The Break Up: The perfect heartwarming romantic comedy

by Tilly Tennant

The number was one she didn’t recognise, not stored on her phone under anyone’s name. She didn’t usually get messages from numbers like that unless it was some kind of cold sales text from a company that had somehow managed to get her details. Either that or a client, though she rarely gave her personal number out to them and she certainly couldn’t recall doing that recently. Forehead faintly creased, she opened it up.

  Wedding planner? I always thought that was a fantasy. I guess I was wrong. Well done for making it happen.

  Lara’s breath caught in her throat, her limbs tingling and her gut heavy.

  Lucien: it had to be. Who else would it be?

  But then Lara paused. Perhaps she really was too hung up on the fact that she’d bumped into him the previous weekend and she was seeing his hand in everything everywhere, even where it wasn’t. Maybe it was someone else, someone she’d lost touch with, someone else whose number had been lost from her phone. She searched her brain but she really couldn’t think of anyone else it might be; she wasn’t generally in the habit of deleting numbers from her phone, especially those of people she liked.

  She read the text again, but it was hard to judge the tone. If it was Lucien, was he being patronising or genuinely pleased for her? Was he impressed with how far she’d come since they’d split? Or was he sneering at her life choices?

  More to the point, what gave him the right to message and comment at all?

  But then she thought about it again for a moment. She’d deleted both Lucien’s and Siobhan’s numbers from her phone after the truth had emerged around their affair – so what if this was not Lucien, but Siobhan? Did that change her feelings about the message? Did it make it one of affection if it had come from Siobhan, rather than one of derision or idle curiosity? In which case, how did Lara feel about that? Did it make it some kind of olive branch offering, perhaps in recognition of the fact of a shared past and that their paths had crossed lately? Did it mean that Siobhan had been thinking about what they’d lost as much as Lara had?

  Thanks, she replied.

  What else? Her finger hovered over the key to send the message. How could she find out who it was without making it obvious to the sender that she didn’t know who was talking to her? But then she decided that whoever it was – Lucien or Siobhan – it didn’t matter. Neither of them deserved that courtesy anyway.

  Who is this? she added before sending.

  She watched the screen for a moment. When no immediate reply came, she put it down and turned her attention back to the drinks she’d come to make, her thoughts firing off in all directions.

  A few minutes later, when still no reply had come through, she shoved the phone back in her pocket and went to take the drinks out to the office.

  But as she walked the length of the garden she heard the text tone ping faintly.

  ‘Thanks, boss,’ Betsy said as Lara swept in and put a coffee on her desk before setting her own down. She pulled out her phone and took her seat.

  You don’t know? Does that mean you deleted my number from your phone?

  Lara tapped a reply:

  Clearly. If this is who I think it is then why would I keep your number?

  I thought we might be able to stay friends.

  You’re actually joking, right?

  Maybe