All the Single Ladies

by Jane Costello

  ‘Well, the list’s a work in progress,’ I say, attempting to placate her, at least until I’m feeling my usual efficient self again – which I sincerely hope will be soon. ‘I’ll review it this afternoon and add some more, erm, brand-appropriate names.’ I hate that term with all its contrived David-Brentness. The clients are universally orgasmic when you use it, though, and who am I to argue? ‘Plus, if you feel Coleen is central, you have my word that we’ll do our best. We have good contacts with her people and I’m confident that the celebrity turnout will be second to none. But bear in mind that the bigger the name, the less likely they’ll commit until closer to the time. They see what’s on their schedules and—’

  ‘Listen, luvvie,’ she snaps with a voice that makes my root canals tremor. ‘Don’t give me that crap. Have I told you Kevin S. Chasen might be coming?’

  Kevin S. Chasen, by the way, is God. In fact, he’s more important than God as far as Lorelei’s concerned because he is the CEO of Teen SOS (whose name is the result of a relatively recent rebranding of the charity that one hundred years ago was simply called Buffets).

  Despite the high-profile job, he’s a shadowy figure, keeping himself relatively out of the public eye; when I Googled him I discovered only two blurry pictures taken several years ago.

  The fact that he may grace an event Lorelei has commissioned is a prospect that’s got her knickers in such a twist it’s a surprise she can walk properly.

  ‘If Kevin S. Chasen is there this event has got to be show-stoppingly brilliant and nothing less. So don’t feed me any crap. Because I’ve been around the block enough to know when I’m being fed crap and this is such blatant crap I can virtually smell it.’

  I take another deep breath. ‘Ms Beer—’

  ‘Lorelei, my gorgeous,’ she corrects me. ‘We agreed to dispense with all that surname crap.’

  ‘Lorelei. All I can say is that everything is in hand—’

  ‘Soz, luvvie – another call’s coming through. Just sort it for me, won’t you?’

  She slams down the phone and I’m left gazing at the handset.

  I look at my to-do list and add to it a review of Lorelei’s invitees. My to-do list now runs to six pages. Any more and I could wallpaper my downstairs toilet. Under normal circumstances, I’d whizz through it, picking off tasks and doing my best to demolish them. However, my brain feels as though it’s made of butternut squash soup this morning. And I hate it.

  I look around the office; the place is quietly buzzing. The BJD team occupies one floor of a large, overly expensive building that we share with several other companies. The fact that my bosses pay over the odds for impressive views and top-of-the-range furniture is a reflection of how important image is to them. It does, however, mean that we have to work very hard at keeping our team as profitable as it is. Which can be a challenge given some of the staff members I inherited, as anyone who’s come across Natalie and Deana would testify.

  Natalie and Deana work here, but only in the technical rather than the literal sense. They turn up (usually). They remain in the office for eight hours (if you’re lucky). They leave (hastily). And they get paid for all of this. Whether this constitutes work is a moot point, particularly since they rarely engage in activity even vaguely beneficial to their employer.

  ‘I asked Ged for flowers the other day,’ announces Natalie, our Administrator, pausing briefly from reading her Take a Break. Both she and Deana are about the same age as me, but that’s where the similarities start and end. ‘He started banging on about it being the twenty-first century and it should be me bringing him flowers. I said to him: “If you’re such a sodding feminist, get your Marigolds on and scrub that bog for a change.” That shut him up.’

  Deana, our Junior Events Coordinator, pouts. ‘You’d think it was hard, wouldn’t you?’ Her distinctive, high-pitched whine is comparable to that of a metalwork drill. ‘That bloke I went out with from Plentyoffish.com was like that. He wanted me to pay all the time. Talk about taking the piss! Hey, have you seen Katie Price’s new extensions? Gorrrrgeous!’

  Deana and Natalie have but two topics of conversation: celebrities and men. The latter, as a breed, are considered to be a bunch of useless reprobates but still provide endless opportunities for analysis and discussion.

  I turn to my laptop and focus on my inbox but the screen makes my eyes hurt. It was gone three o’clock before Ellie and I retired to bed last night. And, unlike my friend, who seems able to function no matter how late a night she’s had, I’m wrecked – emotionally and physically.

  ‘You look pale, Sam,’ says Deana, in between her stream of abuse about the Plentyoffish.com man.

  I look up, taken aback. I must look bad for Deana to have noticed. Under normal circumstances it’d take a tidal wave to tear her away from Closer. Natalie leans in and narrows her eyes in the same way she does when she’s examining her blackheads at her desk. ‘Ooh, yes, you are . . . Are you coming down with something?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I reply through a forced smile. ‘A lot to do, that’s all. Any chance you could do some of that photocopying I gave you, Natalie?’

  She stiffens. ‘Piers said I didn’t have to do as much of that sort of stuff any more.’

  I frown, but can’t be bothered arguing. Not today.

  Piers is my boss. And, despite the fact that Deana and Natalie are actually in contact with him for about one and a half hours per year, he insists that they, along with everyone else in this office, report directly to him. I strongly suspect that the reason for this insane state of affairs is his appreciation of the length of their skirts – and the fact that he’s such a power-crazed oligarch he’d feel at home running North Korea. But my attempts to address the issue continually fall on deaf ears.

  ‘Fine.’ I shrug, and she frowns suspiciously. They continue with their conversation as I sit, staring numbly at my laptop. I log on to my Hotmail account, reopening the draft of the only email I’ve written all day.

  Jamie,

  I’ve got a million things I want to say, so many things that putting them all down here is impossible.

  I pause for a second, rereading the sentence. Impossible? Really, Sam? Have you ever really been the sort of woman who struggles to express her feelings?

  The message I proceed to write to Jamie is of such length and eloquence Tolstoy couldn’t match it. It dissects our relationship in meticulous detail: where it went right, where it went wrong. What we could have done differently. What we should have done differently.

  But there’s one overriding message: we should try again.

  The psychoanalysis I put into practice so thoroughly cathartic that, before I know it, two and a half hours have passed and the email runs to 5,389 words. I end with one sentence, from the heart.

  I love you and I will always love you. I will change, I promise. So don’t go. I beg of you. Please.

  Love,

  Sam

  xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

  With tears pricking my eyes, I hit the send button, feeling a rush of emotion – and a swell of positivity.

  This is going to work. I know it.

  Chapter 6

  After ten minutes, I’ve heard nothing, at least nothing from Jamie; there have been just several calls from my mum, which I deliberately miss.

  After thirty minutes, the situation is unchanged.

  And when I look at my clock and realize it’s been an hour, panic sets in. So I send him a text asking if he’s checked his emails – and follow it up with an email asking if he’s checked the earlier one. I leave a message on his answer machine – both at home and on his mobile.

  The response amounts to nothing except three torturous hours, during which my stomach churns as if it’s attempting to make butter out of the five cups of coffee I’ve thrown down my neck.

  Meanwhile, my to-do list experiences a growth spurt of explosive proportions. There are phone calls, messages and a million people to chase up. But I’m incapable of doing any
thing productive.

  Each time I try to respond to an email or pick up the phone, my mind is yanked violently back to a replay of yesterday evening. To things I should have said or done. I turn to my laptop and open the email in my sent box, cringing as I reread sentences that could be misinterpreted, words that aren’t quite right. Bits I wanted to say but have somehow missed out.

  I whip myself into a fireball of nervous energy. I’m convinced that the email I’d thought was brilliant only hours ago is nothing less than a disaster.

  There’s only one thing for it: to email him again. I start composing another tome – not quite as long; in fact, it’s relatively succinct at 3,876 words.

  Throughout all this, all I can hear is the buzz of Natalie and Deana’s conversation about how the former’s sister-in-law’s second cousin is about to feature on Jeremy Kyle, and how the latter once got caught in a thunderstorm after a spray tan – resulting in her attendance at a wedding looking like she had scabies.

  Once I’ve sent the third email, I stand up to go to the toilet and am five steps from my desk when my phone beeps with a text message. The movement I employ to reach it starts off with a spectacular Jackie Chan-style flip, progresses to a Matrix-style dive and ends with a near impaling on a jar of blunt pencils. I juggle the phone with trembling hands, scanning the message as fast as my eyes allow.

  Hey – been mad busy in the shop today. Just got your emails. I think we need to talk.

  Jamie’s staying with Luke, who’s been his friend since primary school, despite the fact that they appear to have as much in common as Meatloaf and Jane Asher.

  Consumed by nerves, I walk up the path of Luke’s terrace cottage in Rose Brae, passing an array of lovingly tended hanging baskets, which are spilling over with begonias and ivy. The cul-de-sac is quaint and quiet, within spitting distance of Allerton Road with its trendy bars and their attractive clientele – a factor which, I have no doubt, swung Luke’s decision to buy the house.

  I ring the bell with a thrashing heart, and when Jamie answers I experience a weird and fleeting sensation in which I’ve forgotten that we’re no longer together. I gaze into those pale blue eyes and it feels exactly as it has done for six years. Until last night.

  ‘Hi,’ he says softly, looking unhappier than I’ve ever seen him.

  ‘Hi,’ I reply in a strangled voice.

  We stand a foot apart yet it feels like a mile. All I want to do is reach out and touch him – except I know I can’t. I shift awkwardly, hyper-aware of my shallow breaths.

  He coughs, breaking the silence. ‘Come in.’

  The first thing that strikes me every time I enter Luke’s house is that it must be the most fabulous abode ever to be inhabited by a straight man. It’s all gorgeous wallpapers, Jo Malone candles and exquisitely coordinated soft furnishings.

  All, however, is not what it seems. I’ve known Luke long enough to know that his cupboards boast a porn stash that could single-handedly fund one of Hugh Hefner’s yachts; plus, he recently turned his spare room into a gym, where he spends hours inflating the muscles he tells women he was simply born with.

  And women there are – because Luke is not just straight, he’s unstoppable. On Facebook, he has 876 friends (and counting), 710 of whom have two X chromosomes. He is a project manager for a construction company but goes out with women from all walks of life: barristers, hairdressers, doctors, air hostesses. They have one thing in common; they throw themselves at him as if he’s the last man in the northern hemisphere.

  I sit on the edge of a lilac velvet sofa and expect Jamie to head to the armchair on the other side of the coffee table. Instead, he sinks next to me, so close that the familiar smell of his clean skin whispers into my lungs and makes me faint with longing.

  ‘I read your emails,’ he says.

  ‘Did what I said make sense?’ I ask anxiously.

  He nods. ‘It did.’ Although he’s agreeing with me – technically – I can’t read his expression. ‘You’re right . . . in so many ways.’

  I hold my breath, waiting for an explanation. It isn’t forthcoming. ‘Which ways?’

  He sighs. ‘About me waving goodbye to the best relationship I’ve ever had. About you being the only woman I’ve loved. About you being my best friend. About me . . .’ His voice breaks up again. ‘About me still being in love with you.’

  As the last words fire through my head, I feel the stab of tears in my eyes. ‘Are you still in love with me?’

  With his elbows on his knees, he puts his head in his hands and lets out a quiet sob. Jamie’s never been afraid to show his emotional side. He’s regularly in floods at some of the obscure foreign films he has on DVD (although he insisted he was just getting a cold when I put on Marley and Me).

  But when he lifts up his head and looks at me directly, even I’m not prepared for how devastated he looks. Fat tears cascade down his cheeks as he reaches out and grips my fingers. ‘You know I am.’

  The sentence brings a swell of emotion in me too. But the tears soaking my cheeks don’t just represent my hollow sadness. They represent something else. Frustration.

  ‘You say that, Jamie, but how can you love me?’ I sniff. ‘How could you leave me if you loved me?’ I’m trying to keep my voice level but it’s impossible not to betray my exasperation.

  He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know. I’m confused. I’ve been confused for such a long time. My feelings about you, Sam, are the only things that have remained clear. I love you. But I’ve been living a lie for the last six years.’

  My eyes widen. The last time I heard something like that was on Jerry Springer and it was the prelude to a confession involving exotic mail-order underwear and a penis transplant.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean . . . that,’ he says, as his eyes dart in disgust to a stack of foolscap folders on the coffee table. ‘I mean . . . this,’ he adds, angrily pulling off his tie. ‘I mean being a salesman for a bloody mobile-phone company, Sam.’

  I bite my lip and sniff back my tears. ‘I thought you’d started enjoying work a bit more,’ I try, but I know this conversation is futile. I’m talking to a man who reads Kafka in his spare time and who learned to catch fish with a spear in the Cook Islands. Despite any enjoyment he’s had with me, and despite all the fun during his stints as a guitarist in various bands over the last few years, his job is a long way from his definition of mentally stimulating.

  Ironically, Jamie’s very good at his job. This is a situation with which he feels distinctly uncomfortable. They’ve repeatedly tried to promote him, but he’s refused, turning his back on the increased responsibility and pay rise, presumably because it would involve admitting that this was his career. That’s a prospect about as appealing to him as genital warts.

  ‘Then how about I put a proposition to you?’ I begin firmly, with a racing heart. I have an overwhelming sense of what I’ve got to do, and say, to secure my future happiness. He looks up.

  ‘How about we both give up our jobs and I come with you?’

  For the past twenty-four hours I’ve thought over and over again about saying this sentence, yet I surprise even myself when I actually go through with it.

  The truth is that I thought I’d done all the backpacking I ever wanted. I thought what I now wanted was some roots: a house, a career, my friends and family. Plus, while I’ve never allowed myself to even think about marriage and kids, deep down I know that that’s only because I’ve never dared.

  Now, though, all those things are irrelevant compared with the one, overriding thing that I want. Jamie. If I have to give up everything else for him, I’m prepared to do it. My lips tremble as I await his response. It isn’t the one I’d imagined.

  ‘Sam,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Every part of me wants to say: let’s do it. But I can’t. And I can’t for the best of reasons.’

  I frown. ‘What reasons?’

  ‘Because you’d be doing it for me and not because it’s what you really want.
You want the house, the career . . . your friends and family. You want to drink cocktails and go shopping.’

  I sit back, stung by the implication that I’d prioritize such shallow luxuries.

  ‘And why the hell shouldn’t you?’ he continues hastily. ‘Not everyone wants to live in South America. In the jungle. With no running water or shops or insect repellent.’

  I pretend I haven’t heard that last bit. ‘I . . . might,’ I reply weakly.

  ‘You don’t,’ he whispers, pulling me towards him, burying his wet face in my hair. It’s the saddest embrace I’ve ever known.

  Chapter 7

  Returning home for the first time after the upheaval of last night is the emptiest experience of my life.

  The Victorian terrace house Jamie and I have shared for three years is one I’ve spent endless amounts of time and energy getting right. Despite the expensively restored fireplace, lovingly sourced flooring and the Moroccan rug I almost broke my back carrying home (admittedly from Ikea, as opposed to Morocco), the rooms aren’t welcoming tonight.

  The house is in my name, but we always considered it as much Jamie’s home as mine. And, while most of the decor was chosen by me, it was with both of our tastes in mind. There’s only one thing that Jamie actively didn’t like and that’s the huge pop-art print of New York’s Times Square on the living-room wall.

  It was the source of some debate over the years. Jamie thought it was naff, a gaudy image too ubiquitous in home-furnishing departments.

  But he never loved New York like I did. I’ve visited four times and have never been disappointed. It has held an endless fascination for me since I first watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s as a teenager.

  Besides, this is different from other Manhattan prints I’ve seen; its vivid colours against the black of night make me feel alive; it is a reminder of a place that makes the blood in my veins buzz as soon as I step off the plane.