Free Let's Call the Whole Thing Off by Jill Steeples Page B

haven’t even told your mum, yet?’
    ‘No.’ I averted my gaze from her incredulous stare. ‘I tried to, but—’ Admittedly I hadn’t tried very hard. Looking longingly at my phone and hoping mum would pick up on my silent distress call was as close as I got.
    ‘Well, you must! Today! If you were my daughter I wouldn’t be caring about a silly dress and hat. I’d be more concerned about you and how you’re feeling. That’s the most important thing here.’
    ‘You haven’t met my mum,’ I said, giving her a wry smile.
    Mandy shook her head. ‘No, I haven’t, but I can’t believe that she wouldn’t want to know what you’re going through. And you can’t marry someone just to please your mother.’
    ‘I suppose you’re right.’ I sighed. Mandy made everything sound so straightforward, but it wasn’t like that.
    ‘I was in a bad marriage for fifteen years,’ she confided. ‘My husband cheated on me so I know how that feels. When it first happens you try to kid yourself that it’s a one-off. I was even stupid enough to believe that I was to blame somehow. Maybe if I’d been a better wife, less bad-tempered, more understanding then perhaps he wouldn’t have felt the need to go elsewhere.’ She shook her head, as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was saying. ‘I look back now and wonder why I didn’t leave him sooner, but it’s difficult once you’re in a marriage. I wanted to stay, to try to make it work. But no woman deserves to be treated badly, made to feel second best. Especially not one as young and beautiful as you.’ I gulped and bit on my lip. She would set me off crying again if she carried on like this. ‘You deserve so much better than that. You’re the only one who can know if you want to make a go of it with this Ed, but make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. Not to please someone else. I know you’re probably not thinking this far ahead yet, but there’ll be somebody else out there, someone more deserving of you, someone who will treat you like a princess.’
    ‘Do you think so?’ I said, not knowing whether I’d ever want to go through that whole rigmarole again. Dating was such hard work.
    I’d have to watch what I ate, pretending I was really into fruit and salads and healthy-eating stuff and do my best to hide my addiction to Nutella spread thickly onto bread.
    I’d have to think about doing some exercise. Uggh.
    I’d have to keep my body in peak physical form, well as peak as it got with me. I’d have to shave and moisturise and polish parts of my body that had been left to their own devices for months and had frankly run riot. It would be a mammoth task.
    I’d have to find some interesting hobbies to talk about. Watching back to back episodes of
Come Dine with Me
and
Dinner Date
didn’t really count as a hobby.
    I would have to be a much more interesting and entertaining companion than I’d probably been to Ed these last few months.
    No, getting back out there seemed far too overwhelming. Ed knew everything about me, all my foibles and funny little ways. I thought he found them endearing. I didn’t have to try too hard with Ed – or at least I thought I didn’t have to. Perhaps I should have tried harder.
    The thought only just occurred to me, but maybe that’s where I’d gone wrong. Had I taken him and our relationship for granted? I wasn’t sure I wanted to start all over again with someone new.
    ‘I know so,’ said Mandy, interrupting my day-dreaming. ‘If I hadn’t left my first husband when I did I would never have met Bob. We often say that it was fate that brought us together, don’t we, love?’ Bob had wandered in from the kitchen and Mandy reached out for his hand. She looked at him as though it was Johnny Depp standing there when in truth he looked more like Johnny Vegas, but what did it matter when they were both clearly devoted to each other. ‘You might not think so now, but you’ll probably look back on this period