Free Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend by Sarra Manning

calm down. ‘At least I have feelings,’ she snarled. ‘You’re just acting like the whole thing is a minor inconvenience to you. Don’t you even care that Susie’s been cheating on you?’
    ‘Of course I care!’ Wilson would never do anything as uncool as shout but his volume knob was definitely edging towards seven. ‘Susie and I might not have been together for twenty bloody years like you and Jack—’
    ‘It’s thirteen years, actually. Lots of marriages don’t last that long.’
    ‘… but I thought we were heading towards something serious, and so if there is more to this than a bit of flirting and one sodding kiss, then, yes, I’m upset about it. But, unlike you, I don’t go in for hysterics and hand-wringing.’
    ‘I am not hysterical!’ Hope yelled, and she actually flailed on the car seat in a way that would have her squirming when she played this whole sorry scene back at a later date. ‘If you’re not going to drive me into town, then fine! I can make my own way but I don’t have to sit here and listen to you pretend that I’ve blown this whole thing out of proportion because I’m hysterical and I overreact when you …’
    ‘Christ!’ Wilson started the car with an angry twist of the ignition key. ‘I’ll take you into town as long as you promise to just shut the hell up!’
    Hope closed her mouth with an audible snap so she could grind her teeth so furiously that her jaw started to ache, and if she kept that up, she’d be back to wearing a mouth guard at night like she had when she was a teenager and had had far less control on her temper than she did now. Well, not right at this second, but generally she’d learned to control her hissy-fitting by deep breathing. Deep breathing wasn’t an option when she was struggling with a veritable tsunami of rage. ‘You have no right …’ she began, her voice murderously low.
    ‘Not another bloody word!’
    She settled back into a fulminating silence and for want of anything better to do, like giving Wilson a piece of her mind, Hope delved into the carrier bag and pulled out her phone. She switched it on and yes! There were missed calls. Ten of them. Ten ways for Jack to say he was sorry and make it convincing because she wanted him to be sorry and to promise that it (whatever
it
really was) would never happen again. But when she investigated further, eight of them were from Lauren and Allison, there was one from Marvin and even one from Otto, but nothing from Jack. Except, oh! He’d sent her a text.
    R U OK?
    And no. No, Hope wasn’t OK. Not when he couldn’t even take the time to send her a text that contained more than five characters. FIVE!
    ‘I hate him so much right now,’ Hope spat out, and she also hated that she had to qualify the statement. That she couldn’t just outright hate Jack, but she had to give it a disclaimer. ‘I don’t even know who he is any more, and I want to blame Susie for all of this, but y’know, when I saw them … well, it was obvious that Jack wasn’t being forced against his will.’
    ‘I thought we’d decided that we weren’t going to talk about this any more.’
    ‘But don’t you think we should talk about this?’ Hope persisted. ‘We’re the only two people who
can
talk about it.’
    Wilson glanced over at her. ‘What part of “shut the hell up” are you having a problem with?’
    ‘You’re
horrible
!’ Hope ground out, literally ground out because her back molars were now clamped so tightly together it felt as if they’d have to be chiselled apart. ‘No wonder Susie has to …’
    ‘If you finish that sentence how I think you’re going to finish it, then I’m throwing you out of the car
now
, and I won’t care that we’re in Somers Town and you’ll probably get mugged by crackheads.’
    There were a million things that Hope still wanted to say but she couldn’t say them. Not because she believed Wilson’s threats or that she was scared of crackheads (she’d willingly