If someone had told me at the beginning of the week that by the end of it, I would be two pounds heavier, my lost love would be back in my life as my manager, not as my love, and I would be spending Saturday night in a bowling alley, I would have told them to pinch me in the too much chocolate jowl that was beginning to develop due to the stress.

‘Whose idea was this?’ Elle said in a thoroughly disgusted tone as she scrunched her face to brace herself for taking off her heels to sink her foot into a seen decidedly better days bowling shoe.

‘Blame Gem. She said something about the freeing nature of releasing the balls,’ Kate said, pointing across to Gem.

‘What? I really needed to get out some frustration. Bowling seemed like a better option than punching my ex-husband in the face.’

‘So you’re imagining Jay’s balls, and you…’ Elle put her arm around my shoulder and arched her eyebrows at me. ‘You’re releasing the tension of the last week.’

‘No tension. I’m fine. Breezy. Nothing wrong here.’ I stood and moved over to the computer to start punching in the names. ‘Elle, you’re knob chomper.’

‘How very mature,’ Elle deadpanned.

‘Who wants to be cream guzzler?’ I shouted over the music.

‘Talk,’ Gem said, sitting down beside me.

‘There’s nothing to say. He’s back, he’s my manager, and as he quite rightly said, we need to be professional.’ What a load of crap. ‘Now, who wants to be the one-eyed custard chucker?’

‘I’m just finding the whole thing weird,’ Gem continued, ignoring my attempts to hide behind laughter.

‘Tell me how you really feel.’

‘I mean, you need to talk to each other. There is so much to sift through. Why did he end it when things were going well? Why did he stop writing?’ Gem asked. I knew. Fuck, I knew. ‘Why did he come back knowing it was highly likely he would be working with you again?’ Her questions followed one after the other, but I didn’t really know the answers to any of them. Apart from one.

‘I don’t think he even considered he would be managing me. If he did, why would he come back?’

I stood and took my turn, hauling the ball down with every fucking muscle in my body. I returned to three pairs of eyes watching me like some kind of scientific experiment as I sagged down next to Elle.

‘He’s been walking around like the floor contains a hidden landmine,’ Elle said.

I laughed briefly. He was very skittish. He had barely spoken to me and he’d avoided my desk like it was covered in radioactive waste that would eventually cause him to glow green and talk in riddles if he touched it. He was an expert at avoiding me in the corridor, and by Wednesday, I noticed he’d started to bring in his own flask of tea to bypass the kitchen. On Friday, he didn’t leave his office all day, but at 4:55 p.m., as I started to gather myself together to go home, he sent an email scheduling our first supervision session for Monday morning. And that’s why I ordered four strawberry and kiwi ciders.

‘I can’t make him talk to me,’ I shrugged.

‘He’ll have to on Monday. I so want to be a fly on the wall. He’s the one that disappeared off the face of the earth. He should be feeling awkward, not you. Your turn,’ Elle said.

I stood and bowled another ball. I couldn’t give a flying fuck about winning, which showed as the ball drifted mockingly into the side, missing every pin. ‘Listen, I may not have been entirely truthful,’ I said.

‘I kind of guessed that,’ Elle replied.

‘It wasn’t Jamie’s fault that he stopped replying. I sent him a letter telling him I’d met someone else. Can’t blame him, really. Your turn.’

‘Bloody fuck, Abi.’ Elle stomped over and literally dropped the ball, making it roll painfully slowly and knocking down a pitiful three pins. She returned to her seat eighteen seconds later. This was going to be the quickest bowling game in history. ‘I don’t understand. Why would you do that?’

‘Because I was an idiot. I don’t know. It was all just getting too much. He hadn’t written in a while. His letters were getting shorter and less personal. He said his friends were organising a party for his birthday and when no invite came, I may have had a small breakdown. I took some bad advice. I bled my heart out to Mum one night. She told me to make him jealous, to test him to see his reaction. So I told him I’d started seeing someone else. I’d run out of sensible options and took the bloody stupid one.’

There it was out in the open. I’d fucked it up.

‘What the hell? Did I just hear that right?’ Gem stood up with her hands on her hips. ‘You told him you were seeing someone else?’

‘Yes, OK, I’m an idiot.’

‘You are a fucking idiot!’ Gem shouted, alerting Kate to the conversation.

‘What’s wrong?’ Kate asked.

‘Abi forgot to mention that the reason Jamie stopped writing was because she told him she was seeing someone else!’ Gem told her.

‘What? That’s not true, is it?’ Kate asked.

‘Yes.’

‘So all that about leaving for another job was bullshit?’ Gem asked.

‘He left to care for his mum. The job allowed him to do that.’

‘I’m confused.’ Gem sat down beside me. The disappointment in her eyes was killing me. The full story exploded out of me. I’d never needed alcohol more.

‘I didn’t tell you everything because I was so fucking disappointed in myself that I didn’t want anyone else to be disappointed as well.’

‘I don’t know what to say. I’m not sure if I’m more shocked about your letter, you not telling us about it, or the fact that you actually took advice from your mum,’ Elle said. ‘Which was crap advice, by the way.’

‘Shit advice,’ Gem agreed.

‘The worst,’ Kate added. I nodded as they pulled me in for a hug.

‘I’m so mad at you,’ Elle said before flicking my hair over my shoulder.

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘How come you’re so calm about it all? I’ve seen you breakdown. I’ve wiped your tears. Not more than a few months ago, you told me you’d written to him. Was that the letter?’

‘No, the letter where I fucked up was almost two years ago. I told him to let me go, that I couldn’t go on wondering if he would ever come back and that I’d met someone else. I didn’t hear from him again after that. I sent more telling him I’d made it all up and still loved him, but he didn’t reply.’

Elle was referring to the night I visited her in hospital after she was she attacked and stabbed during a home visit to one of her families. She was recovering, but I was a mess. The thought of losing my best friend had ignited all kinds of fucked up wobbles. I called Mum and we thrashed out shit from my childhood that I hadn’t thought about in years. I visited my father’s grave and cried—something I’d never done. And I had admitted to Elle that I’d written another letter to Jamie reiterating that there wasn’t someone else, never had been, in the hope that it would get to him but knowing full well that he wouldn’t reply. I had needed to do something. The silence and empty doormat were like a chiming bell that never let up.

‘You’ve created the biggest bloody mess,’ Elle said. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I felt fucking stupid and low. Then, when I went to his house and he wasn’t there…’

‘Wait! What?’ she asked, her blue eyes wide and concerned.

‘I need the loo. Stop talking. I don’t want to miss anything.’ Kate stood up and ran to the toilets.

‘Elle, can you take Kate’s turn?’ Gem asked. ‘This is going to end up being the longest game ever recorded. If we don’t hurry up, I’ll be going home to teenagers instead of toddlers.’

‘Christ alive, don’t move. Hold that thought.’ Elle dropped the ball down in ten seconds and returned with a thump. ‘Continue.’

‘I went to his mum’s house.’

‘In London?’ Elle asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Elle turned to me, knocking her knees into mine. ‘You don’t tell me anything!’

‘It’s my go,’ I said, smirking as she buried her face in her lap.

Gem dropped her shoulders at her crap attempt at bowling and handed me the ball. ‘I feel conscious about my arse. It’s ruining my game,’ she pouted.

‘Your arse is fucking amazing. That arse and your gorgeous body have carried two kids,’ I smiled as she gave me an out of nowhere hug.

‘You’re just saying that to get me back on side because you know I’m so fucking mad at you.’

‘You can’t be madder than me,’ I replied.

‘You need to talk to him. Tell him the truth.’

‘I will, Gem.’

‘Talk.’ Elle had been waiting for me to return. She totally ignored my strike, which was a complete bloody fluke. ‘Why did you go to his house?’

‘After you nearly died on me, I made a decision that I wasn’t going to let life pass me by. It’s too short for that, so I got on a train and knocked on his door three hours later.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘You were recovering, stressing about returning to work. Falling in love,’ I replied stretching out the word love and knocking my shoulder into hers. ‘You didn’t need it.’

‘What happened?’ she asked

‘A lovely lady answered the door. She’d moved in almost a year before and didn’t have a forwarding address.’ I remembered the words: Sorry, I have no idea where he went.

‘Oh shit, Abi. I should have been there with you.’

‘If he’d been there, I was hoping he would forgive me, rip my underwear off in one move, and fuck me against the wall. You hanging around would have dampened the mood,’ I laughed.

My laughter hid my pain.

The truth was that I had sat on the steps outside the house for two hours. At one point, the owner literally stepped around me to go on the school run, but not before giving me a pained smile and a pleading backward glance that said please don’t be here when I get back, my kids will be frightened.

I tortured myself by imagining him clearing the very steps I was sitting on, bouncing up them two at a time in his trainers after a run. He never could keep still. Then my mind went to those dark places where I imagined him coming home from a night out with a beautiful woman wrapped around him after I’d stupidly pushed him to move on. I wondered if he’d fucked her on the stairs or against the door because in heated passion and frenzied desire, that was the trademark of our relationship. He could never wait.

It had started to rain an hour in, so when I decided to walk back to the Tube station, I was grappling with a see-through blouse, cold jeans and a shattered heart. I ate a steak and beef pie, four grab-bags of crisps and a multipack of Lion Bars on the train as I headed back to Nottingham.

As I headed back to a life of feeling empty and lost.

‘Take a picture of the score board,’ I shouted to Kate. ‘We can put some of the numbers on the lottery. The lottery could be my answer. If I win, I won’t have to go back to work on Monday morning.’

* * *

Four strawberry and kiwi ciders, a vodka and two whiskey and Cokes later…

‘Oh fuck. What am I going to do? How can I go back there on Monday? How can I face him? Kill me. Kill me now.’

I had been sick in the bin at the side of the bench that I was now being propped up on—Elle on one side, Gem on the other, and Kate crouching down in front of me with her hands on my knees. Alcohol had twisted into my bloodstream and had turned all the lies of earlier in the evening into full-blown truths. I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. Everything I had held together was now tumbling and crashing, exposing me for what I really was. Broken. Hurt. Utterly lost and confused.

‘Why won’t he talk to me? I need to know everything. Where has he been? What’s he been doing with his life? I need him to crack open his ribs and offer me his heart.’

‘OK, dramatics. She’s going down Shakespeare Road, and once we get there, there’s no turning back. We need to find her a coffee—and quick.’

Elle had been there before. She knew the pattern. The night would start with clichéd dialogue—We weren’t meant to be. It was good while it lasted—before moving to half-hearted attempts at humour—He couldn’t keep up with me. Not enough stamina—then on to self-pity—We were perfect for each other. Why did we fuck it up?—until we stopped at Shakespeare Road—We were star-crossed lovers. He was my Romeo. The course of true love never did run smooth.

‘I’m going to ring Ben to ask him to help carry her home,’ I heard Elle say as I fell in and out of reality. Sleep or coma, I wasn’t sure. Maybe I was dallying with both.

Not long afterwards, I felt a strong hand under me, jerking me awake. I was being carried. I opened my eyes just enough to see a wry smile.

‘Ben, you bloody dick,’ I shouted, but it didn’t sound like me. The voice was being carried behind my head. ‘You’re a wonderful male specimen of maleness. You alone are restoring my faith in men,’ I slurred into his chest, my cheek rising and falling against him as he laughed. ‘You’re a jizzmonger. No, wait. You’re a cockwomble. No, you, you are a cockateer. Such a perfect example of a cockateer.’

‘Great! Drunken contradictions,’ he said as his eyes followed Elle walking at the side of him carrying my shoes.

That look. He was so in love. I knew that look. I had been on the receiving end of that look. My Jamie. My Dawson. What the fuck was I going to do?

I pressed my hand against his cheek and shivered at how cold it was.

‘Promise me something.’

‘Anything,’ he smiled.

‘Don't take me home sober. I don’t want to think about him, and when I’m sober, I only think of him.’

‘I'm definitely not taking you home sober, Abi, because if I waited for that, we would still be here this time tomorrow night,’ he laughed softly. I was happy that the gorgeous sound of his laugh was the last thing I heard before I fell asleep, dreaming of Jamie and the good times.

I woke from my dream with a jolt, and for a second, I was still in a good place—my legs wrapped around him as he carried me to his bedroom to make love to me. I was still hearing his declarations of love, still believing his promises of loving me forever, still planning our future together—until it hit me again with the force of a punch to the stomach. He hadn’t kept his promises. I would never be his again, and that was so hard to accept. The pain was all consuming, but I couldn’t do anything else except settle into the sobs.

Elle was closing the curtains as I made a weak assessment of my whereabouts.

‘Did Ben carry me home?’ I asked her.

‘Yes, all the way. He’s knackered,’ she laughed.

‘You are so getting spooned tonight.’

I felt her tiny shoulders move up and down as she laughed. I welcomed the comfort of her arms, but I dreaded Monday morning when I would have to face Jamie again.