It Had to Be You Read Free

appealed to the crowd. ‘Haven’t we?’
    Her words faded into the deafening silence. Justin shook his head violently. ‘You’ve forced me into a corner. I’m sorry, Lizzy, but you were never the girl that I was going to marry.’
    There was a collective ‘
Ouch!
’ across the room. Justin put his hand on her arm, like a vet about to put an elderly dog out of its misery. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘It’s over.’
    Lizzy could feel the blood rushing into her ears. A hundred pairs of eyes were boring into her, sealing her hot humiliation. What happened next was so left field and unexpected it took everyone by surprise, most of all her. She put her hands on Justin’s shoulders and pulled him towards her. A look of surprised relief crossed his face as he thought she was about to give him a magnanimous hug, then Lizzy headbutted him, hard.

Chapter 2
    It was bad enough getting dumped by your boyfriend in front of a room full of people. Especially when one of those people records the whole thing on their camera phone. But by far the worst thing is when that person decides to put the footage on YouTube.
    By midday on Sunday ‘Girl Who Gets Jilted at 30 th Birthday and Headbutts Boyfriend’ had three hundred thousand hits and rising. To compound Lizzy’s shame, the ginger beard had muffled her voice, so it was only Justin who you could hear. It was all there in excruciating detail: Lizzy in her floppy hat looking like a confused Weeble, Justin delivering his devastating line:
I’m sorry, Lizzy, but you were never the girl I was going to marry
, Lizzy’s head jerking forward like a giant woodpecker, and Justin staggering backwards holding his hands over his bloody nose. The footage ended abruptly at that point, but the damage had been done.
    Lizzy was still hiding under her duvet, where she’d been for nearly twelve hours straight.
    ‘Are you sure I can’t get you anything?’ Poppet was perched on the end of the bed in a hoody of Lizzy’s that was too big for her. She hadn’t stopped apologizing all night.
    ‘I’m fine.’
    ‘This is all my fault! If only I hadn’t said anything! Do you really hate me?’
    ‘Of course I don’t hate you.’ Lizzy’s voice didn’t feel like her own. Nothing felt like it was her own. Was this how a person felt when they were suffering from posttraumatic stress syndrome?
    ‘Are you sure you haven’t hurt your head?’ Poppet asked.
    ‘No.’
    It was true. Somehow Lizzy had known instinctively where to headbutt Justin and cause the maximum damage whilst leaving herself without even a mark. It was like something primeval had reared up out from the depths of her soul. Lizzy had never so much as bitch slapped anyone in her life. It was shocking to discover she was capable of such off-the-wall violence.
    She heard Poppet gasp. ‘You’ve got another ten thousand hits on YouTube! What if you go bigger than “Gangnam Style”?’
    An hour later Lizzy’s identity was leaked when someone uploaded a Facebook picture of her with a triple chin on to one of the gossip websites. Journalists started to cluster outside her block of flats and rang the doorbell constantly, until Poppet bravely went outside and disabled the bell by bashing it with a wok she’d found collecting dust at the back of the cupboard. Afterwards she tried coaxing Lizzy out from under the duvet with a cup of tea, but Lizzy wasn’t having any of it.
    ‘I just want to be left alone. How did these people find me?’
    ‘Why don’t you take the hat off, at least?’ Poppet suggested. ‘It must be really hot under there.’
    Lizzy made a
meurgggh
noise.
    ‘I know, I’ll make you some toast! The sell-by date on the bread is last week but I’ll just cut the mouldy bits off.’
    Lizzy heard Poppet leave the room again. It did smell like something had died under the duvet.
My dignity
, Lizzy thought. She was still in the Henry VIII costume, as if it were armour protecting her from the full horror of what had