The Other Us. Fiona Harper

      Jude’s eyes widen. ‘You turned him down? Mr Perfect?’

      I frown. Mr Perfect? Is that who he thinks Dan is? I almost laugh. Hasn’t Jude ever tried looking in the mirror? Or taken a really good look at Dan?

      ‘I told him I didn’t know, that I had to think about it.’

      I’m wobbling harder now, as my leg muscles are starting to tire. Jude’s arm comes round me more firmly. ‘Come on, Cinderella,’ he mutters and, before I know it, he’s picked me up and he’s striding across the lawn towards the main house. He deposits me on a flagstone path under a portico. A dull-eyed statue of a half-naked woman eavesdrops on us.

      Jude hasn’t let go of my hand, even though he could. He’s lost his don’t-care-about-anything sheen. Suddenly, he looks as if he cares very much. ‘And why would you say that to him?’

      I swallow as my heart flings itself against my ribcage. It’s one thing to cheerlead yourself into ‘seizing the day’, another thing entirely to actually do it. ‘Because of you,’ I finally whisper.

      ‘I was hoping you’d say that.’

      My heart starts to float like a helium balloon. ‘Really?’ I start to feel that giddy, heady sensation I should have felt earlier in the evening, after saying ‘yes’ to Dan.

      ‘I think I made a horrible mistake …’ he begins, and suddenly everything is back on track again, and he’s saying the words he said to me last time, only we’ve changed the scenery to somewhere way more romantic. He ends with, ‘I don’t think he’s what you need, Meg.’

      ‘And you are?’ I say, remembering my line well.

      ‘I’d like to try to be.’

      I keep going with the script, and while I’m thrilled it’s all turned out the way it should, a little nagging feeling tells me it’s only because I engineered it, that there may be a price to pay for that. I swat that nasty little thought away. ‘But you’re supposed to be going off to France next month …’

      He reaches out and grabs both my hands, and I get a sudden flashback to a couple of hours ago when I was standing with Dan by the river. The memory is so strong it almost wipes over the present moment and I have to fight to keep it in focus. ‘Come with me,’ he says.

      I sway and then I stare into Jude’s eyes to anchor myself to him. Inside I feel as if something is pulling apart, like a piece of cloth being roughly torn, all jagged edges and loose threads. I feel my future unravelling.

      ‘OK,’ I say.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      I knock on the door of Dan’s shared student house and my knees are literally shaking. His mate Rick opens the door. Instead of giving me a hug, as he usually would, he just eyes me warily and leads me silently to the sitting room. I find Dan there, in just a T-shirt and boxers, staring at a This Morning segment on how to turn grunge into a wearable look for summer.

      ‘Hi,’ I say.

      He stares at the TV for a full five seconds before turning to look at me. ‘Hi.’

      ‘Are you OK?’ I ask. I can detect the faint whiff of stale lager and Dan’s eyes look bleary, which is odd, because he’s not much of a drinker.

      He shrugs.

      ‘What did you end up doing last night?’

      He looks away quickly. ‘Not much.’

      I see that look again, the same one he wore last night, the same one that knelled the bells of doom for our future marriage and is doing a pretty good job of messing up the possibility of this one too. Any pity I’m feeling for him evaporates.

      He’s lying to me, and this just confirms it wasn’t a heat-of-the-moment, one-off incident last night because he was hurting. ‘You must have done something,’ I say, maybe a tad more shrilly than a girl about to break up with her boyfriend ought to, but his cowardice incenses me.

      He talks to Judy Finnigan on the telly, not to me. ‘Rick and I had a few beers.’

      Judy chatters on, not the slightest bit interested in Dan’s lacklustre social life.

      I stare at him as he stares at her. This is already a habit, I realise – lying to me – and it started much, much earlier than I’d thought. I feel as if hot air is being puffed into my face as I consider how many other women there may have been, because that’s what he must be lying about. What else would he need to hide?

      But then something clicks inside my head and I realise this is what I want. This makes everything so much easier, because I know I’m making … that I’ve made … the right choice.

      ‘I know I said we weren’t breaking up last night, but maybe we should.’

      Dan’s head snaps round. That got his attention. ‘What?’ he says, although I’m pretty certain he heard every syllable.

      ‘I want to end it.’ Even though I’m trying to steel myself against it, I flinch inwardly as my words hit home and Dan’s face falls. All the righteous, disgruntled anger he’s been wearing as a shield melts away, leaving only confusion.

      He stands up. ‘What are you saying?’

      ‘It’s over, Dan. You and me. It’s just not working.’

      He shakes his head. ‘Last week it was working … A month before that it was working … What’s changed?’

      I start to answer but the way his eyes have filled up arrests me. The backs of my eyeballs start to sting too and I will them to stop. You did this, I try to tell him silently as I look at him. Not yet, maybe. But you will. You have no one but yourself to blame.

      He swallows. ‘Are you sure? Can’t we work on this?’

      ‘No,’ I say firmly. ‘Sorry.’

      I can tell, in the midst of his confusion, Dan is finding my certainty off-putting. He scowls as he tries to compute my response, looking at the patterned carpet, complete with greasy kebab stain, for help. After maybe thirty seconds, he looks at me again, and there’s something different in his eyes. Something glittering. ‘Is there someone else?’ His tone makes goosebumps break out on my arms.

      I nod. ‘Sort of.’

      He lunges towards me, but stops just short of making any kind of physical contact. The look in his eyes is pure fury. ‘You’re sleeping with him?’

      That’s when I take the shock and twist it into rage. Hypocrite! I want to yell at him. What you think is the moral high ground is actually stinking, boggy quicksand! And if Dan has one fault it’s that he occupies a whole mountain of moral high ground, probably learned it from his dad. When he said he wanted to wait until marriage, I thought it was sweet and old-fashioned, if a bit frustrating. I thought it signalled up what an upright and honourable guy he must be. Now I start to wonder if the premature marriage proposal has more to do with the fact he’s panting for it rather than everlasting love. His sex drive clearly overrode his morals in our future life.

      I pull myself up straighter. ‘No. It’s nothing like that,’ I say, and I try not to blush when I remember the night before with Jude, when it almost had been very much like that, until I’d come to my senses and remembered I hadn’t actually broken up with Dan yet. Even the fact I’d kissed him made me feel horribly disloyal this morning.

      ‘Then what are you flipping well talking about?’

      Even now he can’t quite bring himself to say the F-word. Even when I’m prising his heart from his chest and crushing it in my fingers. A part of me despises him for it.

      ‘I’m saying that I have feelings for someone else. Feelings I haven’t acted upon – ’ Dan snorts but I carry on undaunted. ‘Feelings