The Rom-Com Collection: The Plus One, Something for the Weekend, A Marriage of Connivance

by Natasha West

  The room froze as Jess and Chloe glared at each other across the table. Freya and Claire, as the people in the room not currently angry, exchanged a look of brief alliance.

  Freya put her hand on Chloe’s.

  ‘And that’ said Freya ‘is why you never discuss politics or religion with friends.’

  Chloe shot her a brief look of annoyance. Freya quickly turned away from it, taking a sip of her drink. She’d tried.

  ‘Hey’ Claire said softly. ‘Maybe we should change the subject.’

  Jess turned to Claire, about ready to bite her head off. She hated it when people couldn’t handle a bit of tension. It was wimpy.

  But before she could let fly, Chloe stood up.

  ‘Thanks for dinner’ she said quietly ‘But I’ve got to be up early. Don’t want to miss the vote’ she added, almost imperceptibly emphasising the word ‘vote’. But Jess caught it.

  As Chloe picked up her bag and began to get herself together, Jess felt horrible. It had all gotten away from her so quickly. The dinner and her temper. What the hell had gotten into her?

  She stood, ready to make some kind of amends.

  ‘Chloe, I-’

  ‘See you at the conference’ Chloe said and fled the room. Freya was briefly left with Jess and Claire. She gave a shrug and said ‘I guess that’s my cue. See ya’ and quickly followed after Chloe.

  And with that, the evening was done. It had lasted less than an hour.

  Jess didn’t even look at Claire. She started grabbing dirty plates and taking them through to the kitchen.

  After a minute’s hesitation, Claire scuttled in after her. She walked in to see Jess angrily scraping burnt chilli into the bin, taking half the surface of the pan with it.

  ‘Careful. Those were from the registry. They weren’t that cheap as I-’

  ‘Is that all you care about?’ Jess exploded.

  But Claire wasn’t about to take the bait.

  ‘No, I care about you actually. What happened in there?’ she asked softly.

  The tenderness in Claire’s words finally began to sooth the angry beast that had risen up in the last twenty minutes.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jess said remorsefully. ‘How was I supposed to know she’d been bought up by a single mum? She never mentioned it.’

  ‘Did you ever ask?’

  Jess felt another rage flare up at the question, laden as it was with accusation. But instead of flying off the handle, Jess took a deep breath. It was something she’d learned in the weekly therapy sessions she’d been having for the last few months. It had been a long time coming. She needed a place to vent, blow off some of the steam that tended to build up at work. It became too easy to get angry these days. So she’d decided to go to therapy, rather than wait till she ended up strangling a pupil who was ignoring her whistle. So far, the sessions had helped. She’d go in there and vent, and then come out feeling less of a tightness in her chest. She was letting go of something.

  But still, you can never fully cure a quick temper. And that’s how she’d come to rely on deep breaths when it all became too much. And it was pretty effective. Jess just wished she’d deployed it ten minutes ago instead of letting herself go off the deep end at Chloe.

  ‘Not as such’ she replied to Claire’s question. ‘It never really came up.’

  Claire didn’t say anything to that, leaving Jess alone with the thought.

  The next morning Jess walked into the lobby, fighting the urge to creep through like a criminal. She looked around for Chloe but she didn’t see her.

  Jess wasn’t sure how to play things today. She’d been tossing and turning all night, thinking about the argument. She’d moved between feeling like she’d been the arsehole to feeling like the wounded party. Right now, she was somewhere in the middle.

  She walked into the conference room, choosing a seat on the back row. She kept a watchful eye out for Chloe, but she didn’t immediately spot her. Had she sacked it off, Jess wondered?

  But then she saw her. She was near the front, sitting straight backed in her seat. There was something in that rigid posture that was very un-Chloe like. It made Jess a little nervous.

  A woman in a colourful dress with a bleating, loud voice addressed the crowd to tell them about the subject vote, as if everyone didn’t know about it. It was the only topic of the day. To strike or not to strike. It was a topic that got Jess’s blood boiling with righteous ire ordinarily, feeling that it was clear what they should do. But now, the subject was laden with embarrassment, shame and fear.

  That didn’t change Jess’s views, however. Whatever had erupted with Chloe, she still felt essentially the same. She would vote as intended.

  Later, Jess was getting a cup of tea and a muffin from the coffee shop next door to the hotel. She told herself that it was better than the free tea available for the delegates, but the truth was, she was hiding. Jess liked to think of herself as forthright however, so she preferred to tell herself it was all about the English Breakfast and baked goods.

  But, in immediate karmic retribution, Chloe suddenly walked in the door just as Jess had sat down and taken a mouthful of muffin. They locked eyes.

  Chloe, who’d come in for exactly the same reason Jess had, to avoid her, suffered a small panic when she saw her. She almost turned and ran, with the ridiculous idea that that maybe Jess hadn’t seen her. But it was madness. They were five feet away from each other, close enough for Chloe to see the muffin crumbs on Jess’s chin.

  ‘Oh. Hi. How are you?’ Chloe asked robotically.

  Jess put down the muffin and brushed the crumbs from her chin.

  ‘I’m fine. And you?’ Jess replied in an unnaturally mannerly tone.

  ‘Yeah. Ya know…’ she trailed off.

  For Jess, that was as much politeness as she could reasonably be expected to tolerate. She wanted to say something real.

  Unfortunately, the only thing she could think to say was ‘So how did you vote?’

  Chloe stiffened.

  ‘I’d rather keep that private, if you don’t mind.’

  Jess raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Well, we all know what that means.’

  ‘We do?’ Chloe asked coldly.

  ‘Yeah. People only want to keep their votes private when they know it’s an unpopular choice.’

  Chloe looked as though she were about to say something, but changed her mind. She glanced out of the coffee shop window.

  ‘I’d better go. I’m meeting Freya for lunch.’

  And she left.

  Jess wanted to kick herself. Why did she keep talking to Chloe like this? Why couldn’t she stop?

  ‘Greg, calm down. I’m not the enemy. I’m here to help you.’

  Greg, he of the bad moustache, was not so easily consoled. He’d come to Jess, in the almost privacy of the bar, looking for answers that Jess didn’t have. And now he’d reached breaking point.

  ‘Really? Because that bastard is making my life hell and so far, all he’s had is a slap on the wrist.’

  ‘I’m not in charge of the disciplinary action the Head decides on.’

  ‘No, but it’s up to you to push for a just outcome. And I feel like you’re not doing it.’

  ‘I’m really doing my best here. It just takes time.’

  But Greg wasn’t really listening.

  ‘I guess all Heads of Department look out for each other, is that it?’

  Jess was offended.

  ‘Greg, we’ve known each other for five years. Is that how you really see me?’ she said angrily.

  Greg sighed. He shook his head.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  Greg looked so forlorn she couldn’t help but immediately forgive him. She understood how hard it was when work was bad, how it could infect your whole outlook. The man was simply frustrated. And Jess was frustrated too. His boss, Robert Naylor, Head of Science, was about as mean as they came and had been putting the screws to Greg for quite some time. Peop
le said he hadn’t started out like that but Jess didn’t know if that was true or not. All she’d ever known was a bully who smelled of whisky most mornings.

  Greg was right. Robert deserved more than a slap on the wrist. But these things took time. There was a procedure to follow. Even Robert, bastard that he was, was entitled to his rights, the same as Greg.

  Still, that was no good to poor Greg. The man was in rough shape. And he’d talked about quitting more than once. For Jess, that was the worst possible outcome. A good teacher leaves while his incompetent drunk arsehole of a boss stays? Jess could not bear the idea of a world where that happened.

  ‘Just hold on, Greg. Please, hold on. I’m doing my best for you. I want that fucker out too. I just need a bit more time.’

  Greg nodded gently and then turned and left the bar. Jess watched him go, feeling worse than useless.

  Suddenly, she felt a hand on her arm.

  ‘You. Come with me’ said a firm voice, a voice made of iron.

  Jess turned, not knowing who the hell had just spoken. Was she getting robbed right here in the bar of the Gatehouse Hotel?

  But she turned to see that it was actually Chloe. Or possibly her evil twin. She had a steel in her eyes that was unrecognisable.

  ‘Are you coming or not?’ Chloe asked.

  Jess, utterly befuddled, muttered ‘Alright. Where we going?’ as she was pulled out of the bar and escorted to the lifts.

  ‘My room.’

  ‘Jeez, buy a girl a drink first’ Jess said, trying for a light tone. But Chloe was having none of it.

  ‘No, stop that. No jokes’ she said as they got in the lift.

  The door to Chloe’s hotel room opened and Chloe stomped in. Jess shuffled in after her, wondering what the hell she was walking into. Chloe was being quite forceful and direct. Jess wondered if whatever she’d taken to illicit this personality change was available over the counter.

  But Chloe was not chemically enhanced. She was just angry. She’d had about twenty-four hours to stew on what had happened, on Jess’s words. And she regretted only one thing. Walking out before she’d really had a chance to say what she thought.

  Freya hadn’t helped in soothing Chloe’s anger. Partly because Chloe had insisted that she’d shaken off the incident. But that really wasn’t an excuse. It was the duty of the person who loved you to know when you were lying about being OK, to call you on it. But Freya didn’t do that, it wasn’t her way. She preferred to let people work their stuff out on their own. She felt it was more respectful than dragging stuff out of them. If they wanted to talk, they would.

  But Chloe had needed to have things dragged out of her. It was how she’d always been. And she’d needed it last night. But it hadn’t happened. They just sat in the room together, watching TV, tiptoeing around one another.

  It was an unfortunate incompatibility issue for Chloe at this moment. Because she couldn’t remember being quite so angry as she’d gotten at Jess, not in some time. It might have passed if she’d talked it through. But even though that hadn’t happened, Chloe thought that it would fade anyway, given time. Even as she fumed in that coffee shop, she’d still believed that, that it was better to walk away. But ten minutes ago, she’d seen Jess from the doorway of the bar and she knew that for once in her life, she needed to have it out. She couldn’t find peace any other way.

  ‘We need to talk’ Chloe began.

  ‘Yes, I think we do’ Jess replied, with more confidence than she felt. But life had taught Jess to go in on the offensive, then figure out if you were actually right later on.

  And it worked. Chloe was momentarily knocked off her righteous perch. She’d felt so worked up, played out what she would say in her head so many times during the night, it hadn’t occurred to her that Jess wouldn’t play the role she had been given in Chloe’s imagination. Chloe had decided that Jess would be utterly contrite in the face of Chloe’s anger. But she wasn’t quite living up to that fantasy.

  Still, Chloe was down but not out.

  ‘Have you got something you’d like to say?’ Chloe said, her voice coming out higher than she meant.

  ‘Hey, I’m not one of your second years. Don’t talk to me like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like some kid you caught cheating on an exam.’

  Jess was right. Chloe was out of her depth here. Confronting other adults was harder than she’d hoped.

  ‘Look, I really feel you owe me an apology.’

  Jess thought that was most likely true. But pride, her eternal Achilles heel, reared its ugly head.

  ‘Maybe you owe me one.’

  Chloe gaped.

  ‘How did you arrive at that conclusion?’

  ‘Because you’re the one that walked out of the flat mid conversation.’

  ‘Because you insulted me.’

  ‘I didn’t insult you, Chloe. Nothing I said was personal.’

  ‘No, it was just patronising.’

  ‘I was being patronising? How’s about you lecturing me on the finer points of strike action. Like I hadn’t considered them myself.’

  ‘You were acting like you hadn’t. It was all so black and white.’

  ‘That’s because thinking in black and white terms is how things get done. I’ve given thought to it, of course I have. But you can overthink things till the cows come home. When something needs to happen, you have to just move forward, pick a side. Do something!’

  ‘So that means acting like a bull in a china shop?’

  ‘Sometimes it does! If we do decide to strike-’

  ‘Do you really think I’m angry that you want to strike?’

  Jess stopped dead.

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Jess, for god’s sake. I voted to strike.’

  It was Jess’s turn to gape.

  ‘But that’s not your business. And it’s certainly not why you should apologise.’

  ‘Well, I’m getting whiplash from all these turns so I guess you’re just going to have to lay it out.’

  ‘It was never about political beliefs. It’s your bloody arrogance that makes me so angry.’

  ‘What’s your problem here, exactly. We’re on the same page, aren’t we?’

  ‘No, we’re not. You’re not listening to me…’ Chloe faded out. This was pointless. There was a moment’s silence as Chloe thought about whether to keep doing this or walk away.

  ‘Is this about Freya?’ Jess abruptly said.

  ‘What?’ Chloe asked, stunned.

  ‘She doesn’t like me, is that it?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘She was being kind of a bitch last night.’

  That word, ‘bitch’, took Chloe to a new level of anger. It reinvigorated her. She had been about to ask Jess to leave, but now the gloves were coming off. Chloe was reaching a zenith of anger that was beginning to feel good. She felt free to say whatever mean thing she wanted.

  ‘How dare you talk about her like that! At least she actually spoke.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘I think you know.’

  ‘If you’ve got something to say, just say it.’

  Chloe didn’t need any encouragement. She’d had her finger on the trigger already. She pulled it.

  ‘Claire’s boring.’

  Jess’s mouth fell open in shock and offence.

  ‘Just because she doesn’t talk for the sake of it? Who the hell do you think you are to talk about Claire like that!’ Jess cried, her throat raw with the volume that had leapt out of her.

  ‘Who am I? You just called my girlfriend a bitch!’

  ‘I said she was being a bitch, that’s not the same.’

  ‘Yes it fucking is!’

  Jess had never actually heard Chloe drop an F-bomb before, but amidst the angry avalanche that was currently engulfing them both, rolling them both down a mountain that they might never be able to climb back up, it was small potatoes.

  ‘No, it’s no
t. And she was acting like one. You know it as well as I do. That’s why you’re pissed off. Because I’m right.’

  ‘Aren’t you always?’

  Jess felt a sudden desire to walk out of the room. This had gone past the point where anything was going to be resolved. She turned to leave.