Page 95 of Five Things I Love About You

‘What…’ I stop, swallow, lean forward. My leg is jumping up and down furiously beneath the table. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘We’re sick of seeing you mooning around feeling miserable?—’

‘—that’s not quite how I’d put it?—’

‘—so Soph and I have taken matters into our own hands.’ Kirstie rubs her hands together like a Bond villain.

I feel as though my blood has turned to ice and my heart is thumping erratically against my ribcage. ‘You… you’ve done what?’ My throat is dry and the words come out crackly.

‘Listen, I know you said you weren’t going to chase around the world like the star of a Richard Curtis film – your words, I believe,’ Kirstie continues. ‘And Soph and I have been so thrilled to have you back here with us that we’ve ignored the fact you’re pining for too long. But look at you.’

‘What about me? I’m fine.’ I tuck my hands under my thighs to stop them shaking. ‘Just tell me exactly what it is you’ve done.’ My pulse beats in my temple.

Sophie flicks Kirstie a glance, then blurts it out in one go. ‘We got in touch with Matt and he’s agreed to meet you to talk and you’re flying out to see him in two days’ time.’

I stare at them both, trying to fathom what the bloody hell is going on here. They’ve contacted Matt? He wants to meet me? What thehell?

‘What thehell?’I say out loud, standing suddenly. The chair behind me screeches across the floor and my legs shake.

They both stand too, and we stare at each other across the dining table. This is usually a place where we sit, drink and laugh and put the world to rights, but right now it feels like a battleground, with me on one side, and my betrayers, my best friends, on the other. They’d better start explaining themselves, and fast.

Sophie looks like she’d rather be anywhere else but here having this conversation, but Kirstie looks perfectly at ease, and now she leans her hands on the table and tells me exactly what they’ve been up to.

‘Neither of us wanted to see you so sad any more,’ she says, her voice gentle. ‘So I stole your phone and took Matt’s number and I rang him.’

‘You rang him.’ I stare at her, dumbly.

She shrugs. ‘You still had his number in there, so I figured if you really didn’t want to speak to him ever again you’d have deleted it.’

I don’t say anything.

‘Luckily he hadn’t dumped his UK phone, so I told him that you’d left Jay, that you were back in London, and that you wanted to see him, to sort things out.’

‘I told her we should have spoken to you about it first,’ Sophie says, but Kirstie interrupts her.

‘And we all know you’d have said no, and then continued to moon around feeling sad.’ She folds her arms defensively. ‘So I took it upon myself to do it anyway.’

‘You had no right,’ I say, my voice a whisper. I clear my throat. ‘What made you think that was okay?’

A flicker of doubt crosses Kirstie’s face, but quickly clears again. ‘Because we love you, Miranda. Simple as that.’

I stare at the faces of my best friends, the two women I love more than anyone else in the whole world apart from my children, and right now I want to punch them both. I’m mortified, and angry, and confused and… ohGod, what must Matt think of me?

I sit, my legs suddenly weak. Kirstie and Sophie sit down too, Sophie with a look of relief on her face as though this must mean I’m okay with it.

The truth is, I don’t know how I feel about what they’ve done. They’ve betrayed me, but somewhere – buriedverydeep down for now – I know it would have been for the right reasons. They just want me to be happy and yes, Kirstie is right that stubbornness would never have allowed me to agree to them ringing Matt.

It’s done now, so rather than worry about it, I need to decide how I feel about it. About the fact that Matt has said he would like to see me. That he’s agreed to talk to me.

‘I can’t—’ I start, then let out a puff of air and run my hands through my hair. ‘Jesus, you two,’ I say, and laugh. ‘You’ve done some mad things over the years but I think this might be the most outrageous thing you’ve ever done by a country mile.’

‘Buuuuut…?’ Kirstie says. ‘Is it a good thing?’

I don’t answer for a moment, unsure how to respond.

‘Tell me more, then I’ll decide.’

Kirstie looks at Sophie with a triumphant, told-you-so grin. ‘So, he was pretty surprised to hear from me,’ she says. ‘I explained everything – that you were single and back in London, and he knows you regret not staying in touch.’

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