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

crappy TV they’d inherited from Jack’s parents.
    But this wasn’t a minor disagreement. It was The End of Days, and Hope headed for the front door because having to ride out an emotional tsunami in the cramped confines of their flat in front of their closest friends was too much. She needed fresh air to clear her head. If that didn’t work, then she needed to find a steep hill, climb it and scream and scream and scream.
    Jack appeared in the lounge doorway as Hope fumbled with the latch. ‘Hopey … Hope. Don’t go. Not like this.’
    There were so many things wrong with what he was saying that Hope didn’t know where to start, so she settled for an indistinct sound that was half growl, half sob, as Jack reached her side.
    ‘Don’t. Please don’t,’ Jack said urgently, right in Hope’s ear because he was that close, his long fingers splayed out on the door, just centimetres away from where Hope’s hand had stilled on the latch. ‘I screwed up, I know that, but if you go now … what will everyone think?’
    It was interesting, Hope thought to herself in a detached way, that Jack might not want her to leave, would even plead with her to stay, but he wouldn’t touch her. He’d known her for every single one of her twenty-six years and he knew better than anyone that once the rage was upon her, when she was this mad, feeling so thoroughly unhinged, that if he touched even the tip of his little finger to her bare arm, she’d punch him.
    Hope wished that Jack had the guts to touch her, because, God, she really wanted to punch him. But Jack didn’t touch her. In fact, he stepped back as she succeeded in getting her nerveless fingers to open the door. Stumbling out into the night and away from him felt portentous and over-whelming, as if Hope was relinquishing all her rights to him.
    ‘We have to talk,’ Jack called out as Hope recovered from her first faltering steps and began to pick up speed, hurrying up the steps and down the front-garden path. ‘Running away isn’t going to help.’
    Hope ignored him as she took a decisive right turn out of the gate and stomped down the street, not in the direction of Holloway Road and the beered-up gangs of teenagers that congregated there on a Saturday night, but cutting through the square on which they lived, and giving a wide berth to the people drinking outside the gastropub, which was the only drinking establishment in the area that wasn’t an old man’s boozer.
    She didn’t know how long she’d been walking but after what seemed like hours, Hope realised that her Stella McCartney leopard-print platform wedges were not adapting well to life outside. They hadn’t been too painful when Hope was wearing them indoors, but now she had hard pavement underfoot; the shoes were chafing and pinching and generally making their displeasure felt.
    The pain was good, or so Hope tried to tell herself. The pain meant that she could still feel, even though the anger had died down and she wasn’t feeling much of anything else, apart from lost. It wasn’t even a metaphorical lost-ness but an actual ‘I don’t have a clue where I am and I didn’t have the foresight to pick up my iPhone when I stormed out so I can’t even use Google Maps to find my way home.’ Just the thought of home made Hope’s stomach clench, and it was probably better to concentrate on being lost than have to concentrate on all the other shitty stuff that she didn’t want to think about.
    Hope stood at the junction of three identical roads of Victorian terraced houses, unable to decide which one to take. If she didn’t want to go home and she didn’t have money or credit cards or phone, then what were her other options?
    The wall she sat down on to rest her sore feet was as good a place as any to regroup. It was a still, sticky night. Hope could hear the distant roar of traffic and the low throb of music and conversation all around her. The air was thick with the lingering scent of chargrilled meat