The Not So Perfect Plan to Save Friendship House: An uplifting romantic comedy

by Lilly Bartlett

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Dot, for being such an arsehole then, and for pushing you to forgive me over the years, when what I probably deserved was a punch in the mouth. It doesn’t make up for what I did, but know that I truly am very sorry.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m glad that you and Patricia were able to make up. She loved you so.’

  Dot nods. ‘I know.’

  ‘If you can bear it, I’d like the chance to try to make it up to you too, Dot. I know I can’t erase the damage I did, but do you think you might at least let me try?’ He takes a deep breath. ‘I think the world of you.’

  We’re all staring at them. What I see mostly is sadness in both their faces. Finally, it seems, they agree on something.

  ‘I’m tired of hating you,’ she says at last. ‘It used to make me feel… I don’t know, like I was doing something about it. Like I was empowered. But it takes so much energy. Someone clever told me that.’

  ‘Then we can be friends?’ Terence nearly whispers.

  ‘Friends? Oh, I don’t know. It might be too late for that. Besides, you have a lot of making up to do first. I mean a lot.’

  Terence reaches across the table. Dot hesitates, but eventually she reaches too, and they shake. ‘Understood,’ he says. ‘Thank you.’

  Then we hear voices coming from the other side of the office door. ‘Why don’t we just knock? I can’t hear anything.’

  ‘Because we’re supposed to be quiet, remember? Put your ear to the door, you’ll hear better.’

  Dot laughs. ‘Open the door, Nick, will you please? Put them out of their misery.’

  Laney and Sophie nearly fall through it. ‘Oh, we were just—’

  ‘Being quiet so you didn’t hear us,’ Laney says. ‘Or was it so we could hear you?’

  ‘Both!’ snaps Sophie. ‘Sorry. Are you friends now?’

  Terence and Dot look at each other. ‘I think it might be a fragile truce,’ he finally says.

  Chapter 25

  It’s always bittersweet when we’re close to finishing a book in book club. Bitter because we’re not quite ready to stop talking about the story, but sweet with anticipation for the next read. We’ll pick something contemporary next. We always do that after a classic. But I won’t forget everything we’ve discussed about Pride and Prejudice any time soon.

  We’re all here for the finale. Now that Mr Campbell is officially Sophie’s hot younger man (or at least lukewarm at seventy-two), she has relaxed her dress code. She’s even wearing her signature legwarmers tonight. Laney and Maggie have their heads together over Maggie’s notes. Laney likes going through them before we start, to give her a chance of remembering why we’re here. Not that any of us minds if she does forget.

  I don’t recognise Maggie’s cardigan, but her brooch is pinned to the left side as usual. ‘Maggie? You always wear the same brooch. Does it have a special meaning?’

  As her hand finds the lapis lazuli poppy, she smiles. ‘It was given to me by my faculty. It reminds me of who I once was. I treasure it above everything else I own.’

  It’s no good telling her that, even retired and sometimes forgetful, she’s still as smart as she always was. She’s still Maggie. It only makes her cross, so instead I say, ‘It’s beautiful.’

  Dot’s not acting any differently since her truce with Terence, and she’s tired of everyone asking if she’s okay. I’ve got to keep reminding myself that just because a person looks frail doesn’t mean she’s weak. Dot’s probably been through more in her life on an average weekend, and come out the other side, than I have in my whole life so far.

  June and I are pretending that Nick’s not here, which would be much easier if the women would stop fussing over him. If they only knew what he was really like. But he’s got them fooled. He had us all fooled.

  No one’s surprised that Tamsyn’s a no-show. If she can’t watch it on YouTube from her phone, then she’s not interested.

  ‘Let’s start,’ Dot says, opening her book to the passage she wants. ‘This is just after Elizabeth gets the letter from her aunt explaining how Mr Darcy got Wickham to marry Lydia.’ She reads the long passage aloud.

  June says, ‘It’s the final thing Lizzy needs to hear to know that she was wrong about Darcy. Which might be fine for her and Darcy, but I’ve got to question why Darcy would want to saddle Lydia with Wickham after what he did to his sister?! The poor girl is going to be miserable. He should have let Lydia get dumped. She’d have found someone better.’

  But Nick is shaking his head. ‘In different circumstances he probably would have. But she’d already gone off with Wickham, so finding a suitable match would have been too hard. Her social position was the most important thing.’

  Well, he’d know all about that, wouldn’t he? I’m surprised he doesn’t need an oxygen tank with all the social climbing he’s been doing. He might as well attach handholds to Terence or Max every time the talks to them, and don’t get me started on his motives for being with Tamsyn.

  ‘Oh, bollocks to social position!’ I say. ‘June is right, and Austen was poking fun at those norms by exposing them. She thought they were just as ridiculous then as we do now.’

  ‘But what about the women who only had enough money to live on if they married well?’ Nick says. ‘Don’t you feel sorry for them? The five Bennet women, for example.’

  ‘Why are you saying it’s only women? That’s exactly what Wickham was doing in trying to elope with Georgiana. And Mr Collins with Lady Catherine de Bourgh, though he was sucking up to her rather than marrying her.’

  Sound familiar, Nick? The only real difference between Terence and Lady Catherine is that she wouldn’t pee in the bushes.

  ‘It’s not only money-grabbing women, Nick, despite what you seem to think. Some men are just as bad.’ I glare at him. ‘Just because people do it, marrying for money or power or using their attributes to get them, doesn’t mean it’s not disgusting.’ Tamsyn springs to mind. ‘You can give me any excuse you want, Nick, but it’s a betrayal of yourself. It’s selling out, and even more sickening when they’re pushed into it by their family, like Mrs Bennet did with her daughters. It’s hard to go against your entire family, even if you know what you really want to do instead. A person shouldn’t be expected to choose status over their own happiness, especially when it’s not even about them, it’s about their parents and making them look good or fit in or have something to brag about to their friends, when maybe their daughter is just fine doing what makes her happy and she doesn’t want to follow some pie-in-the-sky path to become CEO or president of the boardroom or whatever will make her mother proud, even though she’ll hate it and be miserable for the rest of her life.’

  Whoah. That wasn’t about the book. ‘But, luckily, we don’t have to do that today,’ I finish lamely. I guess knowing Mum was proud of me doesn’t yet make up for all those other feelings. It’s a good start, but I am a work in progress.

  Nick corners me straight after the meeting, asking for a quick word. As much as I really, really want to tell him where to get off, it would look weird in front of the other women. They don’t know that anything is wrong between us.

  ‘Let’s go outside. It’s not too cold.’ When I start to grumble he says, ‘Please, Phoebe, it’s important. I have to talk to you.’

  His words take a steel-toed boot to my tummy. This has to be about him and Tamsyn. He’s finally worked up the nerve to put me out of my misery – will her words ever stop haunting me? – and tell me they’re together. He looks like he’s about to have a heart attack. That’s the guilt. Good. He was the one who asked me out, the two-timing rat. And he lied to me. Repeatedly. Her too, at least by omission.

  Ugh, god, I’m disgusted thinking about being in the same bed where he and Tamsyn have been sleeping together. And what must his flatmate have thought when he saw me? He was probably laughing, or high-fiving Nick behind my back.

  ‘So? Talk before I get cold,’ I say with my arms crossed in fr
ont of me. I will not show him how much this is hurting me. I want to salvage any tiny snippet of self-esteem that I can.

  It’s pretty dark out here, but not too dark to see the worry on Nick’s face.

  He sighs. ‘There’s no easy way to say this, and believe me, I know I should have told you a long time ago, because now everything is so messed up.’ His eyes search mine in the gloom. ‘Do you already know?’

  ‘Just say it,’ I snap. ‘And let me get on.’ He’s not going to get away without at least telling me to my face.

  ‘Tamsyn’s not my girlfriend.’

  ‘Oh my God, please, Nick, give me some credit for intelligence. All right, I might have been stupid for not wanting to believe it before, but don’t insult me now. You owe me more than that.’

  ‘I’m not insulting you.’

  ‘Aren’t you? Even after everything, you’re still lying to me. You’ve been in a relationship with her practically since the first day she arrived,’ I scoff. ‘Will you please just stop denying it?!’

  ‘I’m not denying that,’ he says, ‘though you’re wrong about the timing. It has been a lot longer.’

  I didn’t think I could feel any worse. Wrong. ‘Well, then why don’t you just go ahead and get married and be done with it? Or are you already? Is that what you’re telling me? Thanks, Nick, for being an even bigger arsehole than I thought you were. And that’s saying something.’

  He makes a face. ‘I wouldn’t marry Tamsyn.’

  ‘Oh, great, be an arsehole to her too.’ I have no idea why I’m standing up for her now.

  ‘And she wouldn’t marry me, either. It’s illegal, for a start. Because she’s my sister.’

  …

  ‘Did you hear me?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Say it again.’

  ‘Tamsyn is my sister. My half-sister, actually. My complete pain-in-the-arse little half-sister. I couldn’t let anyone know because… I should have told you.’

  ‘That makes Max your…’

  ‘Right, Max is my father,’ he says, which – extremely inappropriately, given the gravity of the moment, reminds me of Luke Skywalker talking about Darth Vader. It’s all I can do not to make heavy-breathing noises.

  Nick rubs his face. ‘Everything got so screwed up because I couldn’t let anyone know about Max. It would have looked like nepotism that I got the job.’

  I think about that for a second. ‘No, nepotism is when you’re favoured by your relative.’ Max treats Nick like anything but the favourite. ‘This is—’

  ‘Fascism,’ he says. ‘I know. Ironic, isn’t it? June doesn’t know, obviously, or she probably wouldn’t have hired me. Plus, there’s something else. Which means she definitely wouldn’t have hired me. I’m so sorry, Phoebe, that I didn’t tell you all this before. Are you all right?’

  It’s hard to take in what he’s telling me. I’m still stuck back on Tamsyn not being his girlfriend. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’m not trying to justify anything. I just need you to know the truth. I need you to know why I did what I did.’

  He takes a deep breath. ‘Max is my father, and he can be a complete arse, but he is smart and did well at uni and he’s a success. Same with Terence.’

  ‘Oh, God, Terence is your granddad.’ Max is bad enough, but Terence too? Talk about bad genes.

  He grimaces. ‘I know. And he acts like an arse even though he’s actually just grumpy and not a bad person underneath. But the point is that he was successful. And my Granny Patricia, the same with starting the home. Then I come along. Phoebe, I barely made it out of school. I’ve never been smart. Max says I take after my mum. He doesn’t mean it as a compliment, but I do take it that way, because she’s one of the savviest people I know even having left school at sixteen. I haven’t exactly been a success to Max and the rest of the family.’

  It’s not like I don’t know what that feels like. It’s not pretty to say it, but part of me is glad that my brother has lost his job. I know that I should feel bad for him, but Will’s had all the success so far. A kick in the pants won’t kill him. ‘You may not be book smart,’ I tell Nick, ‘but you are smart.’ I’ve seen him with residents. He wouldn’t be that good at his job if he were dim. ‘You went to uni, which is more than I can say.’

  He swallows hard. ‘Barely. I failed my first year. I was just lucky that I eventually found a reception job for a practice of physical and occupational therapists. Otherwise, I’d probably still have no idea what to do with my life. I went back to uni as a mature student.’

  ‘So that’s good,’ I say. ‘It’s what Max wanted.’

  But Nick shakes his head. ‘I barely got through. I only graduated with a pass. I couldn’t find a job, and I looked for over a year.’

  Something sparks in my memory. ‘June told me you had a first.’

  He shrugs. ‘See why I couldn’t tell anyone? Aside from the embarrassment, this whole thing, my job, it’s a lie.’

  ‘You lied on your CV?’ He’s right. He shouldn’t tell anyone that.

  ‘Not technically.’ He flinches when he says this. ‘I am certified to practise. I never claimed to have a first. I’d sent Max my CV to pass along to June. He made the change. He always wanted a first-class son. I didn’t find out about that until after I was hired. By then everyone hated Max over the changes he was making here, and you couldn’t stand Tamsyn—’

  ‘Because she’s useless,’ I remind him.

  ‘She is hopeless,’ he agrees. ‘So, I couldn’t very well hold up my hand then and say, “Oh, by the way, I’m related to everyone causing you all such problems and my CV is a lie too.” Who wants to be that underperforming loser with bad genes?’

  I guess that’s something. At least he wasn’t the one who lied on his CV. Only about everything else. ‘You’re right, June definitely wouldn’t have hired you if she’d known. She might overlook the connection to Max, but not the grades.’

  ‘I know,’ says Nick with a shrug. ‘I was only looking out for myself. It was selfish. Pride too. I wanted to be hired on my own merit. Or at least for everyone to think I had been. I was too embarrassed that it took me so long to get my qualification. And if June knew about the connection, she might have… rightly suspected that I got the job because of who I am. Then all she’d have had to do was check with my university to see that my CV was a fraud.’

  ‘So why are you admitting this now, when it probably means you can’t keep working here?’

  ‘Because, Phoebe, telling you the truth is more important than keeping my job. I’m so sorry for the way I treated June. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt either of you. But I had to do something when I met Callum and realised who he was. Even if it was the wrong thing.’

  ‘… Who is he?’

  ‘He used to be Tamsyn’s boyfriend. The love of her life, actually, if you can imagine Tamsyn loving anyone more than herself. I’d never met him so I didn’t realise it until he started talking about the yurt business. Two yurty Callums in the area would have been a big coincidence. Phoebe, he’s a really bad guy.’

  ‘What did he do?’ Maybe he killed someone and buried them in a field. Then put a yurt over the grave.

  ‘They met at a wedding when she was still in uni. He did everything he could to get her to fall for him. As soon as she did, he backed off. But he didn’t end it. He kept stringing her along, pulling her in just enough to keep her there, then ignoring her. It went on for months, until Max and my stepmother started to worry that Tamsyn was going to do something drastic. It got that bad. But it’s all just a game to him. He pretends that the woman is the centre of his world, until she really likes him, then he loses interest. It would have been kinder if he’d just dropped her, but he wouldn’t do that for some sick reason. Maybe the family money, I don’t know. People see the home and they make assumptions. Maybe just because he likes the attention. He likes having someone need him. I could see he’d done the same thing to June, being all keen as long as she kept her distance. As soon as she let h
er guard down he would have started the same game with her, pulling her in and backing off. I couldn’t let him do that to her too. He would have, eventually. I’m sorry, I should have told June instead or, I didn’t think it till it was too late, had Tamsyn tell her.’

  ‘Yeah, it would have been smarter to have Tamsyn tell her.’

  ‘I told you I’m not smart.’

  What a stupid choice of words, Phoebe. ‘It has nothing to do with being smart, Nick. You acted as soon as you realised who Callum was to keep June from getting hurt.’

  His laugh is grim. ‘Yeah, that worked out well.’

  ‘Only because June doesn’t know the story yet. She’ll forgive you when she does.’

  But Nick shakes his head. ‘No. She’ll fire me when she does. My fake CV, remember?’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  Telling me all this means he’s putting his future in my hands. It’s probably best if I’m careful with it. ‘I won’t say anything to her if you don’t want me to.’

  ‘Thanks, but you don’t need to hide anything from her. I’ll tell her anyway. I owe her a huge apology. It’s nice of you to offer, but I’m so tired of secrets.’

  My head is spinning. ‘I need a minute,’ I tell him, gesturing to the door, ‘to take this all in. Can you…? Just for a minute.’ Obediently, he goes inside, though he’s still staring at me through the French window.

  Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Nick never lied about having a girlfriend. His protests whenever I accused him over Tamsyn were genuine. And probably made him feel icky given that she’s his sister. Which means he wasn’t two-timing anyone, or snogging me, etc., under false pretences.

  So that’s good. And presumably he really did like me, rather than just wanting to sleep with me. Also good. Very good.

  But, in a way, he did lie by not telling me who Tamsyn really was. And that’s bad, because the basis of any relationship has to be trust. He could have trusted me with that knowledge. I wouldn’t have said anything to June if he didn’t want me to. Not even about Max rewriting his CV.