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Despite herself, Samantha asks, ‘How?’
Jenny shakes her head. ‘It was obvious. And it was so horrible. I’d met this amazing woman. You know that feeling when you think you’re going to be really good friends with someone? Well, that’s what I felt, and I think Aisha did too.’
‘I didn’t. Jenny just stalked me into submission.’
They both crack up. Samantha smiles with as much indulgence as she can muster.
‘Why horrible?’ she insists. ‘Why couldn’t you just be friends?’
‘Because I knew he was two-timing her. And she was so beautiful and cool and everything, but I didn’t know her and I didn’t know whether to tell her or whether to just leave it. It would have been easier to say nothing, but I’d had a lot to drink and she gave me this hug and I was, like, mate …’ She rolls her eyes, reliving the moment.
‘And she told me,’ Aisha says. ‘Which I still think was fucking brave.’
‘Why?’ Samantha’s fists are two tight balls, her chest on fire.
Jenny meets her gaze, her eyes a brown-flecked green. ‘Because he was two-timing her with me.’
Twenty-Two
Samantha feels the throb of a pulse at her temple. ‘When was this?’
Jenny looks at Aisha, as if to check. ‘It was October. October last year?’
Aisha nods. ‘It was near the beginning of term, because we’d been to some drinks thing and ended up in the pub. No, hang on, it was the year before, 2016. October, deffo.’
Jenny rolls her eyes. ‘It was, wasn’t it? Jeez, where does the time go?’
They laugh. But Samantha is blinking hard now, trying to absorb the information without crying. When Peter took her to his house on the hill, when she became special and original, beautiful and intelligent, because he told her that this was what she was, when his deep brown gaze seemed only to focus, only ever to have really focused, on her, he was in fact making two other women feel special and original, beautiful and intelligent. These two women, specifically. The two women sitting opposite her. Sitting opposite her and laughing like it’s some big joke while Samantha presses her teeth into her gums and tries to stop herself from smashing into pieces.
The canteen clock reads quarter to three. She should leave, go and get Emily. She is dimly aware that both her hands are being held. Aisha is holding one, Jenny the other.
‘Are you all right?’ Aisha asks.
She nods. ‘I’m fine. It’s just … I mean, I know Peter had girlfriends before me. You expect that. I’m a lot younger than him; I knew he hadn’t lived like a monk. I’m just …’
She looks to Jenny, then to Aisha. They should hate one another, she thinks. And they should hate her. And she should hate both of them. But here they are, holding hands.
‘Can I ask exactly when in October?’ she asks.
‘It was …’ Jenny pulls out her phone, narrows her eyes. ‘It was a Tuesday, so let’s see … that would’ve been the … eighteenth.’ She looks up. ‘Yes, the eighteenth.’
Samantha inhales. She can’t speak. She met Peter on the Thursday. Thursday the twentieth of October. Two days later. Two.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ she manages. ‘Jenny, I’m sorry. I didn’t know—’
Jenny waves her hand. ‘I know you didn’t. None of us did. Which is why there’s no point us shouting and bitching. It’s him, Peter, who’s the shit here.’
‘Don’t call him a shit,’ Samantha says, her voice louder than she meant. ‘He may not have been completely open with me, but that’s his past. He has a right to his privacy. He has a right to a past. And he’s changed.’
Jenny snorts.
‘Don’t, Jenny,’ Samantha says. ‘Seriously. We have a child together. And he asked me to move in with him before I got pregnant. He asked me the first morning we spent together. It was … different.’
Aisha lets go of her hand. ‘I know it’s hard, and believe me, I feel like the world’s biggest bitch for telling you, but it’s not different. Do you think you’re different because he told you that you were?’
‘No! I mean, he did say that, but he … he meant it.’ The words sound hollow. She sounds like a schoolgirl.
‘Let me guess,’ Jenny says. ‘He picked you up at a student drinks party.’
