Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend by Sarra Manning Read Free Book Online

either good or bad that her right hand was out of action and the spoon missed its target. Still, it managed to tear Jack’s attention away from Susie so he could stare at Hope with mounting horror.
    ‘I saw the two of you,’ she spat out, almost tripping over the words. ‘And I know why it took you two hours to get back from Waitrose – you were shagging each other, weren’t you?’
    There was a terrible hush, as if everyone in the room was holding their breath. All Hope could hear was the pounding of her heart. No one was looking at her, preferring to stare down at their empty bowls, except Wilson. He was looking right at Hope, then at Susie, then at Jack, and back to Hope again. For once Wilson didn’t look bored but angry and hurt and betrayed – all the things that Hope was feeling too.
    He also seemed surprised, not at Hope’s revelation, but with Hope herself, as if she might actually have some hidden depths and he was interested to see how far she was going to take things. Hope shot Wilson an angry, defiant look because if he was a nicer person, a better boyfriend, then Susie wouldn’t have to steal other people’s almost fiancés. But even as she narrowed her eyes, Hope knew that this wasn’t Wilson’s fault, and her gaze switched to the top of Jack’s bent head. She’d never known silence like this; so thick and charged.
    Then Lauren giggled nervously, Allison hissed at her to shut up and the spell was broken.
    ‘I haven’t …’ Jack began automatically, even though it was obvious that he had. That
they
had. ‘I went to B&Q and Waitrose, you know I did, and the traffic was a bitch and I really did just meet Susie coming down the road, but we just sat in the car and talked. I swear!’
    ‘I don’t believe you,’ Hope hissed. ‘I saw the way you were kissing. It wasn’t even kissing. It was … It was … You know exactly what it was.’
    Susie coughed. ‘Look, we’d both had a bit to drink and ended up having a drunken snog. End of,’ she said quietly, looking down at her hands, her manicure still in pristine condition because doing the washing-up had been the last thing on her mind when she’d left the table.
    There was more to it than that, Hope was sure of it, but she knew what she’d seen, but what if she hadn’t seen what she thought she’d seen? Maybe, just maybe, this whole awful, world-shattering nightmare was Susie’s idea of a joke, and she’d persuaded Jack to go along with it – and his sense of humour was decidedly suspect. Like, Hope had caught him giggling over repeats of
One Foot in the Grave
on UK Gold on numerous occasions, yet he could remain completely stony-faced when she showed him something on LOLCats, which had made her spit tea down herself. Maybe they hadn’t been kissing and groping but just
pretending
to be kissing and groping. Maybe.
    Hope actually crossed her fingers behind her back, the skin on her damaged hand tightening painfully, which gave her something real, something tangible to focus on until eventually, reluctantly, Susie raised her head to look at her.
    ‘I’m sorry that you had to see it, though,’ she said. There was no bravado, no bluff, she looked genuinely, sickeningly ashamed, which was all the proof that Hope needed, because usually Susie prided herself on having no shame.
    ‘You know what you can do with your “sorry”? You can shove it up your arses,’ Hope said, and she walked out of the room because she couldn’t stay there and have to look at them, at Jack and Susie, any longer.

 
    USUALLY WHEN HOPE stormed out of the lounge it was because of a minor disagreement, like Jack refusing to turn off
Grand Theft Auto
so she could watch
Glee
in High Definition, or because he was mocking her for getting all sniffly and teary-eyed while she was watching
Glee
in High Definition. Hope would flounce as far as the bedroom, where she had a secret chocolate stash hidden at the back of her knicker drawer and could watch the show on the