Getting Over Mr. Right (8 page)

I left Michael’s building in a state of shock. As I passed Tina’s desk, my legs almost buckled beneath me. Despite having guarded Michael like a pit bull, Tina very kindly offered to walk me to the Tube station, but I waved her help away. I just wanted to be out of there and on my own. I sat on the Tube in a daze. If I closed my eyes, all I could see was Michael’s face as he snarled at me in his office. All I could hear was our last conversation and that terrible bombshell. He had someone else!

I called Becky at school. She was teaching a class, of course, but I had the school secretary drag her out, this time by pretending I had just been involved in a car accident. I told myself that I had been in some sort of mental car wreck and if I didn’t speak to her right then, I didn’t know what I’d do.

“For heaven’s sake,” Becky said when she found out that I hadn’t been in an accident after all. “You said you’d had a car crash! Ashleigh, that is one sick joke.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But I had to talk to you right away. If I’d said anything else, you might not have come out of your lesson.”

“Too right. I’ve left eighteen A-level students with an exam next Monday to talk to you. What do you have to say about that?”

I said, “I think I’m going to die.”

“What have you done?” Becky sounded suddenly panicked. “Have you tried to kill yourself? Have you taken something?”

“Not yet,” I said.

“Right. That’s it. I’m coming over,” Becky told me. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Just promise that you won’t do anything stupid while I’m on my way.”

I swore that I wouldn’t do anything more than sit and stare into space. And that was all I managed. That and a bit of rocking backward and forward with my knees pulled to my chest. Oh, and a spot of lying on my side on the carpet in the fetal position, full of primeval pain.

“Jesus, Ashleigh,” said Becky when she saw me. “You look like you’ve got shell shock.”

“Michael has a new girlfriend.”

“Ah.” Becky nodded grimly. She sat down on the sofa while I remained on the floor. She leaned over and stroked my hair. “I see,” she said. “I guessed as much. Well.” She adopted her teaching voice, the
no point crying over spilled milk
demeanor that she used for her final-year students when they didn’t get into the university of their choice. “It’s a horrible thing to hear but at least now you know exactly where you stand.”

“But what should I do?”

“Do? You should do nothing except do your best to get over him as quickly as you can. I had hoped that Michael was just having a bit of a wobble about commitment and would come to his senses, but it’s clear now that there’s more to this breakup than that. There’s no point wasting another second on him now. If he’s telling you that he’s gotten someone else this quickly, then you can bet she was on the scene long before he got rid of you. It sounds as though he was trying to make sure that things were working out with this new girl before he gave
up on the comfort of having you in his life. Talk about having your cake …”

“But … but there must be something I can do?”

Becky just shook her head. “Forget him. He’s got someone else. That’s all you need to know. Now come here.”

She pulled me up to sit on the sofa beside her and enfolded me in her arms.

Concerned that I wouldn’t be safe on my own, Becky insisted on taking me back to the house she shared with Henry. There she tucked me up in a bed in her spare room and fed me soup and Ben & Jerry’s from Henry’s secret supply. She sent Henry down to the pub for the evening (he couldn’t believe his luck) while she listened to me repeat the tale of my terrible day again and again and again.

“You think I’m an idiot,” I said when I’d told her about my proposal for the twentieth time.

“I think you were naïve,” she said. “But I’m glad that Michael showed his true colors so quickly. It will make it easier to move on. More ice cream?”

I refused another spoonful of Phish Food.

“I shouldn’t, either,” said Becky. “I’ll never get into my wedding dress.”

I’d almost forgotten that Becky and Henry were going to be married in less than three months. I felt tears well up at the thought of it.

“You’re getting married and I’ve just been dumped,” I wailed.

“Oh, hey,” said Becky, placing her hand on mine. “My wedding’s ages away. You’ll be
so
over Michael Parker by then. You’ll have a good time.”

I nodded bravely in agreement.

At the sound of Henry’s key in the door, Becky’s face lit up. “I’d better go and see how drunk he is. Do you have everything you need? You can stay here for as long as you want, you know. I don’t want you to be on your own a moment before you feel you’re ready for it.”

I believed it. Becky gave me a heartfelt hug. She truly was my best friend.

I stayed at Becky and Henry’s house for the whole weekend. Becky even canceled a visit to a wedding fair near Croydon to spend Sunday afternoon with me.

“I think I know what a sugared almond looks like,” she said.

I really don’t know how I could have gotten through that first weekend
sans
Michael without my best friend’s support. She made sure that I was fed and drinking enough water. She ensured that I got out of bed and showered. She reminded me to brush my teeth. She confiscated my iPhone to make sure I didn’t buckle and give Michael a call. She cut short the viewing of half a dozen romantic comedies on DVD whenever they came to a happy part I couldn’t quite stomach. She even spoke to my mother to reassure her that I was going to be just fine.

“I know you’d do the same for me,” she said.

Becky listened to me endlessly, nodding with empathy and declaring that Michael was an idiot at exactly the right time every time. But she took a hard line when I insisted that I wanted to know who Michael had replaced me with.

“You can’t expect ever to know what really went on in his mind. You have to tell yourself that you’ll never hear from him again. You don’t need to. You know all there is to know. He doesn’t want to be with you because he’s met someone else.
You don’t need her name. You don’t need to know how old she is. You don’t need to know what she looks like. All you need to know is that Michael Parker is a rat.”

I had to repeat that phrase a dozen times, with gusto, before Becky would agree that it was safe to let me go home.

So, I’d convinced Becky that I was going to be fine without round-the-clock surveillance, but back home my resolve to forget about Michael Parker soon crumbled. As did my promise not to call him. I left another fifteen messages on his voicemail in the hour after Becky dropped me off. I also sent him three emails and started drafting a poem.

I’m sure a more sensible woman would have agreed with Becky that she didn’t need to know who had replaced her in someone’s affections and obviously overlapped in them, too. It was almost certain that Michael had met and started seeing someone new before we officially parted. Did his new girl know that Michael and I had been an item so very recently? I doubted it. He had probably told her that he was free and single. If she knew that he had two-timed her, then perhaps she wouldn’t be quite so pleased she’d gotten her claws into him … But how could she know unless I told her? And I didn’t even know who she was.

I had to know.

Away from Becky’s reasonable influence, the madness soon set in. Michael wouldn’t talk to me, but that didn’t mean the trail was dead. The following day, having called in to work and claimed illness yet again, I picked up my mobile and started calling all those people in my contacts list who had some connection
to my ex-boyfriend. Michael’s sister was first. I’d never really liked her and it was clear that the feeling was mutual. She told me quite primly that I couldn’t possibly expect her to be anything other than loyal to her brother and I should delete her number from my phone forthwith. I told her it would be my pleasure.

A couple of others (including an old school friend of Michael’s who had given me his number in case I ever wanted to “upgrade” from his childhood pal) put me straight through to voicemail. I did get through to Michael’s tailor (I had that number because I’d picked up some altered shirts—sleeves shortened), but though Ahmed was very sweet and claimed he was sad to hear my news, he assured me that he knew nothing about Michael except his inside-leg measurement.

“But I hope you find a nice husband soon,” he told me kindly. “You are a very pretty girl.”

The compliment washed over me. I was on a mission.

Having exhausted all other possible leads, I called Helen, the friend who had introduced me to Michael at her birthday party all those months ago.

“Oh, I’m sorry you guys broke up,” she said. Of course, she must have heard about the incident in the office but was tactful enough to pretend otherwise.

“Who is he seeing?” I begged her.

“Ashleigh,” she said, “I promise you I have no idea. I left the firm on maternity leave four months ago. At the time that I left, the pair of you seemed to be going strong.”

“Are you sure? Did he talk about any women in the office in a way you thought inappropriate? Was there anyone in the office he seemed especially close to?”

“How would I have known? It’s a big company. Thousands of people work there. And after Michael got promoted to partner, we were working on different floors. We were four floors apart. He could have been having an affair with Kylie Minogue
and I wouldn’t have heard a thing. I’m sorry. Look, I’ve got to go.”

“Really?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said. “I’ve got a new baby, remember? Poor thing’s been wailing for the past fifteen minutes.”

Another day off work. A huge increase in my phone bill. And I had achieved exactly nothing.

But I was not to be discouraged. It struck me as I looked at old photographs of me and Michael on holiday, and tried to work out if he looked unhappy even then, that if Michael had announced the end of our relationship via Facebook, there was a very strong chance that he would announce the beginning of his new relationship in the same way. The problem with that was that I no longer had access to his Facebook page. The only Facebook “friend” we had in common was my assistant, Ellie. Michael had signed her up after meeting her at my thirtieth birthday party, back in the day when we were all trying to get as many Facebook contacts as we could and were making friends with all comers, even actively hunting down people we had once spoken to at a bus stop.

But I couldn’t ask Ellie to let me know what Michael was doing. I was supposed to be off work with a virulent stomach bug, for a start. Asking her to help would mean telling her the truth, and that I did not want to do. Not yet. Ellie was like a Komodo dragon that merely nips its prey on the ankle and waits for sepsis to set in. Whenever I showed the least sign of weakness, I would feel her gaze upon me, as though she were calculating just how much longer she would have to wait before I keeled over and she could have my job, my desk, and my view of the executive car park. Though I wasn’t thinking straight by any means, I was
compos mentis
enough to know that I did not want to show any weakness in front of Ellie.

So how would I get access to Michael’s Facebook account? At about eleven o’clock that night I had a small stroke of genius. I didn’t have to ask any of my real friends to check up on Michael for me when I could create a stalking horse in the form of one of his own acquaintances.

Sitting in front of my laptop, I concentrated hard as I tried to remember the faces on Michael’s friends list and fit them to the names I knew. I was looking for just one member of his crowd who didn’t yet have a Facebook profile. Someone who had pooh-poohed the idea. There was bound to be one. Michael’s friends were mostly accountants. They pooh-poohed a lot of things.

After much thought and much Googling, I thought that at last I had found the perfect alias to use.

I would pretend to be Helen’s husband, Kevin. I remembered how, at the Christmas party at which Michael had danced with that big-haired tart who was redoing the company’s lobby, Kevin had ranted about the evils of social-networking sites. He had claimed that at the very best they were for children. Twittering was for the feeble-minded. And any personal information you plugged into a site like Facebook was doubtless being used by the CIA in an infringement of your basic human rights. Well, unbeknown to him, Kevin was about to change his mind …