Page 11 of The Best Ex of My Life

‘I’m good,’ Karina is saying. ‘Yeah, you too … I know, it has been too long. Listen, I’m ringing because I wanted to see if you were still single … yeah, it’s great to hear your voice too … I, erm, maybe … anyway, I’m sorry I’ve got another call. I’ll ring you back soon.’

Karina hangs up and drops the phone on the breakfast bar like it’s burning her hand.

‘So, when’s Lizzie meeting him?’ Teddy asks casually.

‘Oh my God, I’m sorry Lizzie, I didn’t get to that. I thought he’d have basically forgotten who I was by now, but he definitely hadn’t. I’m sorry.’

‘Did he just ask you out again?’ I ask.

‘Kind of.’ Karina grimaces, and I fake roll my eyes before laughing. Karina’s never understood the power she has over men; why her warm and caring nature combined with her beauty is just something that men can’t resist, and I can’t help but love her all the more for not seeing it.

‘Course he did.’

‘I’ll come up with someone else, don’t worry. But one of you needs to go next while I recover.’

I keep smiling, but my stomach feels heavy with disappointment. Nathan was the best ex Karina could come up with, and now it looks like she’ll have to choose her second best, which doesn’t bring with it quite the same promise of amazing dates I was looking forward to.

‘Go on, Teddy,’ I say. ‘Your turn. You have decided who it will be, haven’t you?’

‘Of course I have. OK,’ Teddy says through a chunk of pitta bread. ‘I’m ready.’ She swallows it, picks up her phone and presses dial.

‘Put it on speaker phone,’ Karina says.

‘No fucking way,’ Teddy tells her a millisecond before the person on the line picks up. ‘Hi Matthew, I don’t know if you remember me, but it’s Teddy Atkinson. We dated for a while a few years back.’

Interesting. I remember Matthew. Teddy had only been with him for two months before Matthew had ended it because he was a builder regularly working 5 a.m. early shifts, and they’d discovered their lifestyles were not remotely compatible. An odd choice for Karina – completely not the kind of sleek, works-in-the-city-centre-wearing-chinos kind of man Karina normally goes for.

‘Nope,’ Teddy says to Matthew, before letting out a nervous laugh. ‘Don’t need you to come out to fix anything, thanks. I’m actually ringing to see if you happened to be single at the moment because I have this friend who I think you’d really like. You are? That’s great.’

Two minutes later, Teddy hangs up the phone triumphantly. ‘All sorted. He can’t wait to hear from you, Kar.’

‘Matthew?’ Karina says. ‘Shit. Matthew? The Matthew you introduced me to when we bumped into each other at the cinema? Teddy, he was like a whole other person taller than me, and I seem to remember him taking the piss when he asked what film I’d been to see, and I told him The Meg 2 for the third time.’

‘Firstly, everyone took the piss out of you for seeing The Meg 2 that many times. That was just a natural human reaction to anyone willingly spending that many hours watching Jason Statham. Secondly, yes, he is the tallest person I’ve ever been out with, but you regularly wear shoes that will put you at eye level with him, so I’m not too worried. But most importantly, Matthew is funny and down to earth and kind, so please give him a chance.’

‘Fine,’ Karina says, pouting but with the side of her mouth twitching upwards. ‘Give me his number then.’

I give Teddy an approving smile until the thought of what comes next makes my mouth fall into a grimace.

‘What is it?’ Teddy asks. ‘Your face looks as though you’ve just remembered your execution in the morning.’

‘Worse. I’m next, aren’t I?’

‘Yep,’ Teddy and Karina say together.

I reluctantly pick up my phone and scroll through my contacts until I find Jay. It’s not that Jay is awful. The opposite, in fact. I’ve picked him for Teddy because I remember how down to earth and warm he was on our dates, and Teddy hasn’t seen much of those qualities recently. She gets infatuation, she gets a lot of showing off, but maybe because of the sex appeal she oozes, sometimes men don’t get that Teddy needs more. Jay is a homebody, someone who loved snuggling up on the sofa on a Saturday night watching TV when he wasn’t working in his café or coming up with plots to take down Starbucks. He can give Teddy something different from the nights out and the glamour, and I’m excited to see what happens. The only thing is, I’d assumed our break-up conversation would be the final time we’d talk, and I’d perhaps gone a tad too far when giving him a list of pointers to help him in his love life. The list involved not watching quite so many gameshows and working on his facial expressions when his date didn’t get a single question right when watching The Chase. Now that I’m about to speak to him again, I wish I’d kept quiet.

Teddy and Karina are looking at me expectantly, so I press call.

‘Lizzie Cook,’ he says picking up, his sing-song northern accent catapulting me back to the time we’d spent together when he’d had an annoying habit of always using my full name, only instead of pronouncing my surname Cook to rhyme with shook like I did, he said it as C-U-K-E to rhyme with puke.

‘Hi Jay, sorry to be calling you out of the blue like this. How are you?’

‘Me? I’m great. Super. How are you?’

‘Good, thanks. How’s the coffee business?’

‘Coffee? Oh yeah, that. No, nothing happened there. These big bastard chains won’t let anyone else get a look in. I work in sales now.’