‘Yeeesssss,’ Suze said slowly.
‘Excuse me? What does that mean?’ Molly blinked rapidly.
‘Nothing.’ Suze almost buried her face in the Crunchy Nut to avoid eye contact.
‘When someone says yes in that long, drawn-out way it only ever means no. You think I’m wrong? You think they’re right?’
‘Well, no, I don’t exactly think anyone is right is this weird love triangle – or quadrangle, or patio, or whatever you’d call it. It’s got a bit out of hand, I just think … maybe you should be the first to back down, offer the olive branch. Sometimes – and you know I love you, don’t you? – but sometimes you can be very … wilful. Um, bossy. In a good way mostly, but it can wear people down. A little.’
‘Yes, I know, but … that’s all part of the bootcamp, me being bossy. I am here to boss the guys into a better way of life. They want that.’
‘Yes, but the girls don’t.’
‘I know that!’
‘I’m sure you do, Mols, but you need to make it clearer to them. I think they feel like more of your subjects at the moment.’
Molly folded her arms. ‘I … OK, I can go over the top, I admit. And I should give them more credit for everything they do for me.’
‘For the bootcamp, surely?’
‘Didn’t I say that? Oh. That’s what I meant.’
‘Yeeesss.’
‘Suze!’
‘Sorry, but I think you’re on the verge of going a bit power-mad, my love. It’s time to dial it down. Way down. And apologise.’ Suze gave her friend a good, long stare.
Molly scraped her spoon around in the golden milk leftover in her bowl. ‘I’ve been a bit of a berk, haven’t I? I really said “everything they do for me”. I’ve been pushy. I’ve been a knob. Oh, dear god.’
‘Hmmm.’ Suze chewed on the inside of her cheek.
‘That’s the kind of “hmmm” someone makes when they want to agree with you, but they also don’t want to offend you deeply with that agreement. Because it confirms what a terrible personality you have. Triple bums.’
Nipping up to make a fresh pot of tea, Suze laughed kindly. ‘I would never say “terrible” when it comes to your personality, I would say energetic, sometimes bordering on the manic. But always well-intentioned. And a damn good egg. You’ll patch things up with Jose and Rachel; you’re a great team, unstoppable. Just look at all the good work you’ve done already.’
As if on cue, Rob, Simon and Pavel wandered into the kitchen, dressed in their best and cleanest sports gear, looking pretty damn sharp and toned. Unfortunately, Rob caught Molly’s appreciative eye taking in his physique.
‘Cooper, you sly fox! Take a picture, why don’t you, it’ll last longer.’ His grin could have been seen from space. Rob left his right hand on the space between her neck and her shoulder for just two beats longer than was necessary as he passed by. He gulped down a glass of water and turned back to the girls at the table. ‘Josie’s taking us all to the beach again. It’s going to hurt, but I suppose it’s worth it.’ Rob shot a wink at Molly, and the two other guys all waved with the solemnity of those headed into warfare as they filed out.
‘Hellooooo?’ Suze couldn’t control the delighted curiosity on her face. It was like a child coming down to a roof-touching pile of presents on Christmas Day. She was preparing to tear this particular gift wide open. ‘Did it happen? Was there clickage?’
Molly lifted just the right side of her face into a sly smile. ‘Maybe.’
‘There was!’ Suze clapped her neat little hands together in excitement. ‘There was clickage! Oh my god, don’t tell me – it happened on the beach last night! When you gave them that late lecture. Just as I predicted. Man, I can call them.’ Suze chuckled happily to herself.
‘All right, Derren Brown, you read my mind and predicted the future and whatnot. We had a … moment, on the way to the beach. He is an extremely good flirter and, I will admit, pretty cute. So, it can’t hurt, right? Just one harmless daytime coffee date to get to know him a bit more. And maybe it will help me build bridges with Jose and Rach – I too might see the benefits in dating someone that I know for sure has basic training in hygiene, domestic science and on trend outfits. Ha!’
Suze looked up from her tea-making with a concerned grimace.
‘Joking!’ Molly held up her hands in surrender. ‘I’m just going to play it by ear with Rob, not rush into anything. Might as well get something happening in the dry dry desert that is my love life. See if organic life can in fact be sustained there at all. But first, I think I have some serious relationship repairing to do in a more platonic way.’ Molly tried to sigh deeply with Crunchy Nut in her mouth but didn’t quite succeed. There were now formerly-crunchy bits in her tea.
* * *
Five hours trapped together in a small, moving metal cabin with no escape (except for two seven-minute loo breaks at familiar-looking service stations) will guarantee that even the most deadly of enemies will thrash out their issues, simply just to have something to do. Who knows, if Rach’s stereo hadn’t been broken, the three once-good friends may have stayed at odds longer than Take That and Robbie. But, luckily for them, an inquisitive nephew had once experimented with the effects of buttered toast and cassette players. Apparently, Clios don’t like butter.
Molly had cracked first, somewhere just before Exeter, as they headed back bright and early on the Bank Holiday Monday. Suze had caught a train to her mum’s house to meet Stephen and Max for a homecoming lunch, once she’d been reassured for the twenty-third time that she wasn’t a bad mother for having just one small pocket of fun without her family. The guys were under strict instructions to be out of the house by 6 p.m. that night and to test their domestic powers by leaving it spotless. In an outpouring of remorse, sincere apologies and promises of intense self-flagellation, Molly admitted it had all been her fault, and she was wrong to firstly try and stop relationships in the camp and doubly wrong to criticise them once they had begun in secret. She should have given them far more credit in the article, and she was going to mend her overly-bossy ways starting there and then.
Rachel folded next, as her overloaded conscience dictated. She babbled with relief as she explained that she hadn’t slept a wink since they’d fallen out. Yes, she was annoyed about not being mentioned in the mag, but there were far more grown up ways of communicating it. She didn’t have to go all Peggy Mitchell as she had. Rachel knew Molly just wanted the best for the bootcamp, for them all. The secret dating with Gary had maybe leant an unnatural seasoning of deception and intrigue to her otherwise lightly salted life, and she’d let things boil over by mistake. Molly squeezed her friend’s hand as it rested on the gear stick after changing gears.
Josie stayed weirdly quiet in the back. Especially given that she was more likely to whoop than anything else in normal life. Molly waited till she was sure Rach had chatted through all of her issues, including occasional hints that, once out in the open, a relationship with Gary maybe wasn’t quite floating her dinghy. It turned out he really wasn’t that chatty in a relaxed environment – what Rach had taken for clipped, stolen exchanges on phone or just before a seminar were in fact pretty much all he could muster. ‘You OK?’ ‘Great sandwich.’ ‘Talk later, yeah?’ After checking the confessional lane was clear, Molly cleared her throat and turned in the passenger seat to face Josie head-on.
But she didn’t see a cross Californian girl flexing her extensive range of muscles in order to give Molly the thrashing she probably deserved. Or at least a good pinching. Instead, she saw the sad little face of a homesick American, who had been terrified that she’d lost the best friends she’d ever made in Blighty. A single tear rolled down her cheek, so perfect that Molly was for a second convinced you could squeeze Josie’s stomach and get her to say a range of heart-melting phrases. But there was nothing plastic or preformed about the look on her face: absolute contrition.
‘You guuuuuuuuys!’ she wailed in a burst dam of relief. ‘I was lik
e, no way … you are so awesome, but now you … you so hate me … and Kurt got mad and said … and I called my mom … I’m real sorry, I shouldn’t have been all mean … and now you’re being so nice and apologising when I’ve been the super-heinous dickhead!’ Another tear plopped onto Josie’s royal blue zip-up hoodie.
Molly bit her lip to clamp down on any small laugh trying to escape. ‘You’re never mean. We just all went a bit far, in our own way. Me with my crazy rules and world domination plans and you guys – albeit to a much, much lesser extent, I’ll admit – with your super-sexy secret relationships. God, I have so much to catch up on! But one thing’s for sure, we aren’t dicks. That’s pretty much what gives us the advantage in life, not being ruled by a disco stick. Dry your eyes, you sweet little muffin. I need details, I need dates, I need venues. Basically, I need too much information about what’s going on with you and Kurt. And you and Gary.’ She kindly jabbed a finger in Rach’s thigh. ‘Then,’ Molly quickly added, as she could see the sparkle back in Josie’s eyes and her mouth fully open to dish the dirtiest dirt, ‘I’m going to suggest how we might shake things up a bit around here. Make life a bit fairer all round.’
Rach winked at her very briefly before turning her full attention back to the world. ‘Now you’re talking, Colonel.’
‘No, no, no, no.’ Molly replied seriously. ‘That’s the first to go. From now on, I’m a fellow private, at the most.’
‘But Private what?’ Josie asked.
‘Oh! I know,’ laughed Rach. ‘Private Business!’
Molly nodded and folded her arms. ‘Sneaky, but I like it.’
* * *
From Reading onwards, it was like the terrific trio had never been so much as an inch apart. They shared a bag of Percy Pigs after the loo break and M&S snack stop; they cooed in unison as Josie revealed in a series of sweet anecdotes how attentive Kurt was as a boyfriend; they clucked their tongues as Rachel wondered out loud whether Gary would ever truly understand that grey jogging bottoms were not suitable Sunday lunch attire. Not for the pub; not for your parent’s house. And together they worked out a plan whereby each private would train up her fellow leaders with all her expertise, so that all the different seminars, training sessions and wardrobe consultations could be dished out equally. That way, no one would feel pigeonholed or underrepresented or plain knackered, as Josie confessed to feeling more than once. Happiness descended on the little blue Clio, as three mates finally aired their troubles and helped each other find a safe way through them. Molly confessed once again what an arse she made of herself in the magazine article, but the girls reassured her that even if she’d waxed lyrical about them for twelve hours each (as she should have) the journalist would have trimmed things down to the bare essentials. It was tomorrow’s hamster cage lining, after all. For very fashionable hamsters, granted.
The happy, floaty feeling followed Molly all the way home, up the stairs, into her flat and even to the washing machine as she punched in her first load of post-holiday washing. But the edge was knocked off it when the front door slammed and a long, dark shadow fell over her. John’s shadow.
‘You’re back.’
It wasn’t a question.
‘Yup. Everything … OK?’ Molly could see from the foot-tapping at a Woody the Woodpecker speed that things patently weren’t OK.
‘Things are pretty, hmmm, how shall I put this?’ John did a mock stroke-of-the-chin that in more chilled out circumstances Molly would have ribbed him for. But she was quickly realising this wasn’t the time. She clicked the washing machine to cycle Q, as if cocking a gun ready to shoot at an angry bear. ‘Oh yes,’ John bore down straight into Molly’s eyes, ‘things are utterly shit thanks to you!’ He took out a copy of the glossy magazine and threw it down with a sharp thwack on the kitchen counter. It seemed the Peggy Mitchell baton of dramatic arts had been passed on. ‘What’s all this about? This article? You never told me about this!’
By now Molly’s mood had gone from daisy yellow to storm cloud grey. Why was John lashing out at her for doing a bit of PR? She’d hardly mentioned him and, besides the point, she’d been careful not to use his second name, to spare his manly blushes.
‘Sorry, I didn’t think—’ she responded calmly, but John’s rant cut across her.
‘No, you never do. Well, thanks to you, Melissa has seen this and is pissed off with me and it’s all gone to bollocks.’ A deep crack broke John’s voice on the last expletive, showing the worry that fuelled his anger.
‘Whoa, slow down a sec. What are you talking about? Why is Melissa pissed off with you?’
‘Because you said I was completely over her!’ John flounced out into the living room and Molly skittered after him, just in time to see him collapse into the sofa cushions like a puppet with its strings cut.
‘But you are. And that’s what she wanted. Especially after that time you cornered her in the frozen foods aisle.’ Molly threw up her hands, pretty much adrift in the choppy seas of this typhoon of a conversation. John had blown in, capsizing her sunny mood. Perhaps if she left her hands in the air, someone would throw her a life preserver. Or a clue. But no luck.
‘I did not corner her – I ran into her. By mistake. And it was pet food. But that’s not what this is about. She did want me to get over her, then. But now … things are different.’ John’s temper suddenly left him in an instant, his voice now as limp as a sail without a breeze.
Plonking down beside him, Molly asked, ‘How different?’
‘Liss doesn’t want me to be over her any more, she wants me to be, you know …’ John wiggled his head from side to side and shrugged casually with all the communicative ease of an eleven-year-old who missed sex education week.
‘Under her?’ Molly supplied.
‘Hmm.’
‘Really?’ Molly had just been trying to disarm John with humour; she hadn’t expected this to be the real answer. She thought perhaps the sentence might have ended ‘she wants me to, you know, agree to a restraining order.’ Or ‘you know, change my name and move to Skegness.’ Well that just proves it: you can’t call them all. ‘You’re back together? Really?’
‘All right, no need to sound so shocked!’ John folded his arms and looked away. ‘You said yourself that I’m a changed man and a grade-A boyfriend specimen.’
‘Yes, absolutely. But I was thinking of a new relationship for you. Not hanging on to an old one.’
‘Ah! But that’s just it! Liss was the one I was doing it for. I wanted to stop cocking things up so I could win her back.’ John sat forward with a reinvigorated bolt of energy. ‘I’ve changed. I’m new. I’m better now and I can really deserve her. I can endeavour to deserve her, because you straightened me out.’
‘Ahhh, you pickle.’ Molly felt the sunshine emerge from its hiding place behind the cross thunder clouds. But seeing the deep lines of discontent stretched across John’s brow, turned the weather forecast on its head.
‘Mols, no! That’s not the end of it. Melissa saw the article. The article in which you said I was one hundred percent over her. And now she says she can’t trust me, she can’t trust if all the promises I’ve made are real or just … you know, guff. Aggghhh.’ Deflated once again, John flung himself back into the squidgy sofa cushions.
‘We fixed things once,’ Molly said confidently, ‘we can fix them again. You’ve got one ace up your sleeve, John.’
‘I do?’ came a muffled voice behind two big hands.
‘She took you back, after everything: the towels, the pizza boxes, the old pants, the football kit—’
‘Sorry, was there an ace in all that?’
Molly sighed but tried to remain Zen. Ommm, I am well. Ommm, I am calm. Ommm, I will not remove his kidneys through his nose for the crime of being an idiotic man. ‘Yes. Because it means she loves you. And that we can always work with.’
‘Mmmm?’ John peeked out from between his hands. ‘How, exactly?’
‘If in doubt, my good man, go to the source of
romance: the movies. If you can stomach some humiliation on a grossly public level and expose the very fibres of your heart, all with good grace, then this will be a cinch.’
John swallowed heavily. ‘Anything. Anything for Liss.’
Molly smiled. ‘Pickle,’ she cooed.
* * *
The previous few days had been a rollercoaster, to say the least. Actually, Molly thought to herself as she hurriedly typed up some seminar notes with her laptop balanced on the arm of the sofa, it’s been more like a rollercoaster powered by turbo jets on a runway track with Marty trying to get it up to 88 mph so the flux capacitor can trigger. She noticed she had typed, Don’t be afraid to talk about your true flux capacity and quickly deleted the last two words. Humming Huey Lewis and the News to herself, Molly suddenly thought of Patrick. She hadn’t bumped into him since that cup of tea, and she had half a memory that she was supposed to be measuring him up for some bootcamp treatment. But first she’d have to come clean about the whole shebang. It wasn’t fair to tell porkies to a mate, and Patrick had become such a good friend he was bordering on being the official replacement Sam. Until Sam came back, of course.
When Molly finished tinkering with her seminar-giving notes so that she’d be super-duper ready for a skill-swapping session with Privates Fabulous and Kick-Ass on Saturday morning at their favourite cafe, she opened a new Excel document. On a roll from fixing so many problems in the last seventy-two hours, Molly thought she could perhaps stretch to just one more. She had her friends back on side and John’s big gesture of love all planned out: now to Patrick’s singleness. He was obviously keen to get back on the market – he came along to the speed dating night without much encouragement, after all, and Molly hadn’t once heard him mention a girl’s name. Molly headed two columns: Strengths and Weaknesses. Holding one finger mid-air, as if testing the wind before hitting a birdie, Molly’s heightened focus was quickly disturbed by the tinny ting of the washing machine to announce that it had finished its cycle. Her holiday whites. Molly had just two pairs of jeans left that were noticeably pungent with over-wear. One pair had a very dusty, mottled patch around the bum from Molly’s self-pitying beach visit. She ducked into her bedroom, grabbed both offending denim articles and took them to the washing machine. Feeling momentarily proud of her multi-tasking today – bootcamp work and friendship work and domestic work. Nice going, Mollypops! – Molly pulled out her clean load and shoved in her stinky one.
The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp Page 26