by Lucy Vine
Praise for Lucy Vine
‘Laugh-out-loud funny. Truly, the Bridget Jones for our generation’ Louise O’Neill
‘One of my very favourite writers … It’s wildly funny’ Daisy Buchanan, author of How to Be a Grown-Up
‘What Fresh Hell is so brilliantly, hilarious on-point … READ IT’ Holly Bourne, author of How Do You Like Me Now?
‘So ridiculously accurate I had to take a lie down from all my genuine laughing out loud’ Laura Jane Williams, author of Becoming
‘The most relatable book I’ve read in years – funny, real, filthy, if you liked Fleabag, you’ll love this’ Heat
‘Feisty, fresh, gag-packed comedy’ Daily Mirror
‘A rom-com for a new generation. I loved it!’ Sarah Knight, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck
‘If you love dirty jokes, dating horror stories and hilarious dialogue, this book is for you’ Emma Gannon, author and podcast host of Ctrl Alt Delete
‘The funniest thing I have read in a very, very long time’ Cosmopolitan
‘The laugh-out-loud literary equivalent of Trainwreck-meets-Fleabag’ Glamour
‘Very funny and a joy to read. I adored it!’ Joanna Bolouri, author of The List
‘A laugh-out-loud comedy of errors’ Sarra Manning, Red
‘A breath of fresh air. You’re guaranteed at least one moment of total recognition per chapter’ Stylist
‘A hilarious read that singletons everywhere will relate to’ Natasha Harding, Sun
‘Brilliantly written’ Daily Mail
‘This laugh-out-loud book reminds you that you aren’t alone. A Bridget Jones for the Tinder generation’ Closer
‘A more realistic, relatable Bridget Jones for this generation … Hilarious’ Grazia
Are We Nearly There Yet?
Lucy Vine
Contents
Praise for Lucy Vine
Title Page
Prologue
Chapter 1
Los Angeles
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
Thailand
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
Australia
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
About the Author
Acknowledgements
Copyright
Prologue
AWOL.COM/Alice Edwards’ Travel Blog: Living My Dream and Feeling Very #Blessed/EDIT MODE
20 April – 2.15 p.m.
ROUGH DRAFT
NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT PRESS PUBLISH YET!!!
Welcome to my new travel blog, dream chasers,
My name is Alice Edwards and I have quit my very important and glam job and my really fulfilling life back in the UK to spend the next three or four months travelling the world. I shall be going to many exciting and unusual places like LA and Thailand. I will be out here all on my own, as I feel that is important for my spiritual journey. #Brave. I have just arrived in Los Angeles, known as the City of Dreams and it is really, really nice. The sea is blue like a gleaming sapphire and the sand is pure white and soft like creamy Country Life butter but without any of those toast crumbs in the corner.
So far, my new friends, I have only been here in this city of dreams for one day, but I can already feel the bohemian, relaxed vibe changing my very soul. I am quickly realising that American people are v tanned and v good looking. It is like the sun sees into their very being and then it shines out from deep in their hearts. I am excited to see more of these strange and foreign people, and what effect they will have on me. I will be staying briefly with my friend who is a very famous actress – I cannot name names – and we will be mingling and vibing with some very cool people like YouTubers and Instagram influencers. I have met a few already and one was wearing a top hat. V cool, I’m sure you will agree.
Goodbye for now, my new friends. I have many more adventures ahead of me, many roads to travel, many beaten paths to get off – and I will share it all with you, if you will join me. I look forward to going on this journey with you all and I shall end my very first blog post with a famous quote that I feel is very apt here:
‘A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.’ Sir Albert Einstein.
#TravelBlogger #Travels #Travelling #Wanderer #GoneAWOL #Hashtags #AliceEdwardsBlog #OffTheBeatenTrack #BloggerLife #Blessed #Brave #DreamChaser #ComingBackWithATan #ConstanceBeaumontWannabe
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One Month Earlier
What’s on your mind, Alice?
2 hrs · London · Friends only
I can’t believe it’s my last night of being twenty-nine! Wish me luck for tonight, everyone. I think this evening is going to be truly wild and MESSY.
Checked in at: The Gherkin, London
Like Comment
4 likes
Alice Edwards: No one’s reading this, right? Because Facebook is over, yes? What is the point of anything, why am I here, what am I doing?
Alice Edwards: But if Facebook is ovah and Twitter is ovah and Instagram is ovah, where am I meant to do all my attention seeking?
Alice Edwards: Why am I still asking questions when no one is listening?
Mark Edwards: Jesus Christ, Alice, commenting on your own status is a new basic bitch low, even for you.
I am thinking about sex. I mean, I’ve had two double gins, so of course I’m thinking about sex. But it is also because tomorrow I will be thirty, and therefore used up, dried up – unappealing in all the up ways – according to everything I hear from the internet. And so I am thinking about sex.
I mentally paw through my phone contacts. Who can I text? Who would be available for shagging my brains out later tonight but then also pretending to care about me afterwards?
No one.
Honestly, most people in my phonebook are there so I know not to answer when they call.
Across from me at the table, Amelia suddenly barks a happy birthday in my direction. She is a socially awkward barker, always has been. When there is a momentary silence of any kind at a gathering, she will nervously start barking things. Usually I love that about Amelia, but tonight it makes me want to claw at my own skin. To be honest, right now everything makes me want to claw at my own skin.
I laugh heartily for a second too long, clinking my drink to hers and nodding politely at the beige boyfriend beside her. I can’t remember his name, what is his name? I look around at the sea of plus ones I don’t know around me. Who are all these extra people here at my birthday? When did all my friends couple off?
I stare down at the empty plate in front of me and feel my misery crank up a notch. I suddenly feel intensely disappointed.
Dinner. Dinner? For my thirtieth birthday? A fancy dinner,
sure. A fancy dinner in a tall building, but still, dinner.
For the last ten years my friends and I have had the same messy, sticky routine for my birthday, which has gone as follows:
Disgusting pre-game shots over at mine and Eva’s South London flat with our friends Amelia, Karen, Slutty Sarah, Isabelle (when she’s in the country), my brother Mark, and his best friend, Joe, plus any other casual acquaintances I happen to have accumulated that year.
Then disgusting pink drinks at bars called, like, Strawberry Moons, or Infernos, or basically anywhere where they play appallingly cheesy nineties music (Ideally East 17 and the Honeyz).
Followed by a lie-down on the sticky floor at around 10.15 p.m.
Followed by screaming at each other because we’ve lost a member of our group – usually Eva – and then a bit of angry crying in the loos.
Followed by finding Eva asleep outside on a pile of bin bags and everyone happy crying, which – from an outsider’s perspective – is not that different from angry crying.
Followed by someone suggesting we get a kebab as the whole lot of us scream eating is cheating and then the arrival of too many Ubers because no one coordinated.
Followed by getting refused entry at a club for being too drunk.
Followed by offering to sleep with the bouncers and getting humiliatingly rejected in front of a long queue of people wearing designer clothes.
Followed by getting home en masse and binge-ordering leopard print maxi dresses from ASOS that will need returning but will never be returned.
Followed by burning sausages under the grill (kitchen fire optional).
Followed by group-passing out in my room because it is slightly bigger than Eva’s.
Followed by three hours of sleep and then hangover fear so bad that picking at the dried-out, charred sausages to block out all feelings seems like a good idea. And because there is nothing else to eat.
But now, because I am turning thirty, it has apparently been decided that I am too old for fun any more. Now we must be adults who eat food. And there aren’t even any sausage options on this menu.
So that is why I’m thinking about going to see a man about some sad comfort-sex. And come on, there must be someone.
Correction: there must be someone who is not him. Surely there is more than one option?
But there is not. There is only one person: TD.
I loathe him, I loathe him. But at least it would be easy. He will be free, he will put it in me without much fuss and then he will scratch my back afterwards. I will hate myself enormously afterwards, of course, but what other option is there? Yes, I could go on Tinder right now and find a shiny new man to do it with. That part would be easy, but, oh the effort of getting naked with someone new.
Plus, I’m feeling very insecure about my vagina after my smear test last week. I had an idea in my head – since I’d had it done once before and was obviously therefore an expert – that I would be very cool and laid back and, I don’t know, French this time round. I would casually whip off my cigarette leg trousers (v French) and be like HERE IS MY VAGINA, DO WHAT YOU WILL. But then I got into the nurse’s room and climbed up on the bed – immediately ripping the thin tissue paper with my sweaty buttocks – and was suddenly seized with panic about my socks. Like, I know you don’t wear socks for sex, but a smear test isn’t sex, is it? Don’t answer – I know that for a fact.
So, I kept them on but suddenly felt very silly. I was also very aware of my hairy legs. I was worried the nurse might be offended I’d made no effort before getting naked for her. Then she got down there with her scalpel (I know it’s not a scalpel but come on, it feels like it is a scalpel) and muttered, ‘It’s too small’.
And lads, I was momentarily DELIGHTED with my tiny vagina. My vagina, that is too small for inspection. Too small for insertion. So small it is basically sewn up! No wonder I never get any sex – it’s because men sense I am too charmingly delicate down there.
Then the nurse spoke again, tutting as she declared, ‘Yes, it’s too small, I need a bigger one. I’m not sure they do them any bigger though?’ And I realised it was not my vagina that was a tiny fragile flower, but the device. My vagina was, in fact, a giant gaping monster. A wide, pink cave that eats speculums for breakfast.
And so.
You understand.
Right now, it’s my ex-boyfriend, Twat Dan, or no one.
The waiter passes my chair and I swipe at him, catching a fistful of shirt sleeve.
‘Three more double gins just for me,’ I hiss, and when he looks appalled, I smile blankly, adding, ‘And four shots of tequila please.’
I watch him glide towards the door and I blink hard several times, hoping I can magically make Eva walk in.
Where is she? I miss her so much suddenly. She’s my best friend and my flatmate, it’s her actual job to be here first, holding flowers or something. She texted an hour ago to say she would be a little late but had ‘a big surprise’. And she used a bunch of emojis she specifically knows amuse me – the octopus will always do it for me – so I expect she’s been picking up my present. Late as ever. Late as Eva.
I kinda hope the present is a taxi away from here.
The waiter is back, and he lines up my drinks judgementally before me. Amelia barks cheers nervously across the table and I grin at her as I do the first shot. The warmth of the liquid coats my throat but the rest of me feels cold. I do another one. If I have to be thirty and if I have to be here, eating like a cheat, then I’m at least going to make sure I get really, really drunk.
‘Can I have one?’ my brother Mark asks, leaning across from his seat on my right.
‘Get your own,’ I mutter belligerently, and he raises an eyebrow as I pound my second shot.
My brain begins to swim nicely as I stare broodily at the door.
And finally, she is here. I smile widely as Eva walks in, jumping up and scraping my chair loudly across the floor.
Ooh, I’m drunker than I realised.
Eva is here! Yessss, Eva is h . . . Oh fucking what! She’s brought Jeremy. Ugh, yuck, Jeremy. Why did she need to bring him, he is awful, I hate him so much. Nobody used to bring partners for our sticky nights out, and now – look around – it’s a sea of beige boyfriends and even beiger husbands as far as the eye can see.
Eva and Jeremy have only been dating for seven months, but Eva’s, like, obsessed with him. I don’t get it, he’s so dull. I do not understand why she’s chosen him over me. She’s fully replaced me in every aspect. She’s even replaced me in her Facebook profile photo, which was, until recently, a picture of us cross-eyed drunk from our holiday to Cornwall last year. Right after that picture was taken, we decided Justin Trudeau was in the same bar as us, so we spent the whole night following him around until he told us to shag off in a very distinctive Cornish accent and we realised it probably wasn’t him. Now her profile picture is of her and Jeremy from last Halloween. I have been literally replaced.
I hate Jeremy.
‘Alice!’ Eva screams, throwing her arms around me, ‘Happy birthday!’ She hands me a gift bag and a very large helium balloon that says ‘Birthday Wanker’ on it.
OK, that is a great surprise, well worth waiting for. Things are looking up at last.
‘I missed you so much, Eva, it was rubbish here without you.’ I sigh into her coat.
‘Rude,’ Mark mutters good-naturedly beside me, but we both ignore him.
‘I’m sorry Al, I had to stop off after work to get the balloon. I brought it on the tube and these middle-aged white people glared at me the entire length of the Piccadilly Line.’ She giggles, delighted. Jeremy leans over, interrupting our moment, and I fight the urge to scowl at him.
‘Happy thirtieth, Alice, are you having fun?’ He smiles and it is such a boring smile. It’s the only way to describe it: boring. Even the adjective I choose for him m
ost is a boring one: boring. Bleugh. I nod vaguely and pick my drink up from the table, taking a large gulp. My head is starting to swim. I wave at the disapproving waiter, gesturing for him to come over.
‘Yep, loads of fun, thanks for coming, Jeremy . . .’ even though you weren’t invited, you fish-faced weasel, ‘. . . let’s get the two of you drinks.’ I pound another shot. ‘I’m already well on my way to being wasted. You’ll have to do some doubles to catch up.’
‘Hum, well, actually Al,’ Eva puts her hand on my arm and looks at Jeremy, who gives her one of those coupley supportive nods.
Fuck you Jeremy, Eva and I used to have a secret language too.
She looks back at me, and shifts the weight from one foot to the other, awkwardly. ‘Please don’t be annoyed, Al, but I’m not going to drink alcohol tonight.’
‘What!’ I say too loudly, outraged.
I catch Mark rolling his eyes beside us and Amelia barking a laugh. ‘But you have to drink,’ I say lowering my voice, but still distraught. ‘It’s my thirtieth birthday, Eva! I know that last hangover was awful and I’m not saying you should get so bad you puke on a gravestone again, but just start your sober thing from tomorrow or whatever.’
Eva pulls me away from the table and the Birthday Wanker balloon hits Jeremy in the face. I smirk as she pulls me out into the hallway.
‘Listen Al, you know I said I had a surprise?’ she says breathily.
‘I thought the balloon was my surprise?’ I say, giving the string a pleasing yank.
She laughs but it has the edge of hysteria to it. ‘No, Al, it’s . . . I can’t believe I’m saying this, but . . .’ she trails off. I shake my head, and later, when I think back to this moment, I cannot believe I was so unprepared.