The Rom-Com Collection: The Plus One, Something for the Weekend, A Marriage of Connivance

by Natasha West

  ‘Yes, yes, of course I will!’ Charlie said, thrusting the ring onto her finger.

  Amy, who was now pulling into Maddie’s street, almost crashed the car with excitement. Charlie had said yes to her.

  They parked up and reached out to kiss each other, but the seatbelts yanked them both back in their seats.

  ‘For god sakes!’ cried Amy as they both hurried to unclick themselves.

  Once the belts were dealt with, their lips flew to each other and their bodies fought their way through the steering wheel, the transmission box and the rigid seats, wanting to be close.

  Five hot minutes later, Charlie was straddling Amy in the driver’s seat and the kiss was still happening.

  A tap on the window made them both jump in their respective skins. They turned to see a bemused Maddie standing outside the car.

  ‘Bloody hell, you two. Would you just have a cold shower?’

  Charlie grinned and waved her newly engaged hand at her, the diamond glittering in the sunshine.

  Maddie’s scream of delight was heard two streets away.

  The wedding took place the following summer. Maddie had been given charge of the arrangements and she was loving it. She realised it was a lot more fun when it wasn’t your own wedding.

  As Charlie and Amy finished exchanging their personalised yet tasteful vows in front of their families and friends, (which included a loudly weeping Ed) the crowd cheered and the newly married couple kissed each other, more in love than ever. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful wedding, everyone agreed.

  And it was all the better for the fact that Lilah was NOT invited.

  Something for the Weekend

  By

  Natasha West

  Copyright © 2016 by Natasha West

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Year One

  August 2006 - The Globe Inn (Leeds)

  The hall was large and empty, filled with chairs chosen for stackability rather than comfort. People began to file in without enthusiasm. The crowd had no common denominator. They ranged in age, sex and physical attributes. If you could apply any commonality to them, it’s that most of them had a vaguely beaten down look.

  Except for one woman. Her name was Jess Cooper. She had jet black hair, olive complexion and a modest Mancunian accent. As a PE teacher, she was usually in sports gear and this day was no different. She wore a black tracksuit. Somehow, she rocked it. Though not conventionally good looking, there was something appealing about her strong features. She had a more determined look than the rest. Some might say that at twenty-two, she was simply too young to be downtrodden yet, that it would come with age, as it had to everyone else at the Teachers’ Union Conference. Maybe that was true, maybe not. Time would tell.

  But for now, she was not beaten. Simply bored. It was her first time at the conference and she had every expectation that it would be a complete snooze. She wasn’t wrong. It proved deeply dull for the most part.

  Every year the delegates flocked to the conference, with varying degrees of willingness, to discuss the issues that affected them and to vote on courses of action. It was dull, but not without its perks. Because although the three-day conference was filled with a lot of lacklustre speakers, there was fun to be had during the two nights. That’s when everyone cut loose.

  And if you’d never seen several hundred teachers on a free jolly… Well, it was quite a sight.

  But Jess didn’t know about that yet. She just wanted to put in her time and go home. She wasn’t expecting to have any fun at all. In fact, she’d started to wonder if it had been a bad idea to volunteer for this.

  She had started the school year at the rowdy Edgewood comprehensive school in her hometown of Manchester full of piss and vinegar, eager to take on the world. And when an opportunity to get involved with the union came up, she jumped at it. She wanted to make a difference.

  But now she was sitting there, doubts were surfacing. She could have been doing, well, she wasn’t sure exactly, but something better than sitting in a drafty hall, trying to suppress a fart.

  After everyone was seated, they awaited the first speaker, who was set to talk about issues of holiday pay. No one was exactly jazzed to hear her.

  Suddenly, the door at the back of the hall exploded open.

  The entire hall turned to see who had crashed in. They saw a slight, bespectacled woman with thick auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail creeping into the hall. Her name was Chloe Price. She was twenty-two years old and an English Literature teacher. She tended to speak quietly, her working class southern background hidden in a received pronunciation accent, the result of many years of practise. Her pretty freckled face was currently beetroot red. She had been hoping to sneak in, but the door was lighter than expected and she’d just made a hell of an entrance.

  Jess checked her out reflexively. ‘Cute’ she thought simply. And then turned back in her seat.

  Chloe trotted down the aisle and quickly found a seat. She looked down at the floor until she was sure everyone had stopped staring at her. Unlike Jess, she was not ambivalent. She categorically didn’t want to be here. But the teacher she replaced at her school, Mrs Jacobs, had also been a union rep. So when Mrs Jacobs retired and Chloe came to supplant her as the English teacher, fresh from her PGCE qualification, everybody seemed to expect her to take on that role too. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to do it, but she was new so she accepted it without much of a fight. She didn’t want to make waves.

  The other teachers had assured her that it was really just a figurehead role anyway and that the older teacher she was paired with, Sue Whitson, would take on most of the work, which didn’t tend to be a heavy load. Life at the private school that Chloe taught at, Oxford’s exclusive Redmond School, tended toward the undramatic. There was the occasional affair that went on between teachers that might need mediation once it turned ugly, but other than that, it was a place where the pay was decent and the kids were relatively obedient. At least to the extent that there weren’t any sizeable drug problems or violence that went beyond the odd bitch slap meted out to some meat headed rugby player by his overly suspicious girlfriend.

  The biggest problem they had at Redmond was the entitled air some of the kids, not to mention the parents, approached their educational life with. Any pressure that came from the administration was strictly to do with keeping grades on point. As long as you could manage that, it wasn’t a bad place to work. And so far, Chloe was producing decent results. Which was fortunate because she was a nervy creature. Any real heat would have been too much for her fretful disposition.

  The Conference leader stepped up to the mic.

  ‘Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the National Teachers’ Union 2006 conference.’

  Everyone clapped for the minimally polite length of time.

  It had been a long day of speechifying and voting. Jess was tired, but she needed to eat and the conference had laid on a buffet for the first night. She wasn’t looking forward to mingling with the other teachers. From what she’d gathered so far, they weren’t really her crowd.

  Still, free food is free food.

  As she travelled down in the elevator, she thought about her ex-girlfriend, Elly.

  They’d only broken up three weeks ago. It had been Jess’s decision. She’d gotten tired of feeling like she came last on Elly’s list of priorities. Elly was a busy type, her life always filled with co
mmitments and people that needed her. Her family, her job as a nurse, her friends who always seemed to be in some drama or another, it became too much for Jess. After eight months together, she had begun to feel that it was never going to change because Elly didn’t really want it to. What she really wanted was to feel busy and needed by the people in her life. Jess began to realise she’d always come last.

  When she finally had the conversation with her about wanting to finish things, Elly had been shocked to discover that Jess felt that way. She promised she’d do better. But it was too little and too late for Jess. She’d already checked out.

  So she was single again. Not that she was thinking about the possibilities of that yet. In fact, she’d begun to worry that she’d made a mistake. Perhaps she should have given Elly another chance. She had felt comfortable with her. Maybe she’d been too quick to discard that, she worried.

  Or maybe she’d simply saved herself some wasted years with someone who couldn’t prioritise her, she argued with herself. That was Jess in a nutshell. She jumped into decisions abruptly. Only after the fact did she ever worry about whether it was the correct one.

  As the elevator landed on the ground floor, she was conflicted. She thought maybe she should send Elly a text, just to get a sense of how she felt about her now, whether she was amenable to opening the discussion about a reunion. She got her phone out as the doors opened and began to compose a message as she drifted out of the lift.

  At the other end of the hotel, on the patio, Chloe was on the phone. She was currently in the midst of a similar situation. But she was on the other end of it. She was getting the boot from her girlfriend, Laura.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this to me over the phone, now, while I’m away.’

  Most people would have realised Laura had actually chosen this moment quite carefully. But in her shock, Chloe was blind to the fact.

  ‘I’m sorry Chloe, but I don’t want us to waste any more of each other’s time.’

  Chloe was shocked.

  ‘But, I thought… Laura, we’re engaged! You proposed to me!’

  ‘I know, I know, I know…’ she said with sadness. The sadness was for herself. She hated having to do this. It made her feel like a dick, which she thought was unjust.

  ‘Why? Just tell me why.’

  ‘I’ve just felt this gap growing between us since we got engaged.’

  ‘That was only three months ago’ Chloe said, outraged.

  ‘It’s just felt off. Haven’t you felt that too?’

  Chloe considered the question. Maybe things had seemed a little wrong since the engagement. Laura had become distant. But she’d thought that would pass once they were married. They loved each other, she thought. That was what mattered. Whatever was up with Laura, they’d get through it.

  And then it clicked.

  ‘Have you met someone else?’ she asked tensely.

  ‘NO!’ cried Laura quickly. But it was too late. Chloe might have been a doormat but she was far from stupid. And it was all rapidly adding up.

  Laura taking her phone into the shower. Laura’s laptop suddenly having password protection when it never had before. Her suddenly taking up hockey, which meant she was now busy on Sundays yet refusing to let Chloe come and watch.

  ‘You have, haven’t you?’ Chloe asked, a lump rising in her throat.

  ‘Chloe, don’t be ridiculous’ Laura said, as though dealing with a petulant toddler.

  Chloe found herself taking the phone away from her ear and modestly pressing the call cancel button. She stood on the patio for a second, looking out at a pond on the grounds. She very calmly approached the pond and then pitched the phone into it as hard as she could. It made a satisfying sploosh sound as it hit the water.

  She turned and walked back into the hotel, pushing down the feelings of anger and sadness that were trying to climb out of her.

  By the time she walked into the hotel, her exterior showed no sign of the fact that her engagement had just blown up in her face.

  Jess was still composing her text message to Elly while she stood in line for food.

  ‘Hey Elly, how’s it going?’ she wrote. And then deleted. The message was a bit nothing.

  ‘I miss you. Do you miss me?’ she wrote and then rapidly deleted again. Way too needy.

  ‘Elly, how are you doing? I was hoping maybe we could talk?’ she wrote and then paused. Was it too much as an opening gambit? Should she play it slightly cooler?

  She was still considering whether to send it when she saw Chloe get in line behind her. It was a good chance to get a better look at the girl that she had only seen from a distance. It confirmed Jess’s first thought. She was definitely cute, in a bookish kind of way. The glasses, the tight ponytail, she definitely had that hot librarian thing happening.

  Jess had a sudden image of the hair coming down and the glasses coming off. It made her feel a little heat in her cheeks. She turned back to her text message, determined not to get distracted from her emotional conflict by a pretty face.

  Meanwhile, Chloe was absently piling food onto her plate. She’d yet to notice Jess. She was still thinking about Laura. She couldn’t understand how things had gone so wrong in so short a time. Three months ago, the proposal. The month after that, the engagement party. Then the planning had begun. Before she’d left for the conference, she’d had a discussion with Laura about the menu for the wedding. She’d said she wanted the main to be a fish course. She hadn’t said she was about to break it off. Not so much as a hint. Until Chloe was at the other end of the country.

  The coward, Chloe thought, tears springing to her eyes. And then she pushed it back down. She didn’t want her emotions to spill out. Not here, amongst perfect strangers. If she broke down in the middle of the welcome buffet, she’d be the talk of the conference for the remainder of the weekend. And she didn’t want to become ‘That Girl.’

  She couldn’t even go to her room, because she shared it with Sue. She was a nice enough woman, but Chloe wouldn’t say she was a friend. Certainly not someone she was prepared to weep in front of.

  No, what she would have to do was stamp the feelings down. She’d wait until she got home. And then she’d cry her eyes out, just like her mother taught her.

  She considered all this while holding a dry sandwich. She didn’t realise that to an outside eye, she was staring at the sandwich like it had run over her dog.

  That outside eye was Jess. Her finger was hovering above the send text button, when she found her gaze slip back to the Hot Librarian. The woman looked like there was a lot going on behind her eyes. And it was taking her attention away from Elly, she found with relief. She wondered if she should say something. If it had been some middle aged hairy man stood next to her in a state of distress, the answer to that question would have been no. But funnily enough, this beautiful woman seemed to merit Jess’s compassion.

  ‘Hey, are you alright?’

  Chloe looked up sharply.

  ‘What? Why? Yes. Why?’ she asked at speed.

  Jess felt like she’d just taken a series of verbal bullets in the face. The woman was seriously edgy. But Jess was an ‘In for a penny, in for a pound’ type of person. She pushed on.

  ‘You just look a bit-’

  ‘A bit what?’ she asked nervously. She was a little shocked. She thought she’d been putting a brave face on things and this woman had seen though it like a wendy-house window.

  ‘Err, upset?’ Jess said quietly

  ‘I’m fine’ Chloe said quickly.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Jess asked boldly. ‘Because I think you might be the saddest person ever to contemplate a cheese and pickle sandwich.’

  Chloe couldn’t help it, she let out a short bark of laughter. She immediately regretted it.

  ‘Well, I’m fine.’

  Jess shrugged.

  ‘Ok, then’ she said and walked away, taking her plate to the nearest empty seat.

  Chloe watched her go, wondering if she’d been
kind of a bitch to the stranger. She was just trying to be nice. Chloe hoped she hadn’t offended her.

  But as she watched Jess eating her food, she didn’t look particularly put out by Chloe’s moodiness. She seemed really into some olives she was pushing into her mouth. Chloe felt a pang of envy. The stranger had just shaken the moment off with ease. Chloe had never been able to do that. She tended to give all human interactions intense port mortems.

  Meanwhile, Jess had indeed forgotten Chloe’s rejection of her sympathetic inquiries. She was back on the Elly problem. Yet still, she didn’t send the text.

  Later, most of food had been consumed and people were moving onto booze. Chloe desperately wanted to go to her room, but she knew that Sue was probably already installed in bed, curled up with a bad book. She’d made those threats on the train up and as Chloe hadn’t seen her all evening, she’d obviously made good. Chloe didn’t want to go up until she was sure that Sue was fast asleep. She’d probably have to wait a few hours.