Who were they anyway? She didn’t even like them. She’d spent pretty much all her teenage years secretly and perversely in awe of them, trying to do her damnedest to fit in, when actually they weren’t worth fitting in with. In fact, as was so often the case with bullies, they were the ones who were lacking, the ones to be pitied, not her.
Resisting the urge to kick herself for not coming to this devastating conclusion fifteen years ago when it really could have made a difference, Zoe pulled herself together and cleared her head so she could focus and take control of a relationship that had been far too one-sided for far too long, and then put an end to it.
‘Why would I know?’ she asked calmly, feeling oddly liberated as the panic and nausea fell away.
‘Well, you were the fiancée.’
‘And seeing as how the whole thing was a set-up in the first place why would I even care?’
‘A set-up?’ echoed Samantha, sounding taken aback.
‘That’s right.’
‘You mean the proposal?’
‘I mean the whole lot of it.’
‘I don’t understand.’
Having Samantha on the back foot for once caused an unstoppable sense of empowerment to rise up inside her. ‘There was no boyfriend, no grappa and no ski-resort naughtiness,’ she said almost giddily. ‘I made it all up.’
There was a moment’s stunned silence as this clearly startling revelation sank in. ‘But what about Dan?’
‘I met him about half an hour before you did and asked him to help me out.’
Samantha might have been momentarily thrown but it didn’t take her long to recover. ‘Hah, I knew it,’ she said triumphantly. ‘I knew you’d never manage to tie a man like him down.’
‘I doubt anyone will,’ said Zoe, determinedly ignoring the barb and thinking instead about the way he’d tensed when she’d mentioned they’d been going out for six months.
‘You were always so independent...and such a control-freak.’ Samantha made both sound like the worst character traits on the planet and Zoe couldn’t help bristling all over again because as far as she was concerned there was absolutely nothing wrong with being responsible for yourself or wanting to be in control of you life.
‘I still am,’ she said.
‘You never were very good at holding onto men, were you?’
‘No, well, you made sure of that, didn’t you, Samantha?’ The night of their leaving dance, in fact, when Zoe had finally plucked up the courage to invite a boy from the village where her parents lived that she’d had a crush on for ages. She’d been so excited she hadn’t properly thought through the possible ramifications. If she had she might have been prepared for Samantha to sidle over and mock her date in front of him and she might have been prepared for her to then snog him in the middle of the dance floor an hour later, but then again she might not.
‘Oh, come on,’ said Samantha with a sneer. ‘You’re not still smarting about that, are you?’
‘No more than you are that Dan didn’t respond to any of your flirting last night.’
There was a pause while Samantha took the shot and rallied. ‘Did you know he’s one of the most eligible bachelors in London?’
‘I didn’t, but I can quite see why.’
‘He’s at number two on Tatler’s Little Black Book list.’
‘Only at number two?’ she exclaimed in mock horror. ‘Who’s at number one?’
‘Royalty.’
‘Naturally.’
‘So what would he see in you?’
‘Well, quite,’ she agreed, although actually he had seen something in her, hadn’t he? Something that had made him kiss her as if his life depended on it, something that had set his heart thumping and his hands trembling and his body hardening where it mattered, and something she really should have taken into account before fleeing last night, because for all she knew the ‘but’ she’d sensed coming might not have been the brush-off she’d assumed but a ‘but I’m a bit tied up at the moment so how about I take your number and give you a call?’. Damn, she needed to address the issues she had with self-esteem...
‘Bit sad, though, to invent a boyfriend, don’t you think?’