Page 40 of Such a Good Couple
‘It’s not like that, Annie. I wouldn’t be leaving if I didn’t have to. I’m going so Ollie isn’t on his own. I don’t want you and I to hate each other. We’ve grown up together. All of us have. We’ve all been friends for so long.’
She laughed sourly. ‘As if that’ll be the case after all this. We’ll be working out joint custody of our friends.’
‘We could still all be friends after a while,’ he ventured, sounding as unconvinced as she felt. He moved to the wardrobe and retrieved his bag.
‘All packed, I see.’ Annie glared.
Ignoring this, Conor inched towards the door. ‘I’m going to go up to Ollie. We agreed I’d crash on the sofa in his room.’
‘Nighty-night. Great fucking talk.’
Conor winced and then slipped quickly out the door, awkwardly catching the bag in the frame as he went.
Annie stared at the peculiar blankness of a door that had just closed behind a person who was walking out of your life. She lay down on the bed and inhaled and exhaled and tried to sort through the fevered churn of anger and sorrow raging inside her.
It was hard to admit it, but what Conor had said was true – their relationshipwasfucked if her overriding thought above all else at that moment was about the baby that he was robbing her of.
She closed her eyes as tears began to slide down her cheeks.I have been robbed, she thought. It wasn’t an attempt to comfort herself but a bid to make what had just happened feel real. Robbed was exactly how she felt, like a house ransacked and cleared out – the only things remaining were still and empty rooms where the ghosts of her hopes and beautiful imagined life hovered, vaporous and now utterly and completely impossible to hold onto.
The finality of it all was crushing.
CHAPTER 11
Clara woke up in Maggie’s bed facing the wall. She could sense rather than see her friend behind her, scrolling. For a brief moment, she registered nothing else but the pristine brightness of the room. And then it all flooded in – Ollie’s fury, the mortifying reckoning that had played out in full view of all their friends and, worst of all, the foreign feeling of the young guy’s tongue in her mouth.Why, why, why? Clara, you dumb bitch.
She rolled towards Maggie and prepared to put a brave face on things. God, what were the girls thinking? And Fionn and Conor? Probably that she was a monster and that it served her right that she’d been so utterly, wretchedly wrong.
The image of Ollie kissing a faceless woman came at her, accompanied by a nauseating anxiety. Shewouldbe devastated. Shehadbeen devastated when she thought thatwasthe case. Underneath all her aggrieved bravado, she’d felt so small, as though she’d been discarded.Ollie feels like that right now, she thought.I have to talk to him.
‘Morning.’ She massaged her head, where a headache hammered mercilessly. ‘Thanks for subletting Fionn’s side of the bed.’
‘Ah, yes, well, I’d love to tell you that you’re a better bedmate than he is but you’ve been snoring and you reek of booze.’ She didn’t sound mad, thank God.
Clara pushed herself up to lean against the headboard. ‘I’m sorry about the snoring. It drives Ollie insane at home …’ Shetrailed off. With the mention of their home, the scale of what she’d done overwhelmed her all over again. What was going to happen when they got back?
Maggie was silent, perhaps thinking the same thing.
‘Guess my snoring isn’t the worst thing about me anymore …’ Clara said quietly.
‘Ah, Clara,’ Maggie murmured gently.
Clara chewed on the inside of her cheek. ‘I know I don’t really have much of a leg to stand on but there was a lot going on in my head yesterday. It was … kind of a misunderstanding, like?’
‘I know. You weren’t in a good place,’ Maggie agreed, though Clara felt certain there was more Maggie had to say on the matter that she was withholding.
‘I only got the guy to kiss me as payback. It’s not like I fancied him.’ Even though Clara knew, with the spectre of the blind item hovering, that Maggie was probably not the audience for a speech on why kissing someone else could be in some way justified, she couldn’t help but continue. ‘I know Annie said it was homophobic or whatever to say a gay guy didn’t count but I swear I actually don’t think I’d take it seriously if Ollie scored a lesbian …’ She paused, doubtful. ‘Well … maybe …?’
Maggie sighed. ‘My advice would be to skip that argument when you have your conversation with Ollie. I don’t know if you should be trying to get out of this based on a technicality. A homophobic one or otherwise, you’re in morally dubious territory.’
Maggie stood and pulled on a beautiful kimono that looked like hand-painted silk, and Clara struggled to her feet as well. ‘I suppose you’re right … you don’t want to be a cheateranda homophobe …’ She tried to laugh but trailed off. ‘Best abandon the gay-guy argument.’ She began straightening the duvet.
‘You don’t have to make the bed, Clara, someone will be in.’
‘Oh yeah …’ Clara straightened up and fixed the dress shewas still wearing from the night before. She hadn’t dared go back to her room on the way to Maggie’s in the wee hours of the morning. She found her phone and checked the time. Only 7.30 a.m. She needed to go to Ollie but she also needed to not be dressed like someone just off a bender and a one-night stand. ‘Can I borrow something to wear, Maggie?’
‘Yeah, anything.’ Maggie indicated the clothes rail. ‘Though they’ll probably be too big.’
‘Oh.’ Clara faltered. What was she talking about? They were pretty close in size. ‘I doubt it, Mags. If anything, they’ll be too small.’ She joined Maggie at the rail and started flicking through the hangers.
