Chapter Twenty-Nine
Jen responding well to flattery, she read.
She frowned, glancing up at him. He was staring at her, looking distraught.
Tap into insecurities – not to insult, but set yourself up as the only one who understands her, validating in all areas where they’re vulnerable works well. Comment positively on appearance, especially if she’s clearly made an effort.
Jen swallowed. She felt sick and her heart was racing.
No measurable response to flirting with waitress, maybe just not the jealous type? Others might react?
Anthony sat now with his head in his hands, staring down at the table.
Try turning up spontaneously? Tell her you just need to see her, etc.
‘What the hell is this?’ she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
He looked up, his beautiful eyes full of anguish. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’
Jen glanced down at the book, flipping back a page or two.
No response to ghosting with texts. No begging or initiating contact, no discernible increase in enthusiasm at next meeting. Disappointing results.
The words began to swim before her, and she realised to her horror that her eyes had filled with tears. Had it all been a lie? Surely not.
‘Well, it looks like you’re studying me,’ she said. She was going for icy, but the wobble in her voice betrayed her. ‘So if it’s not what it looks like, then what is it?’
She waited, her heart hammering and her hands shaking. This couldn’t be real. How could it be real? She willed him to speak, to say something that would make it OK, that would make everything slip back to how it was just moments before, when she thought he really meant all the things he said.
‘I’m a writer.’
‘I know.’
‘No, I mean – I’m a journalist.’
His words were like a bucket of iced water, crashing over her. He held his hands together as though he was praying, pressed them to his mouth, his eyes full of fear as he looked at her.
‘I’m – it’s research. For an article on how to date women, it’s – it’s for True Gent magazine.’
Jen lurched back in her seat. She felt as though the room shifted around her.
‘So it was all a lie?’ she whispered. ‘None of it was real?’
He was shaking his head vigorously. ‘No, no, it – I mean, yes, it started as that, but then I got to know you, and you’re so . . . you’re amazing, I really think that, please can we just—’
She stared at him. This was just another ploy, another tactic that he could analyse and record her response to.
‘It was all a lie,’ she said. She was on her feet, walking away. Grabbing her bag, almost knocking her chair over as she untangled the strap from where it had caught. ‘None of it was real.’
She stormed out onto the snowy street, her eyes blurred with tears, her chest heaving in the freezing air as she tried to catch her breath.
Aimlessly she walked on, ignoring the cheerful shoppers and twinkling decorations that hung above and the jolly man dressed as Santa, ringing a bell and asking for charity donations.
At last she found a bar and stumbled in, relieved that the quiet murmur of the clientele and the shadowy lighting hid her.
The barman eyed her warily as he poured the double gin she ordered, and it was only as she took her first gulp that she shivered, realising the snow had soaked her through to the skin; she’d left her coat at the restaurant.
Glancing at her reflection in the mirror behind the bottles of liquor, she realised that her hair was plastered to her head and hung in rats’ tails, and her mascara had smudged into dark patches under her eyes.
She looked as desperate as she felt. And she didn’t care.
She drank until closing time, the steady infusion of gin after gin trickling through her veins.
She hadn’t eaten dinner, and she soon felt the effects, warming her from the inside out and causing the world around her to blur into a discordant haze of jagged laughter and canned Christmas music.
The alcohol smoothed out the rough edges, but it did nothing to ease her raw feelings.
She was reeling. Everything Anthony had said had been a lie, everything he had done had been meaningless, nothing more than an experiment. How utterly cruel, to play with her feelings like that. To let her think he was falling for her. To let her think she was special.
She should have known it was too good to be true. This just confirmed what she’d always thought – love was a lie.
She blinked, trying to focus on the table as she pushed against it, easing herself up so she could get to the bar and order another drink. The ground swelled beneath her feet, as though she was walking on water, and the room felt eerily quiet; had the music stopped?
When she reached the bar she pushed her hair out of her eyes and tried to smile at the barman.
‘Again,’ she said, pushing her empty glass towards him. She’d intended to say, ‘Same again, please,’ and give a winning smile, but this was all she could manage.
He gave her a look that appeared suspiciously like pity.
‘We’re closed,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you hear me call last orders?’
She shook her head, the room spinning as she did so.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked softly. ‘Have you got someone to take you home? Weather’s rough out there.’
She shook her head. She had no one.
Squinting at her phone, she tried to book an Uber. Nothing available. And, as she staggered out of the warm bar, she understood why.
The snow was lying thick on the ground, and still coming down fast. She watched the swirling flakes, vaguely aware that she would have found them beautiful if she wasn’t freezing in just her jumper, and apparently stranded.
She refreshed the page on her Uber app. Still nothing.
Jen hugged herself and stamped her frozen, soaked feet and tried not to cry. She would have to call someone. The only alternative was to find a doorway to sleep in, and even in her drunken state she knew that was a disastrous plan.
It was late. Everyone she knew would be in bed, or had turned out to be a liar who was playing her all along.
At last, with numb fingers, she called the one person she could always count on. She listened as the phone rang and rang, desperately willing for the moment she heard that voice at the other end of the line.
And then, just as she was giving up hope, she heard it. And, with chattering teeth, she explained the situation.
Ted was wearing a T-shirt and pyjama trousers when he arrived. He climbed out of the car and opened his arms, and she fell into them, sobbing against his warm chest.
‘OK, all right. Come on, you’re freezing, let’s get you in.’
He helped her into the car and cranked up the heating as she fumbled with her seat belt. Now she’d begun crying, she couldn’t stop.
‘OK,’ he said, patting her leg. ‘It’s OK, I’ll take you home.’
He sighed and rubbed his eyes, then reversed the car carefully to turn around.
And during the slow and treacherous journey home, which she barely noticed because she was so absorbed in her own problems, she told him the whole sorry tale.
Between sobs and yawns, and gulps when she thought she might throw up, it all came out – a confused and somewhat incoherent version, but the main events were there.
Ted frowned. ‘So – what? He was just using you?’
Jen nodded, sniffling. ‘And I’m such – what an idiot I am. I believed him. I really believed that he liked me, I believed he thought I was special. I’m so stupid.’
They were waiting at a red light. Ted turned to her, his gaze gentle. ‘You’re not stupid.’
‘And I really – I really wanted to be special, I really wanted to be all the things he thought I was.’
‘You don’t need some guy to tell you how to be special, Jen.’ His voice was so soft she could hardly hear him. ‘You are special, just by being yourself, and the kind, quirky, creative things that make you you.’
She blinked at him, trying to keep him in focus. Trying to stop herself from bringing the gin back up in his pristine car.
He drove on, slowly, carefully. The wipers were working overtime trying to clear the screen of snow, and in the darkness all that could be seen ahead was a flurry of flakes lit by the headlamps.
No one else was on the roads. It was the early hours, and anyone with any sense was tucked up at home on such a terrible night.
Ted’s reassuring presence and the steady rhythm of the engine began to lull Jen as she finally warmed up, and she slid down in her seat a little, her eyelids drooping.
‘I – did you get my message earlier?’ Ted asked.
She turned to look at him. He was focused on the road ahead, clutching the wheel as the tyres slipped and slithered now they were on the country roads that led to Babblebrook.
‘I – was busy.’
He nodded, still looking ahead. Jen didn’t want to admit that she’d seen his message and ignored it.
She felt bad, but she was struggling to focus and she couldn’t have a serious talk with him right now; she was exhausted, and more than a little tipsy.
It wouldn’t be anything that bad, surely.
What did he have to be unhappy about, after all?
He was the one who had everything sorted; great job, lovely girlfriend. He didn’t have a problem in the world.