Tom messages me in the morning while Marisa and I are spoiling ourselves with croissants for breakfast after our bad night.
‘Is his flight delayed?’ she asks.
Shit.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Very annoying for him but never mind. More coffee?’
I’m definitely ending the fake relationship when Tom fake gets back from Vegas. The lying is a killer.
* * *
Tom of course does not go to Vegas but he does go for a long weekend to Lisbon with some teacher friends. He has a good time there, managing to fit in a lot of sightseeing, a lot of good food and a fair amount of drinking and partying. I know that because, even though we are no longer fake dating (on my side anyway, which I’ll tell him soon), we’re messaging several times a day.
It began the day after the wedding with him checking up on my ankle and asking how I was coping with life as an injured person, and me asking what he was up to in his school holidays while I battled spreadsheets. I told him about the wedding I was singing at and he was very interested in my song list, and when there was a huge mouse incident (one in the honeymoon suite no less) naturally I told him, given his mum’s incident while we were at Bea and Ruth’s wedding. And then we just carried on messaging.
And now Tom has just texted to say he’s home from Lisbon and that he has a little present for me and do I fancy meeting at Waterloo on my way home from work in the next couple of days so he can hand it over.
I say yes of course and decide that that will be the ideal time to fake break up with him.
* * *
Tom’s waiting when I hobble over to the clock at Waterloo three evenings later. I knew he was already there because he messaged me when he arrived to say I was a loser because he’d beaten me to it. I sent him a middle-finger emoji back.
He’s lookinghandsome, lightly tanned from his weekend away, big, solid, square-jawed. My fanciful mind thinks that he looks like a dependable oak tree in a storm as people (pretty much all smaller than him) swirl around him as he just stands and grins at me.
I can’t believe that I didn’t really notice the first time I saw him how very attractive he is. I mean, I did notice that he was attractive, but in a very objective way; it didn’t almost floor me like it does now every time I see him anew.
‘Hey.’ He leans down for a quick hug (I’m proud to say that I release him slightly before he releases me, rather thanclingingin lust). ‘Looking good with your attractive grey boot.’
‘I know. Rarely do you get an item of footwear that allows you both super speed and high fashion. Nike should take note.’
‘Fancy taking your high fashion boot to the pub?’
‘The football one?’
‘No, and also there’s no football on this evening.’
‘Dammit, what a shame. Yes. Cool.’ Eek. I’m already kind of dreading our fake break-up. Maybe we’ll both feel as though there’s no point messaging any more. I hope not.
* * *
Tom puts my glass of white and his pint on the little round table we’ve found and sits down opposite me.
‘First things first.’ He takes a little bag out of his pocket. ‘I’m not saying this is a big present, because it isn’t, but I’m pretty confident you’ll be happy with it.’
I pull it out of the bag. ‘Oh, wow,’ I breathe.
‘I know. Incredibly proud of myself.’
It’s a Portuguese cockerel made entirely out of jelly beans. And it’s particularly apt because Carole let slip that, after we left the wedding, they’d handed out lots of puddings involving jelly beans, and I wasguttedto have missed out (yes okay maybe that’s a little childish but in my defence I did have a broken ankle) because jelly beans are one of my biggest guilty pleasures in life.
‘It’sperfect. Thank you.’
He’s going to make someone – Lola or whoever – an amazing real boyfriend one day. So thoughtful on top of all his other attributes. I really can’t understand why he wasn’t snaffled by some lucky person long ago.
‘It’s so pretty as well,’ I say. ‘Really it shouldn’t be eaten.’
Tom mock gasps. ‘So are you not going to eat them?’
