Free Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend by Sarra Manning Page B

rights. An endless stream of clubbers, scene-kids and hipsters, most of them chugging espressos to keep the come-down at bay, was entertaining enough that Hope could sit there and not really have to think about anything.
    She didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there but her bottom had gone numb and the sight of her fifth cup of cold cappuccino and a congealed panini was starting to make her feel sick. She couldn’t stay there for ever, even if she’d wanted to. One of the counter staff had been over to wipe her table down at least ten times in the last half hour, so with a heavy heart and even heavier feet, Hope gathered up her carrier bag and headed out to meet her uncertain future.
    It was a glorious day. The sun was already high up in a soft blue sky. A man was walking his schnauzer, a copy of the
Sunday Times
tucked under his arm. Hope checked her phone; it was only a little past seven. She hadn’t been up this early on a Sunday since she’d stayed up all of Saturday night at Latitude dancing with Susie.
    Hope wished that she didn’t have to go home. Ever. Again. She was almost tempted to prolong the inevitable and hunker down in her favourite West End greasy spoon for a fortifying mug of tea and a bacon sandwich, which she might actually eat, but common sense prevailed. Tomorrow was the first inset day of the new school year and she’d promised the deputy head that she’d make her famous chocolate brownies for the infants
v
. juniors staffroom bake-off they had at the beginning of each new term.
    The thought of having to do anything oven-related after yesterday’s dinner party was almost enough to make Hope cry the first tears of a new day. Instead, she stopped at a Tesco Metro to buy ingredients for the brownies, then stuck out her hand to hail a black cab rather than taking the tube. Her shoes were no less painful than they had been last night and if a black cab had its light on before eight on a Sunday morning, then God obviously wanted her to take it.
     
    Hope stood outside 47 Dunhill Road for long, long moments after the taxi had driven away. If God had really been on her side, he’d have forgotten about gifting Hope with a cab for hire and arranged instead for a handy tornado to pick up the building and its inhabitants and deposit them in a field miles away. But it was still standing there in the middle of the terrace and Hope had no option but to drag herself up the garden path.
    As Hope picked her way down the steps that led to the basement flat, she could hear the front door opening and by the time she reached the bottom, Jack was standing there, waiting for her.
    His face had been as familiar to her as her own reflection, but now Hope felt as if it had changed. Something irrevocable had happened in the few hours that she’d been absent.
    She didn’t know the secret heart of him any more. Wasn’t sure that she ever had. And the way he was looking at her, his big blue eyes wide and wary, was shiny and new, too. Maybe he’d changed before now, and she hadn’t even noticed because she’d stopped really looking at him and had simply seen the familiar Jack shape with Jack’s features, and hadn’t bothered to delve any deeper.
    They stood there staring at each other, until Hope dropped her eyes to stare at her feet and the chipped nail polish on her big toe because she couldn’t bear to look at him any longer.
    ‘You’re home … I was worried about you,’ Jack began brokenly. ‘Where have you been?’
    ‘Well, Wilson gave me a lift into town and I spent the night in Bar Italia,’ Hope said shortly, as she moved past Jack, all of her tensed in case she accidentally made contact with him in the process. ‘Like you even care where I’ve been.’
    ‘Hopey! Please, don’t be like this,’ Jack said, touching her shoulder as he followed her into their flat, but letting his hand drop away as soon as he felt the rigid set of her muscles. ‘You have to know … I never meant to hurt