All the Single Ladies

by Jane Costello

  ‘Oh but you should! You never know what might happen,’ she insists.

  ‘I haven’t been very inspired by the others,’ I tell her.

  ‘Maybe you’re not looking hard enough. Come on, let’s log on again.’

  It turns out my inbox is straining under the weight of unread emails and ‘winks’, most of which come either from Saudi Arabia or from people who look like they spend their spare time organizing hamster-baiting rings.

  Reluctantly, I open the first email. It’s from somebody called CaringGent4U. He’s five foot five, fifty-one and has no picture, which, frankly, is the best thing about his profile.

  Hello there! I was struck by such an attractive woman as you undoubtedly and undeniably are. I imagine you have been deluged with mail off of admirers on this website! You sound quite an intriueging lady, a very intriueging lady in fact – with a ‘playful’ and ‘light’ attitude to life if I may be so bold! As for me, if you give me your email address I will send you some photographs, though they don’t do me justice as I am constantly being told what a handsome and charming gentleman I am in the flesh! I am also very, very intelligent and have refurbished my home to a high standard! In summary, I am an impressive man and we would be a very good match. I am currently in waiting for my boiler to be serviced so it would be a pleasure to hear from you!

  I groan and open the next one, from someone called MrLoveRocket.

  Hey bbe – wanna chat?

  ‘That is the most depressing thing I’ve ever read,’ I mutter.

  Jen sniggers.

  ‘Why are you so upbeat?’ I ask suspiciously. ‘I didn’t think you were seeing anybody.’

  She takes a deep breath. ‘I wasn’t. I’m not. But I . . . I fancy somebody. It’s almost as enjoyable.’

  My eyes widen. ‘And?’

  ‘He’s a doctor who’s just started in our paediatrics department. He’s thirty-seven and has eyes to die for and a bum to die for and—’

  ‘Muscles?’ I venture.

  She pauses and looks into the middle distance. ‘Actually –’ she frowns – ‘I’m not sure he has got muscles.’ She shakes her head. ‘The point is that he’s lovely. And we’ve been for coffee. And he’s asked for my number.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And it’s absolutely bloody well killing me not texting him to ask him out!’ she screams.

  I sit back in shock. ‘Why haven’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been reading Ellie’s book,’ she says earnestly.

  ‘Ah . . . the dating book.’

  ‘It’s called Make Him Fall for You.’ Not quite the title Ellie had remembered. ‘It says that asking a guy out, or even texting, or in any way coming on strong, is against the rules. Which I hate. I can’t even tell you how much I hate it. But . . . well, he does seem interested.’

  Under normal circumstances I’d argue that that was outdated nonsense, but this is Jen we’re talking about. She needs all the encouragement I can give to follow this strategy.

  ‘Well, good girl,’ I reply, standing up. ‘Do you want another cup of tea? Stay for dinner, if you like.’

  ‘No . . . I’d better be off. I swore I’d go to the gym tonight. Thanks, anyway.’

  As I see her out and shut the front door, I notice Ben’s scarf hanging next to my coat. I hadn’t realized he’d even left it. I pick it up and hold it to my nose as my mind floods with an image of him kissing me that sends heat rushing through my body. I think of his face in the supermarket and how angry and hurt he looked. When I think of how hurt he looked it makes me feel sick. He showed me nothing but kindness and affection and how did I repay him? Urgh!

  I take a deep breath and snuggle my cheek next to his scarf, breathing in his smell. Then I close my eyes, noticing as I do how hot and sore they suddenly feel.

  Chapter 56

  Julia phones a few days later to invite me to lunch with her and Gary at the weekend. I tell her I’d have loved to, but I have to work so can’t make it.

  ‘Anyway, wouldn’t you like to spend time with him on your own?’ I ask.

  ‘Well . . . I sort of . . . have,’ she confesses. ‘He’s been over a few times. It’s been fascinating. Lovely, actually.’

  ‘Things are obviously going well, then?’

  ‘They are,’ she says, almost surprising herself. ‘He’s a fantastic person. And I was totally right about the fact that knowing him doesn’t change how I feel towards Mum and Dad.’

  ‘I never thought it would. Though I’m not sure Mum’s convinced yet. Not that she’s mentioned it lately.’

  ‘No,’ she says solemnly. ‘She’s said nothing to me either. And I must admit I’m avoiding the issue.’

  I sigh. ‘I don’t think you can, Julia.’

  ‘I know. The thing is, the more I see Gary, the more intrigued I am about my birth mother.’

  ‘What’s he told you about her?’

  ‘Not much. He’s mysterious. The only thing I have worked out is that she lives in Wales. Or has some sort of Welsh connection – I’m not sure which. Anyway, knowing so little is difficult to deal with because he’s been so open about himself. God knows what he’s hiding,’ she laughs.

  ‘Do you think he’s hiding something?’ I ask.

  ‘He’s respecting the wishes of my mother, that’s all,’ she says. ‘As he said, meeting me has to be her decision, not his – or even mine. It’s bloody frustrating, though, like an unsolved mystery. The idea that I may never know who my own flesh and blood is . . . Well, it’s suddenly become difficult to deal with.’

  ‘It never bothered you before,’ I point out.

  ‘I know!’ she replies, then hesitates. ‘Which is why I’m not sure I’ve done the right thing.’

  I frown. ‘What have you done?’

  ‘Written to her – via Gary,’ she says quietly. ‘He knows where she lives and has agreed to forward my letter to her. I’ve told her I’d like to meet her.’

  ‘Oh Julia,’ is all I can say.

  ‘Do you think I’ve done the wrong thing?’

  ‘I just worry that you’ll be hurt if she doesn’t write back.’ She doesn’t answer. ‘You will, won’t you? Be hurt, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know, Sam,’ she replies. ‘I really don’t know.’

  Jamie’s flight remains booked. Our bed is inhabited by me and me alone. We’re not back together – nothing like it. Yet his texts and emails since the supermarket incident mean that giving up on him isn’t an option. Not when there are still weeks in which to change his mind. But I’m running out of ideas about how to do it.

  It doesn’t help that Ellie – my mentor at the beginning – hasn’t been encouraging of late. She keeps saying that Jamie should have acted by now. As if I didn’t want him to!

  I know she has my best interests at heart and is trying to prepare me for the worst. But I don’t want to prepare myself for the worst. Plus, she hasn’t seen at first hand how torn he is about this. She hasn’t read his emails. She didn’t see the envy in his eyes in Tesco. With time and encouragement, there’s still hope. There has to be. And I think Ellie’s distracted by work a lot lately. She’s finding both the workload, and some of her students, difficult to deal with this year. At least, that’s what she says whenever I phone shortly after home time and she’s already cracked into what I know is the first of way too many glasses of wine.

  One person who hasn’t lost her enthusiasm for a reconciliation is Lisa. She texts me on Wednesday to ask me to pop over for a cup of tea and, as I’m passing on the way back from a meeting, I decide to stop off.

  When I arrive at the house, it’s quieter than usual, as three-fifths of the children are at school and the baby is asleep upstairs. Nevertheless, I enter the living room and Elvis hurtles towards me.

  ‘Auntie Sam! Come and look at Timberlake!’ he says, tugging my jeans.

  ‘Your guinea pig?’ I reply, a chill running down my spine. I’m terrified of rodents. I know that technically this isn’t one, but it’s got four legs,
fur, and is small enough to crawl up a trouser leg, all of which makes it close enough in my book.

  ‘Cuppa?’ shouts Lisa from the kitchen.

  ‘Please! Right. Timberlake. Where is he?’ I say, putting on a brave face.

  ‘Here!’ Elvis declares, opening up a box that once contained a pair of size eleven Reeboks and removing the creature. I instinctively sit back, trying to look unfazed.

  Despite the distance I put between me and Timberlake, however, I notice immediately that something isn’t right.

  ‘Is he . . . okay?’ I ask tentatively.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he grins, stroking the animal. ‘He doesn’t mind.’

  ‘Mind what?’

  ‘Being dead.’

  I draw a breath but feign calmness. ‘Timberlake is dead?’

  ‘Yes. Do you want to give him a cuddle?’ He thrusts the decomposing corpse of his beloved pet in front of my nose and I jerk back so fast I bang my head on the wall.

  ‘I’ll pass, sweetheart. Are you sure you’re meant to be holding him?’

  ‘I’m just giving him a hug.’ He rubs his cheek against the fur and looks up, sensing my unease. ‘He was more fun when he wasn’t dead,’ he tells me.

  Lisa walks through the door. ‘Oh yes . . . poor Timberlake. He went this morning. I thought we’d let him lie in state in the shoebox under the telly till Dave gets home. He’s nipping out in his lunch hour to give him a proper funeral. Oh put him back now, Elvis, won’t you, love? He’s as stiff as a board. And wash your hands before you have any more of them Wotsits. Now,’ she says, turning to me. ‘How are things with Jamie?’

  I take a deep breath and glance at Elvis. He is filling the guinea pig’s coffin with a variety of items to see him through to the afterlife – namely, three pieces of Lego and a Dairylea cheese string.

  ‘Oh . . . I don’t know, Lisa,’ I say wearily.

  She narrows her eyes as the front door slams and Dave walks in. He’s three years older than Lisa but, despite the thinning hair, he looks younger. He’s got one of those baby faces you suspect will remain unmarked by time, even when he’s collecting his pension.

  ‘What’s all this about a dead guinea pig? What have you been feeding it? Curry and chips?’

  Elvis rushes over and leaps into his father’s arms. ‘Have you got any Polos, Dad?’

  ‘There – just for you,’ he replies, and Elvis gratefully takes a small handful and places them lovingly in Timberlake’s tiny paws.

  ‘Hi, Sam,’ says Dave. ‘How’re things?’

  ‘Fine, thanks,’ I smile.

  ‘Apart from my idiot brother, obviously,’ Lisa interjects. ‘He’ll see the light soon – don’t worry.’

  I take a sip of tea. ‘I’m starting to worry that nothing can be done about this situation,’ I tell her. As the words spill from my mouth, I suddenly don’t know whether I’m saying this for reassurance or because I believe it. ‘I mean, why am I bothering with this? Jamie can’t love me that much, otherwise it’d be a no-brainer. Why should I have to do all the chasing?’ I look at Lisa. ‘It isn’t supposed to be like this.’

  Dave and Lisa exchange looks.

  ‘You’re not chasing anything other than your heart,’ insists Lisa, and I wonder what TV show she picked that up from.

  ‘I don’t think he’s interested,’ I add flatly, overcome with negativity.

  ‘But he is, Sam!’ Lisa blurts out obligingly. ‘Dave, we need to manufacture an excuse to get these two lovebirds together. Why don’t we do a big roast dinner for everyone? Or you could come to Suzuki’s birthday party the week after next.’

  She babbles away, concocting all manner of potential scenarios in which to reconcile Jamie and me. But as I glance at Timberlake – lying rigidly amid a heap of Lego bricks and mints – one question leaps out at me.

  Is it sometimes better to just let something go?

  Chapter 57

  The next day at work is so hectic there’s barely time to go for a wee. I have these days sometimes. You attempt to break for a rudimentary biological necessity – but someone phones, or calls you into a meeting, or thrusts an invoice at you that absolutely-must-be-signed-there-and-then-or-the-sky-will-cave-in.

  I hadn’t predicted it was going to be quite so chaotic today, though I knew I had a bit to finish on the tender for a bridal show. I hadn’t counted on Lorelei Beer demanding an impromptu meeting before she had to race to her mother’s in Cardiff for a family funeral, or on ‘urgent’ business with three other clients (their definition of which was a long way from mine), or on the drinks machine electrocuting the work-experience girl.

  Why I ever signed up as the nominated first aider I’ll never know.

  ‘We’re going to have to get you to A&E,’ I tell her. She looks fine, but the first thing I learned on my course was to defer responsibility whenever possible.

  The ‘fine’, by the way, refers to her immediate medical requirements, rather than anything else about her appearance. She’s twenty-one, with disastrous hair, an explosion of acne and an apparent inability to say anything. When she first arrived, clutching a CV boasting twenty-seven A-star GCSEs, nine A-star A levels, and a double first, along with her Tupperware sandwich box, I genuinely wondered if she had a vocal-cord malfunction.

  ‘Would that be okay?’ I ask her softly.

  She nods shakily but says nothing. I’m constantly torn between feeling so sorry for her I want to hug her till her sides hurt – and shaking her by the shoulders and declaring: ‘Speak, woman!’

  ‘I don’t think you should drive,’ I tell her. ‘We’ll get you a taxi. Mind you, we need someone to sit with you.’ I look up and hone in on the corner.

  Deana, who has been filling Natalie in all morning on what a useless reprobate her sister’s friend’s second cousin’s current boyfriend is, has paused momentarily – to dye her eyelashes. She is surrounded by pots and Petri dishes – as if she is on the brink of discovering a cure for cancer – and is smearing Vaseline under her eye area with a cotton bud.

  ‘Deana!’ I stand up decisively and clap my hands. She raises her head briefly and looks at me along her nose, like a Roman empress. ‘I’ve got a job for you.’

  Natalie drops her magazine and screws up her face.

  ‘I’d like you to take Anna to hospital.’

  Anna flinches. I feel for her, I really do. But there’s no other way. Being in a car with Deana will be character-building, at least.

  ‘You wha—?’ says Deana.

  ‘Hospital. Please. She’s injured. Or possibly isn’t, actually. But she needs checking out.’

  ‘My car’s in the car park and the ticket only lets you in once,’ she protests. ‘Wharrama gonna do when I get back?’

  ‘Either get another ticket and put it on expenses, or get a taxi. Come on, please.’

  Deana’s urgency is some way removed from anything you see on Casualty.

  I go back to my desk and fend off a further series of phone calls, including one from the organizers of the Santa Dash – a charity race I’ve taken part in for the last three years. They want me to sign up the whole office for the event this December, obviously unaware of the total lack of influence I have on Deana and Natalie during work hours, let alone during their own time.

  Still, I register the office for the run – deciding to worry about practicalities later – and return to my tender. I’ve been doing it for only five minutes, when I realize that I can’t focus. My mind is elsewhere. Namely, on the men in my life.

  I log on to Facebook and hold my breath when I see Ben online. I open up a chat box and compose a message before I can even think.

  ‘Hi there. Hope you’re well.’

  I know it’s bland, but it’s the only way to go. I sit glaring at the screen, as if waiting for a boiling kettle . . . but there is no response for an age. Then a message flashes. Not any old message. This is the message every single woman dreads when they’ve just started a chat conversation with a man.

  ‘Ben is
offline.’

  ‘Great,’ I blurt out, noting that another three women – one of whom looks like Pamela Anderson’s poutier sister – have posted more gushing messages of thanks about the miracles he’s worked on their pets.

  Natalie looks up.

  ‘Unpaid invoice,’ I lie.

  She pulls a face as if to say: ‘Why would I care?’

  I flick back to my tender document and start attempting to add figures, unable to concentrate. Suddenly, I hear a muffled ping – and flick back to Facebook.

  ‘Sorry about that – just got your message. I’d gone into the other room. I’m good. You?’

  I take a deep breath. I could use this moment to make chitchat, to sweep things under the carpet – or I could get straight to the point. Thinking fast, I reply:

  ‘I’m fine, thanks. Listen – I feel awful about what happened. I need to explain.’

  I hit return and watch impatiently as words flash up to tell me that Ben is writing a reply. Eventually, a new message appears.

  ‘Think I worked out what was going on . . . it was obvious I’m afraid!’

  I swallow.

  ‘Erm . . . was it?’

  There’s an interminable silence as he composes his response.

  ‘You’re still in love with your ex.’

  I close my eyes and feel tears gathering. How do I respond to that? I start writing something, then delete it. Then I write something else, and delete that too. Eventually I take a deep breath and type in one word, before hitting enter.

  ‘Yes.’

  My heart is thudding, filled with dread as I await his response. He’d be perfectly entitled to call me every name under the sun.

  ‘I guessed something was going on the day I came for lunch. But, hey – neither of us can help it if you didn’t find me irresistible enough to fall for me instead. I won’t hold it against you!’

  I can’t help but smile.

  ‘You’re wonderful, Ben.’

  ‘Ah – you recognize a good man when you see one. You’re not all bad, then, Samantha Brooks.’