The One That Got Away (3 page)

‘Stu’s never going to grow out of his middle-child syndrome is he? I love your brothers,’ Bec said fondly, ‘in a non-sexual
way, naturally,’ she added hastily.

‘Of course,’ I replied. ‘Been there done that eh?’

Bec blushed prettily.

‘I’m joking,’ I teased. ‘It was what – 1990 or something? And Stu was
quite
the stud then with his baggy Vanilla Ice pants and bum fluff.’

‘You know to this day I can’t bear the smell of Cinzano,’ Bec confessed.

I patted her hand sympathetically. ‘Well, you both got a snog and it’s provided me with endless teasing opportunities over
the years, so everyone’s a winner.’ I reached for my handbag to get my purse out. ‘I’ve had a lovely time today you two, thank
you.’

And I had, although of everything we’d chatted about, it was Leo I found myself still thinking about on my way home, remembered
hearing the surprisingly sharp voice at the other end of the phone line say:

‘Hello, my name’s Cara. I’m sleeping with your boyfriend. I thought you ought to know.’

Leo had just pathetically shrugged, almost helplessly, when I confronted him, saying – as if he couldn’t quite understand
it himself, like it was somehow beyond his control – ‘the thing is, I think I might love her.’ My furious questions had turned
into crying and throwing things at him, all of which was met with an increasingly blank stare I’d never seen him do before.
Just for a second, once he’d gone I almost wished I hadn’t made him leave, even though I knew then and there it was over for
good.

Joss was right. Boys like him were only built for infatuations.

And time really was a great healer.

I arrived home to find that Dan was still out, and having slipped my shoes off and made a cup of tea, I padded off upstairs
to check my emails: one of the downsides of largely working from home as a medical rep was my
chronic inability to leave the computer alone come the weekend. There was nothing interesting pending at all, and so I ended
up logging into Facebook instead …

And after hesitating for a moment I curiously typed ‘Leo Williams’ into the search bar.

I’d done a nosy search for him once or twice before in the past, but nothing had ever come up. That must have been because
he’d only recently joined; surprising really given he worked in event management and was a total—

Well! I caught my breath as a tiny but recognisable picture appeared on the screen. There he was.

Laughing into the camera, his arms hugging a smiling dark-haired woman –
not
Cara – he looked very happy. This was certainly more interesting than a boring mooch through albums entitled ‘randoms from
my shit phone’, belonging to someone I’d once gone to secondary school with … I peered a little closer and then clicked on
to his open profile.

Bec was right. He didn’t really look any different at all, just slightly older. He was wearing a dinner jacket, a good look
on anyone, but particularly so on him. His almost-black hair was perhaps a little shorter than I remembered, flecked with
some grey, but then it had been how many years since I’d seen him, four – maybe five? It must have been – it had all ended
just before my twenty-ninth birthday. I scrutinised the picture, they were clearly at some sort of do, there were a lot of
people surrounding them whose heads had been
half cut off. It looked a bit like the kind of photo that might be found in the diary pages of a social magazine.

He’d added very little information – just his date of birth and that he was ‘in a relationship’. When I opened his photos
however, there were quite a few. Mostly just of him snowboarding and kite surfing, which were a bit, ‘Yes, I’m as at home
on the slopes as in the boardroom’, although in fairness par for the course on a lot of blokes’ pages. There were also a
couple of an apparent holiday with the same woman, both of them sporting expensive sunglasses and tans as they clutched cocktails
very close to camera … and just one with two young, slightly uncomfortable looking little girls stood in front of them, all
smartly dressed. I frowned. What was Bec on about – calls herself a midwife – they weren’t his, they looked about six and
nine, way too old. I leant in closer, she was right about the wedding ring though; there it was, shining on his finger. I
sat back and stared at them again. They looked just like any normal happy family. Leo was a stepdad. How very weird.

Even weirder, was it my imagination or did his wife actually look quite a bit like
me
? She was slightly older and Bec had a point, she was curvy, but in an attractive womanly way. It was the hair really – not
a dissimilar style and colour to mine; mid-length with a long fringe … Still, most men usually went for a type; that was no
news. She certainly looked determined – almost steely. Perhaps Leo had met his match.

I clicked back and stared at his profile picture again. I could practically hear his warm laugh, knew just what it would sound
like … and those were arms that had once been round me, lips that had touched mine. How very strange. I’d posed for pictures
just like that with him. I probably still had one or two of them buried away in a box somewhere in amongst old Christmas and
birthday cards, graduation lists, friends’ wedding invitations.

I scrawled through his list of friends … and straightened up as Cara Jones appeared on the list. No! He was still friends
with her? Her profile was disappointingly closed, although it was quite satisfying to see from her picture that she wasn’t
ageing well.

Cara Jones. The last time I’d seen that face had been when I’d come back slightly too early from work and discovered Leo collecting
the last of his stuff. She’d been leaning on her flash nippy little BMW, all smug, bouncy curls and crossed arms in her tight
expensive biker jacket while she waited for him. She’d looked at me curiously as I’d walked straight past her, head down,
into the building. I wasted some considerable time afterwards wondering if I should have gone back and punched her, and if
not doing so made me a coward or the bigger person.

Thankfully, looking at her face no longer had the power to make me feel anything at all. I poked my tongue out at her – silly
moo – and returned to Leo’s profile.

And then, for no obvious reason whatsoever, I did something impulsively stupid. I stared at him for a minute
and then I found myself clicking on ‘Send Leo a message’. In the subject I put Wow! Typing quickly I wrote

I see you’ve been busy then! Congratulations! Hope you’re well. Molly

And then I hit send.

Almost immediately I shifted in my seat with the uneasy feeling I’d done something stupid. But it was too late, the message
had gone. It was out there on the loose.

Bloody Facebook – it was like being offered a manky chocolate you hadn’t even considered eating, but somehow ended up scoffing
anyway.

Well, I couldn’t get it back. I shouldn’t have even looked at his profile in the first place. I sighed. Perhaps it was just
one of those foolish things best kept to myself – he’d probably just ignore my message anyway. Well, of course he would, this
was Leo after all …

The front door banged downstairs, making me jump. ‘Hello? Moll?’ bellowed a voice. ‘You up there?’

Dan. ‘Hi!’ I shouted brightly, deleting my email thread,
closing Leo’s profile and clearing my history with a speed that surprised me.

When he appeared in the doorway a moment later, I was innocently clicking around on my own profile page.

‘Hello!’ he crossed the room to give me a warm kiss, his face still cold from an afternoon spent outside, cheeks ruddy. ‘What
are you doing?’ He glanced at the screen, ‘Ah, having a productive day I see?’

‘How was the game?’ I said quickly.

‘Crap,’ he said cheerfully, ‘but someone got sent off and punched the ref which was quite funny. Look what I found in a shop
on my way home though.’ He pulled his hand out from behind his back to reveal several packets of sparklers.

‘Oh well done! I completely forgot about them.’

He looked pleased. ‘I thought you might.’ Sitting down on the chair in the corner of the room he began to unwind his scarf
before ruffling up his hat-flattened brown hair. ‘I need a trim, I’m starting to look like a sheep.’

‘I like sheep,’ I said, as I shut the computer down.

‘I like you too,’ he wiggled his eyebrows suggestively, then his expression changed as he appeared to ponder something for
a moment. ‘I might give the hairdresser’s a quick ring now, make an appointment before I forget …’ he reached into his pocket
for his mobile, ever the sensible planner. ‘What time are we due at your mum and dad’s by the way? Have I got time to— Oh!
Text message,’ he remarked, before I could answer. He frowned carefully at the screen for a moment and then his face
lit up. ‘Wow! Ed and Beth are going to have a baby!’ he exclaimed, referring to our best man and his wife. ‘Isn’t that brilliant?
I’ll just give him a quick ring …’

‘Mate!’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Just got your text. Fantastic news! We’re over the moon for you!’ He rested his hand
gently on my head and absently stroked my hair before breaking away to mouth ‘tea?’ to me.

‘When’s it due?’ he continued as I nodded. He gave me a thumbs-up and began to amble off happily downstairs. ‘Times they are
a-changin’ eh? I can’t believe you’re going to be a
dad
,’ I heard him laugh. ‘Your poor kid …’

‘… I just hope it gets Beth’s ears.’ Dan was still nattering away about it in the car on the way to Mum and Dad’s. ‘No one
deserves Ed’s great lugs. Or his hair for that matter. You know he started losing it when he was twenty-two?’ He shook his
head with a chuckle. ‘Poor bastard … Do you think
I’m
going any thinner on top?’ he added after a pause, looking anxiously in the mirror. ‘Maybe next week I should ask her to
cut the sides but leave the top the same length? What do you think?’

‘Eyes on the road,’ I said gently, avoiding his question.

‘So I AM going thinner. Let’s hope our kids don’t get
my
hair then … or my height and your feet. They’d fall over all the time.’ He fell silent for a moment. ‘Or your height and
my
feet. That would be even worse; a great big clown-foot baby,’ he laughed. ‘Scary eh?’

‘Help me, someone!’ I shouted. ‘I’m so frightened!’

Oscar, my nephew, stopped growling and, balanced rather precariously on his scooter, pulled up his mask. ‘It’s still me!’
he said delightedly as I flopped down on to one of the kitchen stools.

‘Phew!’ I said in mock relief, taking a sip of my tea. Oscar put the mask back on and scooted over to the other side of the
room where his younger sister Lily was having an increasingly frustrating time of it attempting to lift her doll’s pushchair
over the lip of the kitchen step.

Oscar paused and assessed the situation coolly. ‘You need a boy to do that,’ he said and tried to lift it up for her. Lily
however, under the impression he was trying to take it away, squawked loudly in outrage, to which Oscar, clearly deciding
the job was more trouble than it was worth, dropped it and rode off, Lily glaring after him in a ‘That’s right pal, you jog
on,’ sort of way. Miscommunication between the sexes was apparently starting younger and younger.

While making his getaway, Oscar nearly crashed into Mum, who was attempting to clear up the kitchen. ‘Er, it’s getting a little
crowded in here,’ she announced in warning to the rest of us, most of whom were lazing around reading the Saturday papers.

‘I’m on it.’ My eldest brother Chris put down the finance supplement, unfolded his long legs and got to his feet. ‘Right,
time for a game of hide-and-seek before we do the fireworks!’

‘I’ll play, Daddy,’ offered Oscar generously, looking excitedly up at him.

‘What a good idea.’ Mum whisked my half-drunk cup of tea away from under my nose and took it over to the sink.

‘I hadn’t finished with that,’ I protested.

‘Hadn’t you? Never mind,’ she said briskly. ‘Off you go.’

‘I shouldn’t be surprised if one of these days
I
wind up on that draining board,’ Dad remarked, keeping a firm grip on the review section and his own mug.

‘Are you going to play hide-and-seek, Granddad?’ asked Oscar.

‘No, love,’ Dad said regretfully. ‘I’ve got a bone in my leg. I’ll help you count though.’ He looked at the rest of us expectantly,
so my sister-in-law Karen and I began rather reluctantly to get up. My other brother Stuart continued to read the sports section,
while his wife Maria looked relieved to have the excuse of giving my youngest nephew Harry his bottle. ‘We’ll go to thirty
shall we, Os? One, two, three …’

‘Come on Uncle Stu and Uncle Dan!’ Oscar urged. ‘We’ve started. You have to hide too!’

‘We should cosy up in the dark like this more often,’ Dan said in the spare room wardrobe, as he pinched my bum.

‘I hope that was you and not Mr Tumnus,’ I grinned as he leant in to kiss me. For a brief moment we started playing another
game altogether until Dan reluctantly pulled back. ‘I think we should probably stop now,’ he said. ‘But can we carry this
on when we get home?’

‘Yes please,’ I murmured, then, hearing Oscar stomping up the stairs bellowing helpfully ‘I’m coming to find you—’ we both
shut up. ‘—But I need a wee first!’

Dan snorted and I giggled. ‘This may take a while, sorry.’

We waited patiently in silence for a moment. ‘I hope they’ll all play games like this with our kids,’ Dan whispered.

‘Of course they will!’

‘I was thinking downstairs – you know Ed and Beth are having a baby? They got married
after
us. I know we said a while ago we’d wait until we’d bought somewhere – but why don’t we just not?’

‘What?’ I said, confused. ‘Buy a house?’

‘No! Wait to have a baby. Why don’t we just do it?’

‘Finished!’ Oscar shouted as the loo flushed. I put my finger to my lips and silenced Dan.

‘What do you think?’ he said eagerly.

‘Shhh!’ I said. ‘He’ll hear you! Let’s not spoil the game.’