‘Hang on, hang on,’ shouts Cara.
She opens the door and I immediately gasp.
‘Um, I’m sorry, I’m looking for my best friend, Cara,’ I say, laughing at her dressed in a flannel nightie and towelling robe.
‘Very funny,’ she says looking each way down the road before yanking me into the house.
‘Nice slippers,’ I say at the sight of her fluffy mules.
‘Sssh,’ she says, whispering as we walk past the bedroom.
‘Who’s there, Cara,’ shouts a male voice, and I freeze.
‘Don’t worry about it. It’s just Lexi. You go back to sleep.’
She pushes me down the hall into the kitchen and I’m still sniggering as she follows me in and closes the door.
‘So I take it Dave’s here, then?’
‘I could have anyone in that bedroom. How do you know it’s Dave?’
‘Because the last time I showed up at your house unannounced at night you were wearing a leather catsuit and five-inch heels. Now you’re in a grandma nightdress and slippers.’
‘Hmm, but I’ll tell you what – it’s bloody comfortable. So are you going to tell me what you’re doing here in the middle of the night?’
She goes over to the kettle and fills it up before switching it on.
‘I’m sensing you’ve got something to say.’
She sits down at her breakfast bar, and I sit down on the stool opposite.
‘I do. Robin kissed me.’
‘Robin from work? The really super-hot guy?’
‘Uh-huh, the super-hot guy that’s actually a massive dick. When I said I didn’t want to kiss him he told me he’d recommend to the councillors that my job be scrapped.’
‘What?’
‘I know!’ I exclaim. Now that I’m sobering up the whole night seems pretty surreal.
Cara’s face is a picture – a mixture of shock and outrage.
‘Where is he? Is he still at the pub?’ she says, standing up and looking like she’s going to thump him one.
‘Probably, but don’t worry, his boss was there and she heard the whole thing. He muttered an apology and skulked away. Oh God. It was so embarrassing. I’d been talking to his boss – who’s like our age, by the way – and telling her about the whole skinny- dipping in Barbados thing. I just assumed she was someone’s bored girlfriend as she wasn’t really talking to many people.’
‘You see, that’s where you went wrong, you’ve broken that fundamental rule of what goes on tour stays on tour. Did I ever tell you or anyone what happened on that holiday to Amsterdam last year?’
‘No . . .’
‘Exactly. What goes on tour, stays on tour.’
The mind boggles and I am actually quite pleased, in this instance, at her rules.
‘But anyway, what happened with Rob the knob?’
‘We were chatting and the next thing I knew he was sticking his tongue down my throat and it was all like this,’ I say, sticking my tongue out in a rapid thrusting fashion. ‘It was awful. And not just because he was a bad kisser, but because he wasn’t Will.’
Cara smiles at me in a smug I-told-you-so way.
‘You don’t have to say it.’
It’s one thing for her to think it, but it’s another for her to say it out loud.
‘I just don’t understand what possessed Robin. I mean, did I really give him the signals? What kind of an impression must I have given him about my relationship with Will for him to think I was going to jump his bones a week after dumping him?’
‘Um, firstly, men don’t think, not when it comes to bones or boners.’
Trust her to make me laugh when things are so pitiful.
‘I wondered if he liked you when we met him at the pub.’
‘When you tried to shove your new boyfriend out of the way so you could flirt with him?’
Cara looks nervously over at the door.
‘Yeah, I felt bad about that, but yes, that night he seemed to only have eyes for you.’
‘But he was perfectly charming to Vanessa about her wedding.’
*
‘Perhaps because you’ve been with Will forever you don’t notice the signs like I do, and while there’s no arguing that he could charm the pants off anyone – me included – or at least me before Dave became my boyfriend.’
‘Your boyfriend, officially?’ I shriek.
‘Uh-huh, even Vanessa knows, and she’s already bloody planning double dates and dinner parties, which is exactly why I wanted to keep it a secret in the first place. But, we can talk about that later.’
I’m about to protest, having momentarily forgotten about my problems, when she starts to talk about Robin again.
‘But despite him having all the charm, he did look at you differently. And don’t forget, he did send your book to that editor.’
‘I know, but wouldn’t he have done that for anyone he knew?’
Cara pulls a face. ‘It’s a pretty big favour to pull, unless the editor was a close friend. Was she?’
‘I don’t think so.’ I got the impression from their email correspondence that she’d been a friend of one of his ex’s.
‘In my experience, men don’t usually go out of their way to do nice things for women they don’t have the hots for.’
‘I can’t believe how wrong I was about him,’ I say, shaking my head in disbelief before sipping my tea. ‘He was such an arsehole, threatening my job.’
‘Yeah, I don’t think he would have really done that, though. My guess is that he was a bit wounded. He’s probably not used to getting knocked back, and the fact you rejected him probably made him lash out.’
‘Do you think?’
‘Yeah, but it’s still a massive arsehole thing to do, though.’
I’m so glad I came over here. I’m starting to feel so much better already.
‘Do you know Robin was trying to tell me that I deserved someone better, that Will didn’t appreciate me, and it was like when he was telling me about the relationship he thought we had, it made me realise how wrong he was. I may have agreed with him a few weeks ago, that Will seemed unromantic and uncommitted, but now that I know the truth about what he’s been up to and what he was planning I can see so clearly that he was anything but. And all the while I was getting my kicks out of planning the revenge and blogging about it.’
I collapse my head into my hands.
‘What have I done? To Will? To our relationship? I can’t believe I’ve been such an idiot.’
‘Well, hang on. For starters, you’re not an idiot. I mean, granted, if you had taken my advice in the first place and just told him when you found out about the food poisoning and the football thing, then you would have known his true reasons a whole lot sooner and you wouldn’t have found yourself in this muddle. But, if you hadn’t done the revenge you might not have realised that something was missing in the relationship. I’m not saying it was broken, but perhaps it needed a little bit of TLC.’
‘Just like you were saying – spicing things up in the bedroom.’
‘Exactly. I just think you lost your way a bit, forgetting why you were doing it all in the first place.’
I try and follow what Cara’s saying, but my head is spinning and I don’t know whether it’s the fact that I’m still drunk or the fact that my emotions are whirling round my body.
‘What the hell was I thinking?’
Cara gets up and reboils the kettle to finish making tea.
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself. You were really mad, and at the time we both thought you were deservedly so. How were you supposed to know that it was Vanessa’s bloody idea all along?’
‘Why didn’t I just tell him that I knew what he’d done?’
Cara coughs politely and smiles.
‘Yeah, you don’t have to say it.’
I’m still not ready to hear I told you so, no matter how right she is.
‘Look, there’s no point beating yourself up about what you did and where you went wrong. At the end of the day, that’s all in the past. What you need to do now is work out how you’re going to put it right.’
‘You don’t think it’s too late? I haven’t spoken to Will since Barbados. I don’t even know where he is. For all I know, he’s glad it’s over and that’s the last I’ll ever see of him.’
‘Come on, for starters you own a house together, so I think you’ll have to talk at some point. And don’t forget, he hasn’t been back to the house to get the rest of his stuff. If he really thought it was over he’d have been back to sort all that out. Maybe he just needed some time.’
‘I don’t know, he was so mad in Barbados. He wouldn’t listen to anything I was saying.’
‘Well, things are different now,’ she says, pouring water into the cups. ‘Don’t forget, you didn’t know why he really missed Vanessa and Ian’s wedding.’
‘I don’t know. He didn’t seem interested in working things out. I can’t imagine him listening to me long enough to hear what I’ve got to say and for him to understand how much I know that I fucked up. I want to tell him that I got so carried away with the revenge that I ended up losing sight of why I was doing it.’
‘I’m sure he’d understand if you explained it.’
I shake my head. ‘No. I don’t think that’s enough. He was pretty clear about us being over. I’ve either got to accept it or . . .’
‘Or what?’ says Cara as she strains the tea bags and throws them into the bin, before passing me my cup. I take it from her, curling my fingers around it, scolding them slightly.
‘Or I have to prove to him he’s wrong.’
‘And how do you plan to do that?’
‘I’ve got to propose to him.’
Cara spits out a mouthful of tea all over her Formica breakfast bar.
‘Are you having a laugh? After all the years of you waiting for your dream proposal, you’re going to take matters into your own hands?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You’re going to track him down to one of his mate’s houses and drop down on one knee?’
She looks at me in disbelief.
‘Oh no. It needs to be bigger than that.’ I think back to his proposal that never was – he was going to write MARRY ME in the sky for goodness sake. ‘No, I know exactly how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to need some help.’
I pick up my phone and scroll through my contacts. I hastily type a quick message and hit Send.
I fill Cara in on the details of what I want to do and how I’m going to put the plan into action, and her face lights up like all her Christmases have come at once.
‘I’ll put the kettle on again,’ she says, practically leaping up, despite the fact that we’re drinking freshly made tea. ‘I’ll make us some coffee. Somehow I don’t think we’ll be getting a lot of sleep tonight.’
I think she might be right. There’s a lot to do in the next twelve hours. I close my eyes for a second and wish for my plan to work, as there’s nothing I want more than to be back in the arms of Will this time tomorrow.