Page 6 of The Best Ex of My Life

I get up to make another coffee and grab my phone to check if it’s time yet to ring Karina and Teddy. I’m surprised to see there’s already a missed call from Elliot, my teaching best friend, who should right now be climbing mountains in the Lake District with his brother.

‘Good morning,’ I say chirpily when he picks up after the second ring. ‘I wasn’t expecting to hear from you today.’

He responds with a long, anguished groan. ‘I’m in hell. Actual hell.’

I smother a laugh at what is clearly a very hungover voice. I can hear strong wind in the background and imagine him high up on a craggy peak in a cagoule, his black hair flying around his face. ‘I take it whisky and walking don’t mix that well after all, then?’

‘Don’t. I can’t even think about the W word right now.’

‘Walking?’

‘Very much the other. There’s something not right about Sam. We were out late yesterday, and he was still up at half six this morning, pulling me out of bed and talking about catching the best light on the hills. That’s why I’m ringing you. I need to live through you for a few minutes. Please tell me you’re in bed and aren’t planning on leaving all day except to get snacks.’

‘That’s the plan,’ I lie for his sake.

‘And you’re probably not even going to bother getting dressed and are going to work your way through a full season of some American murder show.’

‘Hmmm hmm. And I imagine there’ll be chocolate involved and a few naps along the way.’

He groans again. ‘What I wouldn’t do to trade places with you right now.’

‘Oh, Elliot. I would never trade this.’

‘I don’t blame you. Think of me when you’re a few episodes in and are gorging on your second Yorkie of the day, won’t you?’

‘I can’t make you any promises.’

‘I understand,’ he says solemnly. ‘Best get back to it, then. Sam is glaring at me for stopping and oh brilliant, it’s just started to rain.’

I can’t help laughing. ‘Enjoy. Send me a picture when you get a chance.’

I hang up and make my way to the kitchen, smiling as I imagine Elliot trying to catch up with Sam.

A few minutes later, I get a text and open it to find a selfie of Elliot in heavy rain wearing a bright red cagoule with the hood up, wet hair swept across his forehead. The entire backdrop, from the sky to the lake in the distance, is entirely dark grey.

Wish you were here (and I was where you are instead), Elliot.

His name on my screen has me smiling again, the sign off he’s not stopped using for over a year now, like we’re corresponding with letters, and I’d be utterly clueless whose words I was reading otherwise. Like he hasn’t just sent me a selfie of his face.

The morning I started my job as a keen and freshly qualified teacher last September I discovered I’d been buddied up with Newbury High’s most talented English teacher, Elliot. He promised to do what he could to make my first year as easy as possible and to make sure I enjoyed it as much as anyone can enjoy the trial by fire that is being a newbie teacher to over a hundred merciless teenagers. He kept to his word, making it his mission to talk me down from my plans to quit on almost a weekly basis and to point out the funny side of my numerous teaching disasters. Along the way, we actually became friends.

Second coffee down, I decide I’m probably safe to start a group call with Teddy and Karina.

‘What are you guys doing for lunch today?’ I ask.

‘Same as always,’ Teddy replies. ‘Tesco sandwich in my car between viewings.’

I grimace at the reality of Teddy’s job. When she stopped working as a para-legal and announced she was starting a new career as an estate agent after watching the first season of Selling Sunset, it seemed like she’d found the perfect profession. She already had the glamourous vibes and natural persuasiveness, she’d even got Karina and me to join her in getting an intertwined design of our initials tattooed on our ankles the year we all turned eighteen. She’d drawn it, of course, and the tattooist did such a bad job of transferring her swirly pattern onto our skin that it looked like we’d scrawled it on ourselves with biro. Aesthetic aside, I always love when it’s on display in the summer and I catch glances of it throughout the day, my little reminder of the three of us.

Celebrating sales with champagne and earning enough commission to fund the lavish lifestyle she craved seemed like only a matter of time, but the job she landed, the job she was sold, turned out to be more Selling Shitholes. But after giving up such a stable job, Teddy was never going to admit defeat to this new career. It had to work out. There was no room to disappoint the parents who’d always put pressure on their daughter to enter a ‘respectable’ profession and stick to it for life, and especially not her two older, extremely successful solicitor brothers who were waiting for her to slip up so they could deliver a massive told-you-so. She’s kept on going and I marvel at her optimism that she can turn her job around and make it into something she wants.

‘I can’t think about lunch. I’ve not even had breakfast yet,’ Karina says.

‘Well, I’ve got something I need to talk to you about. Do you reckon you can both come into town and meet me at The Koffee Pot for twelve?’

‘Sure,’ Karina answers.

‘If I make it out of my last viewing of the morning, which is at a house I’m fairly sure is being used a crack den, I’ll be there,’ says Teddy.