Chapter Eight #2
Tess pushed away her half-eaten Full Breakfast Everything Bagel. What did it matter that her double-page spread was trailed on the front page and that her breasts looked amazing? Three years ago, she didn’t need to go to such desperate lengths to spend the evening with a man.
Three years ago, yes, her career was still going nowhere but it hadn’t mattered. Because everything else in her life was fine. Better than fine. It was near perfect.
She’d met Sean in her final year at Bristol University.
He was finishing a sports science degree, she was studying English.
He was a year older than Tess as he’d taken a gap year to go travelling.
They didn’t have any mutuals, but one autumn night, their eyes had met across a crowded student union bar.
Sean had introduced himself, bought her several J?gerbomb shots, then held Tess’s hair back when she’d later thrown up the J?gerbomb shots as he’d walked her home.
They’d been inseparable after that. She’d thought that she and Sean were yin and yang.
Opposites attracting. She was a dreamer.
A woman of sudden enthusiasms, like the time she’d decided to paint the living room of their flat in Walthamstow (or rather Sean’s flat because he’d bought it outright with an inheritance) Farrow Tess smoothed out Saskia’s hard edges and Saskia reined in Tess’s tendency towards chaos.
So, although she’d been heartbroken, Tess had survived. She was still surviving, even if she wasn’t exactly thriving.
And Sean? Sean! He was one of those annoying people who, even though he worked with some very influential influencers in the fitness and wellness space, didn’t really do social media.
Which was a good thing because it meant that Tess couldn’t lose her mind and hours upon hours scrolling through his Instagram.
At best, she had to make do with his LinkedIn.
But six short months after Sean had ripped Tess’s world in two, he’d decided that he wanted to spend the next pivotal chapter of his life with a child. Or rather a twenty-two-year-old beauty and lifestyle influencer, though she preferred the term ‘content creator’.
That was when Wilde entered the chat.
Wilde had moved in with Sean after a handful of months.
Tess knew that because she could see the lovely cream and mint-green metro tiles that she’d chosen for the bathroom in the background as Wilde filmed one of her interminable addresses to camera while she did her skincare and make-up, clacking her acrylic nails against every bottle, pot and jar.
The nail clacking had the same effect on Tess’s nerves as someone crunching ice cubes.
Even worse, Tess already vaguely knew Wilde (which surely couldn’t be her real name). She’d been ‘the worst fucking intern since records began’ according to Jay’s colleagues, Chiara and Zara. She’d only lasted two weeks in The Sentinel’s fashion and beauty department until she’d been banished.
Clearly, Wilde was not a serious person. But she was beautiful. Even without the ten-step skincare regime and the contouring, she was beautiful. And willowy. And her hair was like something out of a shampoo ad. And what she ate in a day wouldn’t keep Tess going until lunchtime.
Yet two and a half years down the line, Sean and Wilde were still #relationshipgoals #thisone #bliss.
Tess didn’t necessarily want to get back with Sean.
Unless there was a grovelling apology involved, which seemed unlikely.
She would have loved to have moved on as quickly and as comprehensively as he had but that was proving to be very hard, verging on impossible.
How many hours had Tess spent scrolling through her matches trying to find someone that she wouldn’t mind meeting even just for one quick drink after work?
A suck it and see, Jay called those kind of dates. Though Tess always begged him not to.
Now under Saskia’s watchful gaze, Tess uploaded to her Instagram a picture of herself and the male model (who wasn’t as good-looking as the real Heathcliff, but had much better personal hygiene) gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes.