probably thinks he’ll have greater need of them, after all he is the chef!"
She’d stressed the word chef in an exaggerated arrogant voice, mimicking Tim’s manner of speech.
Lisa snorted. "Yeah, he maybe a head chef at that restaurant but as a man he’s some frigging arsehole!" she exploded.
"Lisa!" Sarah hissed. "Keep your voice down or we’ll get thrown out!"
"Well, I can’t help it," she snapped. "When I think of how arrogant, and up his own backside he is, well, I could just scream!"
Katie gathered some inner strength and fixed her shoulders back remembering her new resolve to look forwards and not backwards. "Yeah, I know. But I don’t want this turning into another we-hate-Tim session," Katie warned, but squeezed Lisa's arm appreciatively. "That’s been done to death. I'm moving on now and the break up is in the past where it belongs."
"Well good onya," Sarah said encouragingly.
The past she thought, he’s all in the past now, and a sudden image of how they’d made love to each other came into her mind and how it had felt to have his firm but tender hands roving up and down her body. An ache of longing so deep and painful swept through her that she found it difficult to catch her breath.
"Katie!" Lisa hissed.
Hearing her name she realised she was daydreaming and simultaneously released the salt cellar she’d been fiddling with. She looked up to see them both staring at her.
"Sorry," she said. "I was miles away."
Sarah laid her fork in the bowl of half eaten pasta. "I have something to tell you and I know it will upset you, but if I don’t..."
Katie looked questioningly at Lisa as if to ask what was coming next but Lisa simply raised an eyebrow beneath her heavy fringe and shrugged her shoulders in ignorance while they both stared at Sarah’s worried expression.
Sarah started tearing the red paper napkin into little pieces now and floundered. "I mean, if someone else tells you and then you find out that I’d known and not said anything..."
"Just tell us, Sarah," Katie said quietly, and took a deep breath to brace herself. Katie had known from the minute the waiter put her bowl of pasta in front of her that Sarah was troubled about something and now her mind was racing imagining the worst. Maybe she was ill, a breast lump or a dodgy smear test?
Sarah shuffled uncomfortably and stuttered, "Well, how do I say..."
Lisa’s patience snapped. "JESUS CHRIST, Sarah! Just say the fucking words. What is it?"
Katie’s heart was thumping with trepidation now and Lisa’s face looked red and sweaty, she was obviously thinking along the same lines as her - something was horribly wrong.
"I saw your Tim out last night with a blonde girl. And before either of you say it could have just been dinner as a friend, it wasn’t. Because by the time I left the restaurant he was outside and kissing her. And, I don’t mean a peck on the cheek," she stuttered, "H...he practically had his tongue down her throat!"
Katie heard the audible release of breath Lisa had been holding in and she did the same, and for one split second felt overwhelming relief that Sarah was OK. But this was immediately replaced with the words screaming in her brain. Oh my God, he had his tongue down her throat! And it was only a couple of months since they’d split up. Did she mean so little to him that he could go with the first bimbo that fluttered her eyelashes at him she railed, and of course she knew men usually got over things quicker than women; they were hard-wired like that, but for Christ’s sake how could he do that? And, who the hell was she?
Sarah looked pleadingly at her as if to say, 'please don’t shoot the messenger, and Lisa comfortingly stroked the side of Sarah’s arm.
"You were right to tell us, Sarah," she quietly reassured her. "Wasn’t she, Katie?"
But it was taking much longer for Katie to get her brain into gear; her mind felt all foggy as though she was wandering around lost in a strange place.
Absentmindedly she muttered, "Yes, yes, of course."
Sarah babbled, "I...I’ve wrestled with my conscience all night about whether to tell you or not in case it really upset you. But then before, when you said he was in the past and you were moving forward, well..." She looked wildly between Katie and Lisa.
Lisa had started already with insults and Tim-the-bastard comments but Katie