All the Single Ladies
Also by Jane Costello
Bridesmaids
The Nearly-Weds
My Single Friend
Girl on the Run
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2012
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Jane Costello, 2012
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
No reproduction without permission.
® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Jane Costello to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
Simon & Schuster UK Ltd
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-0-85720-657-2
Ebook ISBN 978-0-85720-554-4
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, events or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Typeset by M Rules
Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
For Mark
Acknowledgements
It’s been five years since I signed my first book deal, an ambition to which I’d aspired for as long as I can remember.
For that reason, I’d like to extend a special thanks on the publication of All The Single Ladies to Darley Anderson and Suzanne Baboneau, the two people who agreed that deal and launched a career that’s fulfilled dreams I didn’t even dare contemplate.
Thanks also Clare Wallace and Maddie Buston at the Darley Anderson Agency, the brilliant Maxine Hitchcock, Libby Yevtushenko and Clare Hey at Simon & Schuster, and my copy editor Clare Parkinson.
Finally, a mention to my incredible friends (you know who you are), my lovely boyfriend Mark O’Hanlon, my mum and dad, and my two gorgeous children, Otis and Lucas.
Contents
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Epilogue
Chapter 1
There’s a time and a place in which to have an emotional breakdown – and the edge of a bus lane while the AA man twiddles with your spark plugs isn’t it. Sadly, the knowledge that my hysterical short breaths and raging tears are woefully misplaced does nothing to quell them.
He’s pretending not to notice, instead peering into the depths of the bonnet, preferring to risk setting his head on fire than confront a woman in my state of disquiet. He knows what’s happening, though. It’d be impossible not to. Every time the traffic on the busy dual carriageway dies down and I fail miserably to compose myself, the whine of passing cars is replaced by my frenzied snorts, which would rival those of a wild boar at the height of the mating season.
My mobile rings and I take it out of my jeans pocket and answer it. Except I can’t answer it, not with words. A whimper is as articulate as it gets.
‘Where are you, sweetheart?’ my best friend, Ellie, asks with the urgency required for the Code Red status of this crisis. ‘I expected you half an hour ago.’
I sniff, attempting to restrain the runny nose that’s chosen this moment to unleash itself. ‘My car broke down.’
‘Again? You’d be better in a horse and cart. Get a taxi. Seriously.’ This is an instruction, not a suggestion. ‘You can’t be by yourself.’
‘I’m not.’
‘Who’s with you?’
‘The AA man.’
‘Sam,’ she tuts. ‘Being the fourth emergency service doesn’t stretch to psychological support.’
The comment makes me wince. This isn’t like me at all. I am unflappable in a crisis; I keep my head when those around me lose theirs. I’m a person who sees solutions, not problems, who’s unfazed by unpredictability and immune to near-catastrophe. Not that you’d know it to look at me. My composure remains as intact as my mascara and, as the charcoal mess on my cheeks indicates, that’s . . . not at all.
‘Nearly done,’ says Mr AA, momentarily popping up his head, before dipping it again fast enough to absolve me of the need to respond.
‘He’s nearly done,’ I inform Ellie numbly.
‘Good,’ she replies. ‘Though if “nearly” means ten minutes then fine. Any longer and you must get a taxi.’
In fact, it’s less than ten minutes – and would probably be even less than that if the AA man didn’t obviously have to wait for a pause in my weeping before conversing with me.
‘That should be fine for you now,’ he says, wiping his hands with a rag and refusing to make eye contact. I’d guess he’s in his fifties, though he could be older, with hair that was once ginger but has aged to blond.
He looks solid and dependable, the sort of man who, after his shift, will have a single beer while he watches a repeat of Midsomer Murders, then pull on his M&S pyjamas and slip into bed in the hope that Mrs AA hasn’t got a headache.
I feel a swell of admiration for this man whose low-octane existence is quite enough for him, who sees the uncomplicated pleasures of suburban living as the source of nothing but happiness.
‘I’ve done enough to tide you over, but you need to get this car to a garage in the next couple of days,’ he says, before reeling off a list of problems that sounds like the index in a Haynes manual.
‘Thank you,’ I mutter, instantly forgetting everything he’s said.
‘Sign here.’ He hands me a clipboard and I’m halfway through my signature when emotion hits me again in another thrashing wave. As the sting of tears bites my cheeks, the AA man shifts uncomfortably.
‘Are you okay, love?’ he asks gently.
The blindingly obvious fact that I’m not okay doesn’t matter. There’s a part of me that’s glad he’s asked, because I want to explain. About the fact I’m not some emotional jellyfish who regularly contemplates throwing herself off a cliff. About this behaviour being unheard of – for me. About my world having been turned upside down so violently I feel dizzy. But, most of all, I want to explain about Jamie. Only, I’m not in such a state that I don’t recognize a man who wouldn’t appreciate a conversation of that nature.
‘I’ve been dumped,’ I say simply, feeling immediately exposed by publicizing this infinitely personal matter.
‘Ah,’ he replies sympathetically. ‘I don’t know what to say. It happens to the best of us.’
He hands me the keys and his mobile rings. I head to the car as he begins discussing an instruction to pick up some margarine on the way home. ‘Yes, sweetheart, the slimming stuff – I know.’
He’s keen to get off the phone – she’s obviously one of life’s talkers – but the fondness in his voice is unmistakable. As he ends the call, I ponder why it is that some men spend years with a woman – existing in a state in which a lack of drama and excitement is more than compensated for by quiet contentment – while others can’t last the distance. Others need more than just contentment.
‘Your wife?’ I ask, as he puts away his phone.
‘Boyfriend,’ he corrects me and heads to his van.
I slide into the car and throw my handbag on the passenger seat, where it joins a handful of letters I picked up yesterday on my way out. I gaze at the one on top: my welcome pack after sponsoring a child in Eastern Europe. I pick it up and it strikes me how, twenty-four hours ago, when I first looked at this simple, pedestrian thing – an envelope – my life was completely different.
Now, for the first time in six years, I’m alone.
And it’s the worst feeling in the world.
Chapter 2
I arrive at Ellie’s house shortly afterwards and she opens the door with the sort of expression you’d use to gaze upon a tortured kitten. She lives in Woolton, a couple of miles from me in south Liverpool.
‘Oh don’t,’ I groan.
Not that I’m surprised at her reaction; I could barely bring myself to glance in my car mirror on the way here.
Despite last week’s cut, my long, dark bob, which usually has a passable amount of va-va-voom, is scraped into such a haphazard ponytail that it’d shame a Blackpool donkey.
My skin, usually the tans-easily kind, has developed a pallor comparable to that of someone recovering from the Black Death; it’s a fetching shade of grey offset by red neck blotches that appeared at the start of my weeping marathon at six o’clock this evening.
And despite the fact that I’ve been on a health kick for the last six years (in which I’ve counted an infinite number of calories and plummeted from a size twelve to a . . . erm, size twelve), my jeans already feel baggy and shapeless as if just a hint of the now-inevitable Heartbreak Diet has shrunk me.
‘Don’t what?’ She pushes her glasses up her nose.
‘Look at me like that. With such . . . morbid pity.’
She frowns. It’s an expression you’ll rarely see on Ellie because she’s permanently in a good mood. At five foot three, my best friend is four inches shorter than me and has porcelain skin, full lips and a pretty-geek look that – despite being twenty-eight, the same age as me – means she still has the air of the girl everyone fancied in chess club. She also has the best hair in the world, bar none. I cannot describe how much I covet Ellie’s hair. It’s long, mahogany-coloured and so lustrous and glossy that the first words out of her mouth every morning could reasonably be: ‘Because I’m worth it.’
She teaches English Literature in one of the roughest comprehensive schools in the city, a job which requires her to be one tough cookie and no mistake. Although I’m pretty sure that it’s her permanently upbeat disposition that wins them over, rather than the karate skills she honed on a six-week course in 2006 and has since used precisely never.
‘What else do you expect, gorgeous?’ she says softly. ‘I’m hardly going to congratulate you on the wonderful evening you’ve had.’
The fact that Ellie can still call me ‘gorgeous’ when I look as attractive as road kill is yet another reflection of my best friend’s generous personality. I press my back against the wall and feel my face crumple, without having any control over the matter. ‘I’ve turned into a crying machine. I hate that.’
She shakes her head and opens her arms wide, wrapping them round my shoulders and pulling me in. ‘Stop being silly. And cry. That’s what you’re supposed to do.’ I bury my head in her hair and breathe in the full force of her Herbal Essences.
‘Tell that to the AA man,’ I manage. ‘I don’t think he was counting on Gwyneth Paltrow’s acceptance speech when he came to look under my bonnet.’
She snorts with laughter, but I know it’s the last coherent sentence she’ll get out of me for a while, as a twist in my stomach prompts another violent wave of tears.
We make it into Ellie’s living room, where she sits me down on one of her sofas, the big one she’s had since we were students, with huge, squashy seats and gaudy, mismatched scatter cushions.
I don’t know how Ellie’s house manages to look stylish when it’s full of such unapologetically eccentric stuff. The stripped floors and ceiling-high bookshelves help, but she and Alistair – her boyfriend – wilfully turn their noses up at anything trendy and opt simply for what they like.
The result, thanks to the weird trinkets from the Gambia, the Queen of Hearts door knobs and the debris of toys courtesy of her two-year-old, Sophie, is a home that has their individual stamp on it, and no mistake. It’s lovely.
She disappears from the room to get some wine and I find myself gazing at the screensaver on my phone – a photo of Jamie and me in Abersoch last year. It isn’t a great shot of me, in all honesty. My bright green eyes, which can be one of my best features, look nearly grey in the sallow light and the wide smile I’m often complimented on just looks wonky. But I still love the photo. I love the way Jamie’s squeezing my shoulders, the way he’s gazing at me proudly as if telling the world: ‘She’s mine.’
Ellie returns with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc and a glass for me. She tops up her half-empty glass and pours another so full to the top I almost spill it as I lift it to my lips.
‘Start from the beginning,’ she instructs, tucking a maroon-legginged limb under her backside as she sits on the sofa opposite. ‘What did he say? And what did you say? And when did he leave? And how did he leave?’
I take a deep breath and my lip wobbles. Recounting how the love of your life has left you isn’t easy, no matter whom you’re telling.
‘We were supposed to be having a romantic dinner tonight,’ I reply, hearing the tremor in my voice. ‘I had it all planned. I was making chicken cacciatore.’
‘Nice choice.’
‘I couldn’t tell you,’ I shrug. ‘It was never eaten.’
I take a mouthful of wine. ‘When he came in he had a funny look on his face. Nothing over the top. Nothing that gave me a clue as to what he was about to say. He looked like he’d had a bad day, that’s all. You know what men are like when they’ve had a bad day.’
‘A bear with haemorrhoids,’ Ellie nods.
‘I just assumed he’d had a bollocking from the boss, or failed to hit his monthly targets or there’d been a
n unpleasant customer in the shop or . . .’ My voice drifts away, bereft of steam.
‘When did it become clear something was really wrong?’ Ellie asks.
‘He said nothing at first. I walked around babbling about the tennis event we’re organizing and what Natasha Munn in accounts did today and . . . I didn’t see it coming.’
She bites her lip.
‘Then I realized he hadn’t said anything for ages. So I asked if everything was all right. And as he started speaking . . . I wasn’t taking in what he was saying. All I could hear were words going round the room and . . . urgh!’ The memory makes me shudder.
‘What words? What did he say?’
‘That he loves me more than anything. That it would kill him to be apart from me. That he’d do anything for me and I’m everything he could ever want in a woman.’
She scrunches up her nose. ‘Are you sure you’ve been dumped?’
‘He added that sometimes he thinks he’d rather die than be without me.’
‘Wow. I mean . . . what? I don’t get it.’
‘Me neither. Well . . . except I do.’
‘I’m lost,’ she continues, shaking her head. ‘How can he think all that and then split up with you?’
I frown, and for some unfathomable reason feel the need not just to explain, but to defend his position. ‘Because of what I’ve known about Jamie since the first day we met.’
‘What’s that?’
‘He’s a free spirit. He doesn’t want what I want. He doesn’t want the marriage, the kids, the Victorian terrace with sash windows and hanging baskets. He might want me . . . but he doesn’t want that.’
She closes her eyes at this moment of clarity – one that makes perfect sense to both of us, horrific as its consequences are.
‘But you’ve never been one of those women obsessed with marriage and kids and all that stuff,’ she argues. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard you mention it . . . not to him, anyway. Clearly, what goes on between you and the girls on a Friday night is another matter. Besides, you’re perfect for each other. I’ve never met a couple so made for each other. You sparkle together. I know that. Everyone else knows that. It even sounds like Jamie knows that.’
‘Well, it hardly matters,’ I sniff. ‘I’ve little choice on this issue.’