Lisa wondered why everyone thought this explained things and then she realised what they were referring to. ‘Oh, I see. I haven’t got that type of man trouble.’
‘Lucky you!’
‘No, I mean,I do, but… but I don’t have a man not to have sex with.’
‘Ahem!’
Lisa turned to see she had reached the front of the queue and she was being glared at as if that was a highly inappropriate thing to say in such surroundings. Both Lisa and Felicity looked at each other and laughed. ‘Sorry,’ they announced in unison, causing them to laugh harder. Lisa couldn’t help but think thatsomething about being back together was making them behave like the teenagers they had once been!
After very briefly filling Melissa in about her past with Nathan, Lisa confessed to her and Felicity about her drunken Facebooking, the subsequent messages she had received from him and seeing Nathan unexpectedly that morning, cringing when she got to the part where she told them she had agreedto go out for a drink to ‘catch up’. They hung on every word as she described how he looked and how it felt to be hugged by him while she was inappropriately dressed in a wetsuit.
‘So, you see, Flick, I had to find you, so you could talk some sense into me.’
‘Oh my God, yes; why haven’t you – Fred give that back – gone out with him already?’
‘But… wait, what?’ Lisa wasn’texpecting that. ‘It makes no sense.’
‘You said he wants to catch up—’
‘But—’
‘But nothing, it’s – Fred, Mummy said, “No”.’
Lisa watched as Felicity went to sort out an altercation between Fred and another boy, wondering if her friend ever actually finished a sentence in the presence of her children.
‘Perfect!’ Felicity finally offered, returning to her seat.
‘I’m not sure you could describe what happened between Nathan and I as perfect, Flick, you were there.’ Lisa pushed away an image of Nathan’s shocked and hurt face at their prom.
‘But that was all so long ago. It will be different now.’
Lisa thought about seeing Nathan at Wild, Wet and Windy, his arms around her; it did feel different. But perhaps not in the way Felicitymeant.
‘You two used to get on so well. A catch up might be… fun.’ Felicity wiggled her eyebrows.
Melissa paused mid sip of her coffee. ‘Hmm, a grown up “catch up”. It sounds good to me. That’s what Adam and I need.’
Flick leaned round to watch Fred as he set off to get his second biscuit. ‘Seriously, Lisa, you used to be great together. Nathan was your closest friend– after me, of course. But I concede, I never carried your schoolbag for you. I never pinned Wayne Tully up against the wall for swearing at you. I didn’t fill your locker with flowers on Valentine’s Day. And – my personal favourite from the Nathan Baker years – I never got a train to London just to stand in line to get Robbie Williams’ autograph for you when your parents wouldn’t let you go.’ Felicitypaused to lift Fred on to her lap before continuing.
‘Look, Lisa, I didn’t see Nathan much after you left. I guess you were what we shared in common and we were both too raw about you going.’
Lisa swallowed down the feeling of guilt she felt as a lump in her throat.
‘But I know he was miserable without you, and despite other girls from school offering to console him, inone way or another, I know he didn’t accept. At worse the way you ended is too much to put aside, but if not, then you could be friends, or more. What have you got to lose?’
My dignity.
‘What’s stopping you?’
How hard it was to get over him the first time and the fear that I never have. The fact being around him might remind me what I once had and all that I let go.
‘What other plans have you got?’ Melissa asked.
‘None!’ Weighing up a night out with Nathan opposed to another evening in with Simon Cowell and co in her mind, Lisa realised there was no contest, even with all of her misgivings. ‘OK, I’ll go, but, seriously, if he does a Dom on me, I’m blaming you!’
‘A what?’ Both Felicity and Melissa’s eyes boggled.
