Read Online Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend by Sarra Manning - Free Book Online

Lauren she won’t mind waiting up for me.’
    ‘Fine,’ Wilson said, like he didn’t care where she went, just as long as she went somewhere.

 
    THEY DROVE IN a tense, uncomfortable silence down narrow roads that all looked the same. It wasn’t until they drove past Archway station and hit Junction Road that Hope stirred.
    ‘You can just drop me here,’ she said.
    ‘I’m driving you into town, so you can get a nightbus to South London,’ Wilson said.
    ‘Oh, you don’t have to do that.’
    ‘Well, I’m doing it. End of discussion.’ Hope had been a teacher for two years and she doubted that even if she stayed a teacher for another thirty, she’d ever be able to get the same note of don’t-fuck-with-me-ness in her voice that Wilson had. ‘Anyway, how’s your hand?’
    Hope had completely forgotten about her singed palm. Unbelievably, it was still firmly swathed in clingfilm. She stared down at the raised welt, which throbbed with a fair-to-middling pain, but compared to the pinched agony of her feet in her Stella McCartney wedges, the clenched knot where her stomach usually was, and the hollow feeling in her chest – which may or may not have indicated a broken heart – it was the very least of all her current ouches.
    ‘It’s OK, I guess,’ she mumbled. ‘Doesn’t hurt that much.’
    Wilson nodded. ‘Are you going to keep it wrapped up like that?’
    Hope knew the answer to this, she was a trained first-aider after all, but she couldn’t even remember what ‘ICE’ stood for, let alone the proper treatment for superficial burns. ‘Hmm, maybe it needs a dressing,’ she murmured half to herself. ‘So it doesn’t get infected. I’ll sort it out when I get to Lauren’s. She’s much better at treating minor injuries than I am.’
    That short burst of conversation was followed by another painful silence until they got to Camden and Wilson had to jam on the brakes to avoid mowing down two really drunk teenagers who’d suddenly lurched into the road. Hope was thrown forward and then jerked back by her seatbelt, and just as she was wondering if she’d manage to make it to morning without breaking a rib or getting a mild concussion, Wilson turned down a side road and suddenly stopped the car.
    ‘How could you not know?’ he demanded, before the engine had even died. ‘Don’t tell me that you thought everything was all right?’
    ‘What? No!’ Hope shook her head firmly. ‘Of course I didn’t. Like, why would I?’
    ‘Well, it’s not as if they were that discreet about it.’ Wilson leaned towards her and Hope shrunk back in her seat because they were in a confined space and Wilson looming at her when he was so angry wasn’t doing much for her tattered nerves. ‘God, you’re either the most unobservant or the most self-involved person I’ve ever met.’
    Hope bristled at the accusation, which was untrue and unfair on both counts. ‘I am neither … Hang on! What do you mean about them not being discreet? Oh my God, did you know about this? You did, didn’t you? You knew!’
    ‘I didn’t know for sure,’ Wilson said gruffly, but he didn’t sound quite so furious. ‘I had my suspicions.’
    Hope had forgotten that having a conversation with Wilson was like trying to thread a rusty needle with a frayed piece of cotton. ‘What kind of suspicions?’
    ‘The usual kind.’ When Hope let out a tiny growl of frustration at his utter inarticulacy, he shifted uncomfortably as if he realised that he had to do better. ‘OK, OK. I thought maybe she was seeing someone else, I just didn’t think it was your bloke. Well, not until we all went to that thing in Clissold Park.’
    Hope frowned as she cast her mind back to that Saturday afternoon a few weeks before when the four of them had gone to a one-day festival in Stoke Newington, all buoyed up with the prospect of not having to camp in a field and with shiny backstage passes on lanyards, courtesy of
Skirt
magazine. As hard as she tried,