‘Luke.’ The voice sounded faraway and tired. ‘You’re leaving soon anyway. The competition is in less than two months. We’re just ripping off the band aid early.’
‘It was never going to end after two months, don’t give me any of that crap.’ He knew she was angry, but he’d felt like she wanted this just as much as he did. Didn’t she? ‘Open the door, talk to me please.’
‘No Luke. Leave. I don’t want to see you. It’s done. The whole thing is done.’
Luke’s fingers itched to touch the door handle, but he didn’t move. He gave it one last try.
‘From one coward to another, you’ll have to face it sometime. And me. I’m not leaving, Bec. This isn’t over.’
Rebecca didn’t answer. He kept talking, telling her that she could do this, that he was sorry, that he was falling for her. She didn’t answer again. When the sun started to come out, Luke reluctantly left her doorway, packed his stuff up and headed to Hans’s place. Another person’s morning he was about to ruin. Lovely.
Chapter 10
‘Luke, phone.’
Rebecca pulled her hair away from her face, pushing her leg behind her to wake Luke up.
‘Luke, phone!’
She recognised the ringtone. Hers. She scrabbled for it, the events of the previous night coming screaming back into her consciousness. That and the fact that she’d polished off her emergency tequila. The one she hid under the floorboards for emergencies of the Robbie level kind in the old days. Now, it had Luke’s name written all over it. Jabbing at the buttons, trying to blow her unruly mop away from her eyes. Eyes that felt like they were glued together with sleep at this precise moment.
‘Luke! Luke?’
‘Who’s Luke? Take your ear away from the camera, dear.’
Looking at her phone in horror, she saw her mother’s smiling face. A face that stopped smiling as soon as it clapped eyes on Rebecca.
‘What are you doing? Have you been crying?’ She could see her face on the little screen in the corner, and she looked like a mad scientist had spent a wild night with Alice Cooper, and she was the resulting offspring.
‘Yes. No Mum. What time is it?’
‘Time you were up dear girl!’ Her mother had her phone propped up on something on the kitchen table. Probably not the boob shakers. She reached for a cup of tea, and Rebecca could see that she was midway through a sandwich. ‘You could have been out there this morning, getting all the practice you need!’
Rebecca tried to rub at her make-up, but just managed to smear it across her face. Her tongue felt like a hairbrush. Linty.
‘Don’t rub at your face like that dear. Use a facial wipe.’
Rebecca looked around her. No facial wipes. Just tissues from her weeping as quietly as she could whilst getting secretly shitfaced. Whilst the boy she liked slept in the next room. For the last time.
‘Sorry Mum, my masseur doesn’t come till eleven. I usually get rubbed down and spruced up then.’
Her mother snorted down her nose. ‘Eleven! You’ll be lucky. It’s gone two here! Have you really been in bed this whole time?’
She put the phone down on the duvet, looking for the clock by her bedside table. It had been knocked to the floor. It was after three. Where was Luke? Had he gone?
Her mother was still chuntering away as she dived out of bed, covering the screen with her quilt as she ran in her nightshirt out of her room. His bedroom door was open.
‘Rebecca, what the hell are you doing? Rebecca?’
Walking slowly into the room, she looked automatically to his suitcase, which he’d put under the bed. There was nothing but space. She didn’t bother walking to the wardrobe. She’d told him to go. He’d gone.
Her mother’s braying tones kept erupting from the heap of tear- and tequila-soaked bedding that she’d left her in. Walking like a zombie back to her room, she picked up the phone and sat at the end of the bed. Looking her mother square in the face, she listened to her go on.
‘Where have you been! I have things to do you know. Mildred from the paper shop on the corner? She brought me round a printout of your internet page thingy.’ She waggled the piece of paper in front of the screen, pushing it closer and further away. Cheers Mildred, you nosy old bag. You should stick to selling the news, not ruddy spreading it like glitter at a unicorn convention.
‘Can you see it? I can’t get this ruddy thing to focus. It’s you! You got papped again. Oh, I can’t tell you how excited we were. Who’s the new chap? Does he compete? He looks handsome in the photos. A bit Cary Grant, I thought. It’s finally—’
‘Shut up, Mum.’
It took her mother a whole minute to digest what Rebecca had said. Probably because no one had ever said it to her before.
‘What did you just say to me?’
‘I said, shut up, Mum. I can’t take any more. No more. The guy in the photo? That’s Luke. I’ve been shagging him, in my little café flat, for the past week. Yesterday, I told him to bugger off. This morning, he did.’
Her mother gasped like a fish, and for a second Rebecca hoped, nay, prayed that the connection had dropped on the line.
‘Shagging? Luke? Week?’
‘Yes Mum. Your daughter is a dirty little tramp, a washed-up old ski champion with a penchant for anything in spectacles and a sexy elbow patch. I met him a week ago, and now I’m pretty sure I’ve fallen for the huge dork, and I cocked it all up.’ She looked at the screen, bursting into tears.
‘Mum, I just don’t want to listen to you talk about what a total loser I am, because I already knoooooow-woooo-woooo-waaa!’ She dissolved into a full-on ugly cry, her words just little squeaks and snot bubbles. Her mother’s face filled the
