**When Fate Gets It Wrong**
After finishing teacher training college, Marianne returned to her hometown, a quiet village in the Cotswolds, to teach at the very school shed once attended. She loved her fellow teachers, the familiarity of the place, and the comfort of being close to her parents and childhood home.
Since childhood, Marianne had been best friends with her neighbour, Juliethough they were complete opposites. Marianne was calm and thoughtful; Julie was sharp-tongued, brash, and never one to hold back, especially with authority figures. Theyd been in the same class, and Julie was forever being scolded with, “Why cant you be more like Marianne?”
“Like Marianne? Please, Ive got a mind of my own,” Julie would snap back.
“And a mind should at least contain some common sense,” the headmaster, Mr. Thompson, once remarked in Year 11, when Julie had been dragged into his officeagain.
“Whats the offence this time?” he sighed.
Mrs. Wilkins, their elderly form tutor, looked near tears. “She told me I reek of the grave and should retire before I embarrass myself further!”
Mr. Thompson was speechless, but Julie just batted her eyelashes and said, “I never said that. Shes making it up.” With no proof, he had to let her go.
Marianne went on to university, while Julie barely scraped into nursing collegemostly by copying Mariannes work. After qualifying, she worked in a hospitals general ward, where her bedside manner was, frankly, abysmal.
“These old fossils shouldve been buried years ago,” shed sneer at patients. Her colleagues were horrified.
“Julie, why on earth did you become a nurse if you hate it?”
“None of your business. I took what I could get.”
Complaints piled up, until the day the ward manager overheard her reducing an elderly woman to tears. “Youre fired,” he said flatly. “And word of advicestay out of healthcare.”
Julie flitted from job to job, chasing wealthy boyfriends, but none stuck around once they realised what she was like. After three years in Birmingham, she gave up and slunk back to the village, where she rang Marianne out of the blue.
“Darling! Long time no talk. Listen, Im moving back. Your mum works at the GP surgery, right? Put in a good word for me, yeah?”
The moment she arrived, Julie barged into Mariannes cottage. “So! Still dealing with hormonal teens and smug teachers? Bet its a riot.”
Marianne, ever patient, poured tea and nudged the biscuits closer. “Lets not talk shop. Whyd you come back? You always said youd never set foot here again.”
“Changed my mind. Anyway, what about you? Found a husband yet?”
“Actually, yes,” Marianne said, smiling. “Tom proposed last month. Weddings in September.”
Julie nearly spat out her tea. “Tom who? The geography teacher? Or that bloke who fixes tractors?”
“Tom owns a farm. Cattle, sheep, proper machinerypays his workers well, too.”
Julie scoffed. “Oh, come off it. The one decent bloke in the village, and hes marrying you?” (Shed always thought Marianne a bit plump, though in truth, Marianne just had soft curves that made her look sweetly feminine.)
Just then, a deep voice called, “Evening, love. Whos this?”
Julies jaw dropped. In the doorway stood a tall, unfairly handsome man in designer athleisure. Her stomach twisted with envy. *This* was Mariannes Tom?
“Julie,” she purred, flipping her hair. “You must be Tom. Mariannes told me *so* much about you.”
Tom just smiled at Marianne. “Dont oversell me, darling.”
They chatted for hours, but Julies mind was racing. *He should be mine.* Shed spent years hunting for a man like this, and here he waswasted on boring, *plain* Marianne. Well, not for long.
“Mum,” Julie hissed the second she got home, “have you *seen* Mariannes fiancé? Why didnt you tell me there was a catch like him here? He should be with *me*!”
Her mother nodded. “Youre right, love. But well have to move fasttheyve set a date.”
The perfect opportunity came when an old classmate, Tanya, invited them to her birthday dinner in Cheltenham. Marianne felt ill that morning but insisted Tom go without her.
Julie nearly cheered when he walked in alone. She glued herself to his side, topping up his wine until he was swaying. “Lets get you home,” she murmured, steering him outside. A mate gave them a liftstraight to *her* place, where her conveniently absent mother had left them alone.
Tom woke the next morning with a splitting headacheand froze. Julie lay beside him, smirking.
“No. No, no, no,” he croaked.
“Oh, yes,” she trilled.
He bolted. At Mariannes house, her mother blocked the door. “How *could* you? Shes gone. And texting her *photos*? Disgusting.”
Tom checked his phonethere it was: him and Julie, tangled in sheets. He hadnt even been awake. Furious, he hurled the phone against the wall.
Julie cornered him days later. “Hate me all you want, but our babys innocent.”
“*What* baby?!”
“That night wasnt just a fling, Tom.”
He married herbarely speaking, no wedding, just a cold registry office. But Julies “pregnancy” needed fixing. She called Tanya, a nurse, whispering, “Help me fake a miscarriage. I cant stand kids anyway”
She didnt notice Tom behind her.
The divorce was swift. Months later, Tanya took pity. “Tom did you know Marianne had a son?”
His stomach dropped. “Whose?”
“*Yours*, you idiot. Her mums hiding her at her grans in Stow-on-the-Wold.”
Tom drove straight there. And there she wasMarianne, hanging washing in the garden, a blue-eyed toddler giggling in a pram.
“Anthony,” she whispered as Tom knelt by the pram.
“Im so sorry,” he choked out. “But hes mine too. Ill never leave you again.”
She forgave him. Years later, with two more children and a thriving farm, they were happy. And Julie? Well, lets just say karma has a way of sorting things out.
