Page 79 of The Ex Factor

‘Yes. You’re Gary. I start.’ Molly took another sip of coffee, lubing her throat. ‘I’m not doing this, Gary. I’m just not.’

Ashley looked at the script, her delivery completely flat, like a child reading in assembly. ‘What do you mean you’re not doing it? We’ve already put the holding fee down.’

‘But the rent is gone, Gary. You bet it on the football.’ Molly sighed. ‘You always do this. You make a massive mess, and then you look at me like I’m the one who broke the Hoover.’

Ashley lowered the papers slightly. ‘Gary doesn’t say anything about a Hoover here.’

‘I’m improvising because I don’t know the lines yet,’ Molly snapped before taking another sharp gulp of coffee. ‘I just need to find tone. Just read your line.’

Ashley read from the page. ‘Fine. “It was an accumulator, Clare. It would’ve paid out three grand if United hadn’t bottled the ninety-fifth minute. I did it for us.”’

‘You did it for you,’ Molly said. The script said she was supposed to turn away here, but that seemed weird, so she stayed locked on Ashley. And suddenly, she found it. The feeling. Then she heard emotion coming out of her mouth. ‘You always do things for you, and you pretend it’s all for me. Like I’m supposed to be grateful that you’ve ruined my life.’

Ashley’s head came up. ‘Is this still the scene?’

Molly was pissed off. She’d been in the moment, and Ashley had broken it. ‘Yes, it’s the scene.’

‘Because you’re looking at me like… you’re looking at me,’ Ashley said quietly.

‘I’m trying to get a job,’ Molly said, her throat tightening uncomfortably. She set her coffee mug down heavily on the tiny wooden shelf inside her bunk. ‘I’m trying to rehearse a scene about a woman whose boyfriend is an irresponsible idiot. It has nothing to do with anything else.’

‘You started it last night, Molly,’ Ashley said, her voice dropping an octave. ‘You came to my bunk. And now you’re acting like I’ve…’ She stopped, unable to put her finger on exactly what Molly’s unspoken accusation was.

‘It was just, just, just…’ Molly said quickly. She snatched the script from Ashley and rolled it into a tight tube. ‘I was just horny, and you were there. Like when people eat dog food in a famine.’

Ashley’s mouth fell open.

Molly wanted to take it back the second it left her lips. But what would be the point? What would it serve? There was no repair possible. No way back. All there was to do was act like she wasn’t hurting herself too.

Ashley shifted her weight; her face went hard. ‘I’m dog food?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Ashley said, leaning in closer. ‘You wanted to have sex last night. I wanted to have sex too. It wasn’t a famine, Molly. It was just… us.’

‘Well, “just us” is a mess,’ Molly said, her voice cracking slightly on the last word. ‘We are fake dating for a reason. The fake part works. The real part makes me want to jump out of a moving tour bus.’

‘Then why did you come to me last night?’ Ashley asked, stepping closer, her brow furrowed and a small vein throbbing near her temple. ‘If it’s such a disaster, why did you come to me?’

‘Because I’m stupid,’ Molly said, her chest heaving as she sat pinned on the edge of her mattress. ‘I forgot for a minute that you’re the centre of the universe, and I’m only ever someone passing through your orbit. Now leave me alone so I can learn how to dump Gary.’

Ashley stared down at her for three long seconds. She didn’t offer a dramatic rebuttal. She turned and headed towards the exit.

‘Don’t spill your coffee in the bunk,’ Ashley said, her voice flat and completely devoid of the heat from a moment ago. ‘It’s a bitch to clean.’ She grabbed the handle of the door.

And Molly felt that terrible, awful, destructive need to have the last word.

‘Hey! The worst I did was give you a new song to write. You’ll call it “Dog Food”. But give it a fast rhythm, like the kids like. Don’t make it some maudlin guitar song. No one likes those.’

Ashley paused with her hand on the bus door handle for a moment but didn’t turn around. Then she pushed the door open and stepped out into the cold service-station air, letting it click shut behind her, leaving Molly sitting on the edge of her bunk, alone with the terrible person she’d been for the last five minutes.

Twenty-Nine

Ashley kept walking past the WHSmith and the gaming arcade until she found a fast-food place near the back of the service station food court. The smell coming from the kitchen was not a great advertisement.

While Ashley was trying to decide if she wanted to poison herself, she spotted Jax, sitting at a laminate table near the back with a massive paper cup of tea, staring at a perpetually buzzing phone on the table in front of them. They looked like they were having a worse day than Ashley, which was saying something.

‘Don’t start,’ Jax said without looking up as Ashley slid into the plastic chair opposite them.