Free The Cupid Effect by Dorothy Koomson Page B

with me, he could talk sex with me, but he couldn’t even close his eyes, think of Leeds, and kiss me full on the mouth.
    Part of me clung to the notion that Drew was the one who got away, that I wouldn’t feel this for anyone else – three years on, I could see that I really didn’t want to. Because that wasn’t love. Love is a two-way street, except with me and Drew it had been totally one way. If he’d loved me, even a little, he wouldn’t have emotionally teased me.
    I flicked through more pages in the photo album. We all looked so young.
    I stopped over a picture of me that Drew had taken a few days after our final exam. I was lying on the grass in Hyde Park with sunglasses on, a huge smile on my face and sticking two fingers up at him. I looked quite good then, even if I say so myself. I was happy. I’d just finished my finals, I had a few weeks to go until the results. The world was my lobster. A group of us had gone to the park to play a game of rounders and I’d taken a break, lay on the grass not caring about getting grass marks on my short red dress (with white cycling shorts under it for decency).
    As a shadow fell over me, I opened my eyes and found Drew stood over me, his camera poised. Just as he hit the button, I’d stuck my fingers up at him.
    I didn’t look that different in that photo, actually, not if you looked at the photos of me then. But when you looked at the photo then looked at me . . . I was older. Not particularly wrinkly (wrinkles weren’t a worry of mine), just older; I suppose I’d done a lot and it showed on my face. I’d run a department on a women’s magazine. I’d found out that love had to be two-way for it to mean anything. I’d discovered that I’d much rather stay in with a video than go out ‘on the pull’. And then, of course, I lived with a man I’d torn out of every photo he’d managed to infiltrate. This was against everything I ever believed in, I loved to take photos, to take snapshots of every time of my life. To have it there to look back on if I ever got pastsick. With Whashisface Tosspot, I just couldn’t bear to be reminded of the biggest mistake of my life. It was bad enough that I’d slept with him for two years, did I really want to look at him too? No, was the short answer to that, too.
    I slammed shut the photo album. Didn’t I just say to Ed that ‘What if ?’ was no way to live a life? Erm . . . maybe I didn’t say it, but I’d meant to. And, constantly dipping into my photo album was no way to live a life in Leeds, either. Yer have to look forwards I reminded myself.
    And I will, right after I’ve watched a couple more episodes of Angel . . .

chapter seven
    Blurting
    Before I’d touched down in Leeds this time around, I’d decided to doff my cap to health and fitness. Devote some of my time and effort to what probably should come naturally. Not go crazy, not become a gym bore, not even attempt to lose weight or start chasing that mythical dream of ‘firming up’. I simply fancied the idea of being able to walk up more than two flights of stairs without making the asthmatic donkey sound of someone who’d had a thirty-a-day habit since she was sixteen. It was downright embarrassing that Jess could do the stairs thing without a hint of a donkey about her when she had been a thirty-a-day person since she was fourteen.
    The gym on the college campus, a stand-alone annexe, was adequate for my purposes – a line of treadmills greeted you as you entered, flanked on the left by a large handful of exercise bikes. On the right was the weights area, plus rowing machines; further on and then down a short flight of stairs was a swimming pool and a circuit training gym.
    I’d come here, the first day at college, straight from my final meeting with the last lecturer, Sally. (Sally had been lovely. The meeting