back sort of decision and when I try to think about going forward, I can’t imagine a life without him. He’s just always been there and I don’t know how to be on my own. Oh God, I don’t want to be on my own.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with being on your own for a while. Give yourself time to regroup, figure out what your next move is going to be,’ Wilson advised her, and he made it seem so reasonable, so easy, so manageable. ‘You have to decide what you want, what’s going to be best for you.’

  ‘All I want is to not feel like this,’ Hope exclaimed. ‘It … I just feel awful all the time, like I’ve got really bad flu, and I always thought that when people talked about heartache, they were just being metaphorical, but my heart really does ache.’ She rested her hand over the damaged organ and looked at Wilson who should have been rolling his eyes but instead was nodding.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what it feels like when you lose someone that you love.’

  Hope shook her head impatiently. ‘This isn’t just some “break-up”.’ She did angry air-quotes. ‘We were … we’ve been going out for thirteen years. That’s longer than a lot of marriages.’

  ‘Yeah, and people get divorced after decades of marriage and they still manage to function on their own. I’ve heard stories of divorcees who are seen laughing, and there’s also talk that some of them actually find new partners and get married again.’ Wilson pursed his lips. ‘Though those are unsubstantiated rumours.’

  ‘I’ve just told you how shit I feel and you think it’s OK to take the piss out of me?’ She brushed back her hair so Wilson could get the full horror of the dark shadows under her eyes. ‘I’m not going to get over this anytime soon because Jack and I aren’t over, and anyway you don’t have a clue what I’m going through.’

  ‘Oh, I think I have some idea, seeing how Jack is currently shagging my ex-girlfriend and yes, Susie and I didn’t have some big, serious thing but it still feels like shit when you’re rejected by someone,’ Wilson told her in a low voice. ‘Just like it felt like shit all the other times I was in a relationship that ended, even when I was the one who ended it. You don’t have the monopoly on feeling like this.’

  ‘I know I don’t,’ Hope admitted. ‘But feeling like this is so new and hideous and I’m scared I’m always going to feel like this. I won’t, will I?’

  ‘Course you won’t,’ Wilson assured her stoutly. ‘You’ll have bad times, real lows, when it seems like there’s no point in …’

  ‘I’m kind of up to speed on that part. Can you skip to the bit where it starts to get better?’ Hope begged.

  ‘But it doesn’t just get better, not until you’ve done everything you can think of to take the pain away, whether it’s necking handfuls of class As, or becoming best mates with a bottle of Scotch, or healing the hurt by finding a fuck-buddy.’ Wilson shrugged, then looked over to see if he had Hope’s full attention, which he did. Her rapt attention.

  ‘So, like, are you sleeping with other women?’ she asked, because Wilson wouldn’t have brought it up if it wasn’t a suitable topic for discussion. ‘But it’s hardly been any time at all since you and Susie split up.’

  ‘Well, we were on the outs ever since your infamous dinner party, and we were pretty much over when I last saw you – which was, what, two weeks ago?’

  Hope nodded.

  ‘But we took so long to break up, what with all the drama and her running to Jack every five minutes, that I’d already done the whisky-drinking and the chewing-the-carpet thing,’ Wilson said with a wry smile like it was funny but he didn’t sound that amused. ‘And I have an arrangement with a couple of girl mates if we’re currently single. So, yeah, I’m hooking up with my friend Juliet, who was fed up with me being more dour and Northern than I normally am.’

  It might work for Wilson, but Hope couldn’t approve of him having another girl to warm his sheets within a fortnight. It just wasn’t appropriate. You had to give yourself time to grieve. ‘Well, I would never do that,’ she said censoriously. ‘I mean, I appreciate the advice from someone who’s been there but, really, I would never do that.’

  Now Hope was thinking about Wilson doing that, she just couldn’t help it, and he was the one who’d brought it up. She remembered Susie telling her that not only was Wilson well-endowed but that ‘he’s always up for it. Always, Hopey. Behind that surly, fifties-throwback exterior is a sex machine.’

  Then Hope had giggled and pulled a disgusted face, but now she was looking prim, mainly so she didn’t look intrigued. She no longer thought of Wilson as simply a pretentious wanker; he did have actual layers, kind, funny, surprisingly sweet layers, but she didn’t want to think of him in that way. ‘The thing is,’ she continued, b
ecause now Wilson had lapsed into silence and was giving her the keen stare of old. ‘The thing is, I’m just not ready to move on. This business with Susie will burn itself out and until that happens I’m not ready to start thinking about what my options are.’

  ‘You haven’t listened to a single word I’ve been saying. You really need to grow a pair,’ Wilson told Hope sharply. ‘You’re not going to find any answers at the bottom of the biscuit tin or a tub of ice-cream …’

  ‘So I’ve been comfort eating? This is about the only time in a girl’s life that she’s actually allowed to stuff her face with junk food,’ Hope protested, uncomfortably aware that she’d easily eaten almost twice as much food as Wilson.

  ‘And is it making you feel better?’ Wilson enquired, after he’d asked the waiter for the bill.

  Hope shook her head sadly.

  ‘Course it isn’t. It’s food, not a magic eight ball.’

  They’d been getting on so well. Hope had started to think that she knew what made Wilson tick, and that the one good thing to come out of the horrific ordeal was their friendship. Well, sod that. If she wanted someone to kick her when she was down, Hope could always call her mother.

  When the bill was presented on a little silver dish, she put down her debit card with great force. ‘I’m getting this,’ she hissed. ‘To say thank you.’

  ‘We’ll go halves.’ Wilson was already pulling his wallet from his pocket.

  ‘No, we will bloody not.’ Hope actually slapped his hand away, then followed it up with some ferocious glaring, which made Wilson look more bemused than anything else.

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that you’d put on weight but you’re a pretty …’

  ‘Oh my God! Why are you still mentioning it, then?’ The waiter handed Hope the card reader but she was so upset that it took her three attempts to pay, and by then it was too late to do anything about keying in a 50 per cent tip. The service had been good, but not that good. ‘I know I’m eating too much, and I know it’s not the answer, especially when Jack waltzes in with his fancy new clothes and his fancy new haircut, and he’s been with Susie who’s slim and beautiful and I look like a spotty, ginger pig …’