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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…

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