Let's Call the Whole Thing Off (4 page)

Sophie giggled, her relief echoing through the hall.

‘Oh sorry, babe,’ she said, not looking in the remotest part sorry. ‘I completely forgot. Here.’ She unscrewed them from her ears and handed them back to me.

It took all my will-power not to fling them straight back at her.

Chapter Three

‘Bitch. I hate her. Not content with stealing my man, she thinks it’s okay to help herself to my jewellery too. What else does she want? My clothes? My job? Does she want my whole fucking life? Is that what this is all about?’

Ben clipped in his seatbelt and leant across and did the same to me, before pulling the Range Rover out into the street outside the flat.

‘I don’t know, Anna,’ he said, his voice heavy with regret and frustration.

‘I thought she was my best friend. I thought she was happy for me. God, all the time I’ve been with Ed, I’ve seen her through dozens of boyfriends, listening as she went on and on about how marvellous this latest one was, how this one might be the one. Then propping her up when it all went horribly wrong. Which it always did. She’s got rotten bloody taste in men,’ I said indignantly, the irony not lost of me. ‘Did she look at me and think,
Oh, Anna’s got it right. Her life’s settled. I’ll just help myself to her boyfriend instead.

‘Don’t torture yourself with it, Anna. It’s not worth it. And you’ll only make yourself miserable imagining what’s gone on.’

‘Good advice, Ben. Good advice. I won’t think about it. That’ll be easy. I’ll just forget all about it, shall I? Pretend it hasn’t happened. Why didn’t I think of that? Drop me off here and I’ll run back home and get on with my wedding plans.’

‘Sorry. I’m not saying that. I just hate seeing you like this. It breaks my heart, really it does. I wish I could do something to make it all better, but I can’t. Speak to Ed. He’s the one who should be giving you all the answers.’

‘Humph!’ I stared out of the passenger-side window, tears blurring my view of the world outside, a world where people were going about their daily business as though a huge boulder hadn’t rolled into their lives today, crushing everything in sight. ‘I told you. I’m not sure I want to speak to Ed ever again.’

I hated sniping at Ben; it wasn’t his fault I’d been cheated on. It wasn’t his fault my fiancé was a cheating, lying toerag. It wasn’t his fault the wedding of the century looked to be on the brink of being cancelled. It wasn’t his fault he was driving me away from the life I thought I’d been destined to see out, happily ever after, to a bleak and uncertain future.

‘Didn’t you think to tell me, Ben? As soon as you found out? I know you’re good friends and everything, but didn’t you think when Ed told you that juicy little snippet about his love life, that you ought to mention it to me? To save me from making the biggest mistake of my life. I think if the boot had been on the other foot, I might have done that for you.’

‘I was going to, I promise you, but it was difficult. I was put in the worst possible position. I thought it would be better if Ed told you. I told him if he didn’t then I would.’

‘Oh right, and when was that going to happen, then? Before the wedding? After the wedding? On our twentieth wedding anniversary?’

He shrugged.

‘He begged me not to tell you and he promised, on his life, that it was over between him and Sophie. I think he realised he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. I felt as though he deserved a second chance, that your relationship deserved a second chance,

‘It wasn’t your decision to make, though,’ I said furiously. ‘I should have been told what was going on. So that I could make up my own mind.’

I didn’t know what was worse: that Ed and Sophie had been at in the first place or that Ben had been prepared to cover up their lies.

‘I know. I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it. That’s why I came to see you today. I couldn’t let you marry Ed without you knowing what’s been going on. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, but if Ed wasn’t going to tell you, then I knew I needed to do it for myself. Only you got there first.’

I turned my body away again, resting my head on the passenger-door window. Would it have made any difference if Ben had told me or if it had come from Ed instead? Either way it couldn’t have taken away the shock or pain of finding out that my whole life had been a massive lie.

For the rest of the journey, we stayed in silence, locked in our own thoughts until Ben pulled the car into the driveway of the white-washed cottage that sat alone at the end of a twisting country lane. He sighed as he turned off the ignition. ‘Look, I’m sorry if you feel I’ve let you down. That wasn’t my intention at all. Come on,’ he said, laying a hand on my knee, ‘let’s go inside, I’ll make you that cup of tea.’

***

‘Look, you’re going to have to speak to him sometime. And the sooner the better if you don’t want him suspecting anything’s up. Why don’t you text him – let him know what you’re up to?’

My phone had just vibrated for the umpteenth time that day, but I was doing a pretty good job of ignoring it. I liked the feeling of being removed from my own reality, of taking myself out of the game, but Ben had a point. The last thing I needed was Ed chasing after me. That was assuming he would chase after me. He might just kick back with a sigh of relief and think, Job done. Perhaps this was what he’d wanted all along. My heart twisted in pain.

‘There,’ I said, snatching up my phone and tapping furiously at the buttons. ‘Does that make you feel better?’ My message to Ed was short and to the point.

Hey, going to Mum’s for a few days. See you Saturday!

I hoped the exclamation mark would cover up the lack of kisses and the text would give me some much-needed distance for a day or two.

We’d been sitting at Ben’s kitchen table for the last couple of hours, drinking cups of tea and eating biscuits, before moving on to the wine and crisps. My broken heart was obviously not going to lead to a new incarnation as a gloriously thin and wan supermodel-type creature. At this rate I’d be into the Rubenesque category soon, but what did I care? Fitting into my wedding dress was hardly a priority now.

My mind was a complete fog and that wasn’t entirely down to the alcohol consumption. I felt all floaty and wafty, as though I’d been uprooted and transplanted into someone else’s life, vaguely recognising the other characters but having no idea how I was now supposed to relate to them.

‘This is a really lovely cottage,’ I said, looking around, suddenly realising I wanted nothing more than to drop my head on the kitchen table and fall asleep there. ‘Why have I never been here before?’

Ben laughed.

‘I don’t know. You’d have been welcome, you know that. I’m sure I must have invited you.’

I felt a pang of unease, thinking how we’d drifted apart these last few years. Ben was always there in the background, a definite fixture in my life, but one that had slipped into the shadowy sidelines. At one stage we’d been inseparable, spending every single weekend with the same crowd of people doing something or nothing, going to a pub or a club, getting out in the hills for a walk, making bacon sandwiches together. When was it that things had changed? Was it when I got together with Ed ?

‘I’ve been here three years now, but it’s pretty much in the same state as when I moved in. If I’d known you were coming I’d have blitzed the place. And made a cake.’

He swept his arm across the table, brushing crumbs onto the floor, in a deft move. I suspected that it might be the full extent of Ben’s domestic skills. His dark brown eyes smiled at me warmly, a reminder if I needed one today that life was grossly unfair. Ben had impossibly long dark eyelashes; mine were fair and short and stumpy.

‘It’s a bit of a tip. I don’t have many visitors.’

‘It’s cosy,’ I said, only now noticing the overflowing piles of papers and magazines, the dirty cups and plates. ‘Is this where you do your painting?’

‘I have a studio out the back. I’ll show you in the morning, if you like.’

I nodded, feeling a surge of gratitude for Ben’s easy, reassuring presence. I’d been quick to blame him for being part of the web of deceit, but what would I have done in his shoes? It was an impossible situation he’d been put in. None of this was his fault.

‘I’m sorry that you’ve been caught up in all this.’ I ran my fingernail along the groove in his table. ‘I won’t stay for long, I promise. A couple of days at the most and then I’ll be out of your way.’

‘You can stay as long as you like. As long as it takes.’

I sighed, grabbing fistfuls of hair at my temples. Sitting chatting to Ben I could almost forget what had happened, for a moment, but then the shocking memory of those words written with such casual abandon in Sophie’s diary came back to hit me with a renewed vengeance.

‘What do you think I should do?’

‘Oh, I don’t know, Anna.’ He sighed and mirrored my action with his hair. ‘I think only you can decide on that. But a good place to start would be to talk to Ed. Hear what he has to say.’

The warmth and softness in Ben’s voice brought tears to my eyes again, and I wondered that I had any left to cry. Despair swept over me, my bones aching with tiredness.

‘Ed’s the master salesman, you know that. He’ll have all the answers, he always does. I don’t want to talk to him because I know already what he’s going to say. I don’t want to look into his eyes and hear his excuses. I think it might break my heart.’

‘I know. ’ Ben reached his hand across the table, taking hold of mine. ‘But he loves you. And you love him. You can get over this if you want to. All those hopes and plans you had for the future – you can still have those. You don’t have to throw everything away just because of a silly little mistake.’

‘Hardly a
little
mistake. They’ve been seeing each other for months, according to Sophie’s diary. He told her he adored her. That sounds pretty serious to me. And hardly forgivable. What I don’t understand is why he did it. If he wanted Sophie then why didn’t he just leave me to be with her?’

Ben splayed his fingers on the table.

‘That’s not what he told me. He told me it was you he loved. You, he wanted to share his life with.’

I shrugged my shoulders, unswayed by Ben’s words of comfort.

‘Honestly, I’m not sure Ed and I can come back from this. Even if we postpone the wedding, put if off for another day, how can we ever forget what’s happened? How could I look forward to my wedding day in the same way now? To spending my life with him. It’s all been ruined. It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life with Ed on one side of me and Sophie, my best friend and bridesmaid, on the other. If it wasn’t so bloody tragic it might be funny.

‘This is the sort of thing you might be unlucky to have happen to you when you’ve been married for years. Finding out your husband’s having an affair. Then you might be able to find a way to work through it; to come out the other side, but it’s not something that should ever happen before you actually get married. If he didn’t love me enough to stay loyal then can there be any future for us? Besides, I’m not sure that I’d want that now. I don’t know whether I want to be married to a man capable of that kind of deceit.’

I took another glug of wine as Ben observed me thoughtfully, nodding his head in all the right places.

‘Can you ever imagine forgiving someone for doing that to you, Ben? Can you?’

‘I’m hardly the right person to ask. I don’t have much of a track record when it comes to successful relationships. But I’m guessing if you love someone enough you could probably forgive them anything, within reason. Enough at least to give them a second chance.’

‘You’re obviously more forgiving than I am. I’m not sure I want to give Ed a second chance.’ The act of saying the words aloud clarifying the fact in my own mind. ‘Or perhaps I don’t love him enough. Not enough to let him lie and cheat on me. One thing’s for sure: he didn’t love me enough.’

‘Come on.’ He stood up, looking as though he’d really had enough of my self-pitying wailing. ‘You need to get some rest. I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.’

***

Ben’s guest bedroom had clearly not seen any guests in a long while. There was a single bed, or at least I think it was a bed beneath an impressive collection of cardboard boxes overflowing with stuff. To the side of the bed was an exercise bike, presumably in case I got the urge in the middle of the night, and a bare light bulb hanging forlornly in the centre of the room.

‘Lovely,’ I said, looking around and smiling as though I’d just been shown into the Presidential Suite of the Waldorf Astoria.

‘I’ll just clear these,’ said Ben, tackling the boxes and moving them onto the floor where they spilled out into the hallway. I helped with the removal job or else we might still have been there at dawn.

‘I’m only in the room next door,’ he said, giving me an awkward hug when we’d finally finished. ‘Just give me a shout if there’s anything you need.’

I don’t think he means room service
, I considered with a rueful smile. I sank down onto the bed with a sigh. If I wasn’t depressed before I arrived then I soon would be if I had to spend any length of time here. It wasn’t Ben’s fault; he’d been a complete star taking me in like this, but my shabby surroundings only seemed to highlight the neglect and loneliness I was feeling.

I pulled off my jeans and T-shirt and slipped beneath the covers, knowing that I had as much chance of falling asleep as I did of getting married at the weekend.

Weariness washed around my body, but my mind was still buzzing with the events of the day. When was their first time? How and when had it happened? Was it at the flat? I shuddered at the thought. Or was it at Ed’s place? And what the hell was I doing when my fiancé and my best friend were getting to know the intimacies of each other’s underwear?

I couldn’t imagine it. Being with another man. There’d only ever been Ed, and Brian before him, and then that unfortunate one-night stand with Russell after my Halloween party. In my defence, his usual pasty demeanour had been transformed by a pair of fangs, some blood-red lips and a liberal application of hair gel, which had given him a dangerously glamorous air that only lasted for as long as the plastic cape, made from a black bin liner, that swept over his shoulders.