It seems to fit in with the tawdry mess that my life has disintegrated into. Only a month ago my life seemed perfect. I had a gorgeous boyfriend, I was training as an apprentice at a top interior design firm in Milan (a post Jake had secured for me), and I was feeling strong and independent. Then last month I walked out of my job without telling anyone and ran back home with my tail between my legs. It all began when I opened a little email that began with
You are fucking MY boyfriend!
When it’s in Italian it sounds a lot worse. She had attached hundreds of photos going back five years, which indeed proved that I was fucking her boyfriend. They had celebrated birthdays, barbeques, parties, and countless occasions in the company of a whole crowd of friends, none of whom I had met, of course.
I sat at my desk utterly shocked and sick to my stomach.
But he told me I was the most beautiful woman he had ever met. That no one was more beautiful than me. And he was going to take me to meet his parents next week!
I stayed over in his apartment. There had been nothing to tell me that he was cheating and so blatantly. There wasn’t even a case of lipstick in his bathroom cupboard. The magnitude of his deception was inconceivable. Unbelievable.
I looked at his handsome face in the pictures laughing, happy, and utterly devoted to the pretty, olive-skinned woman at his side. I hadn’t known him at all. Or was it simply that I was more naïve that even my brothers believed? I felt so stupid. So cheated. So hurt. I didn’t want anyone to know that I had been the victim of such an elaborate charade and I never wanted to see the slick bastard again. All I wanted to do was run home to my mother’s house and lick my wounds in private.
Since he was one of the top designers in the firm, I simply dropped my belongings into a plastic bag and left without telling anyone. I went back to my apartment, packed my bags, and caught a business flight back to London.
I remember the guy next me on the plane, oily and expensively suited, who had tried to pick me up. The bubble of poisonous, unreasonable hate I had felt simply because he was Italian made me turn on him with so much revulsion that he shrank back with surprise. But even before we landed in Heathrow I knew I was not broken hearted. It was only my pride that was bruised.
I was not in love with Lupo. I had never allowed myself to be.
He was the most handsome man I knew, other than my brother, Shane, of course. He said all the right things. But he had always revealed his true self in bed. Especially at the beginning of our sexual relationship, when we had sex he would shout out puttana as he came. Prostitute. Even after I had asked him not to, he would sometimes slip up. And when I got mad, he apologized and told me it didn’t mean anything. It was the same as someone else screaming “Oh God!” during their orgasm. Nevertheless it had never sat well with me. And how right I had been.
After I got back to my mother’s house everyone wanted to know why I had left Milan so suddenly.
‘Did anyone upset you?’
‘Are you ill?’
‘Do you no longer want to be an interior designer?’
I never told anyone, especially my second brother, Dominic. Knowing him, he would have taken the first flight out to Milan, beat the shit out of Lupo, and calmly taken the next plane back as if nothing untoward had happened. As far as everyone was concerned, except Maddy, of course, I had come back because I was terribly, terribly homesick.
Now I am determined to start anew in London. On my own. Without any help from my family. I’ll get a job like everyone else. Jake told me I could have a try at cutting it on my own, but I had to live in one of his properties. So I moved into one of his London apartments. I was happy because I was only five tube stops away from the apartment Madison shared with her boyfriend.
Absently, I pick up a tub of Greek yogurt from the shelf and place it into my basket. Turning away, I bump into Ria.
She screams with delight. She is wearing a grey blouse, brown leather jacket, faded blue jeans, and purple and orange sneakers. I don’t think I have ever seen her look so casual.
‘Hi,’ I greet and laugh at her infectious joy at bumping into me.
‘Just the person I wanted to see,’ she exclaims with a huge grin. ‘I was going to call you to invite you to come to my birthday party on Saturday. I know it’s a bit last minute and all, but it is a last minute plan.’
I smile. ‘Twenty-four, right?’
‘Yeah, but after this year I’m freezing my age. I’m gonna be twenty-four now until I am fifty, then I will commence the count again.’ She laughs her machine gun laugh.
I laugh with her.
‘Will you come then?’
‘What kind of party is it?’ With Ria you have to ask. She’s totally unpredictable.