The Beach Cafe by Lucy Diamond

Author:Lucy Diamond [Diamond, Lucy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9781447205203
Google: 5FbsphfEp1IC
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2011-06-02T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

The drive back to the café was a quiet one. The children dozed off, and any attempts at conversation were hampered by the torrential rain that thundered against the car roof. I’d had enough of chit-chat anyway; my mind was spinning and spinning with this news about Matthew, completely distracting me from any other topic. Who was this Jasmine woman? Was she his new girlfriend, or just a friend? Could it have been some work outing, and he’d just happened to offer her a lift? Or was she the real reason he’d wanted to split up with me?

‘Letting you go,’ he’d said at the time, as if he were generously releasing me from the relationship against his wishes. Yeah, right. He was letting me go so that he could move on to a new model, more like.

I felt humiliated, as if he’d rubbed my nose in it, as if he’d deliberately staged a ‘chance’ meeting with my sister, so that I would discover he had a new girlfriend. And of all the ways to find out, of all the people to break that horrible news to me, Ruth was the worst person to do such a thing. That made the sting even more painful.

I hated the sound of Jasmine already. She sounded as boring as hell. Walking weekend in Malvern indeed. How middle-aged and dull could you get? I bet she wasn’t the type for outrageous al-fresco sex on the Worcester Beacon, either. She’d probably pack a Thermos flask and a hypothermia blanket, just to be on the safe side. She probably had a first-aid kit tucked in a pocket of her big, sensible knickers, and one of those tragic hiking sticks. My name is Jasmine, and I can bore people to tears with my encyclopaedic knowledge of lichen and birdsong. Would you like to go walking with me sometime?

Well, they deserved each other. I just hoped for her sake that she was a neat freak like him. Bitchily I fantasized about her being a complete slob and driving him nuts with her slovenly habits. Or them both getting struck by lightning in a terrible storm as they stood on the top of British Camp. That would teach them. Fat lot of good Jasmine’s first-aid kit and birdsong calls would be then.

She’d better be nice to Saul, this Jasmine, I thought grimly as we cruised through the dark, rain-sodden lanes. She’d better be bloody lovely to him. He deserved nothing less. I sighed, hating Matthew and hating Jasmine, wishing Ruth had kept her mouth shut and left me none the wiser.

I glanced over at Thea, who was fast asleep with her thumb in her mouth, her facial features slack, her eyelids just trembling slightly with some dream or other. She was so cute; how come I hadn’t noticed it before? Just because Ruth was a pain in the arse, it didn’t mean her kids were too. They had all been adorable tonight – really sweet and funny and giggly.

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