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First published in Great Britain by HarperImpulse 2017

Copyright © Charlotte Butterfield 2017

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Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers 2017

Charlotte Butterfield asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780008216535

Ebook Edition © July 2017 ISBN: 9780008216528

Version: 2017-07-19

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Also by Charlotte Butterfield

About HarperImpulse

About the Publisher

Prologue

Leila heard Jaipur before she saw it. The melodic whirs and clunks of the ceiling fan above her blended with loud shouts, incessant horns and revving engines from the market traders below.

This wasn’t part of The Plan. Nothing about The Plan led to her waking up on Christmas Eve in a strange bedroom in Jaipur. This was actually as far away from The Plan as it was possible to be. She might also have lost the ability to open her eyes; she wasn’t sure yet and wasn’t ready to test it.

The irony was, yesterday had started so well. Or maybe it was the day before, she had no concept of days or time anymore. Using her air miles to upgrade herself at the check-in counter at Heathrow had been a spur of the moment inspired decision. She blamed the festive spirit that blanketed the airport’s departures hall. Surrounded by rosy-cheeked loved ones jetting off on their magical Christmas mini breaks, who wouldn’t have agreed to a little upgrade? After all, it wasn’t every day you crossed the world to be reunited with your soul mate, so if you couldn’t treat yourself then, when could you? Leila had never turned left at the plane’s doors before. She had graciously accepted two, maybe five, glasses of champagne on the flight, enjoyed a three-course meal on a real plate with real cutlery and arrived in Mumbai ready for the surprise romantic reunion with her boyfriend Freddie, who was working there for three months.

Except he wasn’t there.

Leila felt a bit sorry for the woman behind the reception desk at Freddie’s Mumbai office who told her with undisguised pity that Freddie had moved to the Jaipur office a few weeks before. She could feel the receptionist taking in her carefully-put-together reunion outfit, noticing the plastic piece of mistletoe that Leila clutched in her hand thinking it would be such a romantic way to greet him, then looking down at her suitcase.

‘Jaipur?’ Leila had replied, with an enthusiasm that was fast evaporating into the smoggy city air. ‘Wow, looks like I’m going to see more of your wonderful country then,’ and after giving the woman a bright fake smile and a cheery wave, she had wheeled her suitcase out of the building and onto the bustling street. Her gusto faltered a smidgen more when she headed back to the airport only to be told that there were no flights to Jaipur, just a 15-hour train ride.

‘It’s an adventure, think of Freddie,’ she’d chanted in her head, while giving over some hastily changed rupees in exchange for a bowl of biryani on the station platform.

Her stomach started making the rumbles of discontent about an hour into the journey, and after stepping over legs, bags, bodies and even more legs, bags and bodies, she found the toilet. In her previous life of just a day ago she wouldn’t have even considered stepping into this cubicle, common sense and bowel control being two of her former major assets. Yet thanks to her delicate constitution, the urine-soaked box quickly became her spiritual home for the next three hours or so.

Somehow she’d finally found her way back to her seat, curled up into a ball and fallen asleep. She’d stumbled out of the station in Jaipur. Her eyes felt heavy, her stomach was in cramping knots and her appearance in complete juxtaposition with the business class luggage label adorning her suitcase, which had now lost a wheel, because evidently fate had decreed that this day wasn’t bad enough. A flashing neon hotel sign adjoining the station had beckoned her. She couldn’t remember getting to the room, but had vague recollections of handing over her credit card to a bloke behind a desk.

And now she was here. On the 24th December. Lying underneath the world’s noisiest ceiling fan. Hearing sounds of the city below that quite frankly terrified her. With no idea where in the heaving metropolis her boyfriend might be. Or why, thinking about it, he hadn’t told her he’d moved. His last email, sent a week ago, was shorter than the others, granted, but could still be classed as very positive and upbeat. She remembered feeling a slight pang that he’d ended the email with Cheers, Freddie, rather than his previous sign offs that were variations of Yours, Hugs, Big Kiss, XOXO, which she was sure were edging ever closer to the L word.

They’d been dating for four months, which, ok, wasn’t a huge amount of time for deep feelings to form, but when you knew, you knew. She’d met him at the horse races, which sounded a lot posher than it actually was. When she’d accepted her client’s invitation to join them at Cheltenham for the day, she’d envisaged a box, a silver tray with unending rounds of canapés being passed around and fancy hats. In reality she was shoehorned into a minibus with fourteen men who started drinking even before the bus pulled out of Victoria coach station at 9am.

Freddie was sat directly behind her and kept pulling bits of her hair out of her bun somewhere around Oxford. She’d swung around in anger ready to launch into a spit-laden tirade only to see the most piercing blue eyes smile back at her. As much as she tried to act stern, her remonstration was laced with flirty overtones. ‘Please don’t do that, I don’t like it,’ she’d said.

‘Please don’t wear your hair like that then,’ he’d fired back. ‘You’re far too cute to have a hairstyle like a granny.’

Cute. He’d said she was cute. She’d have preferred beautiful, stunning, even hot, but cute was ok. Cute was better than sweet. At five foot three, she’d even had a man pat her on the head before as he passed by in a pub, which admittedly ended in her throwing her wine over his retreating back. But when Freddie had called her cute, she didn’t mind. In fact, as she swivelled around in her seat to face him, the rest of the journey was a lot more enjoyable. They’d spent the whole day together drinking, laughing, placing bets, shouting for the winners, and when his hand rested on her thigh on the journey home, she didn’t move it. And when he escorted her home that night and she invited him in, and they sat on her sofa, she didn’t move it either. And by then it was even higher up.

Two busy months of dating followed: pubs, parties, back to her flatshare, pubs, parties, back to hers, they’d settled into a sociable pattern that was rudely interrupted by his boss asking him to decamp to Mumbai, Jaipur, wherever the heck she was, for three months. It was a huge deal, this secondment. What a responsibility, of course she could excuse him a certain amount of brevity in his email correspondence, what type of girlfriend would she be if she didn’t?

Her neck gave off an audible crack when she moved her head, and she knew she couldn’t put off opening her eyes for much longer. As soon as she did, she looked up and shot out of bed faster than she’d ever moved before. The fan was attached to the ceiling by a threadbare wire that was making the four sharp blades sway in a large circle right above where her face had just been.

While she waited for her heart rate to return to normal, she ran her toothbrush under some bottled water and thought that at some point in the future, this was going to make great dinner party conversation. ‘So how did you two know you were destined to be together?’ one of their new friends, probably someone from the Montessori nursery their kids would inevitably go to, would ask, and Freddie would ruffle her hair and say, ‘when this beautiful, crazy woman risked her life chasing me across India,’ and they’d kiss over the marinated scallops presented in their shell and everyone would go ‘ahhh’.

Yes, she thought decisively, this is a pivotal moment in our relationship, now I just need to find him.

The near-death experience with the fan meant checking out of the hotel was a necessity so she had no choice but to drag her suitcase behind her, over the pot-holed pavement, spilt food and animal excrement in between the hordes of people pouring into and out of the station next door. The noise of the traffic was deafening, and yet above it Leila heard the strains of Mariah Carey’s All I Want For Christmas Is You belting out of a nearby shop and it gave her the steely determination to see her mission through.

Leila looked down at the piece of paper that the receptionist in Mumbai had scribbled the address of the Jaipur office on. ‘Excuse me’, she said, touching the sleeve of a man standing chewing something by a faded orange rickshaw, ‘Do you know this place?’ She offered him the scrap of paper. He stared at her. Then looked down at the writing, his head moved, and he motioned for her to get in the cab and swung her suitcase into the tuk tuk after her with practised ease.

He perched on the saddle in front of her and started peddling into the oncoming traffic. ‘Jesus! Oh my God! Careful, what the—’ Leila’s expletives were drowned out by the chorus of angry horns surrounding them. They slowed to let a couple of goats weave between the traffic prodded by a child with a big stick and no shoes. The rickshaw finally stopped outside a large, modern building and the man pointed. She gave him a fistful of rupees, the denominations of which she hadn’t got the hang of yet. He started dancing on the spot, making her realise that she might have just given him enough to feed his family for a year.

After a brief exchange with yet another commiserative receptionist, Leila found herself back on the street clutching yet another piece of paper with yet another hastily scribbled address on it. Apparently Freddie had called in sick today.

Of course he had.

Because nothing on this god-awful trip could be that easy. Of course he couldn’t have been at his desk and come down to see her in that fancy lobby and twirled her around so her feet left the floor.

Her long black hair was stuck to the back of her neck, but she didn’t want to put it up as Freddie loved it down. The humidity had also made her make-up quite literally slide off her face in the last three hours, but none of that mattered, she was ten minutes away from seeing her future husband.

Room 114 was at the end of the corridor. There was a Do Not Disturb sign on the door, but Leila knew Freddie wouldn’t mind being woken up by her, even if he was sick. Her heart pounded. This was the moment. This is when he would realise how serious she was, and that he loved her. Her fingers brushed the mistletoe in her pocket as she knocked on the door a couple of times, then heard his voice angrily shout, ‘It says do not disturb!’

‘Freddie, it’s me!’

She could hear commotion inside the room, a table perhaps being knocked over – probably in his hurry to get to the door – voices suddenly coming to an abrupt hush – the TV no doubt being muted. Then the door opened a fraction and Freddie peered around it, wearing a dressing gown.

‘Layles!’ She hated him calling her that, always had done, but never found the right time to tell him. Now wasn’t the time either.

‘Freddie!’ She paused, waiting for the door to open more, or for him to invite her in, or for him to come out, or anything other than the two of them looking at each other through a two-inch gap. ‘I’m in India!’ She added completely unnecessarily.

‘So you are! Wow! Um, how did you find me here Layles?’ Still the door remained barely ajar.

She sighed and gave a self-deprecating laugh, ‘I’ll save that story for later, it’s a cracker. Now open the door, let me come in!’

Freddie looked very quickly over his shoulder and shifted a little, ‘Um, you know what, now’s not really a good time…’

‘Your office told me you were sick, don’t worry, I won’t pounce on you, I promise, I’ll just keep you company until you feel better. It’s Christmas tomorrow, maybe you could then call the office and take a couple more days off and we can make up for lost time, I’ve missed you so—’ Her words tailed off as she saw a movement in the slither of room she could see behind him. ‘Is there someone in the room?’ she asked, pushing the door tentatively against his weight behind it.

‘No, of course not! Why don’t you wait downstairs and I’ll just get dressed and come down?’

Then a cough came from behind him. A woman’s cough. Leila pushed open the door with a force she hadn’t known she possessed and saw a topless blonde sat on the bed pointing the remote at the TV. Leila’s suitcase came crashing to the floor as her hand let go of the handle to fly to her mouth.

‘Layles, I can explain.’

‘I really don’t think you can Freddie.’

‘But I—’

Leila put her hand up to stop him talking. ‘You know what Freddie?’ She took a deep breath. ‘I may be naïve and gullible and a romantic, and yes, an eternal optimist, but even I, in my sleep-deprived, stomach-cramping, starving state, fail to see how you can charm your way out of this one. Now excuse me, I have a train and then a plane to catch.’

She shouted over his shoulder to the woman, who had thankfully covered up her bare breasts with a cushion, ‘Good luck love, you’re going to need it.’ And she picked up the wobbling suitcase and strode off down the corridor.

‘Layles, wait!’ Freddie shouted from the doorway.

Leila kept walking, her head held high and shouted back without turning around, ‘Bye Freddie. And for the record. I fucking hate the name Layles.’

Chapter 1

A month later

Expensive does not necessarily mean best. Leila knew that. She was a landscape gardener, and would pick an everyday peony over a rare orchid any day and twice on Sundays, but when it came to chopping off over a foot and a half of her hair, opting for a hairdresser with an eye-watering price list seemed sensible.

The scissors hovered menacingly over her head. ‘You’re absolutely sure?’

‘Absolutely.’ Leila nodded. ‘Never been surer.’ A pause. ‘No! Wait! Yes, I’m sure. Go ahead. No, stop!’

‘Too late.’ The stylist held up a long black ponytail. ‘Oops.’

Between the shaping and feathering and smoothing, Leila was placated to hear the stylist make encouraging sighs and clucks. When she’d finally finished the dramatic elfin cut, and spun her round to face the mirror, Leila took a sharp intake of breath. This small act of defiance had instantly elevated her from sweet to striking in less than an hour.

‘Why in God’s name haven’t I done this sooner?’ Leila said out loud, more to herself than the stylist who had gathered a few of her colleagues over to witness the transformation. She couldn’t stop touching her neck, and her ears felt weird, sort of breezy. But she couldn’t get over how big her eyes were, and her cheekbones, which had previously been hidden under two curtains drawn either side of her face were sharp and sexy.

‘Whoever he is you’re doing this for, is a very lucky man,’ said a voice under a head full of foils next to her.

‘Oh no, there’s no man. Or woman.’ Leila quickly added after an attractive girl with a nose piercing placed her hand on the back of her chair. ‘Just fancied a long overdue change.’

Being an empowered woman of the world, she ought to have been affronted at the wolf whistles that followed her down her street from the house on the corner that was having its attic converted. She did at least roll her eyes at a couple of women she passed as if to say, ‘I know, neanderthals, right?’ while allowing herself a little smile as she let herself in her front door. But then pretty much every time she stuck her key into the lock and pushed open the newly painted sage green door her mood was instantly lifted. She’d only moved in two months previously, and it was the first time she’d lived alone. And, thankfully, as she’d been given the key while Freddie was away, he had never set foot in it so it was completely free from toxic memories of any of her exes.

The flat was tiny, even by London standards, but at least it was all hers. It was in the basement of a tall Victorian townhouse. There was a steady stream of boots and shoes passing her living room window, which she oddly loved. She’d often choose feet-watching over TV at weekends, making up stories about the wearers of the footwear that ambled past, often in twos, or groups. You could always spot a first date by the nervous tottering and inappropriate height of heel. She loved the couples who walked in step with each other, placing right after left in perfect harmony.

When the estate agent showed her round, strategically placing himself over the largest of the damp patches in the hallway, he was understandably twitchy. It had been on their books for a while, and the vendor was getting desperate. He needn’t have worried. Leila looked right past the discoloured walls, and due to her height, the low sloping ceiling in the galley kitchen didn’t even make her duck. As soon as she’d glimpsed the private garden leading off the bedroom she was sold. It was a walled courtyard more than a garden, but in Leila’s mind it already had trellises of trailing wisteria and honeysuckle. She imagined vibrant earthenware pots adorning every ledge and a small raised bed with a herb garden. And now, two months after she moved in, it had exactly that. The patches of damp had been gotten rid of too, and whitewashed walls made the formerly neglected cellar bright and welcoming. There was just about room for a double bed in the bedroom, but little else, so she’d designed a double bed on six foot stilts and one of the craftsmen at work had made it for her. So she ascended a ladder to bed every night, freeing up the whole of the floor space underneath for her desk that was placed in the middle of the room looking out onto the garden.

Her shopping bags made a loud clunk as Leila dumped them onto the kitchen work surface reminding her almost too late of the two bottles of wine that were in them. She then set about making the salad and marinating the chicken that she was going to serve her sister Tasha for lunch when she arrived.

It was the first time Tasha had seen the flat, despite only living two stops down the tube line. But when one of you owns a basement shoebox in Bayswater and the other a five-bedroom, three-storey townhouse on High Street Kensington, of course you’d choose to dine at the latter. But Leila wouldn’t take no for an answer this time. Apart from the disastrous two years she’d lived with her ex-boyfriend Luke, whose table habits were so vile she never invited anyone round, she’d always shared her kitchen with an endless stream of flatmates, who commandeered every available pan or plate come meal time. This was, and it made her feel ashamed to admit it, the first time she’d cooked for her sister in thirty-two years.

The knocker sounded. That was another purchase that made Leila feel very grown up. One of the first things she’d done after moving in was take a screwdriver to the shrill doorbell and ceremoniously bin it, replacing it with a smart brass knocker like the one the Banks family had in Mary Poppins.

‘Welcome, welcome to my humble abode,’ Leila wrapped her sister in a big hug and stood to one side to give Tasha enough room to squeeze through the door.

‘Ooooo, I am loving the hair! Amazing! You’re actually really pretty! And this is so quaint! And the neighbourhood isn’t as rough as I thought it would be.’

‘I’m sure there’s a compliment in there somewhere Tash!’

Her sister laughed, ‘Sorry, that came out completely wrong, let me rephrase. I just mean, wow, you look incredible, it’s really nice around here, and from what I’m seeing of your flat while standing on the doormat, it looks really lovely.’

‘I would say that it’s bigger than it looks, but after the tour which will take all of, oh, seven seconds, you’ll know that’s not true.’ Leila ushered her older sister into the living room, which was lined with books and pictures. Big vibrant canvases jostled for position next to black and white photographs, and vintage movie posters.

‘It’s very you.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning, your personality shines through everywhere you look. I love it.’ And Tasha meant it. She hadn’t had much of an input at all into the decoration of her own home. As a well-meaning surprise, her husband Alex had thrown an obscene amount of money at one of London’s most well-connected interior designers who had transformed the once tired townhouse into a glittering show home. The end result was stunning, just if not exactly to her taste; but there was no way she could have acted anything other than over-awed and incredibly grateful at the big reveal, such were Alex’s good intentions.

Tasha ran a finger along the spines of Leila’s books – even having books on display would be wonderful, but Patricia-the-designer said they would look untidy and mess up her scheme. Her scheme. So, what books they had were hidden behind the ‘concealed storage’ doors. Apart from the massively heavy hardback book on Chanel that was gathering dust on the big glass coffee table. Glass. In a house with three kids in it. That was a clever purchase Patricia.

‘Honestly Leila, this is perfect for you, it’s just beautiful.’ Tasha said as they stepped out into the garden. Leila had flicked the outdoor gas heater into life and despite it being early February, it was a beautifully crisp day. Tasha didn’t need too much persuading to celebrate it being a Saturday without her kids by indulging in a glass or two of the champagne she’d brought with her. She reached over and touched her sister’s wine glass with hers. ‘I’m buying you champagne flutes as a housewarming present by the way.’

‘But I don’t drink champagne normally.’

‘Well then, at least you’ll have them ready for the next time I come over,’ Tasha smiled. The sisters were sat at the little round white wrought iron table in the garden. What was left of the afternoon’s sunlight was dappling the flagstones with specks of light. ‘You seem very together, considering.’

‘Considering, what?’ asked Leila.

‘Freddie. I know you liked him.’

‘Not anymore.’

‘Well no, obviously, but it’s ok to be honest with yourself and grieve for a future you’re not going to have.’

‘Wow, a future I’m not going to have! Alright, Ms Doom and Gloom, I’m not terminally ill!’

‘I know! I just mean, I know you, and in your head you’d have arrived in India thinking that he was going to twirl you around until your feet left the floor’ – at this, Leila looked a little sheepish – ‘before he booked the rest of the week off work and whisked you to the Taj Mahal where you’d get photographed on the same bench where Princess Diana sat, and then he’d take you to a Maharaja’s palace where he’d booked a candlelit meal on a roof terrace festooned with fairy lights, which is where he’d propose. Am I close?’

Leila stuck her nose in the air. ‘Not remotely.’

‘I had it spot on, didn’t I?’

There was no point pretending otherwise to her sister, she could always see straight through her.

‘But he wasn’t right for you Leila,’ Tasha continued earnestly. ‘You do this, you hop from boyfriend to boyfriend, pinning unrealistic expectations onto each of them. Writing the script in your head of what you want them to say and how you want them to act, and if you keep doing that you’ll always end up being disappointed.’

‘Ok, oh wise one. How have you stayed married to Alex all these years then? What’s the secret to finding and keeping the right one?’ That stopped Tasha in her tracks. Running through Tasha’s mind was the old predicament, to tell the truth or the heavily edited soft-focus version she usually wheeled out. The trouble was, Leila was the only one in the family who knew exactly how she and Alex got together seventeen years ago, and had kept the secret too, so fobbing her off with platitudes almost never worked. If their parents ever found out that their daughter had been Alex’s mistress for a couple of years and was the reason for the breakdown of his marriage they’d be horrified. They didn’t even know their son-in-law had been married before, let alone that he’d got Tasha pregnant which is why he had to divorce his first wife to marry her. But, that was fifteen years ago, so absolutely no point raking it all up now.

‘Top me up before I answer that,’ Tasha held out her empty glass, ‘and can I just say how impressed I am that you have an ice bucket.’

‘Thank you. Now stop changing the subject. You and Alex, what’s your secret?’

Tasha sighed. ‘Oh God Leila, I don’t know. We don’t expect too much from each other I guess.’

‘That’s romantic.’

Tasha laughed. ‘I mean, we don’t conjure up ideals that we know the other one can’t live up to. We just get on with it, and have a lovely life, and don’t think too much about the stuff we can’t change.’

‘Like what?’

But that was it. The shutters had come down and Tasha shook her head, ‘Look at me, getting all deep and serious. But you need to move on from Freddie Leila, you’ve been hibernating here since you got back from India and it’s not right or healthy.’

‘I have not been hibernating! You don’t see me sat here in tracksuit bottoms and unwashed hair sipping super-strength cider through a straw do you?’

‘Well, no, but you missed the last family Sunday roast, and that’s unheard of.’

The once-a-month family roast dinner was sacrosanct. It had had a strict compulsory attendance order slapped on it for as long as Leila could remember. Making the trek from her university in Bristol down to Dartmouth every month for a slap-up free feed was a welcome respite from her usual daily diet of Super Noodles and breakfast cereals, but now she lived in London, the journey, and the time away from her friends, and boyfriend, when she had one, was a bit annoying sometimes. Not that she needed to worry about having a boyfriend now. Or ever again.

She knew that it was a cop-out, but heading down to her parents’ hotel in Devon to be guest of honour at a pity-party just a couple of weeks after the Jaipur fiasco was not something Leila wanted to put herself through. Her mother Judy would no doubt have had her head on the side for her entire visit, while repeating the words ‘plenty of fish’ and her dad would simultaneously give her a smile and a wide berth should her emotions suddenly get the better of her. Her brother Marcus would have found it impossible not to make lots of barbed references to her disastrous love life, and while she normally would have batted these back quickly and effortlessly, this latest dating catastrophe had affected her more than any of the others. Not that she was able to say that out loud yet.

‘So are you here as Mum’s spy to report back on the state of my sanity then?’ Leila asked.

‘No! Not at all! Not really. No. Well, maybe a bit. But mainly I wanted to see my little sister and offer my shoulder, should you need it. It’s ok to show your emotions you know Leila, you don’t need to pretend everything’s alright, when it’s not.’

Later that afternoon, when the sun had disappeared for the day, two empty champagne bottles were upended in the ice bucket and Tasha had reluctantly left, Leila thought about what her sister had said. She was known amongst her friends as the Bounce Back Queen, never letting anything get her down, being ridiculously cheerful in the face of adversity, but she absolutely never wanted to feel as stupid as she did leaving that hotel in Jaipur again. It was mid-afternoon on Christmas Day in England when she had skyped her parents from India. Her mum, dad, sister, brother, nephew and nieces all squashed their faces onto the small screen, colourful cracker hats adorning each one of them. She should have been there. She should have been working her way through her dad’s wine cellar with them, playing silly board games and listening to Radio Devon’s festive party mix. But instead she spent the day alone, huddled on a grimy corner of the airport praying for a standby ticket to get her home.

She had stayed awake for every minute of the thirty-hour journey from Freddie’s hotel room in India to her own bed in London, where she slept for almost two days straight. She didn’t cry. She didn’t even drink herself into oblivion with the free booze on board the flight. She just felt numb. And foolish. And she knew that she didn’t want a man to make her feel like that ever again.

Chapter 2

A few weeks later…

‘I reckon his photo was easily taken twenty years ago.’

‘No!’ Jayne cried. ‘Who would do that?’

‘What did he think?’ Amanda asked, blowing the froth off her cappuccino. ‘That you wouldn’t notice that he looked nothing like his advert?’

‘Profile,’ Shelley sniffed, looking affronted. ‘It’s not an advert, I’m not advertising for dates, like you would a car, it’s a profile. Anyway, thankfully he didn’t see me as I’d chosen a table behind a pillar – thanks to Leila’s suggestion – so I was able to leg it before having to spend an evening with him.’

Although this time it was her friend Shelley recounting this story of dating woe, it was a carbon copy of numerous blind date disasters Leila had suffered in her time. Brad Pitt morphing into Danny DeVito, Single Solvent Lawyer mutating into Married Bankrupt Loser.

‘Do you remember me telling you about that guy who, when the bill came, put down a coupon he’d cut out of the paper for his half of the meal?’ Leila added, to the shrieks of hilarity from her best friends. ‘And he didn’t even know why I didn’t want to see him again!’

Shelley picked up the baton, ‘What about those twins we met at that dating in the dark night, Leila, who said they were thirty-something bankers who lived in Canary Wharf and then at the end of the night we saw their mum picking them up?’

‘Are you sure you two don’t make some of these stories up to make me and Amanda a little bit envious of your exciting single lives?’ Jayne asked smiling. ‘I mean it puts my normal night of watching box sets in my pyjamas with Will a little in the shade.’

‘And me and Paul. The most excited we’ve been in months is when a new series of 24 was announced.’

‘Exciting single lives?’ Leila yelped. ‘Have you not been listening? Nothing about being a thirty-something, single woman in London is remotely exciting. Soul-destroying yes, exciting, no.’

‘Oh I don’t know, it has its moments.’ As Shelley was a statuesque redhead with measurements Marilyn would weep for, her experiences tended to sometimes be a tad different to Leila’s.

‘Honestly, you two don’t know how good you have it,’ Leila said, pointing the end of her croissant at Jayne and Amanda. What she wouldn’t give to spend evenings in her pyjamas with the love of her life rather than trundling down to a personality-less wine bar to speed date, or spending hours swiping left and right on Tinder. Trying to locate her future husband was more or less a full-time job, and she was sick of it.

‘You know what?’ Leila said, slamming her croissant down on the table. ‘I’m done. Finito. Caput. No more, I’m taking some time out from dating.’

‘You always say that. Every time you have a bad date, or your boyfriend turns out to be a dick, you say that that’s the last time,’ Amanda said. ‘You’re still in shock about careering halfway across the world for Freddie, you’ll be fine in a few weeks.’

To be fair, her friends had tried to warn her not to follow Freddie to India. ‘Men don’t like to be surprised,’ Amanda had said, ignorant of the irony in her statement seeing as she had proposed to Paul, and not the other way round. And Jayne didn’t understand either, with her perfect marriage to Will, Richmond’s very own Mr Darcy. It was only a matter of time before Shelley joined their cosy married club and Leila would have to fly the spinster flag alone.

***

As Leila walked the few streets back to her flat after their breakfast her phone vibrated in her bag. ‘Layles, flying back to London in a couple of weeks, let’s hook up and I can explain. Miss you XOXO’

Her stomach lurched and she didn’t know whether to hurl the phone into the nearest wall or hug it close to her body in relief. In the first few weeks after coming back from India she’d replayed the hotel room scene over and over in her mind constantly, even sometimes concluding that maybe, just maybe, she might have been too quick to flounce off in a huff. Perhaps the girl wasn’t completely naked, she could have been wearing one of those nude catsuits, so she was actually fully dressed, and possibly she worked at the hotel and had just delivered his room service and then was trying to fix his TV for him, which is why she was sat on his bed with the remote. Put like that, she occasionally felt a bit sorry for the short shrift she’d given him. She had even gone as far as to punch out a text to him that remained unsent, wondering if maybe she did owe him the opportunity to explain. But for him to suddenly get in touch now, a couple of weeks before his arrival in London, with his fancy bit thousands of miles away, just made her mad and not in the slightest bit sentimental.

‘No thanks.’ She pressed Send.

‘Don’t be like that babe, doesn’t suit you. See you in a couple of weeks XOXO’

Her fingers hovered over the keypad. If she was angry before, it was nothing compared to the white-hot rage that coursed through her veins now. How dare he? What planet was he on that he thought it was ok to treat her like that, then have complete radio silence for two months and then resurface like nothing had happened? She wouldn’t rise to it and send him a message back. Shaking, Leila slammed her front door behind her and threw her coat and keys down on the floor in the hallway. She was worth so much more than him. More than this ridiculous, fruitless man-search that made a little bit of her die inside with every unhappy ending. She’d had enough.

***

‘Celibacy?’ Thomas heaped two more roast potatoes onto her outstretched plate. ‘As in, become a nun?’

Leila rolled her eyes, ‘No, Dad, as in a man ban. I have taken a vow of chastity to sort my life out.’ She ignored her older brother Marcus’s immature guffawing next to her and passed the gravy boat on to her mum, Judy, who was sat on the other side, remaining uncharacte‌ristically silent.

‘Well I think it’s a great idea. You’ve been like a beacon for complete prats for the last two decades, and it’s time you concentrated on understanding your own energy field and what you’re putting out to the universe.’ Ever since her sister Tasha had decided to study Mindfulness and Visualisation to fill the void left by her youngest child reaching school age, she’d been peppering all her sentences with words like ‘emotional intelligence’ and ‘cognitive defusion’.

‘Thanks Tash. I feel very positive about it actually, it’s going well.’

‘So, when did you start this man-ban?’ Judy finally ventured, rolling the last two words around her mouth as though they were part of a foreign language.

‘Last Tuesday.’ Leila replied.

They all erupted in the type of laughter that makes furniture shake. Even Tasha’s three children joined in, the younger two, being only four and seven, had no idea what the hell they were howling about, but that didn’t stop them. Marcus’s annoying new girlfriend Lucy was chuckling away with the rest of them too, her perfect flicky-out hair bobbing along in time with her giggles.

‘I’m glad that I amuse you all so much.’ Leila huffed. ‘Next time one of you makes an important life choice remind me to be equally as supportive.’

‘Sorry darling,’ Judy rested her hand on her daughter’s arm. ‘We are supportive, it’s just that you haven’t got a great track record with seeing things through.’

Leila put her hand on her chest in mock disgust. ‘I am offended by that, Mother.’

‘Violin. Ice skating. Veganism. Boot camp. Spanish. Watercolour painting. Salsa. Am I missing anything Thomas?’ Judy had seven fingers outstretched in front of her as she counted off all the pursuits Leila had let trail off after getting bored.

‘Ryan. Carlos. Simon. Steve. Robbie. Luke. Oliver. Liam. Freddie.’ Marcus added. He always took sides with Judy. Such a mummy’s boy. ‘And those are the only ones you introduced us to. There must be more that never got to the meet-the-family stage.’

‘That’s not the same! At all! I have been very unlucky in love, and I haven’t found the right hobby yet. Two completely different things.’

‘You are a bit fickle sweetheart,’ Thomas topped up her wine glass.

‘Adding the word “sweetheart” at the end of that damning insult does not lessen it Dad. And I am not fickle. I am merely seeking perfection in everything I do.’

‘And every one,’ Alex, Tasha’s husband chimed in.

‘Alex!’ Tasha and Judy exclaimed at the same time.

‘Let’s not lower the tone, Alex, it is Sunday after all.’ Leila thought Tasha’s remonstration based on it being the Sabbath was a tad hypocritical – the last time her sister had attended church was her own wedding fifteen years ago.

‘Right, let’s change the subject. Yummy roast Mum, new chef?’ It was a running joke in the family that because Leila’s mum and dad ran a hotel, they got all their meals cooked for them, whereas in fact, apart from the occasional Ploughman’s that Thomas would surreptitiously steal from the kitchen downstairs, Judy made all their meals.

It wasn’t a spur of the moment decision, becoming celibate, despite what her family thought. Leila had always been interested in reading about women embarking on periods of self-discovery and contemplation, but had always measured her own sense of self-worth by leaping from one relationship straight into another rather than taking some time out. Admittedly, when she’d called for silence by pinging her mobile against her wine glass and giving her impassioned declaration to Jayne, Amanda and Shelley last Tuesday, she was fuelled by a few gin and tonics, but that was coincidental.

They too had followed a stunned silence with stomach-grabbing laughter. Then they’d laid bets on the table about how long she’d last. It was perhaps testament to her track record of inconsistency that there was currently £4000 in the pot. ‘This is a bet I have to take!’ her former flatmate Amanda had squealed. ‘So if by some miracle and personality transplant, you pull it off, we give you a grand each, and if you don’t then you have to pay each of us a grand.’

‘Which basically means you’ll have to sell a kidney,’ Jayne warned. ‘Don’t take the bet Leila, you’re just reeling because of what twatty Freddie did, in a couple of weeks, you’ll think differently.’

‘I will not,’ Leila replied haughtily. ‘My mind is set, and ladies, I take your bets. Start saving your pennies.’ Leila had told them what she found herself trying to articulate to her family now. This man-ban was not a whim. And although she usually thought most of what her sister spouted about ‘sending messages to the universe’ was a bit far-fetched, Leila completely recognised that something needed to change, and this seemed a good place to start.

***

As much as Leila would like to think that it was her cooking and fantastic hosting skills that prompted Tasha to pop around unannounced later that week after work, she knew that her sister had an ulterior motive, which she wasted no time in spelling out.

‘Now look, I want to talk to you about this celibacy thing.’

Leila leant her head back on the sofa and moaned. ‘Oh no, not you as well, I’ve already had Mum’s take on how ridiculous I’m being, I don’t need you joining in the chorus too.’

‘Far from it! I’m completely supportive of you, I actually think you should step it up a gear.’

‘In what way?’

‘Well if you’re serious about remaining single, and are genuinely doing it for reasons of empowerment and regaining control of your life, and getting to know yourself better, and all the other reasons you got on your soapbox about at the last Sunday lunch, then take it more seriously. Do something that’s going to change your life, rather than sitting at home being celibate listening to sad songs and lamenting your crap choice in boyfriends.’

‘I am not listening to sad songs! I have a very upbeat music collection.’

‘But put an end date on it, so that you have a period of time for self-discovery. You and I both know that you’re not intending to be single forever, but why not do it for six months, or a year even. Twelve months of finding yourself. Make it formal. Write a blog about it, start a group. Make this year count.’

‘You know what? I really like that idea. A year of me. Starting tomorrow. April 1st. April Fool’s day. How ironic.’

‘Maybe there’s a group nearby you can join?’

‘I’ll have a look this week.’

‘Have a look now.’

‘I’ll have a look later.’

‘Now.’

Leila threw a cushion at her sister’s head. ‘If we’re going to do this, can we do it in the garden? That’s my happy place.’

‘It’s still March. Do we have to?’

‘It’s the last day of March, which is Spring time, and if you’re making me do this, then yes, we do.’

Leila pulled on a sweater, lit a couple of candles in lanterns that were dotted around the courtyard and sat down next to her sister. She opened the computer and started typing. Celibacy London. Chastity. Sisterhood. Female solidarity. The sisters navigated their way through a bottle of red wine and sites selling promise rings written by the Christian far right and web pages for spurned women vehemently (and often violently) advocating a life of no-sex after vicious break ups. But they couldn’t find a site, or group, or club for women like Leila who wanted the happy ever after, but just wanted to dedicate a chapter of the fairy tale to themselves first.

‘So what now?’ Leila asked.

‘You make your own.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Just like that. It’s very easy. I made a blog recently for my Mindfulness group. It’s amazing how like-minded people find you if you put yourself out there.’

Leila drained her glass, and rested her chin on her hand. ‘But I don’t know that I want to be a beacon for every single woman out there.’

‘It’s not about everyone else, it’s about your own journey and documenting it, and learning from it, and sharing it with other women who are in the same position. Do it. I think it would be really good for you.’

‘You’re so bossy.’

‘I know. Now do it.’

Hello. My name is Leila, I am 32 years old and this is my first blog post.

‘You shouldn’t really give out personal information like your name and your age. And it’s obvious that it’s your first blog post as it’s the first post on the blog.’

Leila slammed the laptop shut and glared at her sister. ‘See? I knew I’d be rubbish at this.’

Tasha leaned across and prised open the screen again. ‘As you were.’

‘I used to think that it was you that was the saint, but now I realise it’s Alex.’

‘Leila,’ Tasha said gently, ‘Carry on.’

Leila gingerly started typing. Somewhere around the fourth line Tasha started stroking her sister’s hair and by the time the last full stop was added, both sisters had tears pricking their eyes.

In the last fifteen years I’ve dated two cheaters, one closet homosexual, a man that spat out watermelon pips across a restaurant, another that referred to his man parts as Peter Pecker. One that cried like a baby during love-making, another that had four tattoos of different women’s names on his arm (he wasn’t related to any of them), one that tried it on with my friends, one that tried it on with my sister, and one that used to follow me home from work ‘to keep me safe’. There was one that broke my toe (very bad dancer), another that broke my nose (very bad temper), and two that broke my heart. There was one that proposed to me every day for 87 days then married someone else two weeks after my final no, one that wanted me to wee on him, and in the process of chasing the last one across India I contracted amoebic dysentery and lost my luggage. I think it’s fair to say me and dating aren’t natural companions. Which is why I’m opting out for a year. Celibate. Chaste. Call it what you will, I’m staying single for 365 days to give my sanity a rest. I don’t know what this year of self-discovery is going to be like, but I know one thing - it’s going to be a whole lot more fulfilling and fun than being with, and getting over, all the men listed above. The journey begins here…

Chapter 3

‘Jesus Layles, what have you done with your hair?’

It was almost seven thirty at night, the shutters were down on the shops flanking her smart Notting Hill office and the after-work crowd that normally hung about at the pub opposite had already dispersed. If it hadn’t persistently drizzled all day perhaps the faded benches outside the pub would still have a few stragglers on them. Leila had stayed late to help a colleague on a community project they were working on, and the last thing she wanted was the now-cold latte that was being offered by Freddie’s outstretched hand.

‘Where have you been? Thought you clocked off at six, been waiting here ages for you.’

Leila sighed, ‘Why are you here Freddie?’ It surprised her that the only emotion to course through her was irritation.

‘I came back.’

‘Evidently. But why?’ Leila shook her head again as Freddie motioned for her to take the paper cup, which he then balanced on a bus stop bench.

‘You can’t just leave it there, find a bin.’

‘It’s a gift for the next person to wait for a bus.’

‘It’s cold coffee Freddie, find a bin.’ Leila stopped walking. ‘Don’t be a prat.’

‘Is this about what happened in Jaipur?’

‘It’s about you littering up the streets of London for no reason other than not being bothered to find a bin.’

‘You’re still angry with me.’

Leila reflected on this for a moment, ‘You know what, Freddie, I’m really not. I’m just grateful for finding out when I did that you are a monumental waste of my time and energy. Now, if you don’t mind I’ve had a really long day and I want to go home. Pick up the cup, put it in the bin and go away.’

‘I only came back from India to explain. You owe me that at least.’

If Leila had been a violent sort of person she would have slapped him at that moment. She did toy with the idea of rescuing the cold coffee from the bus stop purely to fling it in his gormless grinning face, but she resisted. ‘Freddie. There is nothing to explain. You screwed up. I’ve moved on. Good night.’ She stuck out her hand and hailed a passing cab. She slammed the car door leaving Freddie standing open-mouthed in the street. It was a dramatic statement more than anything else – she wasn’t even sure she had any cash on her to pay for the cab. A quick rummage through her purse discovered that nope, she didn’t. ‘Um, sorry mate, can you just drop me here?’ The cab had just rounded the corner, less than 50 metres from where she’d got in. In the driver’s eyes, she must seem either deranged or extremely lazy. She looked in the rear view mirror and gave the cabbie a winning smile. ‘And will you accept a three quid Pret a Manger voucher for the fare?’

My ex surprised me outside work today with a cold coffee and a bucketful of hard-done-by-ness. The old me may have relented a little. May have agreed to go for a drink. At the very least the old me may have listened to his attempts to explain why he felt the need to entertain a naked buxom blonde in my absence. But the new me didn’t. The new me felt no stirring of emotion at all, no flicker of remorse or wistfulness. The new me is currently toasting myself with a well-deserved glass of cheap wine. Go new me.

***

There was never normally enough room in Alex’s car for Leila to get a lift with them down to Dartmouth for the monthly family roast. Despite it being a Range Rover, once you’d piled in two adults, three kids – two of them in bulky car seats – and bags full of the necessary detritus to keep three kids amused for a long car journey and a weekend with the grandparents, the car was full. Which Leila thanked the Lord for every time she stretched out on the train, ordered a cheese croissant and cappuccino from the buffet car and read half a book. But fifteen-year old Mia had special dispensation to stay at a friend’s this weekend, leaving a ten-inch gap between the two car seats that, according to her sister, had Leila’s name on it.

‘Remind me how Mia managed to get out of this, when I’ve been trying for the last fifteen years?’ Alex said, at the same time as craning his neck around trying to go across three lanes of traffic to his exit.

‘It’s Imogen’s birthday.’ Tasha replied, flicking through the Saturday supplements that were weighing on her knees. ‘And if we didn’t let Mia go to the sleepover she was going to die. And I didn’t want that on my conscience.’

‘Aunty LaLa?’

‘Yes Oscar?’ Leila turned her head to answer her little nephew, who was staring back at her keenly.

‘Play I-Spy wiv me pease.’

Leila loved her sister’s kids, she did. But they were less than eight minutes into a four-hour car journey. On a Saturday morning when all her friends were having lie-ins with their husbands or drinking coffee out of impossibly small cups at a pavement cafe, she was feeding a constant stream of cheesy wotsits to two little monkeys. One of whom had a trickle of green slime oozing from his left nostril.

Just as the M25 turned into the M4 Leila put a Peppa Pig DVD in the player on the back of the passenger seat which seemed to distract Oscar from a never-ending round of I-Spy. ‘Is Lucy coming as well?’ Leila asked her sister. She obviously didn’t do a good enough job at cloaking the disdain in her question because Tasha span around and asked her why.

‘No reason, I just find her a bit, um, cold,’ Leila shrugged.

‘She’s perfect for Marcus.’

‘He’s not cold!’

‘No, but he is a bit nice but dim. She’s the perfect trophy girlfriend, isn’t she? With her perfect nails and perfect blow-dried hair.’

‘She’s wonderful. What’s not to like?’ Alex interrupted. ‘Ow!’ he said, rubbing his arm where Tasha had punched him. ‘There’s no need for that, I just mean, she’s a bit of a looker, isn’t she? Way above Marcus’s league.’

‘I’m not even going to respond to that. Ignore me, I shouldn’t have mentioned anything,’ shrugged Leila.

‘I thought you were all about female solidarity and sisters doing it for themselves these days Leila?’ Alex looked in the rear view mirror at his sister-in-law.

He was annoyingly right. ‘I am, you’re completely correct. I shouldn’t speak ill of one of my own. Consider myself castigated.’

‘Speaking of your man-ban—’

‘We weren’t.’

Alex ignored her and carried on, ‘Speaking of your man-ban, I think I’ve found the perfect bloke for you. Name’s Andy, new guy in the office, a real laugh, rugby player, single, loves a good time, likes his booze, he’s not looking for anything serious, just a bit of fun—’

He wasn’t the first to assume that her celibacy vow was down to not meeting the right man, that she was just treading water until the next bloke came along. Shelley wasn’t getting it either, and still expected Leila to accompany her to those horrific blind date nights where desperate men made rubbish jokes and you were expected to laugh. She’d got really shirty with her last week when Leila had turned down yet another offer of warm wine and stilted speed-dating chat in a Mexican restaurant.

‘Andy sounds charming.’ Leila replied from the back seat. ‘But the whole point of a man-ban is to ban men, not sleep with them.’

‘Who mentioned anything about sleeping with them? But you’re only doing this because you’re lonely, and I’m just pointing out someone to stop you being lonely, that’s all.’

‘Is that what you think? That I’m just trying to fill my time before the next man comes into my life? Oh my God Alex, you’re so annoying.’ After fifteen years of having Alex as her brother-in-law, Leila felt justified in speaking to him the same way she would her own brother. ‘That just shows your complete lack of depth and understanding of women. I am doing this year – a whole year – to prove to myself and everyone else that I do not need to be attached to someone else to be happy.’

‘There’s no way you’re going to last a year. How long has it been so far?’

‘Forty-one days.’

‘So on day forty-one of three hundred and sixty-five you’re still going strong. By day one hundred you’ll be doing the walk of shame from someone like Andy’s house. Five grand says so.’

‘I haven’t got five grand.’

‘According to you, you’re not going to need it. So take the bet.’

‘Fine.’ Leila said, ignoring her sister’s clucks of disapproval from the passenger seat. ‘I’ll take your bet, and raise you five.’

Alex accelerated down the motorway. ‘Game on. Leila, Game on.’

The next day, Judy had just cleared away the remains of the sticky toffee pudding and placed the tray with coffee, and Lucy’s peppermint tea, in the middle of the table when Marcus gave a little cough. ‘Um, everyone,’ he placed his hand on top of Lucy’s. ‘We have some news.’

Everyone jumped up from the table and loud declarations of ‘Congratulations!’ ‘Fantastic news!’ were exclaimed amid a flurry of hugs and kisses. Leila caught Tasha’s warning eyes over Marcus’s shoulder, as if she was going to drop in the middle of her congratulations mention of his fiancée’s frostiness.

‘Where’s the ring?’ Judy asked excitedly.

Marcus looked a little uncomfortable, but Lucy didn’t flinch, ‘It wasn’t exactly to my taste, so Marcus took it back and we’re going ring shopping together this week to get something more suitable.’

‘Bigger.’ Leila mouthed to Tasha across the table.

‘Oh, well, that’s nice.’ Judy said. It was very obvious to Leila and Tasha that their mother did not in fact think that was nice. In fact, her words of platitude were so fake, she may well have said, ‘you made my son return the ring he painstakingly chose for you, you selfish, greedy mare.’

Tasha hurriedly butted in. ‘So, any ideas for the wedding?’

Again, Marcus shifted uneasily in his seat, ‘Um, well actually, Mum, Dad, we wondered if we could have it here?’ Since the refurbishment three years previously, the hotel had been featured in all the wedding magazines as a must-visit location, and they had a booming bookings book filled with brides and grooms-to-be eager to celebrate their nuptials in the oak-beamed dining hall. The outdoor terrace, built into the hillside, enjoyed panoramic vistas over the harbour and River Dart below and was the perfect spot for pre-dinner Pimms and a jazz band.

‘That would be wonderful!’ Thomas said, ‘We’d be delighted to have it here!’ We’ve got a lot of weekends left after October, or a couple in June next year if you want better weather, so let us know soon what dates you were thinking of.’

‘July 1st this year,’ Lucy said.

Judy laughed, ‘Oh, this summer is completely chocka, I’m afraid, and that’s only six weeks away! But I think we do have a weekend in September and then, like Thomas said, most after October?’

‘No, we definitely want July 1st this year.’

‘But that’s a Saturday! We can certainly do a midweek wedding in July if you fancy it though? But I don’t see what the rush is? It would be nice to take your time over planning it, rather than doing it all in a rush? Oh! Unless you’re pregnant?’

Leila and Tasha cringed at their mother’s lack of subtlety, but Lucy didn’t flinch, ‘No, I’m not pregnant Judy, but neither of us are getting any younger, particularly Marcus, so we don’t see the point in dragging it out unnecessarily.’

‘And we definitely want a Saturday Mum, there’ll be people travelling all over for it, and midweek wouldn’t work,’ Marcus added.

‘I’m sure you can shuffle some things around for us Judy? It is your son’s wedding day after all.’ Lucy’s smile made Leila itchy. The table had lost its joviality of a few minutes before and everyone’s eyes were darting between Lucy and Judy and Thomas to see who would talk first.

‘Let me look in the book, and we’ll see what can be done.’ Judy replied with a pinched smile.

This was absurd. ‘You can’t cancel someone’s wedding just because Marcus has decided to get married then!’ Leila heard herself exclaim. ‘Those people had booked it last year, or the one before!’

Judy flashed warning eyes at her youngest daughter, while maintaining her slightly twitchy composure and smile. ‘I didn’t say I was going to cancel someone’s wedding, just to see what could be done. Maybe we could ask a couple to move to the Sheldrake, or the Winbourne, but let’s look in the book first shall we?’

Lucy clapped her hands together, ‘Oh this is so exciting, how it’s all coming together! We’ll need to talk about menus Judy as soon as possible so that you can order in the ingredients, I want organic Welsh lamb for mains, and then for dessert…’

Leila excused herself and carried the empty coffee cups into the kitchen. Thomas followed her carrying the milk jug and cafetiere. She rounded on him before he’d even put them down on the countertop. ‘Dad, you can’t just cancel someone’s wedding because Lucy has decided that’s the date she wants! It’s completely unethical and will damage your business! And you’re talking about a prime date in July – you’d be getting ten grand at least for that date, are you just going to give it to them for free?’

‘Calm down Leila, this all needs to be thought through before we make any decisions.’ Thomas started loading the dishwasher. ‘It’s all just been sprung on us and we don’t know any of the answers yet. No point getting all worked up. Pass me those plates there.’

‘Well don’t take too long, because I guarantee she’ll have the invites sent out by next weekend, that’s if she hasn’t done so already.’

Her dad straightened up, ‘Why do you care so much Leila, you’ve never bothered about our bookings or business much before, why now?’

‘I just don’t want you and Mum to be completely walked over, that’s all!’

‘Feeling jealous is completely natural love, you’re what, thirty-four now?’

‘Thirty-two, and I don’t know what that has to—’

‘Thirty-two, and your sister is happily settled, and now your brother is getting married, and you’re doing your nun thing, it’s completely understandable you’re going to feel put out and a bit green-eyed. Come here.’ He held out his arms for a hug, and as much as she didn’t want to, she found herself reluctantly falling into them, a little defeated.

It’s odd making a declaration of how you want to live your life in complete contrast to those around you. Society is completely geared up for a man and woman to meet, fall in love, marry and have kids. Yet there are thousands, millions of us that don’t fit that mould or expectation. I have gay friends, religious friends of different faiths, friends that have married inter-culturally, and each of them in their own way has come up against barriers to their happiness, for no other reason than people not understanding or being judgmental.

My decision to be single for a year is a personal decision based on my own unique circumstances. I haven’t made a placard, or protested outside the registry office trying to convince couples about to marry to embrace my way of life. Instead, I’m just quietly minding my own business, trying to navigate through a pretty tricky time. I don’t hate men, in fact I like them possibly a bit too much, which made me lose a bit of myself along the way. I’m only forty-two days into the three-hundred and sixty-five, and have been laughed at, mocked, accused of being sad and lonely, and there’s currently a pot with fourteen grand of my family and friends’ money who are fully expecting me to fail. But I’m not going to, and, just for the record, I’m allergic to cats.

Leila re-read her post from the night before while she was still in her pyjamas eating her rice krispies. She should have matured into more grown-up breakfast cereals by now, but the snap, crackle and pop still made her smile. She was in two minds whether to delete the post or not. Up until then, all her other entries had been so upbeat, extolling the virtues of single life. There were three hundred and three followers now, which was amazing, and the number was growing by a few every day. She got such a pulse of excitement every time she saw the number increase. When it went over the three-hundred mark she did a little celebratory dance in her tiny kitchen. But surely the whole point of writing this blog was to tell her story, describe her journey and the bumps in the road – or was it to paint a picture of a rosier version of her life that wasn’t real? What did the followers want to read, and what did she want to write?

Leila got dressed and went to work and the post stayed live.

Chapter 4

‘I don’t think your sisters like me very much.’

Marcus knew that a long pause between his new fiancée uttering this statement and his effusive denial of said statement was not a good thing, but neither could he hand-on-heart disagree with her. He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t glimpsed the side-eye glances that batted back and forth between Tasha and Leila when Lucy was around, not to mention the almost imperceptible eyebrow raising and whispered asides. He’d wanted so desperately for them all to get on, but for some reason his sisters, who were normally so warm and welcoming, were being a bit, well, off, with Lucy.

‘I wouldn’t necessarily say that I don’t think they don’t like you,’ he finally offered.

‘There are far too many negatives in that sentence for me to even begin to decipher it,’ Lucy replied crossly. She slammed the fridge door shut and handed him a cold bottle of white wine. ‘Can you open that? I know they might be protective of you, but I don’t think they’re giving me much of a chance.’

Marcus unhooked a corkscrew from the wall-mounted metal utensil rod and started turning it in the top of the bottle, pleased to have something to focus on other than forming a response.

‘I mean, I think I’ve been perfectly pleasant, haven’t I Marcus? I bring flowers to your mum every time we go down, I’m nice to Tasha’s kids, even though they’re always a bit mucousy, I even told Leila that her haircut suited her.’

‘You said that she looked androgynous.’

‘I said that the androgynous look suited her. Suited her, Marcus. It was a compliment.’

‘I’m just not sure she interpreted it like that darling. They’re different to you, that’s all. They’re not as…’ Again, Marcus paused, and a dictionary of nouns ran like a ticker tape in front of his eyes until he rested on ‘composed.’

‘Composed?’ Lucy put down the colander of lettuce leaves that she was swilling water through and rested it on the draining board. ‘What the heck is composed supposed to mean?’

‘Composed, calm, ladylike, call it what you will, they’re a bit mouthy and emotional, act first, think later, that sort of thing. They all are, Mum and the girls, you’re much more focused and poised.’

Focused and poised. Lucy liked that description of herself. It was exactly how she’d like to be thought of. Especially by her future husband.

‘Here, get this down you. Cheers!’ Marcus clinked his wine glass to hers.

‘God,’ Lucy groaned, ‘I can’t wait until we get the wine glasses on our wedding list, these stems are so clunky.’

Marcus hovered his hand over the pan that had been warming on the hob to check it was hot enough, before dropping a lump of butter into it, which immediately started sizzling and fizzing around the griddle. He picked up a large wooden spoon out of the china pot in front of him and held it a few centimetres away from his mouth, ‘And today on Marcus and Lucy Cooks, it’s steak au poivre. Lucy, can you tell me how you’re making the sauce?’ He moved the spoon in front of Lucy’s face. She resisted for a couple of seconds then broke into a giggle as they acted out the now familiar cooking routine.

‘Well, Marcus,’ she said into the wooden spoon, ‘while you’re searing the steaks with a peppercorn crust, I’m mixing cognac and cream together, then we’ll add this to the lovely pan juices. Back to you.’

‘Thank you Lucy, that sounds delicious. Now as you can see, the steaks are browning wonderfully, and I’m just going to flip them over, and ta da!’

Lucy leaned over to speak into the spoon again, ‘That really does look marvellous Marcus, and so easy to do at home.’

‘Absolutely Lucy, even though we are indeed pros, even the amateur cook can master this dish.’

‘Yes, spot on Marcus. Thank you for joining us today on Marcus and Lucy Cooks, until next time.’

Lucy had set the table in the dining room earlier that evening, as she did every evening. Even though the kitchen had a small circular table, which suited the purpose for breakfast just fine, a proper dinner always tasted better in the more formal surroundings of the dining room surrounded by candles. A couple of mouthfuls in, Lucy started talking again. ‘I’ve found the dress I want to wear for our wedding, so I’m going to make some appointments this week.’

Marcus had his mouth full so just gave an encouraging noise.

‘I don’t want to go by myself though, and Aimee and Emily are at work. All the magazines say that a bride should go with their mother, but the idea exhausts me.’

Marcus felt uneasy again. The relaxed frivolity of their pretend studio skit moments before had evaporated and he knew that he had to navigate this conversation carefully. He’d only met his future mother-in-law once, and she seemed nice, so was always a bit perplexed whenever Lucy mentioned her in a negative way. ‘How so?’ he asked.

‘Just the expectation levels I guess, it’s meant to be this seminal bonding moment isn’t it, and Mum might cry or something, which would just be awful.’

‘You could make a day of it, take the credit card, treat yourselves to lunch somewhere.’

Lucy grimaced. ‘I know I should, I’m her only daughter after all, but I’m just a bit uncomfortable with it, what would we talk about all day?’

‘Dresses? Shoes? I don’t know Lucy, you’re asking the wrong person. Why don’t you ask Leila or Tasha to come along as well? You were saying earlier that you don’t think they like you, this would be the perfect chance for them to get to know you better.’

It wasn’t a bad idea, Lucy thought. Having another person there would certainly lower the risk of gushes of sentimentality from her mum, and it would be a nice gesture on her part to include his side of the family. She really wanted his sisters to like her, but she just didn’t know how to make that happen. She wrinkled her nose. ‘But what if they don’t want to?’

‘You haven’t asked them yet. Ask. I’m sure they’d love it. All girls love dress shopping don’t they?’

‘Leila’s a gardener, she lives in wellies.’

‘She has dresses, I’m sure of it. When were you thinking of going?’

‘This week. I’ll book a day off work. Honestly Marcus, I have no idea how I’m juggling it all, it’s exhausting trying to plan the wedding, while rushing about at work, doing everything for everyone. I literally feel as though I’m being pulled in a thousand directions all the time. I swear this wedding is going to be a complete disaster because of it. Either that or I’ll give myself an ulcer with the stress.’

Marcus congratulated himself on another well-timed mouthful, he knew that Lucy couldn’t abide bad table manners, so as long as he made sure to do dramatic chewing motions with his jaw, he’d be forgiven for not responding.

Lucy carried on talking, ‘I don’t even have time to concentrate on the flowers and centrepieces, it really needs my full attention to get it exactly right, and I just can’t focus on that with work being so full on. I’m so anxious that the wedding is going to be ruined, and you deserve so much more.’

‘Mmmm, you do have a lot on.’ Marcus agreed. Which was always best.

‘I do, don’t I? And I really do want to be the perfect wife to you Marky, and make sure that our new house, when we eventually find one we like, is exactly right, and that we always have nice food in, and I’m just so concerned how I’m going to fit it all in, it’s a little overwhelming.’

Marcus swallowed his last forkful and took a sip of wine. ‘You know what I think? I earn more than enough for you not to work at all, there’s no reason to get stressed about it all. Just resign and concentrate on the things that you want to. Simple. Right, shall I get dessert?’

As Marcus left the room with the dirty plates and busied himself loading them into the dishwasher, Lucy sat twirling the thick-stemmed wine glass in her fingers and smiled. Well, that conversation couldn’t have gone better.

Chapter 5

Leila was so bored, she actually wished she was back sandwiched between two car seats trying to guess that ‘I’ belonged to ‘I-brow’.

This was the fifth wedding dress shop of the day and she’d lost the will to live somewhere around dress three of the first shop. Except they weren’t called shops, they were boutiques or salons. She’d learned that after getting the stare of death from one of the ‘bridal liaisons’ (shop assistants). Marcus had called her to prewarn her of Lucy’s impending invitation, and he’d been so earnest, so heartfelt in imploring her to accompany Lucy and Lucy’s mum shopping she couldn’t say no. Well, no that was a lie, she’d tried, but he just batted her remonstrations away and guilted her into submission. ‘She’s hardly got any friends, and those she does have are stuck at work,’ he’d said, completely oblivious to the massive neon warning sign that accompanied this statement. Who didn’t have many friends?

Lucy’s mum, Stephanie, was lovely though, which was a complete surprise. If pushed Leila would have admitted to have been expecting a buttoned-up platinum blonde with manicured talons and a designer handbag. She absolutely wasn’t anticipating this wonderfully bohemian middle-aged woman bounding off the train, wearing a full-length paisley coat, with long curly greying hair. If Stephanie noticed Lucy’s lacklustre greeting and stiff embrace she didn’t say, just gave her daughter and Leila a wide smile as she took their arms and proclaimed excitedly that they were going to have so much fun.

The fact that each salon offered them a glass of champagne had lessened the pain but heightened the boredom. Leila was left sat by herself most of the time as Lucy was in the dressing room, and Stephanie was busy taking pictures of wedding dresses to send them to her son’s girlfriend who was also getting married soon. Every boutique was a carbon copy of the one before. Each had a plush cream carpet, shag, Leila thought it was called, giving an immature snigger inside. Big armchairs or sofas were flanked with side tables, usually circular glass ones, with a box of tissues perched upon them, for teary mothers no doubt.

As the hours ticked by, Lucy was getting increasingly annoyed with each assistant, who kept giving sharp intakes of horror when she mentioned that her wedding date was in five weeks’ time. ‘I’m sure you’re not trying to be deliberately difficult,’ Lucy told the last one. ‘So let’s try and make this work, shall we?’

‘Off-the-peg’ was a term Lucy appeared to find offensive, wrinkling her nose and shrinking back a few inches every time it was mentioned. Her binder was full of princess-type dresses, all carefully cut out of magazines and placed in the relevant colour-coded section of the folder, after Flowers but before Poems and Readings. It’s not that each boutique didn’t have the exact eye-wateringly expensive gown she wanted, it’s just it would take six–eight months to order and make. You’d have thought by the fifth time she heard this, Lucy would start to understand.

‘I could always run it up for you my love,’ Stephanie offered later that afternoon, holding out a tissue to her sobbing daughter. Lucy wasn’t an attractive crier, Leila thought, and felt immediately very bad for having that thought.

‘Run it up for me? Run it up for me? I don’t want a pair of bloody curtains Mother!’

That was a bit harsh, the poor woman was clearly trying to help. ‘Lucy, I think at this stage you have two options, buy something—’ Leila stopped herself just in time uttering a phrase that contained the word peg – ‘already made.’ Good save. ‘Or maybe think about having one of the designs you love made, either by your mum, who I’m sure is a very accomplished seamstress—’ Stephanie shot Leila a look of gratitude – ‘or someone else, but I think you need to call it a day at trying different shops. Salons. Whatever.’

‘I knew you’d try to sabotage today, I just knew it.’

Leila knew Lucy would be mortified if she realised that a little bit of snot was stuck to the outside of her nose and that her eyeliner had smudged on the left side. While this was immensely gratifying to see, and more than a little amusing, Leila knew that staying silent went against everything the new Leila stood for. So she passed Lucy a tissue and said, ‘Wipe your nose and your eyes and how about we both pretend you didn’t say that and I ring ahead to the next two appointments to see if they can do this dress any quicker?’

As luck would have it, there was a cancelled order at the next boutique in very similar measurements to Lucy’s. It was Lucy that cited this as ‘very lucky,’ Leila couldn’t help viewing it from the other side, thinking of the poor woman that drank the free champagne, paraded in her dream dress in front of her emotional mum and friends and then tearfully phoned to cancel a few months later. But for the purposes of familial harmony, Leila kept mute. Now was most certainly not the time to introduce the concept of perspective.

She must admit though, Lucy did seem to be extraordinarily fortunate. In the end Judy and Thomas hadn’t had to cancel the couple on the 1st July, they did that themselves. And Marcus had also bartered a great price for the original couple’s photographer who had already accepted a non-refundable deposit, which he knocked off Lucy and Marcus’s price. It crossed Leila’s mind fleetingly that this could possibly be that poor girl’s dress too, but that would be slightly too weird. If she was indulging her darker thoughts, Leila wouldn’t have put it past Lucy to try to break the other couple up just so she could glide into their day, but it was beyond spiteful of her to even think that. And in no way compatible with her new role of Champion of All Women.

‘So what’s next on the list then?’ They’d just dropped Stephanie off at the train station and decamped to a nearby wine bar to take stock of the day and plan the next few weeks. In the absence of a sister, female cousin or any of her friends at all, Leila and Tasha had been drafted in as bridesmaids. Not willingly. And Tasha was away at a yoga retreat in the Peak District, which was very conveniently timed to coincide with this shopping trip.

Her sister was still reeling from being told that her kids were not allowed at the wedding. ‘But they are your nieces and nephew!’ she’d railed at Marcus. But he was adamant that Lucy had vetoed all children, regardless of blood ties. So Tasha had booked her weekend away to deliberately coincide with dress shopping. Meaning that now it was all falling squarely to Leila. ‘It all’ being every damn detail of the wedding it seemed.

‘Ok, so table plans,’ Lucy said studiously, peering at the long list in front of her. ‘We have most of the RSVPs back now – Mum’s going to chase the rest – I can’t do that myself, it would be vulgar. And then we can start assigning table places. Leila, I’ve pinned some ideas onto Pinterest of what designs I want, so you can knock one up as you’re a designer.’

‘I design gardens Lucy, I’m not a graphic designer.’

Lucy looked at Leila blankly. ‘It’s all creative though, isn’t it? It’s literally just cutting out bits of card and mounting it on other bits of card, it’s not rocket science.’

If it’s not rocket science, Leila wanted to say, why aren’t you doing it yourself, now that you’ve given up your job purely to organise the wedding. She couldn’t believe it when Marcus told her that Lucy had resigned from her job as an event planner as she couldn’t manage the wedding and full-time work. ‘Poor lamb,’ he’d said, ‘the stress was really getting to her.’ But Leila knew that Judy was bearing the brunt of all the planning, ironic considering the nature of Lucy’s former career.

Judy had uncharacte‌ristically let slip on the phone to her a few nights before that she was finding Lucy ‘rather difficult’ to deal with, and that in all her years of working with brides, ‘Lucy has taken it to another level.’ She even persuaded Judy to change the curtains in the dining room as they didn’t match her flowers. Judy was incredulous when she told Leila this, yet still did it anyway, which Leila thought was the most incredulous thing. Since then, she had little sympathy for her mother’s tales of wedding woe. Yet here she was, nodding along like a mechanical dog, saying, ‘Table plans, ok. Anything else?’

‘Yes, I don’t know whether Marcus has mentioned this, but you need to bring a date. All the tables are for eight, and we can’t have one of seven, it would look unbalanced and just wrong.’

‘Um, ok, I’ll ask Shelley. She loves weddings, always up for a bit of usher action.’

‘No, no, it has to be a man, it’s boy girl boy girl seating, we can’t have two people of the same sex together, that would screw everything up.’

‘You’re sounding remarkably Republican there Lucy.’

The jibe was lost on her. Leila carried on, ‘But I don’t have any single male friends to bring, and you know I’m not dating anyone for another ten months.’

‘Sorry, but I’m not having your silly vow of celibacy ruin my special day.’

Again Leila found herself biting her lip. ‘Fine. I’ll find someone.’

‘No dreadlocks.’

‘Got it.’

‘He has to wear top hat and tails.’

‘Done.’

‘If he has tattoos he has to cover them up.’

‘This advert is sounding stranger by the minute.’

Lucy’s eyes widened, ‘You’re not really going to advertise to bring someone to my wedding?’

Leila considered carrying on the joke just for her own amusement, but GSOH didn’t seem to be one of Lucy’s qualities. ‘Of course not. I have just the chap. He’s a colleague, Jamie. Nice guy, been pestering me to go out for ages, I’ll ask him, but I’ll have to lay down some ground rules first.’

The conversation with Jamie the next day went exactly the way Leila anticipated. There had been a moment, a fleeting blink-and-you-miss-it-moment at last year’s staff party when their eyes locked onto each other’s and Leila was tempted to accept Jamie’s ever so eager advances, but as she stood there deliberating whether to or not a leggy intern grabbed Jamie to dance and the moment passed. She waited until the office had thinned out at lunchtime and followed him into the small pantry where he was meticulously measuring out his protein shake powder into milk. ‘Hey Jamie.’

‘Lovely Leila, how are you?’

‘Look, I have a favour to ask you. You can absolutely say no, although I hope you don’t.’

‘Intriguing. Go on.’ He leant back against the countertop. His sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, which made his biceps bulge a little. But then, he knew that. Leila was also heartened to see a tattoo-free forearm, which was another tick in a box.

‘My brother is getting married, which in itself is a miracle, and I have to take a date and—’

‘Yes.’

‘I haven’t finished my sentence.’

‘Yes I’ll come with you.’

‘But you need to know, I’m two months into a year of celibacy, and so we’ll be going to this as colleagues, friends even. But absolutely not as dates. It’s in Dartmouth, at my parents’ place, so I’ll book you a room, but a different one to mine. I’m just lowering your expectations now, so you’re not expecting a bit of wedding night fun and frolics.’

‘Message received and understood.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. Would love to come. And you know, if the romance of the occasion, and the free-flowing champagne, means that your mind changes as the night wears on, then that’s fine with me too.’

‘It won’t.’

‘But if it does.’

‘It won’t.’

‘But if it does.’

‘It’s on the 1st July, I’ll email you the details. I’m getting there a couple of days before so you’ll have to make your own way down, but I’ll pay half your petrol. Is that ok?’

‘Sure thing.’

As Leila left the pantry she heard him shout, ‘But if it does!’ She smiled as the door slammed behind her.

That evening she checked her blog statistics, she’d got another two-hundred and fifty followers over the last week, which took her total number to just shy of fifteen-hundred. And some had even started commenting too. At first they were just one or two words, like ‘Yes!’, ‘Me too!’ ‘I feel the same’, but then women started writing longer posts about their own lives and loves. Leila created another page on the site for women to share their stories, and it was garnering more and more clicks every day. The beauty of the internet meant it wasn’t just local London women logging on; she’d had women from Scotland, Switzerland, all the way to Bermuda and California joining in the discussions. Leila couldn’t help feeling a little proud that she’d created this forum for a community of women to come together, united in their tales of embracing single life.

It was the story of one woman, Namisha, that inspired Leila to set up a closed Facebook group in addition to the blog. Namisha had had an arranged marriage planned. She hadn’t been too happy with the idea beforehand, but her family had told her that she could be pro-active in finding the groom, so she relented. After months of chaperoned meetings with different prospective men, she finally found someone she clicked with. The wedding date was set, over eight-hundred invitations were sent out, she sat still for four hours having her hands painstakingly decorated with henna at her Mehndi party, and had a red silk sari specially made in India and flown over. On the morning of the ceremony, just as the ballroom of one of Manchester’s top hotels filled with guests, Namisha learned that the groom had run off with an American girl he’d been secretly dating for five years.

Although she kept her story brief and free from an outpouring of emotion, unlike some of the other recently-scorned singletons, the subtlety of Namisha’s pain was imbedded in every word. Every one of Leila’s break-ups had been a private experience, one where she alone suffered the pain and humiliation. She couldn’t imagine what that poor woman went through in such a public way. Within a couple of hours, twenty different women had offered Namisha support, soothing words and a couple of women local to where Namisha lived even offered tea and cake to accompany their sympathy.

This website was becoming more than just Leila typing a few lines as she had her dinner each night. This was a virtual club that was making a difference.

That wasn’t part of The Plan either.

***

There were only a certain number of ways you could organise twenty chairs in a small room, and Leila had tried all of them. Twice.

Rows were too formal. A circle too Alcoholics Anonymous. Around the edge of the room too pre-teen disco. She’d finally settled on having clusters of five seats around four tables, after all, Tasha did say that part of the workshop was going to involve writing. She put the three kettles on to boil, again. Everyone would be arriving in about ten minutes, and it would be good to be able to offer them a drink straight away rather than make small talk over the ever-increasing sound of bubbling water. And then remembered a warning she’d read once that you shouldn’t reboil water or it could cause cancer. She wasn’t sure of the validity of this, but now was not the time to worry about it. She had toyed with the idea of serving wine too – it was 7pm – but thought for this first meeting it would be good to start off sober. God, she wished she wasn’t so sensible, she could murder a glass of pinot grigio.

Iris from Ealing was the first to arrive, nervously peering around the door. She clutched her bag in front of her as though she was expecting Leila to mug her.

‘Hi,’ Leila walked towards her with her hand outstretched. ‘I’m Leila. You found us then? Thanks so much for coming, it’s really exciting doing this, we’ve got lots of great things planned, we’ve got two speakers at this workshop, and, oh, great one of them’s here now, why don’t you help yourself to tea or coffee Iris, there’s lots of different types – just all on that table over there, great.’

‘Where have you been?’ Leila hissed through her teeth at Tasha.

Tasha looked about the empty room, until her eyes stopped pointedly at Iris deliberating over peppermint or jasmine tea and said, ‘You’re right, I’m sorry, leaving you to riot control on your own was very thoughtless of me.’ She leaned over to kiss her sister’s cheek and whispered in her ear, ‘Calm down sweetheart, it’s all going to go brilliantly.’

Thirty minutes later, when every chair was filled, and twenty heads were studiously bowed, writing down their thoughts in twenty different types of handwriting, Leila allowed herself to breathe. Tasha and her friend Eva had put together a two-hour introductory session on mindfulness for the first twenty London-based women who replied. And the crazy thing was, she could have filled a room three times the size with the amount of people that wanted to come. She couldn’t believe she’d been so disparaging in the past about Tasha’s passion without really knowing too much about it, and it was incredible all the stuff she was saying. The whole premise of living in this exact moment and not letting your past or your future shape or affect your present, was something every woman in that room needed to hear and learn, and Leila placed herself firmly in that camp too. She’d spent so many years hankering after an ex, or impatiently awaiting the arrival of Mr Perfect, that she’d squandered the last decade looking back or forward and never stopping for a minute to just be.

‘Another key thing,’ Tasha intoned, ‘is acceptance. Welcome in your thoughts, the negative ones and the positive ones, but don’t see one as right, or one as wrong, give them space to exist, and don’t judge yourself. Tune into everything you’re feeling – the way the shower spray hits your body, the way a certain fabric feels, the smell of your perfume, the taste of your food – think and reflect on every sensation as you think or feel it.’

Leila was concerned beforehand that two hours sounded like an awfully long time to sit and contemplate your life, but the time just sped by, and it wasn’t until the office cleaners came in, that she realised that they’d even gone over time.

‘Ok everyone, we’re going to have to wrap it up now, but thank you so much Tasha and Eva for coming and imparting your wise words, and honestly, I am so humbled to be surrounded by so many inspiring women. Hopefully this is the first of many events and workshops that we do, and please, any ideas you have, or topics you’d like to focus on, just drop me a line, I’d love to hear from you.’ It was perhaps testament to how soul-revealing the evening had been, but every woman had entered the room giving Leila a handshake, and left it giving her a hug. That was pretty awesome.

‘You’ve got an amazing thing going here,’ Eva said as she gathered up all the pencils left on the desks. ‘To get all these different women in one space is marketing gold.’ Eva had left the world of corporate life coaching a few months previously to set up her own business. ‘I gave my card to at least half the women here tonight. By all rights, I should have been paying you for the exposure, not the other way round!’ Each of the women had paid a tenner to attend, and as Leila’s boss had let her have the training room for free and even thrown in the refreshments, Leila just split the two hundred between Tasha and Eva.

‘Eva’s right Leila, you could have run this evening at a profit tonight, and everyone would have still gone away feeling happy and fulfilled.’

Leila grimaced. ‘I know what you’re saying, but there’s something a bit distasteful at me making money from other people’s misfortunes. I mean everyone was here because they’d been unlucky in love, I don’t want to start monetising their healing.’

‘Think about it Leila,’ Tasha said, getting her car keys out of her bag. ‘You’re providing a service for these women – it’s like a member’s club – and if you started seeing it more like a business than a hobby, you could be making a pretty tidy side-line from it.’

Her sister’s words were going around her head on a loop all the way home. It was so far removed from the reasons she started the blog in the first place. Just three months ago, it was an online diary, a place for her to vent and explore her feelings, and now here she was, an event planner, party host, mentor and head girl of a sorority that was growing larger every day.

***

As she’d been spending so much time on her website, Leila was woefully behind in her work, so when the weekend rolled around instead of pottering around markets with her friends or having lazy lunches she was hibernating at home trying to meet her deadlines. Her phone was ringing for the fourth time in as many minutes and Leila couldn’t ignore it again. She hated being interrupted when creative brilliance was in full flow. Her company had pitched recently for a lucrative but immensely soul-destroying project doing the car parks and outside cafe areas of a chain of well-known supermarkets. It was the first time she had been chosen to lead a project in seven years of working there, and she needed to pull this off. Her dining table was piled high with blueprints and open books and markers, and huge unfolded plans had slipped off the table onto the floor, and somewhere under all this was her incessantly ringing phone.

‘Leila. Marcus.’

She couldn’t help but smile; her brother had such a knack for sounding so pompous. ‘Marcus, what do I owe this pleasure to?’ She was thankful it was him and not Judy who had phoned because she knew it wouldn’t be a long call. Marcus was known for his brevity, unlike her mother.

‘We had dinner with Tasha and Alex last night.’

‘Thanks for the invite.’

Marcus either didn’t hear her sarcastic retort, or more likely, just chose to ignore her, ‘And Tasha was talking about your blog and Facebook page. I had no idea it was doing so well.’

‘Too well at the moment! Work is so busy and then this is massively taking off, and I can’t justify spending all the time I do on something that doesn’t pay the bills.’

‘That’s why I’m phoning.’ He then reeled off a list of five or six clients of his legal firm, big companies that Leila had heard of, that were offering services that targeted professional single women. A bank that had special mortgage rates for single borrowers, a financial services firm that offered women better premiums on car and life insurance, a brand of wine whose latest advertising campaign focused on friendship and sharing, a sportswear brand that wanted to align itself with empowering women, and so on. ‘Don’t you see Leila,’ he continued, ‘your blog would be the perfect place for these brands to reach out to your women, and these people have cash to spend. Now I can’t be seen to be involved in this in any way, obviously, but if you were to send them a short presentation about you and your site, I promise you they’d be interested.’

‘Really?’

‘Really. They’d pay for ad banners on the site, sponsorship of any more events you have, they may well offer your followers discounts, freebies, incentives, you could run competitions for singles holidays, God Leila, you could do amazing things with it. Why don’t you talk to Dad about it? He does all the marketing for the hotel, and his strategy is sound. He’s set up barters with different companies and now they have advertising logos on their brochures. Or, and here’s an idea,’ his voice had changed from purely business to something verging on excitement, ‘You could run weekend retreats at Mum and Dad’s hotel during the off-peak season – it would help them out in the quieter months, and you could pitch it as a … what do you call it … “finding yourself” short break or something like that. Get the sponsors to pay to have their branding there, every woman pays two or three hundred quid as well, give half to the folks and you’re raking it in.’

‘And then there’s your cut too of course,’ Leila couldn’t help saying. It was so unlike Marcus to phone completely out of the blue just to offer some brotherly advice. Particularly now Lucy was firmly entrenched on the scene.

‘This first session is free. But I will charge to look over any contracts you sign.’

And there was the brother she knew and loved.

Chapter 6

Leila stabbed the last phallic-shaped straw into a lurid cocktail in Lucy’s kitchen, hearing the high-pitched shrieks of hilarity through the paper-thin walls. She paused to plaster her smile back on her face before re-entering the dining room.

‘What’s your favourite part of Marcus’s body?’ one of Lucy’s friends from her book club read out to a chorus of girlish giggles.

‘His forearms,’ Lucy replied. ‘He has amazingly strong forearms.’

Leila tried not to blink, and just focused on dividing out the drinks between the eight women, who were in various stages of inebriation, including, much to her complete embarrassment, her own mother, who was swaying glassy-eyed at the end of the table.

Lucy hiccupped after taking a small sip, ‘What’s in this one? It’s lethal!’

‘Um, lots of clear stuff and some blue stuff,’ Leila took a gulp of her own concoction without wincing. She’d passed the point that alcohol had any effect whatsoever. They’d spent the day gluing sequins onto stilettos as one of their hen party activities. Lucy had put Leila in charge of the day and evening, and then proceeded to forward Leila pins or links to exactly what it was she wanted them to be doing. So, early afternoon was glitzing up footwear, and then they had a mixologist come to the house and throw bottles about. Which Leila had to admit was pretty fun – hence her newfound talent for cocktail-making. Lucy had firmly rebuffed the butler in the buff idea, which was just as well as Leila had no intention of seeing a naked man for at least another two-hundred and forty-eight days anyway.

Looking around the table, it was the oddest mix of women she’d ever seen. Apart from her, Tasha and Judy, there were two women from Lucy’s book club, an ex-colleague of Lucy’s who was heavily pregnant so not drinking, another former colleague who was so drunk her eyes were crossed, and a tall, long blonde-haired, very athletic-looking woman who hadn’t spoken to anyone apart from Lucy all afternoon. She also hadn’t joined in any of the activities, instead she’d sat for most of the afternoon and evening with Lucy’s wedding binder on her lap writing down numbers of florists, reception venues and photographers into her diary.

‘Are you getting married soon too?’ Leila turned to her, trying to kick-start conversation.

The woman looked up from the folder, ‘Yes, I’m marrying Lucy’s brother, Nick.’

‘Oh, that’s great. Congratulations.’

‘Thank you.’

The woman put her head down and was scribbling again.

‘I was with Lucy when we went wedding dress shopping and Stephanie was sending you pictures of some, wasn’t she? See any that you liked?’

‘I actually already have my dress, I was engaged before you see, but it didn’t work out. But I love the dress, so have kept it ready for the next one.’

‘Oh.’ Leila thought frantically of what she was meant to say to that. ‘That’s, um, handy.’

‘Same with the bridesmaid dresses. Although one of my cousins has put on loads of weight recently, so she won’t be able to be a bridesmaid any more. Which is a shame because we were close.’

‘Righto. Um, excuse me.’ Leila reached across the table to an upturned sunhat and fished a rolled up piece of paper out. ‘Shall I read the next one?’ She paused before saying, ‘What is Marcus’s favourite position?’ Oh God, why did she have to pick that one out?

‘You have to be diplomatic here don’t you!’ The pregnant ex-colleague laughed.

‘Not on our account, you don’t, pretend your fiancé’s sisters and mother aren’t even here,’ Tasha said with a lot more good humour than she was feeling. ‘There’s nothing we’d like more than to hear about our brother’s exploits in bed.’

‘We can cover our ears if it makes it easier for you to say,’ Leila added.

Lucy’s eyes casted to the left as she screwed up her forehead, looking like she was thinking way too hard about this question for Leila’s liking. ‘Um,’ she said, biting her lower lip, ‘to be honest, we’ve decided to save ourselves for our wedding night.’

Despite ten minutes of solid scrubbing, the wall still had a faint blue tinge to it where Leila had spluttered her cocktail all over it. ‘Sorry about that,’ she said sheepishly after the last of the party, Judy and Tasha, had been dispatched in a taxi, waving merrily and unsteadily, shouting ‘See you in church!’ noisily across the darkened cul de sac.

‘It’s fine,’ Lucy replied in a tone that suggested that it wasn’t. She turned on the main light and started sweeping the table’s detritus into a bin bag.

‘Here, let me, you go on up, you’re the one that needs her beauty sleep ready for the wedding.’

Lucy’s lips pursed into an unattractive pout. ‘Thanks very much!’

‘I didn’t mean like that! You’re getting married! It’s late, I’ll do the rest, honestly, it’s fine, go.’ Leila gave her soon to be sister-in-law a stiff hug and started the impossible task of picking the thousands of penis-shaped confetti out from between the floorboards.

Leila thought that she might as well wait until the dishwasher had finished to put another load in before she left, it’s not as though there was anyone awake at home waiting for her. There was a small bit of wine left in two of the bottles, so Leila splashed them both into a glass and gave it a swirl. Marcus would be horrified. When they were teenagers they used to work in their parents’ hotel in Dartmouth, and she and Tasha used to stow away the dregs from all the bottles they’d served to customers throughout the evening for them and their friends to share later. She’d decant all the whites into one bottle, all the reds into another, completely ignorant of blending grape varieties or vintages, and trudge to the sheltered safety of the local park to drink the stash and voice ill-conceived musings on the universe. She remembered with a smile that Marcus had been appalled that she had mixed a £200 bottle of 1982 Chateau Haut Brion Pessac-Lognan with a rough house Beaujolais, but she had just tipped her plastic cup at him in a mocking toast and downed the lot.

***

Jamie had saved a seat for her in church by putting his top hat on the pew next to him. At six foot five, wearing the top hat was never really an option, but Lucy had insisted on him at least carrying it.

‘Emergency averted?’ he asked as Leila hurriedly sat down and pinned the hat on her head. She hated hats.

‘Yes, the roses were the wrong shade of pink.’

‘Oh no, is your sister-in-law ok?’

‘She’ll live.’

They turned in time with the rest of the congregation as Lucy made her entrance to a loud fanfare of Handel’s Wedding March, a predictable choice that had the rest of the church beaming. Her tight corset flowed down to a sharp A-line, with delicate crystal beading catching the sunlight that danced through the stained glass. Her long strawberry blonde hair had been tightly pinned into elaborate swags under a flowing veil. The hysterics over the roses a few minutes earlier were forgotten.

Back at the hotel, Leila hurried past the easel holding the seating plan straight into the dining room. She didn’t need to look at it, she’d had three blasted attempts at making the damn thing, so knew its contents off by heart. The first two efforts didn’t entirely ‘encapsulate the theme’ was how Lucy phrased it. The theme in Leila’s mind now being ‘sticking needles in my eye’. She’d also just had an earful from Marcus about the fact that Jamie had bailed straight after the ceremony to step in to replace an injured teammate at the last minute for an away rugby match at Exeter.

‘His place at the wedding breakfast cost £65,’ Marcus had fumed at her, as though she had gaily waved him off after tucking in his shin pads and hadn’t been livid about it herself. Now she was dateless for a massive family wedding and incredulously £65 out of pocket as her brother accepted her offer to pay for Jamie’s food. And Leila knew their parents were footing the bill anyway but didn’t have the heart to have a screaming match with her brother on his wedding day.

Her table was already filled – now the only table with odd numbers in the whole room. ‘Hi, Leila, hello, Leila, hi there, Leila, hello, Leila, nice to meet you, Leila, hello, Leila.’ Introductions and obligatory reaching across the table handshakes done, Leila broke with the convention of waiting for the bride and groom to arrive and poured herself a massive glass of wine, broke a bread bun in half and slumped noisily sighing into her seat.

‘That bad?’

Leila looked to her right. ‘Worse.’

‘Nice dress.’

Leila looked down. The coral bridesmaid’s dress that dwarfed her tiny frame in a blanket of offensive, and probably highly flammable, chiffon could not in any way be described as a nice dress. In that instant every tiny atom of frustration that had been building up for the entire three-month engagement was ignited by the gently mocking tone of this stranger. She threw her head back and laughed a laugh so loud, so bordering on hysterical, that nearby tables turned to look. ‘You have no idea,’ she finally uttered. ‘You literally have no idea.’

‘Try me.’

Leila needed no encouragement. For the next ten minutes, even during the jubilant, albeit vastly rehearsed, entrance of Marcus and Lucy, she barely paused for breath. ‘And another thing,’ she added, ‘Lucy even wanted me to wear a blonde wig to cover my dark hair because I would ruin the photos, can you believe that? And another thing—’ Throughout this impassioned monologue the stranger had kept her glass topped up and was offering silent nods of sympathy. ‘These god-awful shoes weren’t available in my size so Ms Hitler ordered me ones a size and a half too small, so as well as looking like a festival tent, I now have four blisters and my blood has dyed the fabric a sort of putrid puce colour.’ She paused. ‘I’m sorry, you must be Rob, you work with my dad, is that right?’ Leila remembered the name that she’d written on three table plans next to her own.

‘No, I’m Ms Hitler’s brother, Nick.’

Leila buried her face in her hands. ‘Bollocks. Bollocks. I’m sorry. For the tantrum, not that she’s your sister. I’m sure she’s delightful. Deep down. Shit. I’m sorry.’ She suddenly froze. ‘Why did you move places? Nobody’s supposed to move!’ Her voice was now loud and shrill. ‘This arrangement took away almost a week of my life that I will never get back, and I’ll never hear the end of it if Lucy finds out. You’re supposed to be on the other side of the table between Rob’s pregnant wife Laura and a woman called Olga, who quite frankly sounds like a Russian lap-dancer.’

‘Who is also my girlfriend. And is sitting to my right, but thankfully the hours she’s spent in noisy strip clubs has completely ruined her hearing, so I think you got away with it.’

‘Oh God.’ Leila took a big gulp of her wine. She had no idea how much she’d drunk, but her verbal diarrhoea was in full flow, so a sizeable amount she reckoned. ‘I’ll just stop talking shall I?’

Nick grinned. ‘Apparently some arsehole, my sister’s words, not mine, dropped out just before the meal and so she needed to shuffle things around, so here I am, being captivated by the eloquence of my new sister-in-law. Lucky me. And if it’s any consolation, I’m under strict instructions not to roll my sleeves up, regardless of how hot it gets because she doesn’t want your family to know I have tattoos, and until last week I had long hair as well, that I had to cut off or my invitation was going to be revoked. Which I’m realising now may not have been a bad thing.’

‘I had waist length hair until about four months ago, but then went for a bit of a drastic change. Which your sister says makes me look like a boy.’

‘Oh Jeez. I’m sorry. And for the record, you don’t.’

‘I’m really sorry too. About everything, My no-show date, Lucy, and Olga. Who I’m sure is really lovely, or you wouldn’t be marrying her.’

‘I wouldn’t be what now?’ As if on cue, the blonde woman with long poker-straight hair from the hen party swivelled round in her seat and extended her beautifully manicured hand over Nick’s lamb shank. ‘Hi, I’m Olga,’ she said. ‘How are you?’

‘Um, fine thanks, much better than I was. Nick has been cheering me up, sorry for taking up all his time. We met at Lucy’s hen do?’

‘Did we?’ Olga started stroking Nick’s arm with her fingernail.

‘Yes, we were talking about your wedding and you were making notes on Lucy’s bridal folder. And telling me about the bridesmaid dresses you’ve already got?’

Leila had never seen the physical manifestation of the phrase ‘blood draining from face’ before, but before her eyes it happened to both Nick and Olga at the same time. Nick retrieved his arm from Olga’s tight grip, coughed and pushed his chair back. ‘I need a smoke, back soon.’

Leila pushed open the door to the terrace and walked over to where Nick was lighting a new cigarette from the dying embers of the last one. ‘I told the waitress to keep your lamb warm, they’re clearing the table now.’

Nick shrugged, ‘Cheers, but I’ve lost my appetite anyway.’

‘So… I take it the engagement was very much in Olga’s head,’ Leila ventured.

‘It’s our fifth date. So yes, very much so, although now you mention it, she did insist on meeting Mum after the first one. To tell the truth I didn’t even want to bring her today, but Lucy insisted as otherwise it would cock up the numbers or something. But it’s a massive thing isn’t it, bringing someone you barely know to your sibling’s wedding?’ He wasn’t to know that this made Leila cringe a little. ‘And I didn’t want to give the wrong signals this was more serious than it was, and all the time she’s been planning our wedding.’ He took a deep inhalation from his cigarette and blew the smoke out. ‘Jesus, women!’

‘Can I take this opportunity to point out your audience?’ Leila joked.

‘Sorry. I’m just fed up of every woman I date trying to fast track from the getting to know you stage straight to the altar.’

‘At least yours made the dinner, my date didn’t even have a Pimms before he legged it to a better offer.’

‘That makes me feel better. At least I’m not the biggest loser here.’

‘You’re welcome.’

‘But at least you’re now free to enjoy the party. I have to go back in there, break up with a fiancée I didn’t know I had, and then I am going to have to call her a taxi.’

‘But her name is Olga.’

‘Oh, that’s a bad, bad joke.’

They stood opposite each other both looking fittingly solemn. And annoyed. Leila’s mouth began to twitch, and then Nick smiled the start of a bigger smile. Before long they were both convulsed in laughter that didn’t stop until Lucy angrily shouted from the window that the desserts were being served.

Somewhere between the coffee and the first dance, in that lull that always happened at weddings when the bride and groom often disappeared to ‘freshen up’ while the dining tables were moved to make way for a dance floor, Nick put a tearful Olga in a taxi. He’d spent nearly an hour on a sofa in the reception with her begging him not to ruin her life.

‘Double whisky please,’ he asked the barman weakly on his return back to the bar. He perched on a stool alongside Leila, who too had made the transition to hard liquor. ‘What a day.’

‘Thank God it’s almost over and we can all get back to our lives.’ Leila lifted up her tumbler and clinked it against Nick’s. ‘Cheers to never hearing the phrase “but it’s my wedding” ever again. I swear I have it on repeat in my head.’

‘Why let yourself get so involved though? She’s not your sister. I managed to not get roped in.’

‘I know, I’m weak and impressionable. But I’m working on changing that. Spending a whole evening stuffing sugared almonds into tiny pieces of netting only for 200 people to pick them up and proclaim, “I don’t like almonds,” has made me realise I need to be more assertive.’

‘It would have been cool being on that table with the woman with the nut allergy. They all had Haribo sweets instead. They lucked out.’

‘Indeed they did.’

They both sat in silence, staring ahead into the mirror behind the optics. As the background lounge music turned into a very loud One Direction hit, Nick leant forward and banged his head hard on the bar three times. ‘Leila, I swear to God, if we don’t find a way to escape this hellhole in the next fifteen seconds, then this is officially the worst day of my life.’

‘Come on then.’

She led him through the maze of corridors through a door marked Staff Only, past a couple of waitresses staring at their phones, and through the spotless lino-clad kitchens. Leila ducked into her parents’ office to retrieve a key from the desk drawer and then pushed open a disabled fire exit door.

The hit of cool evening air with the lingering scent of salt water was a welcome respite from the stuffy bar and they both took long breaths in. ‘I love the sea.’ Nick’s eyes were closed, his face slightly upturned to the sky.

‘Me too. As much as I love living in London I do feel my shoulders dropping a few notches whenever I get back here.’ Leila pulled Nick to the very edge of the driveway and parted some of the thick branches of an oak tree. ‘Come and stand here, in this exact spot.’ Leila moved a foot to the left so Nick could take her place. The whole town was laid out in front of them. The panorama took in the whole of the harbour below, across to the Castle and Naval College on the other side of the town. Down on the water you could see the lights from the passenger ferry’s last journey across the river, taking tourists back to the waiting steam train. ‘Isn’t that view incredible? I’ve tried taking photos of it so many times but it never captures just how amazing it is. I’ve tried painting it too, but nothing does it justice.’

Nick smiled at Leila’s unexpected burst of sentimentality. ‘Where are you taking me now?’

‘You’ll see.’

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