by Hazel Osmond
Now the skirmish was over, she realised that she was shaking. She hadn’t expected Jack to welcome her with open arms, but what she’d just witnessed was … She couldn’t think of the word. Callous? Cruel? He’d more or less had her chucked out. The man who had kissed every part of her body had brushed her off like some kind of insect. Ellie sat down on the kerb. She was tired, she was hungry, but most of all she wanted to give up.
Only the thought of flying back to England without having talked to Jack made her stand up again. She took a deep gulp of air and tried to think what to do next.
Plan B.
If only she had a Plan B.
She walked back round to the front of the building as the door opened and Jack emerged, looking neither to left nor right and striding determinedly towards the cab that was waiting at the kerb. Ellie ignored the doorman advancing towards her and only had time to shout out the words ‘Wait, listen!’ before Jack slammed the car door behind him and the taxi sped off.
The doorman kept on coming and Ellie had a surge of inspiration. She raced out of his reach down the road and then jabbed out a hand.
It was probably the only time in her life she was ever going to say, ‘Follow that cab,’ and so she made the most of it, even though the cab driver looked bored to tears when she said it.
The lunchtime traffic was vile and at one point they lost sight of Jack’s cab, but Ellie waved a fifty-dollar bill at her driver and promised him it was his if he caught up with Jack. In response he jumped a red light and dropped her round the corner from the restaurant as Jack walked in through the front door.
Ellie followed him at a distance. Catching sight of her reflection in a window, she paused to twist her hair up and secure it with a clip from her bag. She smoothed down her clothes as best she could and bit her lips and pinched her cheeks. Now all she needed was the British matron’s voice.
‘Jack honey, tell her to go away – she’s starting to bore me.’ The blonde woman with the pneumatic breasts put her hand on Jack’s arm. Ellie could see that under the restaurant table Miss Plastic Tits’ foot was slowly rubbing Jack’s ankle.
The urge to grab hold of the woman by her perfectly cut hair was nearly overwhelming.
‘What the bloody hell are you hoping to achieve here?’ Jack said to Ellie. ‘I thought I made it clear at my apartment block that I didn’t want to speak to you. Stop making a fool of yourself and go home.’
Ellie ignored the glowering Jack in front of her and tried to focus on the one she had known back in London. The funny Jack, the one who was kind to Edith, the one who had talked to her through the bathroom door and then cradled her in his arms.
‘Jack, I came all the way here to talk to you. I’m not going to be put off. I can’t go home without telling you what I have to say. You must see that?’
In reply Jack swore loudly and slammed the menu he had been holding down on the table.
The other diners were pretending not to take any notice. But cool New Yorkers or not, Ellie could see the looks surreptitiously darting her way, the heads turned slightly. She tried to pour all the love she felt for Jack into her eyes so that he would know that he should leave the blonde by his side and come home with her. But the adrenalin pumping through her body was making her feel shaky, and her close proximity to Jack was having the usual effect on her body. She couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t get beyond wanting to sit herself in his lap and feel his arms come round her.
‘Jack, please. I am trying to apologise for being so horrible about Helen. I’m trying to explain that I got hold of the wrong end of the stick. I didn’t know the full story until I talked to Bryan at the paper. If I could take back those things I said about her, believe me I would.’
‘And I have told you that I’m not interested in apologies or anything else from you,’ Jack shot back. ‘We had a fling, it was OKish and it’s over.’
That ‘OKish’ rammed into Ellie’s chest and she had to get hold of the table to stop herself from giving in and sliding under it. The blonde woman giggled and Ellie felt her hands twitch as if they had decided quite independently of her that they wanted to be round the woman’s neck.
Ellie tried again. ‘Jack, please listen to me—’
Jack slammed his hand down on the table. ‘No, I have told you before. I am not listening to you. Everything we had to say to each other we said in London. You’re being pathetic chasing me across the Atlantic like this.’
Ellie could see the other diners openly staring now. There was a general murmuring. No doubt they had her down as a pathetic stalker, a pathetic scruffy English stalker in their nice, cream-coloured restaurant. She was interrupting their lunches and talking over the jazz track. Ellie saw the blonde pneumatic woman yawn elaborately.
She stumbled on. ‘I am so sorry about Helen, Jack. I cannot begin to understand the pain you have been through. I wish I could take every piece of it away from you. I love you, Jack.’
‘Right, that does it.’ Jack rose abruptly to his feet. ‘You’ve got a choice here, Ellie. You either stop making a tit of yourself and go, or I get you chucked out.’
Ellie saw the blonde woman run her hand up the back of Jack’s thigh. She smiled at Ellie like a cat that had all the cream and wasn’t handing it over anytime soon.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t go, Jack. Not until I’ve said everything I have to say. Stop fighting me and listen. If you listen, I’ll go, I promise, but listen.’
Jack folded his arms. ‘Go on, then. Amaze me.’
Ellie glanced round at all the faces looking at her. This scene wasn’t meant to go like this; she was meant to be talking to Jack somewhere private, just the two of them. She felt like she was some kind of freak in a show. She took a deep breath. ‘I got it wrong, Jack, but so have you. All this’ – Ellie waved in the blonde woman’s direction – ‘it’s not you. It’s not who you used to be when you were happy.’
Jack laughed. ‘Well, bugger me. You’re not only a copywriter, you’re a psychologist too.’
‘Jack, please … I … I think that you’ve got stuck somehow at the point you were at when Helen died. I think you’re scared to move on, to really work at a relationship in case you find someone you love as much as Helen. It would make you feel like you’d forgotten her, like you were being disloyal. If anybody gets close to you, you run.’
Jack snorted. ‘Oh, I get it. You think that you were getting too close, so I ran away?’ He looked down his nose at her and then leaned forward. ‘Perhaps when you’ve had more experience of men, you won’t take a little fling like we had so much to heart.’
Ellie gripped the edge of the table more tightly and made one last effort. ‘I wanted you to forgive me for what I said, Jack, but if you won’t forgive me, please at least think about what you’re doing with your life. I can’t bear to think of you carrying on like this, being permanently lonely and going from one mindless fling to the next.’
‘Gee, thanks,’ said the blonde woman.
‘I know I’ve blown my chances, Jack, but please, please find someone who will look after you and love you and … and give you a family and security and everything you deserve.’ It was a great speech and she managed to get to the end of it without faltering. But hearing herself say she had blown her chances finally brought it home to her that she had.
Jack’s face was stony, empty. ‘Go home and stop humiliating yourself, Ellie. You’re hardly qualified to lecture anyone on relationships. Didn’t your last boyfriend have an affair for months without you even noticing?’
That was it, a final killer blow delivered in front of everyone, her deepest secrets aired at the freak show.
The blonde woman leaned forward. ‘Face it, honey, you’re the type of girl that men cheat on.’
When Ellie felt a waiter’s hand on her arm, it was almost a relief. The torture was about to end. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ he said, ‘you’re disturbing the other diners. I’m going to have to ask you to leave.’
She was aware of Ja
ck sitting back down, of the blonde woman raising her hand to his cheek, and then she let the waiter lead her from the restaurant and out into the street. There was no parting, mind-changing wisecrack, no final romantic declaration that would melt Jack’s heart. The last look he had given her had been one of intense anger.
Down in the men’s room later, Jack splashed cold water on his face and then braced his arms against the back of the sink. It was pointless going back over every word he’d said. He knew he’d inflicted pain on her as effectively as if he’d punched her. Hell’s teeth, if he’d heard any other man talking to a woman like that, he would have gone over and decked him. No question.
What choice had he had? She had to stop thinking he was a good guy. When she got over the shock and sat and thought about it, she would definitely hate him. And that was good; hating him was good. She could move on from that, get over it and get on with her life.
Damn it, though, she’d come all the way out here to apologise. How much had that cost her? And she looked so sad, so ill. Jack turned on the cold tap again and rubbed his wet hand over his face. Why did she have to make it so hard? Why keep turning up and telling him how much she loved him? He took a big gulp of air and kept his head down until his throat stopped tightening.
Better to leave it like this. She’d get over him soon enough.
He ignored the pain that thought brought with it and stood back up straight and smoothed down his hair.
He’d got a free afternoon and piranha woman upstairs in the restaurant had already made it more than clear she was his for the asking. So he was going to ask and then he was going to bury himself in her and forget all about Eleanor Somerset.
Jack went back up into the restaurant, paid the bill and escorted the blonde woman to his apartment, where he had sex with her against a wall and tried not to compare her plastic hair and plastic conversation and plastic breasts to Ellie’s.
It didn’t work. He just felt like a cheap, dirty bastard and sadder than he had since Helen had died.
CHAPTER 37
‘You and Jack Wolfe?’ Lesley said, her eyebrows doing a manic dance. ‘Jack Wolfe and you?’
She said it a few more times until Ellie put her hand on her arm and said, ‘Yes. Jack Wolfe and me.’
They were sitting on a bench in the park, eating lunch. Ellie had known it was the right time to tell Lesley about Jack, out in the open, without any flapping agency ears listening.
Lesley moved on to, ‘Jack was married and his wife died?’ which she repeated quite a lot while Ellie looked at the ducks and ate her prawn and avocado wrap.
Telling Lesley hadn’t been easy, but she couldn’t go on pretending everything was fine. She’d given Lesley the very edited highlights in the end, and hadn’t mentioned Helen’s fling. It didn’t seem relevant to the woman Helen had been or to her marriage. In some crazy way Ellie felt protective towards Helen and even more protective towards Jack.
Lesley finally ran out of astonishment and settled on, ‘Jeez, you should have told me earlier.’
‘I know,’ Ellie said, ‘but you had your own problems with Megan and her family back in Wales and well, it was too big to talk about.’ Ellie reached over and took hold of Lesley’s hand. ‘It wasn’t because I didn’t want to tell you. It was too painful. And I felt so stupid.’
Lesley shook her head. ‘Right under my nose and I couldn’t see it. No wonder you threw that sickie when he came back from New York.’
Ellie let go of Lesley’s hand and took another bite of her wrap, and they sat there looking at people walking their dogs and a group of small children kicking a football.
Lesley broke the silence with a self-mocking laugh. ‘I wish you’d told me before his leaving do. I made a right arse of myself telling him he was the best boss I’d ever had. And I put a tenner in his leaving collection. Bastard. If I’d have known, I’d have got even more drunk and kneed him in the groin.’
‘Thanks, Lesley, you’re a real friend.’ Ellie threw the last of her wrap on to the grass and watched the ducks start to run towards it. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter now. It’s over, finished. It was just sex for Jack and I built it up to be something more. He’s still in love with his wife as far as I can see.’ She brushed the crumbs from her skirt to cover up the fact that her eyes had started to fill up. It was a little while before she felt composed enough to say, ‘Why can’t I be more sophisticated and slip in and out of relationships without getting so involved?’
Lesley gave her an incredulous look. ‘Why should you? It’s a hideous way to be, believe me. I mean, great for a while, but, Jeez, in the end it’s like stuffing yourself stupid at some kind of all-you-can-eat people buffet and then making yourself feel sick. And …’
‘And what?’
‘Well, it’s no wonder you got confused with Jack. He isn’t meant to have sex with anybody he works with. It’s a Jack rule – everyone knows that.’
‘He knew he was going by then, so I didn’t count.’
‘He said that?’
‘More or less.’
Lesley shook her head. ‘I really, really wish I hadn’t put that tenner in now. What a git.’
They watched the ducks fighting over the wrap and Ellie waited for the one question that she knew Lesley was dying to ask.
‘Um …’ Lesley said.
Ellie wasn’t going to help her out.
‘Um …’ repeated Lesley with the addition of a querying look.
‘Um, what?’
Lesley shuffled her feet about a bit. ‘Well, we’ve established that Jack was a bastard out of bed, but … uh … in bed?’
Ellie had formed some witty reply and was about to deliver it when a picture of Jack and her entwined on her bedroom carpet came into her mind. She saw Lesley’s face disintegrate into a watery blur as her tears came properly this time. ‘He was lovely, Lesley, completely lovely,’ she sobbed. ‘Filthy and tender both at the same time.’
‘Oh, Ellie,’ Lesley said, and scooted along the bench to put an arm round her.
Eventually Ellie got herself under control.
‘I’m really sorry, Lesley. I miss him so much and I got it so wrong and I don’t feel I can trust myself to understand anything any more.’ She scrabbled in her pocket for a tissue. ‘When it ended with Sam, when I got over the shock of the Barcelona thing, I realised there were loads of signs that we’d been on the skids. Loads. But with Jack, it seemed to be getting better and better. Just before the end I felt we’d got really close, crossed over some kind of line. He said such wonderful things to me.’ She blew her nose fiercely. ‘I was so trusting, such an idiot.’
‘C’mon, you’ve got to stop putting all the blame on yourself.’ Lesley gave her another hug. ‘Someone like Jack’s used to getting women to believe that they’re the centre of his world for a night, or a couple of nights.’
‘Or a couple of weeks.’
‘Yeah. Look, you’re talking to the queen of getting it wrong here. Till I met Megan.’
Ellie gave Lesley a waterlogged smile. ‘But I thought Jack was my Megan. Do you remember when you met Megan for the first time and you said you realised it was a face you’d been waiting for your whole life? Well, that’s how I felt about Jack. Everything I knew about him told me to run away, but I couldn’t. I fell deeper and deeper into liking him and then loving him. He was who I’d been waiting for.’
Lesley gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘Poor, poor Ellie. You don’t deserve another swine, not after Sam.’
Ellie wiped her face dry and put the tissue back in her pocket. ‘We better get back. I’ve still got the copy for the Whispedge pack to polish up.’
They started to walk across the park, Ellie aware that people were looking at her blotchy face.
‘You’ve got to promise me, Lesley, hand on heart, that you won’t tell anyone anything about this. I couldn’t stand having it all raked over by Hugo and Rachel and the rest of them.’
‘’Course I won’t. Except … can I tell Mega
n?’
‘Yeah, you can tell Megan. But no one else. Tell anyone else and I’ll let Megan know about that sandwich-delivery girl last year and what you did to get that extra filling.’
Lesley made a ‘cross my heart’ sign and for good measure a ‘zipping up my mouth’ sign too and then they went over the road and headed back to the agency.
That evening Ellie couldn’t think of another single word to make with the Scrabble tiles in front of her. Edith was playing to her usual high and bawdy standards, but so far Ellie had only managed ‘wig’ and ‘top’.
Ellie was aware that Edith was studying her. Up until now Edith had been extremely understanding about the whole Jack thing, not once saying, ‘I told you so.’ For her part, Ellie had tried her hardest to do her mourning for Jack in private and had worked on her bright and breezy act, the one that she had been perfecting at work. Even when Edith had caught her yesterday standing in the garden with tears streaming down her face, Ellie had tried to pass it off as hay fever.
‘Ellie, Ellie, Ellie,’ Edith said suddenly, real sadness in her voice. She got up and poured them both another gin and splashed the tiniest bit of tonic on top. Then she set the glasses back down, gave Ellie a little consoling pat on the hand and disappeared out of the room. A few minutes later she was back with a battered old biscuit tin. The lettering on the side revealed that it had once held custard creams costing one shilling and six old pence. Edith set it down on the Scrabble board with a flourish.
‘Now, Ellie,’ she said, taking a big gulp of her drink, ‘tell me exactly what happened with Jack.’
‘Oh, Edith, no, you don’t want to hear it. You warned me and I didn’t listen.’
‘Tell me. I want to help you. Come on, drink up and talk.’
So for the second time that day Ellie spilled out everything about Jack and how much she loved him. She even told Edith something that she had not told Lesley: that for a brief period of time she had felt that Jack understood her better than anybody, even her family.
