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‘So you didn’t end it because the ex arrived, you ended it because you didn’t want things to get messy?’ Annie asked.
‘Exactly,’ Ellie said, glad that someone could make sense of it all.
‘But why would things get messy, if it was just a fling?’ she countered.
‘I…’ Ellie hesitated. Why didn’t she have an answer to that?
‘And who ended things exactly?’ Annie added. ‘You or him?’
‘I did, I suppose,’ Ellie said, although she wasn’t even sure about that any more. ‘Although he didn’t exactly put up much of an objection.’ And why did that still hurt?
Ellie felt the tears begin to mist her eyes again.
Oh, for goodness’ sake, pull yourself together.
Annie touched her hand. ‘What is it, Ellie? Whatever it is we are totally here for you.’
She looked at the ceiling, struggling to keep her eyes dry. God, why was it so hard to say now, even to her friends? ‘I’ve got a really bad feeling I might have been falling in love with him. How idiotic is that?’
‘Not idiotic at all,’ Tess said, as if she hadn’t just said something completely ridiculous. ‘Because it’s obvious he was falling for you too.’
Ellie wiped away a tear with her fist. Well, at least now she knew she hadn’t completely lost her mind. Unfortunately, though, it didn’t make her predicament any less tragic. ‘No, he wasn’t.’
‘How can you be sure?’ Maddy said. ‘Did you ask him?’
‘No, thank God. The only saving grace in all this is that I didn’t do that.’ And that was still the major bright spot on the horizon. ‘Believe me, I’ve been there, done that and I already have the hideous memory of what happened to prove it.’
‘You fell in love with Art before? When?’ asked Tess, aka Miss Super Intuitive.
‘Nineteen years ago, the day before I left, I threw myself at Art. I’d had a crush on him for weeks and I thought he had a crush on me.’ Her mum had thought so too, so she hadn’t been completely nuts. ‘For a moment, I thought…’ She pushed her hair back, starting to feel ridiculous all over again. ‘I actually thought he was going to kiss me. But, instead of kissing me, he went all stiff and looked horrified. Then he told me to get lost. He told me he didn’t kiss little girls. Especially not stuck-up little girls like me.’ Good to know she could still cringe about that. ‘I was devastated, of course, as only a fourteen-year-old drama queen can be. I didn’t think I could survive at the commune after that. So the next day, when my dad arrived to visit me – I told him I wanted to go back to London with him. That I hated the commune and couldn’t live there. So we left together. I know now that devastated my mum. And the reason she signed over all her custody rights to him was because after that grand departure, she thought that’s what I wanted. She convinced herself I’d been desperately unhappy at the commune, and it was all her fault, when of course I hadn’t been and it wasn’t. And I suppose I convinced myself of the same thing, because I didn’t want to admit the truth, that I’d made a complete tit of myself and thrown myself at Art when he was not remotely interested in me.’
To think she might have done that again was even more humiliating now she thought about it. Her mother had tried to make her feel good about that stupid knee-jerk decision nineteen years ago, wanted her to believe that she’d learned from it, that what she’d done had been brave instead of just monumentally melodramatic, but how could she have learned from that mistake if she hadn’t actually owned it until this summer?
‘So let me get this straight, you didn’t tell him you think you might be falling in love with him this time?’ Maddy asked.
‘No I did not, thank God.’ She could still be relieved about that if nothing else.
‘Ellie, is it at all possible that you let that incident…’ Annie paused. ‘Which I think all of us who have ever been teenage girls in love will admit sounds pretty horrific,’ she added. ‘But is it possible that it was so awful you let it colour how you read his reaction this time around?’
Ellie thought about it, for a few seconds. Then shuddered. No, she wasn’t going to get delusional again, not even for Annie. ‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. He looked right through me, Annie. He made me feel like crap. Even if I could persuade myself I misunderstood, I can’t get past that look. He’s never looked at me like that before and I–’
‘Which is exactly my point,’ Annie interrupted. ‘Art is not a demonstrative guy. But he looks at you like you matter. I’ve also never seen him smile as much as he has in the two weeks before you split up. And he’s certainly not smiling now, in fact he’s been supremely cranky, even for him. Just ask Toto.’
‘Well, he’s not getting spectacular nooky any more, is he,’ Ellie said, not wanting to think about Toto either. ‘Men are simple creatures, sex keeps them happy. I found that out the hard way with Dan.’
‘Forget about Dan, he’s a skank,’ Annie said. ‘Art’s not. And I wouldn’t normally disagree with you re: the path to enlightenment for men being paved with spectacular nooky. Rob only whistles when he’s up at dawn to do the milking if he got up before dawn too,’ Annie said. ‘If you get my drift.’
Ellie laughed, the first genuine laugh she’d had in four days, Annie’s broad Yorkshire humour hard to resist.
‘And Rob can get tetchy if he’s not getting any, because so can I. But Art’s surprisingly self-contained in that department. I think he may have trained himself to do without sex for Toto’s sake.’ She lifted up her hand and began counting off the points with her fingers. ‘Let’s look at the evidence. One. He never brings anyone back to the farm. Ever.’
‘I was here already, he didn’t have much of a choice there,’ Ellie said.
‘Two,’ Annie carried on regardless. ‘He dates women then discards them quickly.’
‘We broke up after two weeks, so he certainly didn’t break pattern there,’ Ellie said.
‘Yes, he did, you guys were circling each other for months. Ever since you arrived really.’
