Читать книгу A Year of Being Single: The bestselling laugh-out-loud romantic comedy that everyone’s talking about - Fiona Collins, Fiona Collins, Sylvie Hampton - Страница 13
Оглавление‘Happy Valentine’s Day!’
‘Happy Valentine’s Day!’
The women clinked their glasses together.
‘Pretty good way to spend it,’ said Imogen. ‘Better than being knee to knee with fifty other couples at a restaurant, all paying over the odds for beef in a pink sauce and heart-shaped cheesecake!’
‘Oh absolutely!’ declared Frankie. ‘Or sitting at home staring at your joke Valentine’s card, which depicts you as a cartoon harridan in curlers, and wondering where it all went wrong.’
Grace smiled and nodded but she didn’t share their sentiments. She was not relieved to be single on Valentine’s Day. She was not happy to be out with the girls instead of at home in the warm with James, a huge bouquet of flowers in the silver crackle vase on the sideboard, a card professing his undying and everlasting love on the mantelpiece and a Marks and Spencer’s Meal Deal for two on the coffee table in front of them. He would have run her a bath with candles and Jo Malone; she would be in a perfect dress and heels and ready for a kiss. It was always perfect. She would have done anything to be stuffed in a restaurant with loads of other couples, even if most weren’t speaking to each other. She would have done anything to just have her nice husband back – the one who hadn’t yet cheated – but he was now doing lovely Valentine’s stuff with another woman.
She’d had to be dragged out. Imogen had popped round the other night and told her that as Valentine’s Day was on a Friday this year, they should have a girls’ night on the town. Stuff all the happy couples and all the saccharine rubbish, she’d said, they should celebrate being single and fabulous. Grace had muttered something non-committal about it sounding lovely, but hadn’t planned on actually going. She didn’t want to celebrate being single; she hated it. She missed having a man and missed being in a relationship. But Frankie and Imogen had her sussed and had turned up at six o’clock tonight, in their going-out finery and a bottle of plonk, and had practically pushed her out the door.
Now here she was, in a bar festooned with red balloons, while a DJ played a souped-up version of ‘Love is in the Air’ and a load of singles who had no one to go with dinner with pretended they were about to enjoy themselves.
‘Well done, girls,’ said Imogen. ‘One month single! And it’s been a walk in the park, hasn’t it? I’ve absolutely loved it,’ she sighed happily.
‘Hear hear,’ said a grinning Frankie. ‘It’s been bliss.’
Grace grinned too but she wasn’t feeling it. All she could think about was James in a nice shirt, feeding her a mouthful of M & S scallops over a flickering vanilla flame and some Norah Jones. She couldn’t bear it.
‘Right,’ said Imogen, taking a large sip of her bubbly. ‘Remember what I said. We’re implementing a Don’t Talk to Men rule. The first rule is, if a man approaches and tries to talk to you, you do not respond. You turn your back if you have to. Got it?’
‘Got it!’ said Frankie.
‘Grace?’
‘Yep,’ said Grace miserably.
‘The second rule is, we all help each other to enforce the rule. The third rule is, if a group of men approach, we deflect them en masse and send them on their way. If we’re going to be single for a year, we have to be serious about this. Clear?’
‘Clear!’ shouted Frankie, as though she were doing CPR in an episode of ER.
‘Yay,’ said Grace, weakly.
‘Come on, Grace,’ entreated Imogen. ‘Get with the programme! We don’t want men, remember? We’re going to be single for a year and love it!’
‘Okay, yeah!’ said Grace and punched the air in a salute. She knew Imogen would only keep going on if she didn’t swear her allegiance to the cause. Frankie grabbed her raised fist and shook it triumphantly.
‘Good girl!’
‘Yes, that’s my girl!’ said Imogen. She made them chink their glasses again and down their drinks in one.
It was quite funny at first, when the men were bald and ugly idiots with not an ounce of charm between them. It was easy to send them packing. A man would approach. He’d be ignored or told to go away and he’d go away. It was no loss to anyone. Certainly not to Grace. Then a really gorgeous man started looking at her from across the bar.
Tall. Dark blond hair. Lovely eyes. Nice white shirt. She looked back; he looked back. He looked over; she looked over. Eventually, he walked across to them. He stood directly behind Grace and tapped her lightly on the shoulder. Imogen, like a hawk, spotted his hand and slapped it down.
He scowled at Imogen but was undeterred. He tapped Grace on the shoulder again and said, ‘All right?’
‘Hello,’ Grace said, smiling at him.
‘We’re not talking to men,’ said Imogen, cutting in and planting her face in front of his. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to bog off.’ This man was obviously not used to such treatment. He cocked his head to one side in amusement and apparent disbelief then pulled at Grace’s arm, trying to get her out of the circle. Imogen had to step it up.
‘She’s not interested. Crawl back to your hole, there’s a love.’
His face was a picture. It was not a picture Grace liked.
‘Lesbians!’ he said, shaking his head at Grace as if to say, ‘Your loss’, then he walked back to his mates, in a bowling gait he hadn’t employed on the way over. She saw him laughing with his friends and immediately scouring the bar for fresh prey; he wouldn’t be wasting any more time.
Grace plastered a bright smile on her face.
‘Thanks, Imogen,’ she said, but internally she sighed a deep, highly disappointed sigh. She was gutted. Okay, he was a bit of a wally saying that about lesbians, but he was gorgeous. And just her type. Tall, dirty blond hair, a naughty grin. How unfair!
She tried to tell herself Imogen was right to dismiss him so smartly. That he was a man and it could only end in disaster. What would be the ultimate best that could happen? He would be wonderful, they would date, fall in love, he would ask her to marry him, then, eventually, he would cheat on her… Still, she wished Imogen hadn’t.
No other man dared approach. After plenty of vodkas had been consumed and they hit the dance floor, they were a ring of steel. Many a man tried to infiltrate and many a man was repelled; Imogen had somehow acquired the dual superhero powers of elbows of titanium and a threatening stiletto heel. Frankie once laughingly tried to have a little boogie with an eager young pup in a suede jacket but he was shot down in flames.
‘It’s only a laugh!’ shouted Frankie.
‘Never give in! Never surrender,’ Imogen yelled back, over Calvin Harris. And she was almost unbearable when Beyoncé’s ‘Single Ladies’ came on – wagging her finger, wiggling her backside, giving it all that. Grace just went along with it. Imogen was right, though, she thought, looking round the packed dance floor. These men were all no-hopers: men who hadn’t got a valentine either, who were out on the prowl, on the pull, to see who they could get. She still hated being single, though.
‘Can I get you a drink?’ a man suddenly said, from her right. He was young. White T-shirt. Floppy hair. Killer smile.
‘No, thank you.’
‘Why not, gorgeous?’
‘I’m not interested.’
He laughed. ‘I’m not used to women saying “no” to me.’
‘Well one is now.’
He shook his head, still laughing. ‘I suppose a shag’s out of the question then?’
‘Please go away.’
And he was gone, with that killer smile and a shrug, moving on to try someone else.
Her hangover wasn’t too bad. Daniel was at James’s this weekend so she didn’t have the full-on Saturday packed with activities she now did to make up for the weekends she missed with him. She’d spend the day watching trash TV and nibbling on things.
It was 8p.m. Grace poured herself a glass of wine – a little hair of a small dog would help no end – and got down the laptop from the bookshelf. She popped some Adele on the music system, stretched her legs out in front of her and placed the laptop on top of them. Time for some mindless surfing.
She flicked through this and that. Fashion blogs. ASOS. Facebook. Ugh. Why had she opened Facebook? She hated it. It was a mocking reminder of the life she thought she had.
Before James had gone, she’d been one of those smug, show-offy Facebook mums, constantly sharing photos and happy news with her one hundred and four friends, mostly other mums from Daniel’s posh school. She’d post photos of the three of them on days out, on holiday or at home in the garden, on idyllic weekends. She’d share photos of meals they’d had in restaurants or ones that James had cooked. He was quite an accomplished husband, when he was one; there had been lots of pictures of him smiling proudly over a plate of tuna steaks and chunky chips, piled in a Jenga grid, like they’d seen on the telly.
Daniel’s achievements had also featured prominently in her Facebook photos. Daniel in his Taekwondo outfit, doing a high kick or whatever it was called; Daniel with a fish he’d caught at Hanningfield Reservoir; Daniel at sports day. She’d even posted nauseating photos of her and James with corny captions such as ‘My best friend, my soulmate, my everything,’ while she grinned cheesily and he smiled that lazy, sexy smile of his. Sometimes, to her now extreme horror, she’d even said she felt ‘blessed’.
In the post-James days, she posted nothing on Facebook. Nothing at all. She just scrolled through other people’s stuff, getting angry.
Family life was gone. It was no longer to be celebrated. And, despite opportunities to temporarily drown her sorrows with her friends, the weekends without Daniel were awful. James was making sure of it.
He was purposely unreliable with pick-ups and drop-offs. The very first weekend he’d had Daniel, he’d been two hours late picking him up on the Saturday. Then on the Sunday he’d, without notice, brought Daniel back three hours early, which hadn’t given her enough time to get rid of the hangover from that girls’ night in at Imogen’s. She’d hated greeting them both at the door with a still-puffy face and unwashed, dandelion-clock hair.
She remembered that, despite his premature arrival and the fact she may have still smelled a little bit boozy, she’d fallen on Daniel in relief. Her boy – she’d missed him. Daniel had looked mildly horrified, shrugged her off and bounded upstairs to his Xbox, leaving James on the doorstep, attempting to give his famous grin as an apology. She’d ignored it. She’d quite enjoyed throwing him a curt ‘goodbye’ and shutting the door in his face.
Later, she’d asked Daniel how it had gone.
‘Fine,’ he’d said, giving all the usual detail boys of ten like to give.
‘What did you do?’ asked Grace.
‘Not a lot. FIFA 15 and we got a takeaway.’ Informative. She didn’t dare ask if Daniel had met ‘that woman’. She’d made James promise that when he had their son he wouldn’t see her, but who knows? He could have bribed Daniel not to say anything. She’d rifled through Daniel’s rucksack for new Match Attax cards but found nothing.
Her ex’s timekeeping had remained purposefully awry since. Just to wind her up. Grace sighed, re-adjusted the laptop to a more comfortable position and sipped her wine. She’d probably get the same tomorrow, when James was due to bring Daniel back. Oh, so much to look forward to.
Work had been a nightmare as well. Gideon had been horrible.
When she’d heard, just before her job interview, that the owner of Hats! hat shop was gay, she wasn’t expecting a camp, gossipy and ‘fabulous daaarhling’ cross between Gok Wan and Jack from Will and Grace, but she hoped, if she got the job of course, they’d get on well and have a laugh together – she’d always wanted a gay best friend. Grace got the job, but unfortunately, Gideon disappointed: he was sour, dour and grumpy and totally lacking in charm. Grace often thought he was in the wrong trade: he would tell a woman she looked downright awful in a hat and he swore too much in front of the customers and not in a manner that was remotely hilarious… She still remembered the faces of three rather genteel-looking women when Gideon had emerged from the stock room one time, a cardboard box in his arms, and had announced in an over-loud voice, ‘Oh, pissing hell, isn’t life all such a fucking drain.’
Still, his bluntness was, in a strange way, very good for business. Women left his shop in exactly the right hat, often a complete departure from the one they came in for. If something suited them, he made sure they had it. And the hats were gorgeous, so that helped.
This week she’d finally told Gideon about James, expecting him to pull something from the bag in terms of empathy and sympathy (deep, deep from the bag), but all she got was a terse, ‘Them’s the fucking breaks’ and, ‘I hope you’ve got a packet of tissues on you; I don’t want you snivelling all over the ladies.’ She should have known better. She’d been right not to tell him. But once she had, she found the week very hard as she had to put on a horrid brave front that she couldn’t let slip. She wouldn’t have needed the tissues – she had not and would not cry over James – but she’d stupidly hoped Gideon might rustle up some support if she was feeling a bit down.
It was all hard to get used to. Being alone. Being without James. When you’d hero-worshipped someone for so long, what did you do when your hero has gone?
He had to go though. He had betrayed her, and he knew that would be the end of them. When they used to hold each other at night and say how much they loved each other, she told him if he cheated, that would be it. He’d be out. ‘Absolutely, sweetheart,’ he’d whisper. ‘Absolutely. But that’s not going to happen.’ Now she knew he didn’t mean he wouldn’t cheat, but that he intended never to be found out.
She would not be hurt again. She had to compartmentalise James somehow, put him away in a mental box and lock it tight. And any future man would have to give her a cast-iron guarantee he wouldn’t cheat on her. She would make him write her a contract, in blood.
She flicked up the blind and looked out of the living room window. The street was really quiet when Frankie’s kids were not around at the weekends. Three of them at least would usually be out on bikes, or squealing from the trampoline in their back garden until quite late, all weathers, all seasons. She knew she wouldn’t see Frankie tonight, either. She’d been going on about a date with Mad Men and a bottle of Shloer. And Imogen was with her mum.
Grace was on her own.
She took a slug from her red wine. Adele was warbling about finding ‘Someone Like You’. She was feeling slightly tiddly already. She wasn’t a big drinker. She didn’t subscribe to Facebook slogan drinking: ‘Wine o’clock’, ‘Mother’s little helper’, ‘For instant happy woman just add wine’ etc, etc. There were people who responded to anything at all with ‘wine!’ She’d never been one of them, and she would never refer to having a ‘cheeky’ glass of anything. Yet, since James had left, she had been reaching for the wine. Her wine o’clock appeared to be the moment that bastard left her.
Feeling like a criminal, she quickly opened a new tab on Google Chrome. Hook, Line and Sinker. An online dating site. She’d heard it mentioned by a couple of mums from school, usually accompanied by a lot of shrieking – one was still dating a man she’d met on it. Grace quickly clicked onto her preferred age range: thirty to forty. Most of the men she scrolled through made her scream aloud they looked so grisly or pathetic or downright predatory. A few looked like serial killers. But, surprisingly, some of them looked okay.
She didn’t dare tell Frankie and Imogen, but she needed a date for something. She had a ‘do’ coming up and there was no way she could go on her own.
Nana McKensie, James’s grandmother, was soon to be celebrating her one hundredth birthday and had arranged a huge family trip to the theatre. Grace was determined to go. She was extremely fond of James’s grandmother. Spry and as mentally agile as they came, you’d never have believed she was approaching her centenary. She still lived in her own home, still pottered round her garden, and still went out for fish and chips with ‘the girls’ every Friday lunchtime. She could text and use the internet and even had a Twitter account. Grace thought she was fabulous, and had gratefully received an email from Nana McKensie after she and James had split, to say she ‘must’ still come, and she must bring a plus one. Sadly, it couldn’t be Daniel, who of course had been invited – he would be away that weekend on a school trip to Paris.
Grace needed a plus one who would show James. She took another gulp of wine and entered her details on Hook, Line and Sinker’s registration page before she could change her mind. She felt like she was doing something very furtive and very naughty. Well, she was! Imogen and Frankie would be horrified. Without thinking about it too much, she ‘friended’ a couple of different men from the local area. One looked quite sporty, another looked like he was on a night out with mates, a pint in his hand. He looked jolly. Friendly.
Almost immediately she got back some dodgy booty call type messages, one asking to see her without her top on. Oh God. She browsed further down the rows and columns of men. One guy looked nice. His hair was a little bit longer, he had an open, kind-looking face and a T-shirt with a puppy on it. She messaged him. Five minutes later, as she was appalled reading about a man who enjoyed sniffing people’s feet, a message popped into her ‘Hook’ box.
‘Hey babe. Are you up for sex? I could cum over.’
Yuk, yuk, yuk. What a sleaze. That puppy had been very misleading. Is that what all the men on here were like? Hook, Line and Stinker was more accurate. She closed down the browser in disgust and slammed shut the lid of the laptop.
Surely there were classier, more sophisticated dating sites? Tinder? No! God, no, not that. Not a sugar daddy thing either, though – she’d heard all about that site. She took another large glug of wine, opened the laptop up again, and googled ‘classy dating agency, Essex.’ The first result that appeared was The Executive Club – yes, that sounded more like it, but when she clicked onto the website, all the men in the sidebar were ridiculously good-looking. Almost revoltingly good-looking. Oh, she should have known. This was an escort agency. It said so. Gorgeous men at your service, it proclaimed, at the top of the screen.
Curiosity got the better of her. The wine was swilling pleasantly around her system. Adele was now ‘Rolling in the Deep’. She read the text in the middle of the page: male chaperones to make you feel special… the perfect man for a dinner date… kind, courteous and handsome and know how to treat a lady… gorgeous straight men who love the company of women. She quickly scanned down the photos. Most of the men looked smarmy, had goatees, were in dinner suits, or suits and ties; a lot were channelling Mr Grey or The Bachelor, from that American TV series. One looked like Gary Barlow and was straddling a ridiculously tiny bike saddle, dressed in pink and grey Lycra.
She stopped at the next photo. ‘Text Greg,’ it said, underneath. He looked nice. Late thirties? Navy blue short-sleeved polo top. Dark blond hair. Handsome grin. Most of the other men had closed-lipped knowing smiles, or one eyebrow raised, like ridiculous Roger Moores; Greg had his face half turned to the camera and was smiling like a normal person. It was a very informal photo. It was as though he’d quickly put up a casual photo with plans to put the real one up later…when he got round to posing in a dinner jacket and hauling up his left eyebrow.
She studied him. He didn’t look like an escort. He looked like an older boy next door – if the boy next door was a cross between Brad Pitt and Liam Hemsworth, that was, not the low-rent Ron Weasley lookalike who always wore a grey tank top, as was actually the case.
Text. Okay. She could just text him, if she wanted to. She could hire him, if she wanted to, to go to the theatre with her for Nana McKensie’s one hundredth. She could afford it. James was paying her maintenance for Daniel, she had her earnings from Hats! and her gran had left her some money, a few months ago. She’d never told James; she didn’t know why. This money was just hers, to be put by for a rainy day. And if this wasn’t a rainy day, she didn’t know what was.
A male escort. It was almost hilarious. Once, years ago, in the large circle of her and James’s London friends, a rather hapless bloke called Ed had turned up for dinner at Wagamama’s one night with a really stunning woman. Everyone had been really surprised – Ed hadn’t had a woman with him for months and he was definitely punching above his weight with this one. They all stared at her for most of the night, and tried to get him on his own so he could be quizzed.
After loads of booze, and when Stunning Surprise Girlfriend had gone to the loo, Ed was drunk enough to ’fess up, after unconvincingly trying to make out he’d met her in a Tesco Metro. She was an escort. Once, just once, he said, he wanted to turn up with a stunning girl on his arm and have everyone wondering.
They never saw her again. Ed must have spent too much money on cocktails, or perhaps he didn’t want any ‘extras’, as at the end of the night he saw her off into a taxi with a chaste kiss on the cheek and they all went to get a kebab.
Grace remembered it was a cold night and how happy she’d felt when James had put his arm round her to pull her in close. When James had kissed her in the street after purposely making them drop back from the others. God, he was handsome. She was his and she loved it. She’d been spectacularly happy… Oh God.
She put James back in the box in her mind and slammed down the lid. James was gone.
After pouring the remainder of the bottle into her glass and taking a huge swig, she grabbed her phone and quickly sent a text to ‘Greg’, before she chickened out, or wondered too much if that was his real name.
Hi, just want to make an enquiry? Grace.
As the text sent, she got up and skipped a bit, nervously, around the room. Then sat back down again and stared at her phone. A text appeared.
Hi Grace, hope you’re having a great evening. Would you like to know my prices and range of services?
She panicked. Range of services! This was actually real, wasn’t it? Oh God. She was in danger of completely bottling it.
I’m not sure! Frantic texting fingers.
Do you just want to chat?
Okay.
Oh, relief! Yes, just chat, they could do that.
If that’s okay? she texted again.
Yes, that’s fine. Tell me about what you like?
Oh God!
Do you mean sexually? she texted. I’m not sure a lady like myself is ready for such a question!
No! In general. What do you like doing?
She thought, sucking on the end of a pencil. Sucking on the end of a pencil! She shouldn’t be sucking on the end of anything! She threw it down on the coffee table.
Dining out and roller-skating?
Where had that come from? She hadn’t roller-skated since she was fifteen. Although she did really use to enjoy it, especially if she went with a boy. There was nothing nicer, she thought, than skating round to songs from the charts, holding hands.
Interesting! Would you like to book me for either of those activities?
He didn’t want to chat, did he? It was all just about angling for a booking. She felt a horrible wave of terrified, horrified shame wash over her. An escort! What on earth was she thinking? She drained her glass of wine and wondered if she had another bottle lying around somewhere.
No thank you. Sorry. I’ll get back to you.
