Sunshine on a Rainy Day: A funny, feel-good romantic comedy. Bryony Fraser

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СКАЧАТЬ I still dressed the same, I still did the same job. I even had the same friends – or so I thought. It seemed that assumptions would just be made no matter what I said or did, all because I’d signed that piece of paper agreeing to marry Jack.

      After the meeting with Benni, I tried to focus for the rest of the day, working through lunch to get my head around the curriculum I’d be explaining to some of our more difficult parents, and to keep myself distracted. By seven thirty, I was starving, and very, very ready to leave.

      ‘Right!’ said Benni, as I stood in her office doorway. She slammed her laptop shut. ‘Let’s all go and right some wrongs.’

      I didn’t stay long – Benni and I only managed to right three wrongs each (if you count ‘wrongs’ as ‘delicious and very strong cocktails’) – and left her, along with Miks, his girlfriend from the English department, and a large bottle of wine, so I could get back to have dinner with Jack, having not seen him much for a few days due to our criss-crossing work schedules.

      At just after eight, I had my head, slightly dizzily, in the fridge when Jack came out of the shower.

      ‘What do you fancy?’ I called through to him.

      ‘Don’t worry about me, I’m out tonight, remember?’

      I didn’t remember. ‘Whereabouts?’

      ‘Don’t know yet. Just out with friends.’ Immediately, my hackles were up.

      ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I knew I shouldn’t pick a fight, but I needed a way to vent my disappointment at an evening spent apart yet again.

      ‘I did. Last week. I didn’t realise I needed written permission. I’m just out with Iffy and people.’

      ‘People? And Iffy who you saw yesterday?’

      ‘Yeah, people. And yeah, Iffy. I know I saw him yesterday, but it’s a group of us and we’ve had tonight in the diary for ages.’

      Hearing myself, I couldn’t help but think of what Jack might be saying about us when they did hang out.

      ‘So do these people have names?’ I realised I was slurring slightly.

      ‘Well, this is a delightful conversation.’ Jack cocked his eyebrow. ‘What’s up with you, Zo?’

      I crossed my arms. ‘I just didn’t know you were going out, and suddenly there are these people that you absolutely have to see. I left my departmental drinks early to see you.’ The alcohol in my system was making me sound much angrier than I’d ever have felt sober.

      ‘I’m happy to cancel, although given the way this conversation is going, I can’t begin to imagine why we’d want to spend the evening together instead.’

      I thought of all the things I could do tonight if Jack wasn’t about: have a long bath, watch a trashy film, call Ava for a chat, take an early night with Jilly Cooper flopping open at all the right pages. Lie really still and wait for the room to stop spinning. In all honesty, I didn’t care that he was going out. And yet, something – utterly unreasonably – still rankled.

      ‘Fine. Go. Have a nice time.’ I gave him a brief kiss on the cheek and a tight smile, and before I knew it he was gone.

      I was shaking. I was so angry at myself. I didn’t care – I’d never cared – if he was seeing friends.

      But I was also angry at his tone, and the creeping realisation that if I’d asked him to stay with me, he’d have had to tell his friends a lie, and they wouldn’t believe the lie, and how they’d tease him for months about his wife being in charge now. Then, if I insisted on him staying with me again, they’d eventually stop teasing, and stop calling. Ugh. I didn’t want to star as the worst kind of clichéd spouse. I couldn’t stop seeing it from his angle too: his partner, suddenly turning the flame-throwers on him. But then I flipped back again: if I was feeling this bad, why was he going out? And yet, why was I feeling this bad if he hadn’t done anything wrong? Then back again: I felt bad because I’d been a weasel to him. This was my problem, not his.

      Back and forth, back and forth I went, the whole evening, sitting in front of unsatisfying TV, not doing anything I’d planned, losing my evening, losing my mind, feeling my pub-buzz sour. I scuttled to bed when I heard his key in the main door, throwing my clothes off and hunkering under the duvet as he opened our front door. I pretended to be asleep when he came in, wrapped up in fleecy pyjamas, not up to facing what I, or he, or we, had done, with one tiny, toxic argument.

       FOUR

      Seven years earlier

      There was only so much refusing they could do before someone got offended, so within half an hour, Zoe and Jack – minus Jack’s face mask (‘The air round here is so polluting, don’t you find?’ asked Jack’s mother, Linda; slim, groomed, tortoiseshell glasses pushed into her shiny chestnut hair) – were in a taxi with Jack’s parents. Linda had taken Zoe’s arm from the moment Jack had introduced her and hadn’t let go since. Graham, his father, said very little, pale and quiet in a pale, quiet shirt and corduroy trousers, merely smiling at her and giving her a muttered hello. Once they’d been seated at the restaurant Zoe realised that was probably the highlight of his interactions for today. Linda chose his food for him, reminding him that tomato soup never agrees with you this time of night, does it, Graham? and Maybe you should just stick to the garlic bread, Graham, and, Graham, I think you’d best have the lamb, after your trouble with the chicken last time. Zoe, on a student budget, skipped the starters and chose the cheapest thing from the mains, a three-bean salad. Jack chose the same.

      ‘So then,’ said Linda, settling her glasses on her face and tilting her head to one side. ‘When were you going to tell us about your new girlfriend, Jack?’

      ‘Oh, I’m—’

      ‘It’s quite—’

      ‘Do you go to the same college as Jack, dear?’

      ‘No, I’m way over the other side of town – I’m doing Chemistry.’

      ‘Ooh! A scientist! Well, that is posh. Isn’t that posh, Graham? Zoe’s going to be a scientist!’

      ‘Well, I hope I will. It’s a long way to go yet. If I do my Masters I’ve got another couple of years left.’

      ‘So Jack will have left before you’ve even finished?’

      ‘Mum, we’ve only just—’

      ‘Yeah. Yeah, I suppose he will. I hadn’t thought about that. We really only met just—’

      ‘My cousin’s son is a scientist.’

      ‘Mum, Stuart works in Boots.’

      ‘No, well, he started in Science, but decided he wanted to be more hands-on.’

      ‘He didn’t “start in Science”, Mum. He did a Science GCSE, which he failed.’

      ‘Oh, so now you know all your second cousins’ academic careers, do you? СКАЧАТЬ