Seeing Other People Read Free Page A

invariably dangle the prospect of my gaining access to her underwear to dissolve my resolve and because I was seventeen and shallow it worked every time. Finally however, a fortnight before we were due to go to university at opposite ends of the ­country I received a handwritten note pushed through my parents’ letter box:
     
    Dear Joe,
    This is the most difficult thing I have ever had to do but I do it all the same because deep down I know you will understand. Of late I have been giving great consideration to my future. Although I care for you deeply I feel we have been growing apart for some time now, and therefore think it’s best that we end our relationship sooner rather than later. Please always think fondly of me.
    Yours faithfully,
    Fiona xxx
    PS. Please do not try to change my mind.
     
    It was all lies of course. Two days later my friend Tony saw her in WHSmith in Swindon town centre hanging off the arm of Ian Mallander, who was five years older than her and worked at the local B&Q. By rights, I should have been hurt by the deceit she’d employed to get rid of me but I was too busy celebrating to give it a second thought. Finally I was a free man, one who was about to go to university to study English Literature with hundreds if not thousands of members of the opposite sex some of whom I was pretty sure would have sufficiently low standards to actually consider sleeping with me. And I wasn’t going to be satisfied with sleeping with one girl with no standards: no, I was going to sleep with as many girls with no standards as would allow me into their beds and only when I had reached double figures would I even contemplate becoming embroiled in another relationship.
    At least that was the plan. Two days into my university career I was attempting to inveigle my way into a group of female modern language students at the freshers’ night disco when I’d felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned to see Fiona’s best friend, Sara, accompanied by a pretty, dark-haired girl wearing a vintage floral tea dress and lace-up ankle boots. I couldn’t tear my eyes from this girl. Something about her was so warm, inviting and strangely familiar that all I wanted to do was get to know her.
    ‘Sara,’ I said, forcing myself to sound pleased to see her even though I loathed her as much as she had patently loathed me. ‘How funny to see you here.’
    ‘It’s not that funny,’ she said sharply. ‘You knew I was coming to Sheffield because I told you and where else would a first-year student be on freshers’ night?’
    ‘Good point,’ I replied, hoping that Sara’s friend hadn’t taken me for a complete idiot. I flashed a hesitant smile in her direction and got an equally hesitant one back. ‘Hi, I’m Joe, I didn’t quite catch your name.’
    ‘That’s because I didn’t introduce you,’ Sara butted in. ‘I only came over to tell you that Fiona has changed her mind. She wants to go back out with you. She’ll be up the weekend after next to stay with me so if you know what’s good for you, you’ll meet her outside my halls first thing on the Saturday morning.’
    This was all too much. I wanted to cry. To shed actual man tears that would express the level of desperation I felt. Fiona was like the serial killer in a horror film who just wouldn’t die and stay dead.
    ‘But I—’
    ‘But you what?’ demanded Sara. ‘You want me to pass on some message to Fiona that we both know will make her angry? No, if you have something to say to Fiona, say it to her face when she gets here.’
    Fizzing with frustration at the thought of falling into my ex’s clutches once more I nursed bottle after bottle of Newcastle Brown in an effort to build up a head of steam sufficient to propel me to call Fiona’s parents in the hope of obtaining her number in Southampton. I was going to stop this madness – which I was pretty sure it would be – before it started if it was the last thing I did, but as I reached the wall of