The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp Read online

  The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Six months later…

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp

  Poppy Dolan

  To Mum and Dad: For everything, and then some.

  Chapter One

  ‘This feels weird.’ Sam fiddled with the pile of tiny black napkins by the bar snacks. He shook his head. ‘I can’t … this is just—’

  ‘We’re on a date,’ Molly muttered through clenched teeth. ‘Why don’t you try and act like it? Honestly, it doesn’t take much effort to make me feel special. Tell me I look nice or ask me about my week so far.’

  ‘Um … so, when … I, sort of …’

  ‘Oh, sparkling conversation, Sam, well done.’

  ‘You’re not helping,’ he growled back under his breath.

  ‘Well, forgive me for wanting to feel like we’re connecting on a deeper level.’ Molly threw back the last mouthful of Martini in her glass. ‘I can’t believe we’ve spent all these years together and being out with you is less intellectually stimulating than a braised lettuce on Newsnight.’

  Sam’s shoulders sunk as he leant back against a padded brown leather bar stool. The light dimmed in his usually sparkly chocolate-brown eyes. ‘But come on, this just doesn’t feel right, does it?’

  ‘Of course it does,’ Molly replied quietly through pursed lips, smoothing down her midnight blue satin top.

  ‘But you’re my sister!’ Sam whined.

  The barman not two feet behind them froze.

  Unclenching her teeth quickly to produce a smile big enough to be seen from space, Molly spoke clearly and with her eyes on the now-pale bartender. ‘Yes, but if you don’t make an effort on this practice date with me now – someone you know so well you apparently don’t mind embarrassing them in a nice bar – how are you going to know what to do with an actual girlfriend? Should you ever get another one, that is.’

  ‘Oi!’ Sam coloured slightly at the top of his ears. ‘I only agreed to this because you said you wouldn’t get mean about it. I told you everything in confidence. Don’t score points off me now; I’m a miserable, pathetic shell of a man already.’

  The tension in Molly’s face dropped away in an instant and she put down her glass, giving the poor barman an excuse to escape as he whipped it from the bar and headed to the dishwasher, still feeling a bit of a chill down his spine.

  ‘You’re not pathetic. You’re a lovely, amazing bloke. I’m sorry I had that little dig; you know that too many Martinis make me think I’m living in Dynasty.’ She patted his hand. ‘Now, come on, I’m only here because I really want to help, but I didn’t say the process would be easy. In fact, I did mention that it would involve hard work, some mortification and a heavy dose of home truths. Plus, you paying for everything. Speaking of which, I think I could do with a mojito.’

  Sam rolled his eyes. ‘The things I do for love.’

  Chapter Two

  Molly’s mission to help out her unlucky-in-love younger brother had started the week before. It wasn’t as if Molly had intended to stick her nosey nose into his love life issues, but the scene that had greeted her after a hard day’s work just couldn’t be ignored.

  The gravelly, whisky-soaked tones of Johnny Cash rolled out from under Sam’s door. To Molly Cooper this was the final clue in a Hansel-and-Gretel-style trail to find a severely down at heel brother. The lights were all out in the flat that night; Molly could just make out the recognisable stripy carrier bag of the corner shop on the kitchen table, holding two out of what had been six cans of Carling; Sam’s door was shut fast against the world and Folsom Prison Blues seemed to be the soundtrack to this evening’s mope-athon Molly knew these signs well, but didn’t exactly relish them. Of course it’s pretty miserable to see your brother feeling low, but after four nights straight the blues start to seep into your own head. Molly didn’t have much time for negative feelings – they got in the way of her plans for world domination. Plus, she always got a spotty T-zone when she was stressed and today had been stressful enough. Molly had been pounding the pavement since 8 a.m., meeting with potential retailers for her fledgling company’s products but getting absolutely nowhere – other than around the Circle Line three times and getting lost just behind Oxford Street.

  After three knocks and an unintelligible masculine grunt from the other side of the balsa wood, Molly opened the door. The smell was the first thing that assaulted her, as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. The fug of stale beer, warm bodies and something greasy like battered sausage hung in the air. Sam had obviously been so all-consumed by grief that he’d forgotten how to change his sheets or open a window. Urgh.

  ‘Samuel, honestly.’ Molly tutted and hooked a toe under an abandoned pair of grey joggers that were preventing her from opening the door fully. ‘Dude, you’re single, not dying.’

  ‘Same difference,’ Sam mumbled, his face buried in a wrinkled pillow as he lay flat-out on his bed. ‘I’m single, therefore no one cares if I die.’

  ‘So glad that Philosophy module came in useful after all,’ Molly muttered to herself as she plonked down on the edge of Sam’s less-than-fresh mattress. She ruffled his curly black hair. Sam had the kind of hair every girl would dream of: thick, but not coarse or dry, curly, but in soft, loose spirals rather than mean, tight coils. Of course, to Sam it was a ‘nightmare’ and he had it cropped short at the first sign of anything wavy appearing in the mirror. Molly had their mum’s hair, which was rather less interesting, hanging in poker-straight brown sheets down to the nape of her neck. Pretty plain, she knew, but handily manageable. And when you’re managing your own business at twenty-seven-years-old, you really didn’t have time for hair care dramas.

  ‘I care if you die.’ Molly nudged her brother playfully in the ribs. ‘I care loads. I can’t afford the mortgage on my own. And your body would smell pretty bad as it went into decomp and gave off methane gases.’

  ‘You watch too much CSI,’ Sam groaned through his pillowcase. He wearily raised himself onto one elbow. ‘Did I drink all the beers yet?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Will you get me another one, sister of mine? I might want to live if I only had another beer.’

  ‘Good grief. OK, OK. Then you can tell
me what you did to annoy Abby.’

  Sam rolled his eyes. ‘What’s to say she didn’t annoy me? I might have chucked her, you don’t know. Sheesh.’ Sam’s head flopped back onto the pillow.

  ‘Did you chuck her?’ Molly probed.

  ‘Well, no.’

  Not wanting to kick a brother when he’s down, Molly left the conversation there and waded her way through discarded boxer shorts, loose CDs and too many Wotsits packets to count. She was worried about any unforeseen residue getting stuck on her best shoes but put that to the back of her mind as she switched into crisis aversion mode. Sam was obviously having a full-on pity party. Right now, he needed a pooper. As any little brother will tell you, big sisters are always ruining their fun.

  * * *

  ‘And then what did she say?’ Molly rested her feet on the coffee table, flicking onto an episode of Mad Men with the battered remote.

  Sam was wrapped in a blanket like a shroud on the sofa next to her, just his grey, glum face poking out. ‘Abby said that we were better off as friends. She didn’t want to “ruin our friendship”. Well, excuse me, but I don’t make Gordon’s chicken pie for just “friends”, or take “friends” up the Oxo Tower.’ He shook his head.

  ‘That’s not a euphemism, is it?’

  Molly held up her hands in defence as Sam’s withering glare told her she wasn’t quite taking this as seriously as he’d like. She turned to face him and leant her arm on the sofa back, flipping her hair behind her shoulders with an efficient flick. ‘Sorry, sorry. So you really didn’t see it coming?’

  ‘No,’ Sam looked down at his knees. ‘I thought we’d got to that bit of the relationship where you can start to be really comfortable around each other and relax more. When you can start to look ahead, you know? Turns out she was looking ahead and straight out the front door.’

  ‘Oh, Samwise Gamgee. That sucks. I’m sorry, dude.’ Molly’s heart gave a small ache – it was never nice to see your little bro upset, whether he was twelve or twenty-six. She wished there was something she could do. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Yes, please. And a Jaffa.’

  ‘Sure thing.’

  ‘Thanks, Mollypops.’ Sam gave a begrudging lopsided sort-of smile. Though he was now a good foot taller than his sister, she liked to remind him of the days when she was the one who seemed to tower over him. Sam liked to remind her – though never out in public – of the sickeningly sweet name he’d called Molly as a toddler and how it had stuck. Indefinitely.

  As Molly put tea bags in mugs (Cath Kidston flowers for her, Cath Kidston stripes forced on him), she ran through Sam’s track record with the fairer but, it seemed in his case, more discerning sex. Sam meets a lovely girl; Sam takes the lovely girl out on dates and it all goes swimmingly; the lovely girl tells Sam three or so months later that it’s not him – it’s her. But how could it be him? Molly was utterly baffled.

  Sam was never impolite; he was never mean, he genuinely liked these girls but time and again he became dumping fodder. He was left out in the cold as often as an old sofa and the heartache was making him even start to sag like one. His shoulders drooped, his head hung heavy with a thick frown, his eyes scanned the pavement as he walked, perhaps looking for that last shred of his self-esteem. Being a newly-trained physiotherapist, bad posture was really quite a serious symptom in Sam. Molly liked to think she was nothing but upfront in relationships but there were plenty of women, and men, who made dating as confusing as a level five Sudoku when you’re three sheets to the wind. She could think of at least two other girls who had vanished after the threeish month mark in recent years. Molly had always assumed that Sam was your typical common-or-garden man who didn’t like to be tied down. The less she thought about his wild oats the better, but it was hardly a stretch of the imagination to imagine he was enjoying the life of a wild young physiotherapist in South London. It was every young man’s dream, after all. But with Sam taking this particular breakup so badly, she unpicked her assumption. Maybe Sam wasn’t the one doing the dumping.

  Stirring in milk, Molly wondered just what was going wrong. She could vouch for her brother’s kind nature, his good teeth, his sensible driving speed and lack of criminal convictions. But, if you looked at Sam’s past relationships like a test sheet of baffling equations that refused to add up, the only common denominator was him.

  Carefully dropping the tea bags into the bin, Molly continued to muse. She did all her best thinking when making beverages. A really nice hot chocolate with warmed milk and marshmallows could lead to a life-altering invention. Two cups of tea, although less inspirational, could still spark a light bulb moment now and again. Sam was a good guy, but these women weren’t seeing it. It was like having a great product but not marketing it properly, she realised. It was like coming up with the best stomach-holding-in knickers ever and then not selling them through M&S.

  Molly’s busybody gene kicked in. She was a doer, a maker and a mover. Molly didn’t sit still for more than five minutes if she could help it. Every spare minute was filled with cooking or crosswords or tapping out texts on her BlackBerry or coming up with new entrepreneurial business ideas. Dragon’s Den was never far from her mind. Basically, Molly was the last person in the world to watch a Lord of the Rings DVD marathon with. But she always enjoyed helping people, if she could; it was, at the very least, a good way to burn off all her excess energy. Maybe it was genetic: her mum Cleo was the MD of an internationally franchised company, and went from Portsmouth to Portugal bossing people about for the highest profits. It certainly hadn’t come from her dad’s side.

  When Molly and Sam were still primary school kids who thought the opposite sex had fleas, Jonathan Cooper had walked out on their family and had pretty much failed to appear in their lives ever since. Apart from the occasional letter from his new home in Brazil (one of the benefits of a Brazilian model-slash-actress girlfriend), Molly and Sam didn’t hear much from their dad. Seeing how he’d hurt their mum and left them behind, they had honestly stopped caring. So as their father became known as ‘The Sperm Bank’, Cleo became a friend of her local bank as her business grew and grew. Molly loved that her mum was so successful, secure and independent; she wanted to be a gap-spotting, bounce-backable, spits-in-the-eye-of-defeat sort of entrepreneur too. She just hadn’t thought of the perfect business yet. But when she did, she would kick butt. Molly was sure.

  As she took her first sip of tea back on the sofa, Molly appraised her brother. Probably textbook good looking with his dark hair and eyes and tall stature (it’s hard to tell if your sibling is really attractive when you’ve seen them cry over a lost parachute action man until they were so hysterical they vomited over their own shoes. Though admittedly that was twenty years ago). Thick hair, no signs of receding. Jeans a bit frayed. But good skin. Suspicious eyebrows. Oh, wait—

  ‘Molly, why are you staring at me? Have I got chip fat round my face?’ Sam wiped the back of his stripy sleeve across his chops.

  ‘No, you’re fine. I was just … wondering. Not to pour salt in your wounds or anything, but just tell me more about the last time you saw Abby.’

  ‘Well,’ Sam rolled his eyes up and to the right in the way people do when they’re rifling through memories. ‘I cooked her dinner here. Pumpkin linguine with garlic bread, then sticky toffee pudding. One of my more impressive meals but she just sort of picked at it.’

  ‘Uhuh. And how did she seem – was she noticeably smiley or a bit grumpy?’

  ‘Normal, really. Why?’ Sam’s suspicious eyebrows were back in play. Molly laced her fingers together and chewed her bottom lip.

  ‘Just wondering. So you thought the relationship was going well? You wanted it to last longer?’

  ‘Of course! I even said—’ Sam stuck both hands in his hair and continued miserably. ‘I need this cut again. I’m starting to look like Kevin Keegan.’

  Molly swatted his hands away. ‘No, you’re not. Come on, bro. What did you say?’

  ‘I have no idea why you�
�re so bothered, it’s not like I press you for details of your measly love-life—’

  ‘Sam! Focus, OK? Then I might be able to make a suggestion. Go on,’ Molly pressed.

  With a deep sigh, Sam finished up, ‘I said she could bring a towel and shampoo and stuff here if she wanted, seeing as she was already staying over so much. But – I don’t know – she wasn’t up for it.’ Sam had gone a bit pink just under his chin with this admission. For a second Molly tried to imagine she was someone other than Sam Cooper’s sister, someone who didn’t know how his mind worked, someone who would take what he said and did at face value for what kind of a boyfriend he’d make.

  ‘Tell me where you met her, again.’

  ‘The Saturday food market, at the gluten-free stall. We got talking about couscous and other grains so good they named them twice.’ Sam gave a gruff, low chuckle. It was obviously bittersweet to recount this in the light of Abby’s recent quick getaway.

  ‘But you made her linguine for dinner,’ Molly pointed out.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Linguine has gluten in it – if you met her at that special stall where you have to pay four pounds for unpleasant fake-bread-things, then she probably doesn’t eat normal pasta.’ Molly tried to keep the condescension out of her voice, but she was a woman who’d lived in London for several years and read a forest’s worth of glossy magazines. She was chapter and verse on wheat allergies by now. You just weren’t on-trend if you didn’t bloat at least a little after a Pret posh cheese and pickle baguette.

  ‘Bums,’ Sam squeezed his eyes shut with a frustrated wince. ‘I forgot about that. Bollocks I did know but I was just so excited to cook my signature dish for her, I suppose I forgot to remember.’ He picked at the blanket covering him, with a miserable expression. ‘So garlic bread and then sticky toffee pudding?’

  ‘Are also big no-nos. Sorry, Samwise.’

  ‘Wheat is the spawn of the devil,’ he muttered moodily.

  Molly chose her next words carefully. ‘I think, maybe, some things from that night might explain her chuck— her change of heart, too. I mean, I think I can see it from a girl’s perspective. If you want it, that is.’ She wrapped her thick caramel brown cardi tighter round her middle and leaned in slightly.