How to Get Over Your Ex Read Free

and
because she worked alone in her little X-ray lab behind two levels of carded
access restrictions. The world wasn’t exactly interested enough in her botched
proposal to have teams of paparazzi on her trail but it was certainly interested
enough to still be talking about it—everywhere—a few days later. She didn’t dare
check her social media accounts or listen to the radio or pick up a paper in
case The Valentine’s Girl was still the topic de jour.
    London was divided. Grand Final kind of division. Half the city
had taken up arms in her defence and the other half were backing poor,
beleaguered Dan. Hard to know which was worse: the flak he was copping for being
the reject or or the abject pity she was fielding for
being the reject ee .
    Didn’t she know what a stupid thing it was
to have done? some said.
    Yes, thanks. She had a pretty good idea. But it wasn’t as if
she just woke up one morning and wanted her face all over the papers. She’d
thought he’d say yes, or she wouldn’t have asked. It just turned out her inside
information was about as reliable as a racing tip from some random bag lady in
an alleyway.
    Why do it live on air? her
detractors cried.
    Because she woke up the morning after Kelly’s stunning
pronouncement that her brother was ready for more and the ‘Give him a Nudge’
leap year promotion was all over the radio station she brushed her teeth to. And
rode to work to. And did her work to. All day. The universe was practically
screaming at her to throw her name into the hat.
    She rubbed her throbbing temples.
    Their names.
    Dan was in it up to his neck, too, but because she wasn’t about
to out her best friend—for Dan’s sake and for his sister’s—she was still
struggling with exactly what her answer would be when he eventually turned those
all-seeing eyes to her and asked, ‘Why, George?’
    She loaded another dish of carefully laid-out seeds into the
holder and slid it into the irradiator, then secured it and moved to her
computer monitor to start the X-ray. It took just moments to get a clear image.
Not a bad batch; a few incompetents, like all batches, but otherwise a pretty
good sample.
    She typed a quick summary report of her findings, noted the low
unviable percentage, and attached it to the computerised sample scan to go back
to the seed checkers.
    Incompetents . It was hard not to
empathise with them, the pods that had rotten-out interiors or the husks that
formed absent of the seeds they were supposed to protect. Incompetent seeds
disappeared amongst the thousands of others on the plant and just never came to
fruition. Their very specific genetic line simply...vanished when they failed to
reproduce.
    In nature, that was the end of it for them.
    Incompetent seeds didn’t have to justify themselves and their
failure to thrive constantly to their competent mothers. Didn’t have to watch
their competent friends’ competent families take shape and help them move out to
their competent outer-city suburbs.
    ‘Ugh...’ Georgia retrieved the small sample from the
irradiator, repackaged it to quarantine standards and placed it back in its
storage unit. Then she reached for the next one.
    Twenty-five-thousand seed species in the bank and someone had
to test samples of each for viability. Lucky for the National Trust she had
weeks and even months of hiding out ahead of her. Looked as if they were going
to be the immediate beneficiaries of her weekends and evenings in exile.
    Across the desk, her phone rang.
    ‘Georgia Stone,’ she answered, before remembering what day it
was. Why was someone calling her on a weekend?
    ‘Ms Stone, it’s Tyrone at Security. I have a visitor here for
you.’
    No. He really didn’t. ‘I’m not
expecting anyone. I would have left a name.’
    ‘That’s what I told him, but he insisted.’
    Him. Was it Daniel? Immediately,
new guilt piled on top of the old that she’d not been brave enough to face him
personally yet. ‘Wh...who is it?’ she