Happy Endings Read Online Free PDF

confines of our cramped Notting Hill flat, he’d tell me why he was acting so un-Jack-like.
    To Bean or Not to Bean was a shoddy place a few streets away from the Globe theatre. It was decorated like an old Shakespearean set and filled exclusively with tourists. When I walked in the café was in the middle of an influx of Japanese tourists, all shouting their orders in broken English and pointing at the menu. I looked around until I saw Jack, hastily trying to get his apron on and take orders. He looked tired, miserable and irate, but still bloody gorgeous: short blond hair, slightly sad blue eyes, cheek bones to die for and those arms, so big and safe. The sexiest thing about Jack though, and one of the things that had attracted me to him in the first place, was that he didn’t know it.
    I waited for the queue to die down before I found him behind the counter.
    ‘Bit busy now, love,’ he said as soon as he saw me.
    ‘Time for a quick Taming of the Brew?’
    I smiled. He looked annoyed.
    ‘I’m rushed off my feet. We have two staff members out and we’re expecting half of Texas any time soon.’
    ‘Five minutes and I’ll even buy you a coffee. What’s the special of the day?’
    ‘Our famous Bard Blend.’
    ‘Famous where exactly?’
    ‘I don’t know. Five minutes,’ he said tersely.
    He poured us two cups of the Bard Blend and we sat outside. The streets were buzzing with people as we sat in the small area on the pavement where if you craned your neck and looked really hard you could just make out the top-left-hand corner of the Globe theatre. Inside, the horde of Japanese tourists were busy drinking their coffees, eating their traditional English scones and reading their Shakespearean literature diligently, while outside Jack was giving off a distinctly cold and unloving air.
    ‘Are you going to tell me?’
    ‘Tell you what?’
    ‘What’s on your mind and why you’re acting like you hate me.’
    ‘I don’t hate you, Em.’
    ‘Then why are you being all weird and quiet? Is this to do with the film?’
    Jack did this thing when he was nervous. He would chew on his lip and his right eye would twitch ever so slightly.
    ‘Of course not,’ he said, but I could tell he was lying.
    ‘Then what is it, Jack? I need something,’ I said, reaching across and placing my hand over his.
    ‘It’s . . .’ He looked at me for a moment and it seemed like he was going to say something, but then he stopped himself. ‘It’s nothing, love, just tired.’
    I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to push him, but I knew something was wrong and it annoyed me that he couldn’t tell me. It was the one thing about Jack that really pissed me off. I wouldn’t have cared if it was about the film or whatever it was, I just couldn’t handle the pent-up silence, the mawkish refusal to talk it out. To me feelings were like rubbish in a bin. If they weren’t emptied routinely they would start to overflow and make an awful stench. Jack would keep stuffing them in, pushing them down deeper and deeper, never giving them the chance to clear out and start over fresh and clean.
    I was deciding how far to push him, but before I could say anything else, a stream of loud, brash Americans flooded around the corner and swamped us. My moment had come and gone.
    ‘I really need to get back,’ he said, giving me a quick kiss before disappearing back inside.
    I was left alone, still no wiser as to why Jack was behaving like a spoilt child and with half a cup of famous but foul-tasting coffee. I cursed Kate for being gone, but then my phone buzzed and when I looked down it was Matt.
     
    I was four when I decided to become an actress. According to my mother, I ran into her bedroom dressed up in a wonderful jumble of costumes and said, ‘Mummy, I’m putting on a play, five minutes please,’ and then I acted for the first time. It probably wasn’t very good. I was four and I had made the whole thing up, but after that day I was