Read Nine Uses For An Ex-Boyfriend for Free Online Page B

tell Allison and Lauren anything, but this shameful secret was so large that she was scared to give it a voice in case it swallowed her whole. And the thing about best friends, real to-the-death best friends, was that sometimes you had to lie to them and they wouldn’t be fooled for a second, but they’d understand. ‘I just wanted everything to be perfect and it’s not. I’ve burnt my hand and thrown a hissy fit and everyone thinks I’m a gigantic tool and I’m pretty sure that my brioche bread-and-butter pudding resembles charcoal by now.’
    ‘You silly, silly cow,’ Lauren said, and Hope was surrounded on all sides and gathered into a gentle hug that was mindful of her injured hand, as Lauren and Allison murmured soothing words and petted her.
    It was established that the pudding was fine. Maybe a little dry, but nothing the mascarpone and the clotted-cream ice-cream couldn’t hide. Also, by the guffawing and chink of glasses coming from the former lounge, the getting drunk was back on course, and it was essential ‘for someone to have a meltdown at a dinner party, especially the hostess’, Allison explained earnestly, as she finished dressing Hope’s hand. ‘It’s the entertainment between courses. It’s expected, Hopey, and quite frankly, I’ve seen better hissy fits than that.’
    ‘Thrown them, more like,’ Lauren muttered darkly. Allison gasped in outrage, which Hope knew was faked, but she smiled all the same and it was as if her smile, no matter how frayed at the edges it was, was the cue the other two had been waiting for, because they picked up the pudding and accompaniments and chivvied Hope out of the kitchen.
    It took only three steps, not even big steps, to get from the kitchen to the other room, but to Hope it felt as if she was walking the Green Mile. She wasn’t sure how she was going to get through the next five minutes, never mind the next hour. She hesitated in the doorway but that was because Allison had to tuck her chair in so she could get through the door.
    ‘Pudding looks amazing,’ Marvin said when Hope had resumed her place at the head of the table. She picked up a serving spoon in her uninjured left hand, which was going to make things tricky, but she needed to wrest some control back.
    ‘Do you want me to take over?’ Allison asked.
    ‘I’m fine,’ Hope insisted.
    ‘Really, it’s no trouble. You’ve had a nasty shock. C’mon, I’ll do the slicing.’
    ‘I can manage, Alli, but if you want to be helpful you can pour me a really, really large glass of wine,’ Hope told her as she looked down the length of the table. Allison, Lauren, Otto and Marvin were all watching her anxiously but they’d had so much to drink that the concern was making them go cross-eyed, and she couldn’t even bring herself to look at Jack and Susie. Instead her gaze rested on Wilson who, to be fair, had got up from the table to make sure that she hadn’t been maimed for life, but now that the crisis had been temporarily averted he was more interested in fiddling with his iPhone, which was kind of rude.
    Actually, being irritated by Wilson made Hope feel better, or at least feel halfway normal again. Like she was back in her own skin, and it was the push she needed to find the courage to look at Susie and Jack, who at that precise moment were sharing a smile and a raised eyebrow.
    That look, that complicit look, was enough to make Hope instantly forget all her honourable intentions of dealing with Susie and Jack at some unspecified time in the future, once she’d become acclimatised to all the horror and hurt and could trust herself not to burst into loud, snotty tears. Also, at this unspecified time in the future there wouldn’t be any witnesses to Hope’s utter humiliation and despair, but that wasn’t right or fair. Why should they get off scot-free?
    The serving spoon left Hope’s hand before she even realised that she was throwing it in the direction of Jack’s head. It was