I open my mouth to protest that it’s not quite that straighforward. That I might be single now but I’m considering being attached again soon, because Rob is lovely and gorgeous and maybe I do love him after all . . . when I stop myself.
Not least because my frontal cortex feels like it’s going to melt every time I think about this.
‘I don’t think so, Stacey,’ I say simply. ‘Listen, I’d better run. I’ve got a dinner to cook.’
‘Ooh – for anyone exciting?’
‘Well, yes, actually.’ A little too exciting if the truth be told.
Chapter 7
‘Oh – sweetie, don’t do that. Come on, darling. Angel. Ow . . . that hurts!’
Zachary is trampolining on Cally’s knee as she attempts to conduct a conversation that’s been cut short several times amid cries of: ‘Mummy! Pay me some detention!’
I spent far longer organising Zachary’s dinner tonight than my own, having sourced a recipe for Fussy Eaters’ Pasta on the internet and arranged it with carrot and cucumber crudités in the shape of a smiley face. The website in question seems certain this will impress any two-year-old. But they haven’t met Zachary.
Cally finally grapples him into a standing position and ushers him to his chair at the kitchen table, where he narrows his eyes at my culinary offering.
‘Go ahead and dish up while I go to the loo,’ Cally tells me. ‘You’ll be all right with Zachary, won’t you?’
He takes several sharp sucks of his dummy as I wonder when the two Dobermanns are going to arrive at the door.
To be absolutely fair to Zachary, he’s not the only child to elicit this increase in my anxiety levels. They all do. As a breed, I find them terrifying. I have no idea why – it’s not as if I was bitten by one in my youth. I just find children, particularly the little ones, terribly . . . unpredictable. And loud. And messy. God Almighty, they’re messy.
‘Are you hungry, Zachary?’ I can hear the strain in my voice, like there’s a fork impaled in my tonsils. ‘I hope you like this because Auntie Emma tried very hard to find something that would appeal to you.’
Even I know this is a ridiculous thing to say to a two-year-old. I deserve the resultant look of disdain he throws me before turning his gaze to the fresh, puréed sauce, the special pasta shapes and the lovingly arranged crudités. Then he looks back at me, giving nothing away. It’s like catering for A. A. Gill.
‘Tuck in!’ I add, handing him a fork. He stares at the dish, assessing it suspiciously as his lip starts to curl.
‘Is everything all right?’ I whimper, but he flings down his fork, crosses his arms, and blurts out a single, loaded word.
‘Yuck!’
‘I made friends with Abigail Daes on Facebook last night,’ Cally tells me after she’s spent an hour trying to coerce Zachary into consuming six pieces of pasta and a cucumber eyebrow, before finally skipping to the cupcakes.
He’s in the living room now, engrossed in a Bingbah DVD and probably smearing the cake on the sofa, but I’m beyond caring.
‘Wasn’t she the quiet one in 4R?’
‘Yes – glasses and a funny twitch.’
‘What’s she up to these days?’
‘Pan Asian Marketing Director for a global software company. She’s based in Singapore.’
I nearly spit out my tea.
‘I was shocked too,’ Cally says. ‘She never really had much about her, did she?’
‘Wow.’
‘You should see the pictures of her apartment on Facebook. It’s stunning. The size of a football pitch.’
I stand up, banging my head on the space-saving recess next to my back door.
‘She’d have to be work-obsessed to get to a position like that,’ I venture, placing the dishes in the sink.
‘Actually, she seems to be up to quite a lot. She’s getting married next year, to a guy that looks like Olivier Martinez. And she’s climbing Kilimanjaro in October, to raise funds for a charity she’s on the committee of. Oh, and she was voted Woman of the Year by her colleagues in April.’
I take a deep breath. ‘Please tell me she’s fat.’
‘Size eight. Tops.’
‘That’s settled, then. I hate her.’
Obviously, I’m joking. Clearly. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone their fabulous lifestyle and achievements and I have absolutely no doubt she’s had to work extremely hard to get to where she is today.
But while I’m certain I don’t feel resentful, I definitely feel something.
Something that is still lingering as I’m clearing up the devastation after Cally and Zachary have left. I go to open the freezer to put away the litre and a half of hidden vegetable pasta sauce I might get around to eating myself one day. And when I close the door, I’m confronted by something stuck to it with a magnet: the list.
I pick it up and stare at it, reading each line.
I don’t know what it is exactly that persuades me to make the decision there and then.
Maybe it’s because the countdown to turning thirty has well and truly begun. Maybe Abigail Daes and her luxury Singaporean apartment have brought out my competitive side. Or maybe it’s that picture of my mum on her thirtieth birthday, taken less than a year before she died. Since it tumbled out of my photo box, I haven’t been able shake the feeling that I should be treating every second of my life as precious – grasping every opportunity, no matter how mad or scary.
It could be all those things, or none. But once the decision is in my head, there’s no going back. So I clutch the list and head to the living room, where I fire up my laptop and type two words into Google.
Polo lessons.
Chapter 8
‘Are you serious?’ Asha splutters into her tea.
‘Actually, I am.’ I’m at her flat on Thursday after work, trying to ignore the implication that I must’ve suffered a severe blow to the head.
‘But, Em,’ she says gently, ‘how are you going to buy a cottage in Rutshire?’
‘I can do half of that one – the polo lessons. Besides, I didn’t say I’m necessarily going to do everything. There’s got to be flexibility or it’d become a full-time occupation and I’ve already got one of those. But by the time I hit thirty, I want to have achieved . . . I don’t know . . . seventy-five per cent. Enough to make the point.’
Asha’s flat is at the top of an enormous Victorian terrace off Lark Lane. It’s an Aladdin’s cave of a place, courtesy of the travelling she’s done over the years, with rugs from Turkey, batiks from Swaziland, tea caddies from Hong Kong and a dozen other far-flung places.
She examines the list and raises an eyebrow. ‘Have a one-night stand. When are you going to do that, then?’
‘That’s in the twenty-five per cent I won’t bother with. I haven’t got the bottle to even try it.’
‘But you have to jump out of a plane,’ Asha points out. ‘Remind me how many people you’ve slept with, Emma?’
I suck in my teeth and start counting on my fingers until I’ve used up both hands twice over. Then I look up. ‘Three.’
I’m no prude; at least, I don’t think so. I’ve simply never found myself in a position to have sex with someone who isn’t a long-term boyfriend. Of whom, there have been only three.
‘Surely picking and choosing things on your list destroys the object,’ Asha muses. ‘Shouldn’t it be all or nothing?’
‘Two minutes ago, you thought I was deranged to even consider this!’
She laughs. ‘Maybe I’m coming round to the idea. You could spend six months ticking things off your list, then have a party to celebrate.’
‘I’d like a thirtieth-birthday party,’ I confess. ‘I’ve never done anything before because my birthday’s so close to Christmas. I think I’m due one.’
‘Well, if you’re going to have a one-night stand, it’s Cally’s birthday night out on Saturday – that’s the ideal opportunity.’
I squirm, really wanting to drop the subject. She notices. ‘You’re s
till not sure you did the right thing with Rob, are you?’
Asha knows the story of my relationship with Rob inside out; she and I have dissected the whole thing, like a frog in a school biology class. She always has been a brilliant listener – patient and generous, never far from the end of a phone. If only that made things any clearer.
Rob and I met last year after he walked into the offices of Little Blue Bus Productions for a meeting with Perry about a fundraising dinner for Alder Hey children’s hospital.
Rob’s company is big on ‘corporate social responsibility’ so he’s often charged by his boss with generating cash for worthy causes – something he enjoys almost as much as his day job as a ‘wealth manager’. Which, as far as I can tell, means making rich people even richer by investing their money. To great effect, as I understand.
He turned up at our office at eleven thirty that day like the Diet Coke man, leaving the womenfolk of the parish so overcome with lust most of us could barely walk straight. He and I got chatting in the lobby as I was leaving to grab some lunch – then carried on as we realised we were both heading into the city centre. He asked me if I would join him for lunch and, two Pret sandwiches and a couple of lattes later, our relationship had begun.
To call Rob eye candy would do him a disservice. He’s a feast of gorgeousness – all tanned biceps, dark blond curls and a smile so dazzling it could alert passing ships to hazardous rocks.
But there’s more to him than looks. He’s sweet, charming, clever, my dad loves him and, basically, he’s as close to perfection as it’s possible for anyone who isn’t Matthew McConaughey to be. If I wrote a list of things that were right about Rob and a list of things that were wrong, there would be virtually nothing in the second column. He does own a Craig David album, but that’s a minor misdemeanour in an otherwise overwhelmingly positive list of attributes.
I miss him so badly it sometimes makes my insides ache. Which begs one almost constant question.
Why wasn’t it love?
No. Let me rephrase that . . . why wasn’t I sure it was love?
There have been so many times since we broke up that his absence has been so aching, so cold, that it must’ve been. Yet, something stopped me from saying yes when he asked those big, beautiful and destructive words back in the spring.
He’d booked us in for a couple’s spa day at a hotel in Cheshire and we’d spent many hours being massaged, pampered and steaming up the Jacuzzi well beyond its highest setting.
Afterwards, we went for a walk along the Roman Walls in Chester and paused to sit under a tree by the River Dee as the sun glittered on the water. He’d never looked more fanciable. The day had been perfect. The evening had been perfect. Then it all went wrong when he said something that turned the blood in my veins to stone.
There was a long prequel in which he declared me to be the most ‘awesome, sexy and wonderful woman’ he’d ever met. How I’d made him happier in eight months than he’d been in his life. How he’d been keeping a lid on his feelings but could do so no longer.
All the time I was thinking: God, I think he might be about to suggest something really outlandish, like going on holiday together.
As he continued talking, I’ll tell you what was going through my head: A week’s a bit long, but I’d consider three days in Rome. Or maybe Barcelona, because you can get an easyJet flight there—
‘Emma, did you hear me?’
‘Of course! Where were you thinking?’
He looked taken aback – and unnervingly happy.
‘Well, we’d have to take a look at a few venues but . . . does that mean it’s a yes?’
Then something clicked. Nobody could be that happy about the prospect of a dirty weekend, even if I promised to go on a spending spree at Agent Provocateur and take a course of pole-dancing lessons in advance.
With my heart hammering, I shoved my hands in my pockets and found a packet of mints Dad had left in my car at the weekend, feeling a sudden urge to put one in my mouth. ‘You’re not talking about going away, are you?’ I mumbled.
‘Emma, I don’t care where we do it, I only care that we do it.’
‘Do . . . what?’ I asked, praying his answer would be ‘snow-boarding’.
He sank to one knee and uttered four words that killed my blissful notion that what we had together was frivolous, thoroughly enjoyable and just a bit of fun.
‘Will you marry me?’
I nearly choked on my Fox’s Glacier mint.
Chapter 9
My bid to tackle the list gets off to a flying start.
By Saturday, the day of Cally’s thirtieth birthday, I have a polo taster lesson booked, although it’s not until the end of September. I cancelled this morning’s hair appointment so that I can ‘grow hair long’, as the list puts it, despite my awareness that aspiring to look like Daryl Hannah in Splash by December might be ambitious. And I Googled various Michelin-starred restaurants – even though, as I did so, something hit home.
Completing a list that features everything from the Northern Lights to jumping out of a plane (although I’ll need a personality transplant to go through with that one) will not be cheap.
I sit at the kitchen table with my laptop and log on to my bank, flicking onto the second account that’s been virtually untouched since it was set up when I was a little girl.
It contains five hundred and seventy-five pounds, money I’ve never considered actually spending before. You might think that’s odd. Except this was money left to me by my mum when she died – the rest of her estate was put in trust with Dad – and I’ve never really had a clue what she would’ve wanted me to do with it.
But now has to be as good a time as any to use it – even if that sum alone probably won’t be enough. Some of my aspirations are seriously expensive and going into my thirties with a bankruptcy under my belt isn’t part of the plan.
My immediate priority needs to be to cut back – even if I’m not one of life’s natural cutter-backers.
That Money Saving Expert bloke leaves me cold: if I spent all the recommended time switching energy suppliers, swapping 0% credit card deals and researching ISAs, I wouldn’t have time for full-time employment – and that’d be terrible for my finances.
Still, I hit the supermarket in the afternoon and fill my trolley with own-brand goods, trying not to think about what a £1.49 washing powder called Supasoapa might do to my skin, or the fact that the Cheddar-style cheese looks capable of removing chalk from a blackboard.
The evening’s festivities, however, don’t do a great deal for my economy drive.
Cally has decided to mark her thirtieth birthday in Alma de Cuba, a place overflowing with atmosphere, where Latin dancers whirl under Gothic chandeliers, petals are strewn from a balcony and two-hundred-year-old frescoes can be seen above enormous palm trees.
It is a fantastic evening – even if, four hours into the celebrations, something has happened to Cally. Something being two rounds of cocktails, a couple of G&Ts and an unspecified amount of rum and Coke.
‘Do you think we ought to wake her up?’ Asha asks, nodding at Cally.
Not so long ago, Cally would’ve been surrounded by admirers and batting her eyelids like she was trying to give them a blow dry.
Today, she is propped up on a bench in her chic sage-green dress, with her face slumped on the table in front of her, her mouth contorted into a concave polygon. She looks like a shooting victim in The Sopranos.
‘I don’t think she’d forgive us,’ I reply. ‘She was up at five thirty with Zachary and will welcome all the sleep she can get.’ I suddenly realise I’m slurring my words – and have hit the four-drink limit I’ve stuck to since a hideous vomiting incident at a bus stop in my first year at university. People often ask me if I find it difficult to stick to, but the memory of my guts emptying in front of an audience of commuter traffic has meant it genuinely has not been a challenge.
‘Does it count as sleep?’ Marianne asks, frowning at Cally.
‘I’m not sure she’s conscious.’
My sister is home for the weekend to retrieve some of her effects from Dad’s loft – which is why she’s out with my friends and me again. Her own circle of friends, although large, has spread far wider than mine over the years, so she’s always happy to have a drink or two with us when she’s back. Judging by how she looks tonight, I can’t deny Edinburgh life agrees with her. Her skin is luminous and the couple of pounds she’s gained since leaving London suit her.
I’m about to tell her as much when Asha’s phone rings. She takes it out of her bag, sees Toby’s number and gestures that she’s taking it outside.
‘What’s all this about a one-night stand?’ Marianne asks when we’re alone.
‘Oh . . . did they mention that?’ I mumble.
‘You’re not going through with it, I hope.’
‘I wasn’t, no.’ The truth is, I’ve thought a lot about that particular item on the list and, despite the fact that I have for the first time in my life put a Durex in my clutch bag, it isn’t going to happen. It’s just not me.
‘Good.’ Her expression is somewhere between smug and matronly.
I frown. ‘Why good?’
‘I don’t want any little sister of mine throwing herself around like the last tart in the bordello.’
Indignation rises up in me. ‘As if you’ve been an angel!’
‘I’m serious. If you’d said yes, I’d have dragged you out of here and bundled you into a taxi.’
I cross my arms. ‘Marianne, I am twenty-nine years old. If I choose to hone my fellatio skills on half the British athletics squad, that’s up to me.’
‘You’d regret it.’
‘I may or may not. That’s up to me.’
She shakes her head, prompting a reminder – a small but perfectly vivid one – of the fury she would arouse in me when we were teenagers.
‘Maybe the more I think about that one, the more I think it epitomises my failure to have done most of the things on that list,’ I continue casually, enjoying winding her up. ‘Or indeed anything on that list.’
The Wish List Page 4