“Ellie, have you completely lost your mind?” Catherine slammed her palm on the café table, making teacups rattle like nervous birds. “He treats you like a doormat! Come today, don’t come tomorrow, then suddenly needed again!”
“Cathy, you simply don’t get it.” Eleanor stirred sugar into her tea, exhaustion in her voice. “Edward’s a busy man, business meetings nonstop. We see each other when he has time.”
“Business be damned!” Catherine flushed crimson. “You’re thirty-six, Ellie! How much longer will you play the backup plan?”
Eleanor flinched. Ever direct, Cathy. And undeniably right – though the truth pricked like thorns.
“What choice do I have?” Her gaze drifted to rain-streaked windows. “Stunning women everywhere, while I’m… ordinary. But convenient. No demands, no dramas.”
“Heavens, listen to yourself!” Catherine seized her wrist. “Convenient? Are you a dishcloth? Oxford degree, senior accountant, own flat in Chelsea. Smart, kind, loyal—”
“—But not pretty,” Eleanor interrupted bitterly. “Men choose with their eyes first.”
Catherine sank back, shaking her head. Two decades of friendship, yet Ellie still didn’t see her worth. Always in the shadows at uni, always adapting, pleasing, never inconveniencing.
“Remember Oliver from university?” Eleanor asked abruptly.
“The engineering bloke? What of him?”
“Fancied him madly for three years. Fetching notes, helping with coursework. He never noticed. Then Scarlet Davies appeared, and suddenly he was her shadow.”
“That was ages ago!”
“Yesterday to me.” Eleanor’s smile was weary. “Taught me life’s rule: beauties get everything. The rest must be useful.”
“But Oliver became a washed-up drunk! And Scarlet’s thrice-divorced! Their lives are trainwrecks compared to yours!”
“They live,” Eleanor whispered. “I accommodate.”
Her phone chimed. Eleanor’s face lit up like a child spotting sweets. “Edward? Yes, I’m free. No, it’s fine. An hour? Right then.”
Catherine watched in dismay as her friend transformed—eager, willing to bolt at his summons. “Ellie, don’t,” she pleaded. “Say you’re busy.”
“Can’t. Two hours between meetings.” She grabbed her Burberry trench. “Haven’t seen him properly in ages.”
“Five days!”
“A lifetime,” Eleanor insisted, vanishing into the drizzly London street.
Alone, Catherine stared at her reflection in the rain-blurred window. When had her brilliant friend become someone else’s footnote? At Oxford, Ellie lacked conventional looks but brimmed with energy – organizing theatre trips, helping everyone. Lads adored her as “mate” not “date.” She’d proudly worn that nickname then.
After graduation, she’d climbed swiftly at Deloitte. Flat, Audi, proud parents. Only her love life stalled. First serious romance at twenty-eight: twenty-stone Andrew from Compliance. Reliable, steady. Eleanor thought: at last, valued for her soul.
Two years together. She’d begun browsing wedding dresses. Then Andrew met new hire Katie – twenty-two, luminous. “You’re wonderful, Ellie,” he’d stammered, red as a London bus. “But Katie… it’s fireworks.”
“Calm with me, wasn’t it?” she’d asked. “Convenient?”
“Well… yes,” he admitted. “Too predictable.”
That sealed it: beauty ignited
Helen shivered at the memory, the rain streaking the taxi window like tears she wouldn’t shed, finally understanding the quiet London streetlights reflected not an ending, but the possibility of a dawn shaped entirely by her own choices, her tea cooling on the sill as a fragile, defiant peace settled over her for the very first time.
