We Were On a Break

by Lindsey Kelk

  Dazed, I tapped out a reply from where I belonged, on the freezing cold linoleum floor of a public toilet.

  Is he with a really, really gorgeous brunette? I asked.

  Three grey dots thrummed across the screen and I waited for David to sugar-coat his response.

  She’s all right, he replied.

  ‘I have to get out of here,’ I told my phone, not quite able to use my fingers to text. ‘I cannot walk out there and see them.’

  Not because I was upset or embarrassed but because I did not want to deal with it until it was on my terms. I mean, yes, I was embarrassed and flush-my-head-down-the-bog heartbroken, but more importantly, I looked like shit, I felt like shit, a dog had been sick on me three times that afternoon and I’d had to euthanize a very cute rabbit. Enough was enough for one day.

  Can I get out the door without him seeing me? I typed, pulling myself together as best I could.

  DON’T KNOW, David replied. THEY’RE PLAYING YE! IN THE BELL!! WTF??? GOT TO LOVE A BIT OF KANYE.

  As much as I loved him, he was useless.

  Until Abi got here, I was on my own and I really needed to get out of the toilets before she arrived. What if she saw Adam and Chrissy Teigen’s body double before I could warn her and poisoned them with some amazing chemical compound she’d been working on to cure alopecia in rabbits? Maybe if she just poisoned the girl …? No, that wasn’t fair. I didn’t know anything about her; for all I knew she was entirely blameless in this. Totally blameless and incredibly hot and snogging my boyfriend one day and sitting in the pub with him the next and, oh dear god, I was going to have to have her killed.

  There was no way I was walking out past the pair of them in one of David’s hoodies with no make-up on my face and possibly smelling of Labrador vomit. There had to be another way. Perhaps David could create a distraction or Abi could set the bar on fire. I looked up at the window and felt a breeze on my face. There was always another way.

  ‘This is totally doable,’ I announced, making sure my phone and credit card and car keys were safe in the pouch of my jumper, and began my escape. One foot on the pipes, one foot on the sink, both hands through the window and voila! I was out. I was halfway out. Hanging over the pub bins. Hanging out of a window, face first over two massive, filthy dumpsters with nowhere to go but down. Yes, Liv, this was definitely more dignified than walking out of the bar with your head held high, well done you.

  ‘Should I even ask?’

  I looked up to see Abi and Cass standing in the middle of the car park. Cassie looked confused, her mouth was moving but no words were coming out, and Abi was simply waiting for a response.

  ‘It looks so easy on telly.’ I kicked my legs behind me, swimming in thin air. It felt as though someone had shifted the sink just to mess with me, and the window frame dug into my hip as I tried to find my balance. ‘I’m not having a good day. One minute I’m putting Peter Rabbit down and now this.’

  ‘What are you doing exactly?’ Cass ran forward in between the bins and placed my hands on her shoulders to take some of my weight off my hip. Ah, sweet, sweet leaning relief.

  ‘Can I tell you the story after you get me down?’ I asked, fidgeting around in the window frame and inching forward. I knew I should have stuck with the Pilates classes Adam’s mum bought me for Christmas – my core was not up to this. ‘It’s a lot further than I thought it was going to be.’

  ‘The safest way to get down would be for you to fall straight into the bin,’ Abi reasoned, standing back to review the situation. ‘It’s the shortest distance and the softest surface.’

  ‘It’s also a bloody bin!’ I shouted. ‘Come and help me. If you take my hands and Cass holds my waist, I think I can get out without too much—’

  Before anyone could do anything, I heard the toilet door creak open behind me and I panicked. Pushing all of my weight forwards, I toppled out of the window, crashing down onto Cassie.

  ‘And another way would be for you to fall straight out the window and break Cass’s neck,’ Abi said, rushing to pull us out from between the bins. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Cass replied from somewhere underneath my arse. ‘But I’m not best pleased, either.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Abi heaved me up to my feet before peeling Cass up off the ground. ‘I’m really, really sorry. I heard someone coming.’

  ‘You did.’ A face and a hand popped up at the toilet window and waved. It was David. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I had to get out of there!’ I explained, turning from one friend to the next, trying to justify my extreme exit while picking bits of dead lettuce off my jumper. ‘Adam’s in there, I had to.’

  ‘Oh, Liv …’ He rested his chin in his hand. ‘It shouldn’t happen to a vet.’

  ‘I’m lost,’ Abi said, while Cass inspected herself for injuries. ‘Why did you have to climb out a window because Adam’s in the pub? What’s happened that we don’t know about?’

  ‘He’s in there with a girl,’ David answered, chin resting on the window frame. ‘A really, really, really, really, really fit girl.’

  After treating him to my best death glare, I looked back at Abi and Cass with a pout.

  ‘What he said.’

  ‘I’m sure it’s nothing,’ Cass piped up quickly. ‘If he was cheating on you, I don’t think he’d be squiring her around the village, would he?’

  ‘She’s right,’ Abi agreed, much to Cass’s delight. ‘This is Adam, Liv. One minute he’s begging you not to break up with him and the next he’s snogging girls in the driveway and then bringing super-hot dates to your local? I don’t think so. Logically, it doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘Logically, Brad leaving Jen for Angelina Jolie didn’t make any sense but it happened,’ I replied as David nodded sagely in the window. ‘And you’ll be pleased to know it’s the same girl. The girl in the pub is the girl from the driveway.’

  In spite of all my best efforts to remain calm, I felt my bottom lip tremble and my eyes began to sting and burn. It is a scientific fact that it is impossible to stop yourself from crying when you were wearing contact lenses, I was almost certain of it.

  ‘I think I’m going to go home. Sorry, Abi, I can’t go back in there,’ I said, squeezing my hands together inside the pouch of my jumper, trying not to think about Adam and the Hot Girl in our pub. What if they were at our table? What if Red Roger the barman had seen them? How would I ever look him in the eye again? I was still trying to live down the night I’d decided I was going to start drinking cognac and ended the night falling off a barstool when I was twenty-two.

  ‘You could go in and confront him,’ Cass suggested. ‘Because I’m certain it’s nothing.’

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ David said fast. ‘There’s only one thing less attractive than a jealous woman and that’s a crazy woman. Unless she’s a really smoking hot crazy woman, then it’s attractive for a bit.’

  ‘Liv is smoking hot,’ Cass offered, stroking my shoulder and picking off a cigarette butt. David, Abi and I all gave her the same look. ‘What?’

  ‘I just want to go home,’ I said, deflating with every breath. ‘I will talk to him, but not in public and not in front of her.’

  ‘Then I’m coming with you,’ Abi said, whipping her phone out of her pocket and tapping out a text. ‘Bill will wait. Or he won’t. Whatever.’

  ‘You don’t have to,’ I assured her, watching as she blew off another potential relationship right in front of me. ‘All I want to do is go back to mine to watch crap telly and eat everything in the house. I’m fine, you go and see Bill.’

  ‘And she needs to wash my jumper,’ David added. ‘There’s a brown streak down the back and I don’t want to know what it is.’

  ‘I’m coming too,’ Cassie said, bending down to pick up a bunch of keys that she held out to me. ‘My mum is looking after Gus so I’ve got the whole evening off. I’ll probably pass out by half-past nine, but I swear, every moment I’m awake wil
l be dedicated to you.’

  I looked at the keys as I took them from her. Two car keys, two door keys and a gym membership card. Definitely not mine. ‘Whose are these?’

  ‘Yours,’ she said, straightening her slightly askew ponytail. ‘They fell out of your pocket when you landed on me.’

  ‘No.’ I shook my head, the keys hot and heavy in my hand. ‘They’re not mine.’ I looked up at my friends, my hand trembling. ‘I think they’re hers.’

  We looked at each other, me horrified, Abi smiling, Cass curious, David downright ecstatic.

  ‘How did you get them?’ Abi asked, holding them up and looking for clues. ‘Did you pickpocket her?’

  ‘No, we bumped into each other in the toilets,’ I explained. ‘She was coming out when I was going in, she dropped her bag, I helped her pick up her stuff. I must have put them in my pocket by mistake.’

  ‘Oh, this is too good. Wait there, I’m coming.’ David disappeared from the window and I heard the door to the ladies slam shut behind him.

  ‘What do we do with them?’ I asked, staring at the keys as though they might come to life at any second. ‘We can’t burn them. I know we can’t burn them.’

  ‘We could drop them back through the toilet window,’ Cassie suggested as David tore, red-faced, around the corner. ‘She’s going to notice they’re missing eventually and if that’s where she dropped her bag, that’s where I’d look first.’

  ‘Or we could do this,’ David suggested, snatching them from Abi’s fingers and pressing the unlock button on the key fob. In the corner of the car park a familiar little green Mini beeped into life. ‘I like the car but I expected better,’ he declared. ‘It’s a bit “look at me, I’m so quirky” isn’t it?’

  ‘I like a Mini,’ Cass replied as we all began to walk towards the girl’s car, before reaching out for my arm and opting for a more outraged expression. ‘But obviously, this is a rubbish Mini. Because it belongs to a cow.’

  ‘We don’t know she’s a cow,’ I said, repeating all the arguments I’d had with myself over the last twenty-four hours out loud. ‘She might not know Adam has a girlfriend. She might be perfectly nice.’

  David shook his head, crouching down to stare through the windows. ‘No, I’ve seen her, she’s too fit to be nice.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Abi demanded. ‘Good-looking girls can’t be nice?’

  ‘Oh, don’t start that with me.’ He stared back up at her, a picture of exasperation in rainbow-striped scrubs. He looked like a slightly annoyed, out of work clown. ‘You know exactly what I mean. Go in and have a look. If she was on The Bachelor, she’d be the first one to say “I’m here to win, not make friends” and then she’d be the first to give him a blow job when she thought no one was looking.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ Abi replied, kicking one of the car’s tyres. ‘I’m taking back your “I Am a Feminist” T-shirt.’

  ‘There’s something on the back seat.’ Cass pressed her hands against the back passenger window and looked inside. ‘I can’t read what it says though.’

  David clicked the key fob again and we all jumped back as the car beeped and flashed its lights. With his mouth open in delight, he gave a magician’s assistant flourish and opened the car door.

  ‘He didn’t.’ I covered my eyes with my hands. ‘Tell me he didn’t.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Cass said, her words bubbling over with glee. ‘But he did.’

  ‘She obviously works out.’ Abi made it sound like an accusation rather than a statement as she flipped the front seats and clambered into the back. ‘A lot, from the smell of this gym bag. It’s rancid.’

  ‘You can’t break into someone’s car!’ I stepped backwards out of the car park and into the neighbouring field, tripping over the concrete boundary. ‘Put that back.’

  ‘We’re not breaking in,’ Cass replied as she fished around in the glove box before triumphantly holding up a passport. Her face was flushed with excitement, her ponytail all askew. ‘We’ve got keys. Jane Campbell! Her name’s Jane Campbell!’

  Jane. Hmm. How dare someone that fit have such an innocuous-sounding name?

  David slipped the keys into the car and the stereo boomed into life. ‘Eurgh, Mumford,’ he said, switching it off as quickly as he could. ‘Who likes them any more?’

  ‘Adam,’ I replied. ‘Loves them.’

  ‘I’m really starting to think you’re better off out of this,’ he replied as he checked himself in her rear-view mirror. ‘You never told me he had such terrible taste in music.’

  ‘We’re all going to hell,’ I said, sitting down in the wet grass and watching my friends root through the car like truffle pigs. ‘Actually, prison first and then hell.’

  ‘You’d be good in prison.’ He lowered the driver’s window and waved. ‘You’d be the dodgy prison surgeon, fixing up all the bitches that got cut up in fights but didn’t want to go and see the proper doctor in case they got in trouble.’

  ‘She’s been to a lot of places,’ Cass said, leafing through the passport with bright eyes. ‘This is expired, though. I wonder why she keeps it in the car?’

  ‘Adam keeps his old passport in his bedside table,’ I said slowly. ‘To remind him of when he went travelling.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she nodded, still turning the pages. ‘Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar. Didn’t Adam go there, Liv?’

  ‘Yes, he’s been to all those places,’ I said weakly. Fantastic. In three days, he’d managed to find his perfect woman. Gorgeous, tall, owned a bar, liked the same music and loved to travel. In the same amount of time I had eaten a packet of chocolate Hobnobs for dinner and only showered twice.

  ‘We should go,’ Abi said, looking over at me as I sank into the mud like a miserable blonde hippo. ‘Let’s go home.’

  I stared back at the pub, wondering what they were doing in there. Did he have his hand on her knee? Was she resting her head on his shoulder? That was my shoulder, my hand.

  ‘Guys,’ Abi used her sternest boss voice and we all looked up at once. ‘We should go.’

  ‘It could still be nothing,’ Cass said, ever the optimist. ‘It really could be a meeting.’

  ‘I’m going to call him.’ I patted myself down for my phone and brought up his number. ‘I’m going to call him and ask what he’s doing. He’ll say he’s in a meeting and it’ll be fine. Won’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ David said, clamping a hand over Abi’s mouth while Cass nodded quickly. ‘Call him.’

  With an audience in front of me, it was impossible to run away, drive two hundred miles and break another iPod. Holding my breath, I pressed the call button and waited. And waited. And waited. Even Cass’s keen smile began to flag as I put Adam’s answerphone message on speaker. David looked up at the sky as it began to rain again.

  ‘Call him again,’ Abi ordered. ‘If he’s in a meeting he might not answer on the first ring but if he doesn’t answer on the second ring, he’s officially on my list.’

  Wiping drizzle off the screen with my sleeve, I dialled one more time, still on speakerphone.

  ‘Hello?’

  He answered almost immediately.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ he asked when I didn’t reply.

  ‘Yes.’ It was so strange not knowing what to say to him. ‘I was just wondering what you were doing?’

  ‘Uh, nothing.’ Cue far too long of a pause. ‘Why?’

  ‘No reason,’ I choked. ‘Are you at home?’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, either nervous or hopeful, I couldn’t decide. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Why, why, why?’ Abi muttered inside the car. ‘Arsehole.’

  ‘I was going to go and see Cass,’ I lied, ‘but she’s not home. I thought they might be with you.’

  ‘No,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘No. Actually, I am in the middle of something right now. Can I call you back later?’

  ‘Yeah, OK,’ I said, unable to turn away from my friends and keep some dignity intact. ‘Talk to you later.’r />
  He hung up before I could. Without a word, I shrugged at my friends, all still hiding inside the Mini, and tucked my phone back into my pocket. Sitting on the floor with a wet-through bum and a broken heart, I didn’t know quite what to say.

  ‘He’ll be in the middle of my fist in a minute,’ Abi said, clambering out of the car and dropping onto the wet ground beside me. ‘Don’t you dare get upset.’

  ‘This is exactly how I felt when I heard Jay Z cheated on Beyoncé,’ I heard Cass whisper to David. ‘I can’t believe it.’

  ‘What do we do with the keys?’ he asked, pulling them out of the ignition and following her out of the car. ‘Are we chucking them back in the lavs?’

  ‘We’re chucking them somewhere,’ Cass replied with wild eyes, grabbing the keys out of his hand, running into the field and hurling them as far as she could into the brambles by the side of the road. She turned back to look at us with her arms held aloft in triumph.

  ‘She didn’t.’ Abi stared at our friend who was whooping at the top of her voice. ‘She did not just do that.’

  ‘She did,’ David replied, running at Cass and lifting her up onto his shoulders. ‘She’s a hero.’

  From my spot on the floor, I looked up at Abi with saucer eyes.

  ‘Did that really just happen?’

  ‘This is what happens to people when they have a baby,’ she said, nodding. We watched as David ran around in circles with Cass still up on his shoulders, singing the theme from Rocky. ‘Give them an evening off and they go completely insane.’

  ‘In the best way,’ I added, beginning to smile. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so proud of her.’

  ‘Me either,’ Abi said, helping me up to my feet. ‘Come on, there’s a new episode of Real Housewives on tonight. Want to take a bet on who’s had the most surgery since last season?’

  ‘Always,’ I replied as my phone vibrated in my pouch. I pulled it out, hoping to see Adam’s name. Instead, I found a Tinder notification. I had a new message. It was from the handsome hipster I’d matched with the day before. ‘Go and get Bonnie and Clyde, I’ll catch up.’

  Walking slowly across the field as my friends ran ahead, I opened the message, a warm, prickly feeling spreading across my chest.