Once she’d hung a selection of damp lingerie and knitwear on Anna’s heated airer, she raided the kitchen cupboards. Sugar, eggs, flour … chocolate chips and bicarb. A bottle of vanilla extract that was only slightly out of date. There was also proper butter in the fridge, which meant she was going to make cookies.
An hour or so later, the soothing scent of sweet dough and melting chocolate permeated every room in the flat. Once they’d cooled, Rachel filled one of Anna’s floral cake tins with biscuits that, though she said it herself, looked mouth-watering.
She kept two aside, then fastened the lid and made a cup of tea. After digging for Dev’s client list in her handbag, she sat down with her laptop and mobile.
Zack Lanson, she soon learned, was the most famous of the group who’d signed up to be part of #NoFilter. Rachel felt her eyes widen as she scrolled through his social feeds and YouTube channel. The white T-shirt video Tom had mentioned earlier had well over a million views.
Alyssia Ahmadi, Rachel discovered, was some kind of wellness warrior. Her Instagram was all cooking with quinoa, daily yoga practice, mindful mantras and designer sportswear. Meanwhile, Joey Nixon was a gaming guru whose reviews of the latest releases could apparently make or break them.
Sophie French seemed to occupy the same cyber space as Jessica Williams: she vlogged and posted about her life and style, partnering with fashion and beauty brands to promote their products. A trawl through Sophie’s Insta history revealed she’d even been an Angeljuice ambassador at one stage.
Rachel’s thoughts drifted back to the bus ads, and she felt the good mood she’d cultivated start leaking out of her like air from a punctured tyre. Without asking herself what she was doing or why, she typed Jessica’s name into Instagram’s search bar and opened her profile.
Every beautifully composed, thoughtfully styled photo was like a punch to Rachel’s gut. She told herself that flipping through Jessica’s summer bikini shots probably qualified as an act of self-harm – but somehow she couldn’t resist the urge to look at them.
The emotions Jessica evoked were similar to those Rachel remembered having in adolescence, standing next to her older, more beautiful (and, crucially, non-ginger) sister in family photographs. Rachel’s discomfort had usually showed in the developed images; she’d be scowling, looking away from the camera or grinning through gritted teeth. She’d ruined every picture she was in, or at least that was how it had felt. By contrast, Lizzy had always looked relaxed and happy – unconcerned that the click of a camera button might see her weighed, measured and found wanting.
Grown-up Rachel had spent years trying not to compare her appearance or achievements to anyone else’s, and she knew that Tom was right: she didn’t need to. Rachel was her own person, and broadly happy with herself. Yet Jessica retained a unique power to make her feel dumpy, dull and deficient.
Rachel licked a finger, swept up the cookie crumbs from her plate and devoured them. If this was stress-eating, she decided it wasn’t entirely unjustified after the week she’d had. Maybe just one more …
As she’d once said to Anna, it wasn’t merely the fact that Jack had cheated on her that hurt. It was also thewayhe’d done it – and who with.
During his pursuit of Rachel, he’d made much of her romantic, singular look: the idea that she was beautiful – handsome, even – rather than conventionally pretty. The strong features Rachel had been teased about in childhood sat differently in her adult face. Without realising it, she’d grown into them in her late teens, and her deep-brown eyes, creamy skin and generous lips – the top one slightly larger than its partner – now combined with her copper waves to give her a dreamy, soulful bearing.
Nevertheless, Rachel had never quite shaken off the idea that she was inelegant and odd-looking. She’d been surprised to discover she appealed to males of the species – particularly the unkempt, poetic types she’d met on her English degree course. But for all Jack’s effusive praise of her ‘difference’, he’d gone and slept with someone lithe, mahogany-haired and tanned: a woman nine out of ten cads would have voted better-looking. It was so depressinglyobvious, at the same time as feeling like a stunning volte-face.
Rachel’s memory wound back to her first meeting with Jack, during Freshers’ Week. He’d stood in line next to her at an onboarding event, making wild predictions about which student societies she’d join. ‘Women’s rugby team? Lego Club? The Princess Diana Society! Hang on … Jane Austen Is My Spirit Animal Soc?’ She’d finally laughed at that and said, ‘Bang to rights.’
They’d become friends, but Rachel had worked hard to keep her wits about her when he turned on the charm. Even then she’d been expert at checking her own emotions – consigning inconvenient feelings to hidden corners of her heart, from which they’d struggle to resurface.
Ultimately, though, refusing to fall for Jack had become exhausting. It took effort not to let him hold her gaze when he focused his green eyes on her; it was tough to resist the repositioning of a friendly hand slung around her shoulder when it migrated to the small of her back.
Two years on he’d worn her down, drawn her in. It was only once Rachel was completely suckered that he’d decided to burn everything down. It was this, above all, that she had never forgiven him, or herself, for.
And now Jack was back: a changed man, or so he claimed. Amarriedman, perhaps …
Rachel’s hand hovered over her computer keyboard. She’d resisted looking for Jack on the internet for so long that even the thought of searching for his Facebook profile felt illicit. She wondered if this was what a recovering alcoholic might feel like, trying to face down a tumbler of twenty-five-year-old single malt.
Her fingertips shook slightly as she tapped out his name. Writing it felt like admitting he was real again: like bringing him back to life.
He was here, and they had six mutual friends – presumably people they’d been at university with. His page was private, but some of his photos were visible. In his profile picture he wore a navy suit with a crisp white shirt, a cornflower-blue tie and a yellow crocus in the buttonhole. There was a flute of something sparkling in his right hand, and his left arm was wrapped around the slender waist of a woman in a white 1950s-style dress. A wedding dress.
Anna had been right, then. Jack had a wife.
As she stared at the image, transfixed by the sincerity of his smile, Rachel found she wasn’t bitter or devastated. To her surprise, it seemed she wasn’t anything, really.
She felt oddly numb, as though this were information she couldn’t quite compute. It was like being convinced you understood a person, only to find out they had a secret identity – that they weren’t who you thought they were at all.
At least one thing made sense: Jack’s wife was predictably pretty. She had Nordic-blonde hair cut in a sleek, shining bob. Her eyes were big and blue – almost doll-like – made up with flawless, flicky black liner. Her red-lipsticked mouth was spread wide in a warm, happy smile that matched her new husband’s.
This wasfine, Rachel told herself. More than fine. Perhaps it was even ideal. Jack being married drew a very neat line under their history. Rachel felt relieved, as if she’d just been given a booster vaccination: a shot that would supercharge her immunity to him.
Satisfied, she shut her laptop. Maybe she’d run a bath and start a new book, then order in a pizza for dinner. She padded to the bathroom, poured a capful of her favourite foam into the tub and turned on the taps.
As Rachel surveyed her cluttered bookshelves, hunting for something as unromantic as possible, she chose not to ask herself the obvious question. Why, after what Jack had done and after all this time, should she ever have been concerned about her resistance to him?
Later that evening, halfway through an old Louis Theroux documentary, Rachel’s phone rang.HQ Basecamp calling, the screen said. It was her parents.