Just Saying

by Sophie Ranald

Genres: Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

I almost gave up on love. My ex, who called his private parts ‘Nigel', was enough to put me off men forever. But then I met Joe.
Alice thought she'd found Mr Right. Her blue-eyed boyfriend Joe gives her butterflies, makes her bacon sandwiches when she's hungover, and doesn't have a nickname for any of his body parts.
She should have known it was too good to be true. Because one day, Alice and Joe bump into Zoe. According to him, Zoe's ‘just an old friend'. But Alice saw the way they froze, and heard the strange note in Joe's voice when he said her name.
Then, out of the blue, Zoe needs a place to live. And Joe has the bright idea of inviting her, and her fluffy ginger cat Frazzle, to stay with them.
Alice tries her hardest not to feel threatened. But the thing is, Zoe doesn't survive off microwave meals, or go days without washing her glossy copper-coloured hair, or accidentally get mascara in her contact lenses.
Joe's ex might be pretty much perfect, but there's no way that Alice will let Zoe steal him. She's on a mission to prove that three (four, if you count the cat) is definitely a crowd…
This fabulous, feel-good book is for anyone who has ever got a little too drunk and checked out their partner's ex! (We've all been there…) Fans of romantic comedies by Sophie Kinsella and Lindsey Kelk, and TV shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin, will love this utterly relatable listen.

Release date: July 3, 2020

Publisher: Bookouture

Print pages: 350

Sample

Even though it was Friday, and my birthday, I only stayed in the pub for the one glass of wine. I know, right? A couple of years before, I’d have been all over the opportunity to have a wild night out on the town and get happily shitfaced with my colleagues.

Who knows, two-years-ago-me would have said to herself, I might even meet someone.

But here’s the thing. I had met someone. Just weeks after beginning my training contract at Billings Pitt Furzedown, a London law firm that was almost, but not quite, in the so-called magic circle of the super-elite, I’d hooked up with Joe, who’d started in the same cohort of ambitious, naïve, sharp-elbowed, wet-behind-the-ears soon-to-be solicitors as I had.

It happened at what seemed like warp speed – yet also felt totally natural. Within weeks, I’d been spending almost every other night at his, and he’d been spending the rest of the time at mine, both of us heading back to our respective shared flats on Sunday nights to catch up with laundry, open our post and reassure our flatmates that we weren’t disappearing into the vortex that sucks new couples out of their friendship circles, never to return.

But we both knew, even in those early days, that meeting each other was going to change both of our lives in a big way, for a long time.

It wasn’t like some massive drama took place between us – like Joe declared undying love for me on date number three, or anything. If he had, I’d have marked him out as a potential psycho and headed for the hills as fast as I could. It just felt right, right from the start. It felt like we were two plants that had been put in pots next to each other, and as we climbed the same sunlit wall our tendrils reached out for the same things until they became intertwined, and we grew together with the same water and light, neither crowding the other out.

Cheesy as fuck, right? That’s what my friend Heather said, anyway, when the lease on the flat I shared with her came to an end and I told her I was going to move in with Joe – and then right away she gave me a huge hug and told me anyone could see we were made for each other and she was going to be best woman at our wedding in a few years, just watch.

So Joe and I had been living together for a bit more than a year. In the beginning we’d shared the flat with a mate of his, but when Chris had been offered a job in Dublin we’d figured out that we could – just about – afford the rent by ourselves, and decided to go it alone, together.

Anyway, like I say, it was my birthday and I knew that Joe would have made surprise plans for me. My last birthday had been just a few days after we’d moved in together, and we saved up to buy a bottle of the most expensive champagne either of us had ever tasted, ordered a Chinese takeaway and ate it on the living-room floor because we didn’t have any furniture yet. It had been perfect. This year, I guessed he might have booked a table at a local restaurant or something, and I wanted to get home and change out of my work suit into something prettier and more comfortable, and get ready to celebrate being twenty-seven.

But before I even walked into our flat, I knew Joe had planned something different – something special. Tied to the door handle was an enormous bunch of white heart-shaped balloons, and I didn’t even have to count them to know that there would be twenty-seven. I carefully untied them and let myself in, feeling an enormous smile spreading over my face.

The curtains over the glass door leading to the garden were closed, so the flat was filled with a dim twilight, but there were candles lit on the table, which was laid for two people. On it were a little pile of carefully wrapped presents and a card for me to open. There was a folded piece of paper on one of the plates, with ‘Menu’ printed on it in a swirly typeface. I unfolded it and felt my smile grow even wider: ‘Smoked salmon blinis, Fillet steak with mushroom sauce, Chocolate mousse’. The very same things Joe had made the first time he ever cooked for me.

Then I heard his voice from beyond the curtains.

‘Alice? Come out here.’

‘Just a second.’

I tied the balloons to the back of one of the chairs, pushed the curtains aside – and then I froze.

‘Oh my God! Joe! What have you done? You absolute nutter!’

In the fading sunlight, our small patch of garden was filled almost from side to side by a huge inflatable hot tub. Steam rose from its bubbling surface, leaving only the faintest haze in the summer evening air. Fairy lights sparkled around its edges; a silver ice bucket holding a bottle of champagne stood next to it. And, best of all, there was Joe, wearing only board shorts, flip-flops and a delighted grin.

‘I only hired it for one night,’ he said, ‘so you’d better get your bikini on, birthday girl. We’ve got no time to waste.’

I didn’t need telling twice. Ten minutes later, I was neck-deep in the warm water, half a glass of champagne down, Joe’s bare shoulder strong and smooth next to mine, the jets gently pummelling our bodies, the first stars visible in the ink-blue sky above us.

‘This is so amazing,’ I said. ‘Who knew our weed-infested garden could be turned into romance central?’

‘You know me, Alice. When you’re here, everywhere’s romance central.’

I laughed and squeezed his hand under the water, then ran my fingers up the ridged muscles of his stomach, feeling goosebumps pop up on his skin.

‘When did they deliver this thing? I thought you had an early meeting today.’

‘Yeah, I kind of made that up. I went and sat in a coffee shop by the station until I saw you go in, then pegged it back here in time for them to drop it off and install it at nine thirty. It takes ages for all this water to heat up, you see. And then I left the office at five on the dot to get all the food ready.’

‘You’re quite something, you know that?’

‘I’ve got a girlfriend who deserves the best.’

He leaned over and kissed me, gently and affectionately at first, but then it changed into something more. I put my glass down so I could wrap both arms around him, pulling his warm body closer, our legs tangling together under the water. We kissed and kissed, and then – when we realised that if things went much further one or both of us would probably drown, which would be quite the passion-killer – we went inside to the bedroom, discarding our sodden swimwear on the floor along the way. We fell onto the bed in each other’s arms, laughing and gasping with longing and pleasure.

We had the kind of shag that was passionate but also leisurely – the sort of sex you have when you know you’ve got all night to do it again, all weekend to do it some more, and the rest of your life to keep getting better and better at it.

And when we’d finished, we pulled on some clothes and finished the bubbly while Joe cooked our steaks, then ate our starter while they rested, which he insisted they had to do if they were to be perfect.

‘Whatever you say, Marcus Wareing,’ I teased.

‘A Michelin-starred chef would be ashamed of himself, serving dinner at eleven o’clock at night.’

‘Not if he’d done what you just did to me.’

‘What, so back there you were thinking filthy thoughts about Marcus Wareing?’

‘I admit nothing.’

We burst out laughing, and I wrapped my arms around Joe from behind while he stirred the mushroom sauce and opened a bottle of red wine. The candles were glowing, the room was filled with delicious smells – the most delicious being Joe himself – and I felt completely happy.

Then we both jumped out of our skins at the crash of the door knocker.

‘What the hell?’ Joe said.

‘Could it be a neighbour complaining about noise?’

‘We weren’t making any noise.’

‘Deliveroo driver at the wrong address?’

‘Maybe. I’ll get it.’

Still shirtless, Joe walked the few steps to the front door and opened it, and I heard a familiar voice.

‘Sorry to barge in. My God, something smells good. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?’

My brother. What on earth was he doing here?

‘Hello, mate. Your sister and I were just in the middle of dinner, but you’re welcome to join us,’ Joe said.

‘Fantastic! I’m bloody starving. I just flew in from Penang, via Singapore and Zürich because I was too skint to fly direct. Couldn’t even afford the train fare to Mum and Dad’s so I got a bus here from City airport. I’m out of credit on my phone, or I’d have let you know. Happy birthday, Alice. I’m not interrupting anything, am I? Don’t hug me, I’ve been in cattle class for almost thirty hours. Any chance of a shower?’

Looking at my brother’s familiar, grinning face, I felt a familiar mix of affection and exasperation. Our romantic evening was screwed, that was for sure – but, at the same time, Drew’s presence was like a bright light had been turned on in our living room, dimming the glow of the candles.

Compared to my brother, I’m pretty ordinary-looking. I’m middling height, not tall but not short either. I’ve got blonde hair that I help along with some highlights when I get time to go to the hairdresser, and greeny-blue eyes. A typical English rose, I guess. Sometimes I scrub up well, sometimes I look like I’ve been dragged through a hedge backwards, just like anyone.

Still, when I looked at Drew, I couldn’t help feeling, just for a second, that nature could have been a little bit fairer when she dished out the looks in our family.

The features and colouring that were ordinary on my face had somehow been translated into something exceptional on Drew’s. He was gorgeous. Taller than me, broad-shouldered and lean, his blond hair gleaming like a shampoo advert, his eyes managing to look warm in spite of being deep blue. His face was movie-star handsome. Girls reacted to him like cats to catnip. Okay, maybe they didn’t actually throw themselves on the ground, writhing and yowling, but you could tell they wanted to.

If I let slip on social media that, right now, Drew was naked in my shower, there’d be a queue round the block like when Space NK opened and was offering free goodie bags.

But Drew had never quite got his shit together. After school he’d had a series of casual jobs – working in a supermarket, working in a call centre, working in a warehouse fulfilling online orders, doing a couple of courses in website design and social-media marketing. And in between them, he was out of work for months at a time, living at home and claiming benefits.

He said he wanted to be in a band, or go travelling, or be a poet. But he never did very much about any of those things. Actually, the travelling he did get around to – taking off for months at a time to New Zealand and Bali and Peru and other far-flung places, getting casual work in bars when he could, before eventually coming home and moving back in with Mum and Dad, back to unemployment and writing poems that occasionally got published in obscure literary magazines that didn’t pay a fee.

‘So how was Malaysia?’ Joe asked, dragging me away from my thoughts.

My brother had emerged from the shower, and I knew from experience he’d have left at least three sodden towels on the bathroom floor and his backpack would look like a bomb had gone off inside it.

‘Sick,’ Drew said. ‘The beaches are just amazing. There are loads of social problems, of course, and poverty. But the natural beauty is incredible. I volunteered for a charity that’s working to protect their biodiversity, and I washed dishes in a restaurant to pay for my flight home. But here I am.’

I watched as Joe carefully divided the two steaks, cold now, into three and shared out the oven chips.

‘Mum’s been going nuts worrying about you,’ I said. ‘I had to show her your Insta feed to convince her you were still alive.’

‘Oh shit. She didn’t see the picture of me passed out on the beach surrounded by empty Tiger beer bottles, did she?’

‘Yeah, I drew her attention to it especially. She said it looked like a fun night.’

Drew stuck his tongue out at me, looking like a twelve-year-old boy again.

‘Anyhow, how about you guys?’ he asked. ‘What’s up in the world of high-powered lawyering?’

I made a face. ‘We’re not exactly high-powered, you know. We’re still trainees – the lowest of the low.’

‘But Alice is all set with a job when she qualifies,’ Joe said. ‘Newly qualified solicitor in the intellectual property department.’

‘And what’s your plan then, Drew? Now that you’re back?’

‘God, Alice, I don’t know! I’m still jet-lagged. I don’t have a plan.’

‘You never have one.’

‘I don’t need one,’ Drew said. ‘Plans are so bourgeois. Making it up as you go along is far more interesting.’

He pushed back his chair and glanced outside.

‘Hey, is that a hot tub? Cool! Let’s open another bottle and have a go.’

So Joe and I changed back into our damp swimsuits, Drew pulled off his T-shirt and put the bottle of duty-free vodka he’d brought into the ice bucket, and we all got in. The hot tub was a tight squeeze for three, but we managed it.

‘Mind if I smoke?’ Drew asked.

‘Go ahead.’

Joe sloshed vodka into our glasses and Drew lit a fag.

‘God, I’m knackered,’ he said. ‘I thought that flight was never going to end. It’s good to be back.’

He stretched out his arms and legs, giving me an accidental kick on the ankle, tipped back his head and closed his eyes. I looked at Joe, worried he’d be annoyed at his carefully planned surprise being gatecrashed. But he winked at me and blew me a kiss, and I knew everything was all right.

Then he said, ‘What’s that smell? Like burning plastic.’

Drew’s eyes snapped open again.

‘Shit,’ he said. ‘Shit shit shit. I’ve only gone and burned a hole in the bastard thing. I’m so sorry.’

‘I expect they’ll be able to patch it somehow,’ I said, although I didn’t really have a clue.

‘It’s leaking like crazy,’ Drew said. ‘And kind of sagging.’

He tried to sit upright, but he must have slipped backwards, because the side of the tub where his back was dropped dramatically, sending a tidal wave of water out over the side and into the garden. Once it had started, it was unstoppable. The weight of the water forced down the side of the tub, its structural integrity destroyed. As the hot tub’s wall sagged down, my brother’s body followed it until he was almost horizontal, water streaming over him. Joe and I tried to hold up the now-deflated side, but it was hopeless – partly because we’d started to giggle, and our laughter soon became an unstoppable flood, too.

We helped Drew to his feet and watched as the whoosh of water slowed to a stream and then a trickle.

‘Between you two,’ I said, ‘you’ve certainly given me a birthday I won’t forget.’

Joe and I were woken the next morning by the thud of the front door. As he’d promised, Drew – no doubt woken up by jet lag – had got an early start to head home to Mum and Dad’s place in Reading, and Joe and I were left to deal with our hangovers and make our excuses to the hot-tub hire company alone.

‘What time is it?’ Joe mumbled, turning over and pulling me close to him, big spoon to my little spoon. I could feel his warm breath on my neck and the length of his body pressed up against mine, a perfect fit.

‘Eight fifteen.’ I had to crane my neck to see my watch, because my arm was trapped under his. ‘God, I’m hungover. We shouldn’t have opened that last bottle of wine. I don’t know if I’m up for Parkrun today. Seriously.’

‘Come on, Alice. Getting out of bed is the hardest part.’

‘You get up first. Go on. Bring me a coffee. Please?’

‘It’s your turn. I made it last week, remember? Even though I was the hungover one.’

‘I could make the coffee and we could have it in bed. Go on, let’s sack it off, just this once.’

‘Alice! You’ll feel miles better afterwards – you know you will. You always say…’

‘But it’s my birthday,’ I objected. ‘We could go to the farmers’ market instead. Get some breakfast.’

‘Well, since you put it that way…’

I rolled over and turned my face up to his, feeling his hands start to caress my back, and I knew I was safe. There weren’t many ways of persuading Joe that staying in bed was a better idea than getting up and running five kilometres, but this was one of them.

Two blissful hours later, we burst out into the morning. The air was fresh and clean, and I could tell that it was going to be a glorious, roasting-hot day.

‘God, I’m starving,’ Joe said. ‘I hope the burger van will be at the market today. They do those killer breakfast butties, remember?’

‘Or the place that does the lamb wraps.’ My mouth watered at the thought. ‘Or we could have hot dogs with fried onions.’

‘God, stop. You’re torturing me. I want all that stuff.’

‘And cake.’

‘Carrot cake, or salted caramel?’

‘I vote for both.’

We turned onto a street lined with Victorian houses, flanked by tall chestnut trees, and we walked on, Joe’s hand warm and strong in mine. Soon we were joined by a flow of people – young families with their babies in buggies, older couples carrying wicker baskets, pairs of twenty-somethings like us heading out for brunch in the sunshine.

Although it had only just opened, the farmers’ market was already crowded. The organic vegetable stall had a queue snaking round it, people examining bunches of asparagus, peppers so shiny they looked like they’d been polished, bundles of dark leaves with rainbow-coloured stems and punnets of glistening strawberries.

‘What do we need?’ I asked Joe.

‘I thought we could get a chicken to roast tomorrow,’ he said. ‘Maybe make a salad, and something for pudding. Apricot tart, maybe?’

‘Sounds great. I guess I’ll be on chopping duty, as per usual.’

‘So long as you don’t almost chop off a finger, like you did last time.’

‘It was your fault. You pinched my bum and distracted me.’

‘Your bum distracted me first.’

I watched as Joe pored over the table of fresh chickens as intently as he read through a legal contract on his laptop, before selecting one that, as far as I could tell, was no different from its poor, dead brothers and sisters.

‘I reckon I’ll be working late most nights this week,’ he said. ‘So I’ll probably eat at the office. We could make some soup with the leftovers from this.’

‘Sounds good,’ I agreed, although I knew that I’d be working late most nights too, and also ducking out from the office at seven to grab a tub of noodles or yet another cheese and pickle sandwich – or, if the pressure was really on and I couldn’t leave my desk, ordering a pizza on Uber Eats. And I knew that the leftover chicken would sit forlornly in the fridge until the following weekend, when one of us would guiltily throw it away.

I followed Joe round the fresh produce stalls, growing steadily hungrier and casting longing glances towards the line of food carts on the other side of the market. But there was no point suggesting we eat first and finish our shopping later: my boyfriend was on a mission. He chose seedy wholemeal bread, a bag of dusty baby potatoes that he said were Jersey Royals – and, considering they cost about fifty pence per potato, they should have been – a paper bag of golden apricots, a tub of fresh cream and a load of tomatoes in an array of colours that, as far as I was concerned, tomatoes had no right being.

My presence was pretty much superfluous – he’d given up trying to pass on his obsessive interest in food and cooking to me long ago. But I was content following him around, half-listening to the in-depth discussions he had with the stall-holders, by the end of which he practically knew the name of the goat whose milk had gone into the cheese (Bunty Farquahar-Smythe, possibly, given the price of the cheese) and the location of the tree on which the apricots had grown.

‘Right, all done,’ he said at last, hefting the bulging nylon shopping bag onto his shoulder. ‘Only the best for your birthday Sunday lunch.’

‘Speaking of lunch…’

‘Right. God, I’m starving. What shall we get?’

As if pulled by magnets, we both turned and followed the crowd – and our noses – to the row of food carts. There was the familiar burger stall, where two bearded guys were flipping patties, toasting buns and frying eggs on a sizzling hot plate. There was the hot-dog woman, turning a tangle of fragrant, floppy onions with a giant pair of tongs. There was the roast-dinner-in-a-Yorkshire-wrap stall, the rich smell of simmering gravy making my mouth water.

But the longest queue of all seemed to be for a new stall.

‘Korean street food,’ Joe read. ‘Shall we give that a go?’

‘Isn’t that, like, cabbage and stuff?’

‘Kimchi. Fermented cabbage. Like sauerkraut, only Asian.’

I wrinkled my nose. ‘I’m not sure you’re selling this to me.’

‘Come on, Alice! It’s good to try new things. And if you don’t like it, I’ll have yours and you can have a burger.’

I edged closer and read the menu, handwritten in chalk on a blackboard fixed to the side of the trailer that formed the stall.

‘Peanut and noodle salad. Pork and kimchi stew. Bleurgh.’

‘Fried chicken bao, though. How good does that sound? There’ll be spicy sauce on it, too. Give it a go.’

‘Fried chicken with spicy sauce. Okay, now you’re talking.’

In spite of Joe’s foodie adventurousness, he couldn’t come close to me when it came to hot sauce. If we went out for a curry, I’d offer him a taste of mine and watch, laughing, as he winced and broke out in a sweat, insisting that it was fine, really delicious, but that he’d stick with his mild chicken korma. On the rare occasions I cooked, it was usually chilli con carne, and he’d hover over my shoulder, watching anxiously as I added spices to the pan, trying not to comment or criticise until he snapped and said, ‘Are you sure that’s not…?’ But he’d always struggle through like it was some test of manhood, bravely having seconds and assuring me that it was the best thing he’d ever tasted, then quenching his burning mouth with a huge glass of cold milk.

As we joined the end of the long queue, Joe took out his phone and started scrolling through messages. Even though it was the weekend, he never switched off. If he wasn’t running, he was shopping. If he wasn’t working, he’d be in the kitchen, preparing some kind of feast. And when he did take some downtime, it would be to sit on the sofa, Xbox controller in hand, competing furiously with a bunch of strangers online in whatever was the latest game that he was determined to master and win at.

While he scrolled and typed, I watched the couple behind the food cart’s makeshift counter. The guy was taking orders, accepting cash and returning change, turning to call over his shoulder at the woman behind him. He was nice-looking, I thought – a dark, stocky bloke with a neatly trimmed beard and a gold ring in one ear. The woman had her back to him, swiftly assembling meals with a pair of chopsticks. But when she turned to say something to him, I was brought up short by how pretty she was.

She was small and lithe, with a cascade of auburn curls held back from her face by a coiled phone-wire hair tie. Her arms were bare in her bright red vest top, and there was a tattoo of a mermaid snaking up one bicep. Her skin was as pale as cream, and as smooth. She moved from one side of the tiny trailer to the other – from the gas burner, to the array of condiments, to the guy at the counter – as if it was a stage and she was a dancer.

When she smiled, it was like a spark of electricity.

‘What can I get you?’ the guy asked, and I realised I’d been so busy gawping at his colleague that I’d barely noticed us reaching the front of the queue.

‘Oh, sorry – one fried chicken bao and one kimchi and cheese arancini please,’ I said. ‘Joe?’

Joe broke off from his laser focus on his phone. ‘Sorry, sorry. One spicy beef bao and one portion of fried dumplings please, mate.’

When he spoke, the girl froze, like the music driving her rhythm had stopped.

Then she turned around, very slowly, and looked at us.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Joe.’

‘Oh my God,’ Joe said. ‘Zoë.’

I felt suddenly cold, like the sun had passed behind a cloud – and suddenly, definitively, no longer hungry.

I tried to ask Joe about Zoë after that. I mean, obviously I did. She wasn’t just an acquaintance he’d bumped into, I was sure. That moment when she’d heard his voice, over the sizzle of her pans and the hubbub of the market, and frozen, right there. The way they’d looked at each other, even when, after those first two identical, breathless exclamations, they’d returned to a more normal ‘How random is this?’-type conversation, which had been brief because the queue was building up behind us.

There’d been something there. Something important.

We found a wooden table in the shade to perch at and eat. I took a bite of my bao, which was perfection – crisp-coated, tender chicken in a pillowy steamed bun, piled with some sort of pickly stuff that I assumed was kimchi and slathered with sauce that was pretty damn lethal, even by my standards.

And then I felt my throat close up a bit, and I asked, ‘So where do you know her from?’

‘Who?’

‘Come off it, Joe! You know who. That girl at the food cart.’

‘Oh, right. Her. Just from uni. We. . .