Page 65 of Little Miss Fortune

Shame like never before is rising at my sides. He is accusing me of using him, and I have no rebuttal; he is right. I used his feelings as a way to satisfy my own selfish need for comfort.

‘I am sorry,’ is all I can say.

I grab my bag and phone. Twenty-two missed calls from my dad and Hannah. Great.

‘No, don’t say sorry, Fuko.’ He grabs my hand. ‘Say what you actually feel so that I can understand how to process the fact that I’ve spent the last two months fawning over someone so completely unavailable.’

‘But you weren’t, Toby.’ I pull my hand away. ‘You were dating someone else. Someone that won’t even return my messages because I hurt her so much. I am one whistle away from being fired, and unlike some, I don’t have every door open to me. So I am sorry if I can’t return your feelings, destiny or not, because for some reason every time you are involved, I keep making bad choices. So bad, in fact, that I can’t even blame them on my bad luck anymore. There are other things that are simply more important to me right now.’

We stand in suffocating silence. My words made it seem as if he is responsible for my problems. His pained eyes are darting around my face, looking for a sign of regret or apology, but I stubbornly do not move a muscle. I hope that if I hurt him enough, he will stop trying. That he will leave the dirty slut alone.

‘Is there anything I can do?’ he whispers.

‘There’s nothing.’ I walk back to the lift. The doors open by themselves. How the hell...

Toby is behind me; I hold my breath, waiting for him to say something, anything, to call me cruel, a bitch, chuck something at my head. He doesn’t enter, as if waiting for me to say something, or maybe he wants me to see how badly I’ve hurt him.

‘Better luck next time, then.’ Toby reaches in and presses the green G. It’s not clear whether he directed that to me or himself.

His blank expression makes my chest ache. Metal doors shut between us.

There might not be a lower point in a person’s life than this.

CHAPTER 23

Misfortunes go up to eleven

I should have gone to the toilet whilst I was still at Toby’s. The journey back is about fifty minutes, and normally, I would have been thinking about what to say to Dad on my return. But now all I think about is how to sneak into the bathroom without being seen. The Tube away from central London is surprisingly empty at this time of the day. A man sitting across from me is chomping down on a half of a watermelon. A woman to the left is playing songs by Kate Bush out loud. The carriage might be empty, but it’s full of characters. Really helps with the need to pee and the screaming that’s happening inside my head.

It starts raining when I walk home, of course it does. I don’t bother with the umbrella, contorting my body to reach for it would just increase my desperate and all-consuming desire to piss, as well as the fact that I think I deserve to get rained on. The shrubberies by the houses look mad at my walk of shame, rustling their judgemental leaves, but I keep walking, jingling my keys.

The door is unlocked, presumably for me. The smallest step makes a floorboard creek.

‘Fuko?’ Dad’s voice from upstairs. ‘It better be you, or I swear—’

‘It’s me.’ I drop my head. The door to the toilet downstairs is ajar, but the crossness of my father’s tone makes me think needing to pee is the least of my concerns.

He rushes down, fully clothed for work. ‘Have you lost your mind? I was worried sick. Do you know how many times we called last night?’

‘I am sorry. The phone was on silent.’

‘No, sorry won’t cut it, madam. What on earth possessed you to stay out on a Tuesday?’

Hanako’s face pops up on the first floor’s landing.

‘I—’ I try to find the words. Obviously, I am not going to say that I stayed at a boy’s house.

‘Yes?’

‘I was fired.’

‘What?’ The two of them gasp.

‘They fired me. I got really drunk and stayed at a friend’s house.’

‘Which friend? I called both Sashka and Leon. They haven’t heard from you,’ he shouts but with notes of genuine curiosity. He is right. I do only have two friends. Did. Ouch.

‘Fawzia, from work,’ I lie like a teenager. ‘She was there when they fired me. So I just crashed at hers.’