Nine Uses for an Ex-Boyfriend

by Sarra Manning

  Then it was the third day after she left Jack, and there were lots of reasons to be cheerful. There was Elaine’s Christmas Eve party that evening, and when Hope bumped into Alice from next door on her way to buy yet more masking tape and white spirit, she invited Hope to join them for Christmas dinner, so she’d have someone to talk to who wasn’t aged twelve or under, or her husband Robert, or related to Robert.

  Hope set off down the Holloway Road at a jaunty pace, ridiculously pleased when the staff at the DIY shop greeted her like an old friend. Then she stopped off at Waitrose to buy some nice bottles of wine for Elaine and Alice, and some posh treats for herself for tomorrow night and Boxing Day. Spending Christmas in London and flitting from one social engagement to another was a much better option than being stuck at home and having to peel Brussels sprouts under her mother’s exacting eye. In fact, Christmas Eve was shaping up very nicely until Hope wandered past the hairdresser’s in the shopping arcade. The fact that it was Christmas Eve and the salon had empty chairs should have been an indication that maybe it wasn’t a very good hairdressing salon, but Hope caught sight of her tangled, paint-splattered hair in one of the salon’s mirrors, and it was such a pain to have to tie it up in a scarf and it always got soaked with sweat when she was running, and if it was shorter and more manageable then she’d probably never have to have another comb-out for as long as she lived. Her thought process took less than five seconds, then she was pushing open the salon door and asking if they had any appointments free.

  At least Hope hadn’t burst into tears in the salon. At least she’d spared herself that humiliation. No, she’d lied and said that she loved her new haircut, which was meant to have been layered and shoulder-length, but had ended up as an uneven jaw-line bob because the girl who’d been cutting her hair had been more interested in telling Hope what a complete bitch the salon owner was, and how she expected her staff to work until nine on New Year’s Eve, and that she and her husband were fiddling their tax return. Hope even tipped her ten pounds and wished her a Happy Christmas before she hurried out, felt the cold air rush to meet the newly exposed back of her neck, and then she burst into tears.

  Back home, she did all the stupid irrational things that anyone does when they’ve had a terrible haircut, though as Hope understood it, terrible haircuts were a rite of passage that should have been over and done with by your sixteenth birthday. If only she’d listened to her mother who’d actually been right when she’d told her, repeatedly, to leave her hair alone, Hope thought, as she dunked her head under the cold tap and applied serums and mousses and straighteners. All her efforts amounted to nothing. There was no escaping the fact that she had a wonky bob that was shorter on the right side than it was on the left. Also now that she didn’t have so much hair, what she did have left looked more ginger than auburn or red or Titian. And Hope had never noticed how much her ears stuck out, or how weak her jaw was.

  It was barely worth wrapping a scarf around her head so she could get on with the painting, because some buttermilk matt emulsion could only improve her coif, Hope thought as she dipped the roller into the paint tray, and then the day went from bad to much, much worse as the bulb in the kitchen light blew and tripped the fuse at the same time. Sorting out the fuse was a simple matter of flipping a switch, but the lightbulb was another matter entirely.

  It was only just past lunchtime but the vague promise of daylight was already fading. There was no question of painting, or even making a cup of tea without electric light. Hope went as far as taking a new lightbulb out of the drawer and fetching the stepladder from the little lean-to by the back door. Then she eyed the lightbulb and the top step of the ladder on to which she’d have to climb to change it. The top step, which meant there’d be nothing to hold on to as she extended her arms up towards the light fitting.

  Hope’s first instinct was always going to be to call Jack, but as soon as he answered the phone with a weary, ‘Hey, what’s up, Hope?’ she wished that she’d waited for her second instinct to come along.

  ‘The lightbulb’s blown in the kitchen,’ she explained, again realising too late that she should probably have started the proceedings with a gentle enquiry about his emotional health. ‘And it tripped the fuse, which I sorted out, but I can’t change the lightbulb. But, anyway, how are you?’

  ‘How do you think I am?’ Jack demanded. ‘And you know what? You’re the one who fucking turned me down when I proposed, so you don’t get to phone and ask how I am, and you don’t get to call me just because you need help changing a sodding lightbulb.’

  He was right. And Hope was wrong, and flushed with shame and mortification. ‘Jack, I’m sorry. I didn’t think. It’s just I’m so used to calling you and I know I started wittering on about the lightbulb, but I’ve been thinking about you a lot.’ Hope sighed. ‘I pretty much think about you all the time. How are you holding up?’

  ‘Oh, I’m just great. I feel like I’m on top of the fucking world, especially after I found your list on the floor of the car and the only reason you supposedly loved me was because I was good at doing stuff,’ Jack sniped. ‘It comes to something when the love of your life is only with you because you put songs on her iPod and go to the shops for ice-cream.’

  ‘It was only a first draft,’ Hope protested. ‘It was a shitty first draft, and if I’d written it six months ago, it would have been a completely different list, you …’

  ‘What the fuck ever!’

  Jack was furious with her, and Hope knew that he was well within his rights to feel like that, though she wondered if it wasn’t his pride that hurt as much as his heart, because nothing he was spitting at her was inclined to make her change her mind. ‘I’m really not the love of your life,’ she reminded him softly but with just a soupçon of acid to go with it. ‘If I had been, you wouldn’t have shagged someone else.’

  ‘I might have known you’d bring that up. We’ve been on the phone for what? Three minutes. Great restraint there, Hopey.’

  Hope stopped feeling guilty or sorry for Jack, because he was forgetting some very important details about why she’d broken up with him. Instead of blaming her, Jack should have been ruminating on all the pain he’d caused her so he never made the same mistakes again with the next girl who was supposed to be the love of his life. ‘Just for the fucking record, Jack, I don’t need you any more!’ Hope shrieked. ‘I can do stuff by myself. In fact, I’m getting off the phone because I can’t stand talking to you for a second longer, and I’m going to change the bloody lightbulb on my own!’

  Hope ended the call without bothering to find out if Jack had got the message, but as she’d been yelling, she was sure he’d picked up the highlights and then, while her blood was still up (and currently rushing to her head) she grabbed the lightbulb, marched over to the ladder and was on the top step before she even realised what she was doing.

  Don’t look down, Hope told herself, as she firmly planted both feet on the step, sucked in her tummy muscles and reached up to unscrew the duff bulb. She could hear her frantic breaths as she dithered, wondered if she might actually throw up, and finally took stock of the fact that she was on top of the ladder. She froze, all her limbs stiffening, because she had a bulb in each hand and if she came down the ladder to get rid of the old one, Hope knew that she’d never be able to climb back up.

  Right on cue, she felt the sweat breaking out, her hands going clammy as she wobbled for one alarming second, but then managed to right herself.

  You can do this. You can do this. You can do this. Except she couldn’t do this, and now she couldn’t get down either, because she was paralysed at the top of the ladder, both hands occupied, so she couldn’t even go down a step and grip the bar at the top.

  Hope tried to rationalise the situation. She was on top of a six-foot ladder, and what would be the worst thing that would happen if she fell off? OK, she might bang her head and die. That would be very bad, but it would be much worse if she fell off, broke several limbs so she was una
ble to reach her phone, and had to lie in her own urine on the kitchen floor until Jack came home on or around the twenty-eighth of December. Though maybe Alice from next door might realise that something wasn’t right when Hope didn’t turn up for Christmas dinner and come round to check that everything was OK.

  Of course, there was another option. Maybe Hope didn’t fall off the ladder but stayed on it long enough to change the bloody lightbulb. Because it wasn’t just a lightbulb, it was a metaphor for her life, her future, for not being with Jack but being single and taking charge of her own destiny.

  This time the voice in her head was a lot more forceful. If you can’t change a simple bloody lightbulb, then you are screwed. How are you going to lead a normal, fulfilled and independent life if you can’t even get up a ladder to perform a simple act of household maintenance? So, stop being such a big baby, suck it up and change the fucking lightbulb, Hopey! Change it right this fucking minute!

  The voice in her head was so terrifying that Hope ignored the sweat that was dripping into her eyes and making them sting, she even ignored her phone, which had suddenly started to ring, the shock making the ladder wobble again. She ignored everything but the message her brain was passing on to her hands to reach up and screw in the lightbulb.

  Once she was done, Hope couldn’t believe that she was done. Instead of scrambling to safety, she actually stayed where she was to check that she had just done the unthinkable and changed the lightbulb all by herself. And then she stayed up the ladder for the time it took to clasp her hands over her head in victory, which made the ladder teeter alarmingly and Hope scramble down to safety in record time.

  When her feet were firmly planted back on the kitchen floor Hope hugged her sweaty self in triumph. She felt utterly elated, as if she’d just run a marathon, and she wished that there was someone to hand who understood the enormity of what she’d just achieved. It wasn’t three rungs on a ladder but one giant step for Hope. Her phone rang again just as she was contemplating whether she could climb the ladder again to paint the upper cupboards, just because she could.

  As she picked up her phone, she saw she had a missed call from Jack and he was calling her again. She really didn’t want to segue into the next instalment of their ongoing fight, or to hear all the horrible things he’d had half an hour to work on. Hope even thought about not answering, but then she decided that if she could get up a ladder to change a lightbulb then she could take Jack’s call.

  Even so, her ‘Hello?’ was extremely cautious.

  ‘Hopey! Thank God, you’re all right,’ Jack gasped. ‘When you didn’t answer before, I thought you’d broken your neck and were lying dead on the kitchen floor.’

  ‘Well, I’m not,’ Hope sniffed.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry about earlier. I’ve just been getting it from all sides, and every time I see your mum, she gets tearful and starts going on about how much you hate her.’

  Hope sighed. ‘I don’t hate her. Don’t particularly like her very much at the moment, but I don’t hate her.’

  ‘Well, do you think you could ring her and tell her that?’

  She could, but she wasn’t going to. ‘Did you not hear the part where I said that she was way down on my list of favourite people?’ If her mother was that racked with remorse, she could change the habits of a lifetime and ring her only daughter to apologise, which would happen the day that the apocalypse began. ‘So, now we’ve established that I’m not dead, is there anything else?’

  She sounded cold, Hope knew that, but maybe cold was the way to go. When she forgot and treated Jack like her friend, or her boyfriend, it was confusing for both of them.

  ‘I’m sorry about before, about snapping at you,’ Jack said. ‘And I could ring Otto, he’s around, he might be able to come and change the bulb.’

  Hope sucked at being cold. ‘That’s really sweet of you,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have rung you, but I’m used to ringing you. It’s going to be a hard habit to break.’

  ‘So, this isn’t just a temporary break or a trial separation, and then when I come back we’ll start counselling ag—’

  ‘No, Jack, no. It’s real,’ Hope told him, all her glee and exhilaration gone, and now she was on the verge of tears. ‘I shouldn’t have called you. It was thoughtless and selfish and … and I think we need to not talk until after Christmas, because this isn’t helping either of us.’

  There was silence and Hope began to wonder if they’d been cut off until she heard Jack swallow. ‘Is that what you really want?’

  Hope wasn’t sure that she even knew what she really wanted, but she knew what she didn’t want. ‘Yes, yes it is.’

  ‘But what about the lightbulb?’

  ‘Oh, that? Actually, I did it myself,’ Hope said.

  ‘You climbed up on the ladder?’ Jack sounded incredulous.

  ‘Yeah, that’s why I didn’t answer the first time you called. I was frozen with terror, and I knew that if I got down to answer the phone, I’d never get back up again.’

  ‘You climbed up a ladder,’ Jack repeated. ‘Oh, Hopita Bonita, you don’t need me any more, do you?’

  ‘Please don’t think that. Just so you know, I loved you for a lot more reasons than what I wrote on that stupid list. Not just because you were handy to have about the place.’ Hope tried to laugh but it was entirely without mirth. ‘Though you can wield a screwdriver like no one else.’

  ‘You’re not to worry, you’re going to be fine on your own. Don’t think you’re going to be on your own for long, though. Someone will snap you up in no time at all,’ Jack said, and he sounded misty-eyed and wistful. ‘You just see if they don’t.’

  ‘You’re just saying that to be kind, but thank you.’

  ‘No, I’m really not. It’s the truth,’ Jack said sadly. ‘So, I guess I’ll see you after Christmas. Am I allowed to text you with my ETA?’

  ‘Of course you are!’

  There was nothing left to talk about after that except to stammer their way through a goodbye that felt as if it was the last thing they’d ever say to each other.

  Hope was in despair for ten long minutes after she got off the phone. Unhappy enough to break into one of the tubs of Celebrations and root through to find the giant Maltesers. Just as she was stuffing the last one into her mouth, she caught sight of the ladder and, still masticating honeycomb, she climbed up it. It was still scary. It was still not one of her favourite things in the world, but she could do it.

  It made Hope wonder what else she could do if she put her mind to it. She took that thought and ran with it, gathering up the CDs and the sheet of instructions Wilson had sent her, and hurrying into the bedroom. After a few false tries and a rummage under the bed to locate the right lead, Hope managed to hook up iPhone and computer.

  The rest was easy. Hope was almost incandescent with rage when she realised that putting songs on to the iPod was child’s play. Quite literally. Most of Blue Class would have been able to do it, and then she was angry at Jack for never letting her do it herself and controlling what she could play, in some patriarchal plot to force her to listen to The Beatles ad nauseam and lots of scruffy-haired, guitar-led indie bands who all sounded the same. The nerve! Hope bristled as she discovered a folder in iTunes labelled ‘Hope’s crappy music’, and in it were all the beloved shouty riot-grrrl bands that she’d adored in her shouty teen years, and her show tunes! Oh, and Gloria Gaynor!

  Hope had to stop right there, cue up ‘I Will Survive’, grab a hairbrush and let rip. On the second round of ‘Go on now, go!’ she even jumped on the bed, until she caught sight of herself in the mirror and saw that she was the living embodiment of every wronged-woman, rom-com cliché, and stopped immediately.

  She spent a happy hour deleting everything on her iPod, and creating new playlists for the gym and walking to work, and for her sad moments and her happy moments. She even made a playlist for when she had a bad day at work, which ended with ‘Everything’s Coming up Roses’ sung
by Ethel Merman. It was only when she started squinting at the computer screen that Hope looked out of the window to discover that it was pitch dark and she was due at Elaine’s in less than an hour.

  There wasn’t time to do anything but put a couple of sparkly clips in her raggedy hair, which matched her silver skinny-knit jumper, which she wore with her skinniest skinny jeans – thankfully she could still get into them despite her Celebrations binge. Because she was only going to Elaine’s, who lived a good ten minutes’ walk from the nearest bus stop, and it was freezing outside, Hope shoved her feet in her Uggs.

  It wasn’t until she was on the bus heading towards Hackney and she’d got over the novelty of having an iPod full of songs that she actually wanted to listen to, that Hope switched from iPod to iPhone and wondered if calling Wilson would ever be a habit that she got into.

  Maybe it would, if he always sounded so pleased to see her number flash up on his phone. ‘Hello, stranger,’ he said. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. Really fine.’ As soon as she said it, Hope knew that it was true. Or, at least, she was going to be fine. There might be times when she stepped backwards instead of moving towards the light, but she was on the right path.

  It turned out that Wilson was fine, too. He’d just finished his last job of the year and was heading over to a little gastropub near Parliament Hill Fields, where his staff were waiting for him to pay for a slap-up meal and all the alcohol they could pour down their throats before the landlord called last orders.

  ‘And what about you? Are you oop North?’ Wilson asked, exaggerating his Lancashire accent.

  ‘Down South, and on my way to Hackney for Elaine’s annual Christmas Eve bash. Simon makes a pretty lethal elderflower vodka,’ Hope said.