Page 91 of Love Letters on Hazel Lane

‘Which way are you heading?’ he said as they stepped onto the pavement.

Jo indicated towards Victoria Station.

‘I’m going the opposite way,’ he said, ‘but I’d be happy to walk you to the station.’

‘Thanks, but no need.’

He kissed her on both cheeks. Not the swift, perfunctory air kisses of two acquaintances, but with tenderness, his soft, warm lips resting for a moment against her skin.

For a second, Jo felt a longing for him, but pushed it away. Things were over with Si – with good reason too – and they had been for years. And he was with someone new.

‘Goodbye, Si,’ she said and walked away.

When she reached the Station, her train was about to leave. Jo ran towards the ticket barrier, pushing her ticket into the machine to open the gates, then ran towards the platform. But she was moments too late.

She slumped onto a cold, metal bench, watching the train disappear, and realised that she hadn’t found out why Si had sought her out after all this time.

‘This is Si we’re talking about,’ she said to herself. ‘He must have wanted something.’

Looking back at the evening, she couldn’t figure what it was. He’d spent nearly an hour in Wetherspoons, reminiscing about their relationship and trying to make her see things the way he wanted her to see them, not how they actually were. He’d been trying to reframe things.

He’d been trying to make her believe they’d had a good relationship but why?

Because they hadn’t. He had spent every day of their marriage trying to mould her into someone she wasn’t. He’d controlled every aspect of her life.

Her ex-husband was a bully. He had bullied her throughout their marriage, like Leona bullied her in the office. Like those children at school had bullied her.

She had been bullied by other people her whole bloody life. And it had to stop, Jo decided. It had to.

35

Jo had finished all her work, but it wasn’t quite six o’clock and she didn’t like to slope off early. So she sat in the office, watching Leona, wondering for the umpteenth time why the two of them had never got on, why Leona picked on her.

Leona clearly hadn’t finished all of her work. In fact, she looked frantic. Hassled. Her usually perfect hair looked ruffled and unkempt – her regular grooming sessions in the ladies’ loos were a thing of the past now she was being promoted – and her mascara had run too. Jo wondered if she’d been crying.

Jo felt a wave of sympathy towards her colleague. She wasn’t coping, that was apparent, although David didn’t seem to have noticed. Everyone else had, though. Three of the cameramen had phoned up, complaining that their invoices hadn’t been paid. Leona was snappy with everyone, not just Jo, and her usually perfect complexion looked pale and blotchy. Jo had even spotted her biting her once perfectly manicured nails.

Jo wondered, as she had several times in the last few days, if she shouldn’t offer to help. If anyone else had been struggling, she’d have gone straight over and asked what she could do. But she remembered all the nasty comments directed at her in the past, how she was never invited out for after-work drinks, and, worst of all, how Leona had stolen her programme idea, so she left her to it and went to the ladies’.

She frowned at her face in the mirror.

Why did people like Leona pick on her? What was it about her face, her personality, her being that made them do that?

She never stood up for herself, never had the courage.

When Leona had pitched Love Letters right in front of her in that meeting, she hadn’t said a word. And Leona would have known that Jo would stay silent.

Or on that terrible date with Neil in ¡Tapas! ¡Tapas! He’d made her feel obliged to pay half of that ridiculously expensive bill. She could have said, Now, hang on, wait a minute, you ordered all that food.

How had he known that she would say nothing? That she’d do as he wanted and tap her card on the machine?

Did she look like a pushover? Or, worse still, a victim?

People looked down on her. Why was that?

She stared at her reflection.

Was it because she was slightly overweight? Was she seen as inferior just because of a few extra pounds? Were people really that judgemental?