Evie locked her Renault Clio – nicely nestled in the last space in Cirencester’s biggest car park – and beamed at the middle-aged man in the un-parked bottle green Jaguar who’d arrived literally minutes after she’d started waiting – with her indicator on – for this parking bay and had then tried to angry-gesture her into giving the space up to him.
She checked her watch. She was actually nearly half an hour early for brunch with Jed. She could go shopping but she didn’t have any spare money so that was clearly a bad idea. She could go and sit in the café and wait for him and read.Or, she could go to his flat and surprise him and they could have a lovely hand-in-hand walk along the river together to get to the café.
That would be nice. It was maybe taking things slightly to the next level, just turning up unannounced at his flat, but it felt like things were getting serious between them. They’d been going out since the middle of September, just after Evie had started her job at the big comprehensive in Cirencester where he worked as a games teacher. Some Year Elevens had seen them together walking through a park a couple of weeks ago and had done the whole ‘Ooh, Miss Green and Mr Raffertyholding hands’ thing and Jed had been cool about it; he’d just laughed. And he’d mentioned maybe going to the staff Christmas party together.
Jed’s flat was on the ground floor of a Victorian house a little way out of the town centre. She could see from along the road that the curtains at the front were closed, so he must be having a slow start this morning.
When Evie got to the house, the main front door was open. She went in and knocked on the door of his flat.
He didn’t come to the door immediately but he was definitely in there, because she could hear voices. He was probably watching TV in the sitting room, which his front door opened directly onto.
Eventually, he opened the door, wearing a dressing gown tied very haphazardly and showing a lot of bare chest.
‘Evie!’ he said, his voice a lot higher than usual, and pushed the door so that it wasn’t so wide open, but not before she’d seen Laura Carter, one of the history teachers at school, on the other side of the room, wearing a large t-shirt over long – and gorgeous – bare legs and feet.
Evie reflexively pushed the door back towards him and stepped into the room.
‘Morning, Laura,’ she said. ‘Morning, Jed.’ Something was whooshing loudly in her ears and her eyes were filling and she had no idea what to say next.
Jed tightened the belt on his dressing gown and said, ‘Evie, could you give us a moment?’
Give them a moment? Likeshe, his supposed girlfriend of nearly three months, was intruding? With the implication that she was being almost slightly rude? Pissoff.
‘I’ll give you as long as you like.’ Evie was pleased that she’d found her voice and, hopefully, her dignity, since her tears had receded. ‘Just so you know, Laura, Jed slept with me, in his bed here, two nights ago. Jed, just soyouknow, you’re a two-timing bastard.’
She turned round and marched herself back out into the hall, feeling slightly shaky with adrenalin. It took her three fumbles to get the main front door open but finally she was outside and had walked far enough along the road that Jed and Laura wouldn’t be able to see her out of the sitting room’s bay window if they were looking.
How unbelievably humiliating. God, howstupid, that, after Jed had mentioned the Christmas party date, she’d been on the brink of telling several other teachers that she and Jed were an item. Thank goodness the only person at school that she’d told was her friend Anita, who she’d known forever since they were at school themselves before they then ended up working in the same school.
What had he actually been planning for the Christmas party? How could he have gone with her if he was also sleeping with Laura? Maybe it was a one-off with Laura.
Now she thought about it, she and Jed hadn’t actually been out anywhere within sight of anyone from school apart from bumping into those Year Elevens in the park. There’d been a couple of group evenings out and he’d made excuses not to go each time. Again, bastard.
Okay. She should stop wasting her life thinking about himright now. Although what else was she going to do with her morning? God. She wassostupid. She’dreallyliked him. Notreallyreally. Not likelovereally. But he’d seemed like a good long-term prospect. He was good company and good-looking and he was a teacher. And he had a lovely, neat flat.
Hopefully it wasn’t just neat because he’d always just cleared up after other women. Eurgh, if he’d done this before, she really hoped he’d changed his sheets in between.
It felt so bad to have been two-timed. And it was what so many men had done to her mum.
Evie stopped in the middle of the pavement and put her hands over her face.
What. An. Idiot.
She should have been a better judge of character.
Right. She wasn’t going to waste her morning. She was going to call Anita and see if she was around for coffee, and moan to her about Jed.
Her phone pinged with a message from Jed while she was waiting for Anita.No hard feelings? Jx
No hard feelings? Was he insane? She had very hard feelings. Completely rigid feelings. She sent a reply sayingPiss offand then deleted his number.
Which was clearly a pretty pathetic response from a spurned woman. She should probably have done something spectacular, like spray-paint his pride-and-joy kit car with something very sweary, or cut up all his designer trainers or, no, she couldn’t even think of anything else. And painting a car and cutting up trainers weren’t really spectacular; they were just petty. Better to have walked away withsomepride intact.
Forty-five minutes later, Evie and Anita were in the coffee shop in Middle Bishop, the village where Anita lived, a couple of miles from Melting, and Anita was shaking her head for the umpteenth time and saying, also for the umpteenth time, ‘Bastard.’ She poured herself another cup of tea and forked up another big mouthful of coffee and walnut cake. ‘I know it’s only been an hour or two, but I feel that you’re ready to move on to the next phase of your break-up.’
Evie wasn’t so sure. ‘What is that phase?’
‘The phase where you hear gossip about Jed and realise that you’ve had a very lucky escape.’
