The One That Got Away Read online

  ‘Urgh!’ Bec and I exclaimed in unison.

  ‘He was like a walking rolled pork joint,’ Joss continued relentlessly. ‘The old birds loved him though,’ she reached for her cup. ‘C’est la vie … or not as the case may be.’

  ‘Joss!’ I admonished as Bec gasped so loudly she made us jump. Joss even spilt some of her coffee. ‘Oh my God! And talking of blasts from the past … I can’t believe I forgot to tell you THIS! You’ll never GUESS who tried to add me as a friend on Facebook. Leo!’ she squeaked excitedly, before we could offer any suggestions.

  I paused. ‘Leo, as in my ex Leo?’

  She nodded.

  ‘That turd basket!’ Joss exploded in outrage. ‘This is exactly why I refuse to go on Facebook or Twitter. You didn’t accept him did you?’ she glared at Bec.

  ‘Of course not!’ she said, looking insulted. ‘What do you take me for? He’s got an open profile though Moll; I looked. He’s married now!’

  ‘You are joking.’ Joss was appalled.

  ‘That’s nothing – I think he’s got kids too!’

  And to my surprise, I felt something inside me pause, like the small hand of a clock losing time for just a second, before resuming as normal.

  ‘Is he married to her?’ I heard myself ask calmly.

  The girls shared a look and then Bec said uncomfortably, ‘Cara? I don’t think so, no. The woman I saw looks at least our age and Cara was younger wasn’t she?’

  ‘She had peroxide blonde hair.’ I picked up my cup and casually took a sip of coffee, even though there was hardly any left, and what was there had gone cold. ‘Like Marilyn Monroe – hard to mistake. You’d know if it was her.’

  Bec shook her head firmly. ‘No then, it’s not. This woman was a bit mumsy if anything; normal looking.’

  ‘She can’t be normal,’ Joss said grimly. ‘Not if she’s married to him, poor cow.’

  It was a slightly strange moment, realising that even though I no longer thought about Leo, he had of course been out there living his life anyway, meeting people, getting married, having children. It had all happened ages ago by the sound of it; I’d been none the wiser and neither had it made the slightest of differences to my life. Yet it was odd somehow to realise that he’d said the words I once thought we might say to each other, to someone else. I wondered if he’d felt the way I was feeling now, on hearing I had married.

  Still, it was neither here nor there really. I pushed the thought firmly from my mind, smiled at the girls and said brightly, ‘So, what does he look like these days then? Fat and bald hopefully?’

  Bec snuck a quick look at Joss who was still glaring at her crossly and said uneasily, ‘Pretty much the same as he used to.’

  ‘Well that’s annoying,’ I said, seeing his slow, troublesome smile in my mind, ice-blue eyes staring brazenly back at me, intentions clear. ‘He could have at least had the decency to let himself go.’

  ‘So he hasn’t tried to “be-friend” you then?’ Joss said sharply.

  I laughed. ‘God no.’

  ‘Well he wouldn’t know your married name would he?’ Bec said quickly. ‘You’re Molly Greene on Facebook. That’s why I didn’t accept him, so he couldn’t see I was friends with you,’ she explained earnestly. ‘Or see any pictures of you.’

  ‘Hmm. That was good thinking,’ Joss said, thawing slightly.

  ‘Thanks, Batman.’ Bec looked relieved. ‘I’m glad you approve.’

  It had never really occurred to me before how bizarre that was; that an ex out there might potentially look at some of the most intimate snapshots of my life, occasions that were no longer anything to do with him: my wedding, birthdays, nights out … ‘That feels a bit weird really.’

  ‘It’s just the surprise,’ Bec said reassuringly, misunderstanding me. ‘I’d feel exactly the same way if John suddenly popped back up out of nowhere too.’

  ‘Which is exactly why I HATE Facebook,’ Joss repeated. ‘You’re not supposed to know what your knobhead exes are doing. They’re supposed to just vanish out of your life and that be that. All this so-called social networking is really upsetting the natural balance of things.’

  ‘Bringing about climate change?’ Bec teased. ‘Disturbing the food chain? You really didn’t like Leo and John did you?’

  ‘I didn’t dislike or like them,’ Joss responded honestly, which surprised me. ‘Not at first anyway. John was just spineless and a bit selfish. He didn’t bring out the best in you Bec. He made you very needy.’

  Bec looked a bit like she wished she hadn’t asked.

  ‘What I mean is, he didn’t add anything to your life, he was always off doing his own thing, which made you very insecure. He was a bit nothing really. Leo, on the other hand,’ she paused, ‘could be a lot of fun, when he wanted to be. The trouble with him,’ she began to get into her stride, ‘was aside from turning out to be a cheating wanker, he was like that nursery rhyme; when he was good, he was very, very good – when he was bad, he was horrid.’

  ‘—he wasn’t the messiah, he was a very naughty boy.’ Bec added and they both laughed.

  ‘You’re thinking about that poem, the little girl with a curl,’ I said to Joss. ‘Right in the middle of her forehead?’

  She looked back at me blankly.

  ‘Never mind. When I was about five I drew on my bedroom walls with a felt tip.’ I reached out and dotted up a few leftover crumbs from the plate with my finger and popped them in my mouth. ‘Mum caught me and I told her it wasn’t me, it was my naughty hands, so she told me if my hands felt like being naughty again, I should sit on them. Leo should have spent some time sitting on his hands.’ I smiled at them both. ‘In fact he probably shouldn’t have ever got off them.’

  Joss grimaced. ‘Imagine if you’d married him …’

  ‘I wouldn’t have,’ I shook my head. ‘Not if it had come to the crunch.’

  Neither of them said anything.

  ‘I wouldn’t!’ I insisted. ‘I know I got stuck there for a bit, but he was never The One. I just thought he was for a mad few moments.’

  ‘I thought you said there was no such thing as The One?’ Bec said quickly.

  ‘You’re right,’ I pointed at her. ‘Well reminded. What I mean is he wasn’t someone who would ever have made a decent life partner.’

  ‘Too right. He should have been a three-month fling at most,’ Joss said. ‘He just wore you down, that’s all. He only ever put up a fight when he sensed you were going off him. That’s why blokes like him are such a headfuck. They’re clever enough to sharpen up their game when they realise you might actually walk away … but then once they’ve hooked you back in and you start having perfectly reasonable demands and needs of your own – see you later! But what I hate him for,’ she paused, ‘is that he screwed you over when your dad was so ill. I still maintain he was a special kind of weasel to admit to shagging that bint when your dad had just had a heart attack.’

  ‘If he were here,’ I said casually, ‘he’d say he had no intention of it happening like that, that he didn’t know Cara was going to ring me and tell me what was going on.’

  ‘If he were here,’ Joss said quickly, ‘I’d kick him in the nuts.’

  ‘You’re like an avenging elephant,’ I grinned. ‘Once wronged, never forgotten.’

  ‘Yes I am,’ she said loftily, not looking altogether displeased with that description. ‘I’d trample anyone for you two.’

  ‘It was a weird time,’ I said, staring into the middle distance. ‘I did everything backwards really, didn’t I? I should have been out being unsuitable and living it up, not cleaning and cooking Sunday roasts aged twenty-five; trying to make it all fit when it was never going to.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what you did or didn’t do then,’ Joss said firmly. ‘You know where your head’s at now and that’s all that matters. I can honestly say that by and large my twenties were shit – I wouldn’t have them again for all the tea in China. New shoes, pots of money, loud clubs and overpriced
drinks; a bloke for that matter – all the things I was chasing; I just didn’t need them. It’s being able to do things like this,’ she motioned between us, ‘that makes me happy. And that’s enough.’

  ‘Here, here,’ I said heartily. ‘Although can I keep my husband please? I know I don’t need Dan, but I sort of want him, if that’s OK?’

  ‘I’ll allow that,’ Joss said generously. ‘Seeing as it’s him. Are you still off to your mum and dad’s for some fireworks later? Will Dan be allowed to light any of them this year or will Chris be in charge as usual?’ she grinned, referring to my older brother who quite liked to take control of everything.

  I laughed. ‘My dad’ll do it. Chris and Dan will be surveying carefully from the sidelines, while the girls will all be safely indoors with the children watching Stu enthusiastically heap too much rubbish on the bonfire, thinking it’s a bit too near the back fence. Once a pyromaniac always a pyromaniac.’

  ‘Stu’s never going to grow out of his middle-child syndrome is he? I love your brothers,’ Bec said fondly, ‘in a non-sexual way, naturally,’ she added hastily.

  ‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Been there done that eh?’

  Bec blushed prettily.

  ‘I’m joking,’ I teased. ‘It was what – 1990 or something? And Stu was quite the stud then with his baggy Vanilla Ice pants and bum fluff.’

  ‘You know to this day I can’t bear the smell of Cinzano,’ Bec confessed.

  I patted her hand sympathetically. ‘Well, you both got a snog and it’s provided me with endless teasing opportunities over the years, so everyone’s a winner.’ I reached for my handbag to get my purse out. ‘I’ve had a lovely time today you two, thank you.’

  And I had, although of everything we’d chatted about, it was Leo I found myself still thinking about on my way home, remembered hearing the surprisingly sharp voice at the other end of the phone line say:

  ‘Hello, my name’s Cara. I’m sleeping with your boyfriend. I thought you ought to know.’

  Leo had just pathetically shrugged, almost helplessly, when I confronted him, saying – as if he couldn’t quite understand it himself, like it was somehow beyond his control – ‘the thing is, I think I might love her.’ My furious questions had turned into crying and throwing things at him, all of which was met with an increasingly blank stare I’d never seen him do before. Just for a second, once he’d gone I almost wished I hadn’t made him leave, even though I knew then and there it was over for good.

  Joss was right. Boys like him were only built for infatuations.

  And time really was a great healer.

  I arrived home to find that Dan was still out, and having slipped my shoes off and made a cup of tea, I padded off upstairs to check my emails: one of the downsides of largely working from home as a medical rep was my chronic inability to leave the computer alone come the weekend. There was nothing interesting pending at all, and so I ended up logging into Facebook instead …

  And after hesitating for a moment I curiously typed ‘Leo Williams’ into the search bar.

  I’d done a nosy search for him once or twice before in the past, but nothing had ever come up. That must have been because he’d only recently joined; surprising really given he worked in event management and was a total—

  Well! I caught my breath as a tiny but recognisable picture appeared on the screen. There he was.

  Laughing into the camera, his arms hugging a smiling dark-haired woman – not Cara – he looked very happy. This was certainly more interesting than a boring mooch through albums entitled ‘randoms from my shit phone’, belonging to someone I’d once gone to secondary school with … I peered a little closer and then clicked on to his open profile.

  Bec was right. He didn’t really look any different at all, just slightly older. He was wearing a dinner jacket, a good look on anyone, but particularly so on him. His almost-black hair was perhaps a little shorter than I remembered, flecked with some grey, but then it had been how many years since I’d seen him, four – maybe five? It must have been – it had all ended just before my twenty-ninth birthday. I scrutinised the picture, they were clearly at some sort of do, there were a lot of people surrounding them whose heads had been half cut off. It looked a bit like the kind of photo that might be found in the diary pages of a social magazine.

  He’d added very little information – just his date of birth and that he was ‘in a relationship’. When I opened his photos however, there were quite a few. Mostly just of him snowboarding and kite surfing, which were a bit, ‘Yes, I’m as at home on the slopes as in the boardroom’, although in fairness par for the course on a lot of blokes’ pages. There were also a couple of an apparent holiday with the same woman, both of them sporting expensive sunglasses and tans as they clutched cocktails very close to camera … and just one with two young, slightly uncomfortable looking little girls stood in front of them, all smartly dressed. I frowned. What was Bec on about – calls herself a midwife – they weren’t his, they looked about six and nine, way too old. I leant in closer, she was right about the wedding ring though; there it was, shining on his finger. I sat back and stared at them again. They looked just like any normal happy family. Leo was a stepdad. How very weird.

  Even weirder, was it my imagination or did his wife actually look quite a bit like me? She was slightly older and Bec had a point, she was curvy, but in an attractive womanly way. It was the hair really – not a dissimilar style and colour to mine; mid-length with a long fringe … Still, most men usually went for a type; that was no news. She certainly looked determined – almost steely. Perhaps Leo had met his match.

  I clicked back and stared at his profile picture again. I could practically hear his warm laugh, knew just what it would sound like … and those were arms that had once been round me, lips that had touched mine. How very strange. I’d posed for pictures just like that with him. I probably still had one or two of them buried away in a box somewhere in amongst old Christmas and birthday cards, graduation lists, friends’ wedding invitations.

  I scrawled through his list of friends … and straightened up as Cara Jones appeared on the list. No! He was still friends with her? Her profile was disappointingly closed, although it was quite satisfying to see from her picture that she wasn’t ageing well.

  Cara Jones. The last time I’d seen that face had been when I’d come back slightly too early from work and discovered Leo collecting the last of his stuff. She’d been leaning on her flash nippy little BMW, all smug, bouncy curls and crossed arms in her tight expensive biker jacket while she waited for him. She’d looked at me curiously as I’d walked straight past her, head down, into the building. I wasted some considerable time afterwards wondering if I should have gone back and punched her, and if not doing so made me a coward or the bigger person.

  Thankfully, looking at her face no longer had the power to make me feel anything at all. I poked my tongue out at her – silly moo – and returned to Leo’s profile.

  And then, for no obvious reason whatsoever, I did something impulsively stupid. I stared at him for a minute and then I found myself clicking on ‘Send Leo a message’. In the subject I put Wow! Typing quickly I wrote

  I see you’ve been busy then! Congratulations! Hope you’re well. Molly

  And then I hit send.

  Chapter Three

  Almost immediately I shifted in my seat with the uneasy feeling I’d done something stupid. But it was too late, the message had gone. It was out there on the loose.

  Bloody Facebook – it was like being offered a manky chocolate you hadn’t even considered eating, but somehow ended up scoffing anyway.

  Well, I couldn’t get it back. I shouldn’t have even looked at his profile in the first place. I sighed. Perhaps it was just one of those foolish things best kept to myself – he’d probably just ignore my message anyway. Well, of course he would, this was Leo after all …

  The front door banged downstairs, making me jump. ‘Hello? Moll?’ bellowed a voice. �
��You up there?’

  Dan. ‘Hi!’ I shouted brightly, deleting my email thread, closing Leo’s profile and clearing my history with a speed that surprised me.

  When he appeared in the doorway a moment later, I was innocently clicking around on my own profile page.

  ‘Hello!’ he crossed the room to give me a warm kiss, his face still cold from an afternoon spent outside, cheeks ruddy. ‘What are you doing?’ He glanced at the screen, ‘Ah, having a productive day I see?’

  ‘How was the game?’ I said quickly.

  ‘Crap,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but someone got sent off and punched the ref which was quite funny. Look what I found in a shop on my way home though.’ He pulled his hand out from behind his back to reveal several packets of sparklers.

  ‘Oh well done! I completely forgot about them.’

  He looked pleased. ‘I thought you might.’ Sitting down on the chair in the corner of the room he began to unwind his scarf before ruffling up his hat-flattened brown hair. ‘I need a trim, I’m starting to look like a sheep.’

  ‘I like sheep,’ I said, as I shut the computer down.

  ‘I like you too,’ he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, then his expression changed as he appeared to ponder something for a moment. ‘I might give the hairdresser’s a quick ring now, make an appointment before I forget …’ he reached into his pocket for his mobile, ever the sensible planner. ‘What time are we due at your mum and dad’s by the way? Have I got time to— Oh! Text message,’ he remarked, before I could answer. He frowned carefully at the screen for a moment and then his face lit up. ‘Wow! Ed and Beth are going to have a baby!’ he exclaimed, referring to our best man and his wife. ‘Isn’t that brilliant? I’ll just give him a quick ring …’

  ‘Mate!’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Just got your text. Fantastic news! We’re over the moon for you!’ He rested his hand gently on my head and absently stroked my hair before breaking away to mouth ‘tea?’ to me.