The Single Girl’s To-Do List

  ‘Not the argument,’ she whined impatiently. ‘The kissing? Was it just kissing? Do you love him?’

  Matthew stopped checking out the neon fittie across the ward just long enough to raise his eyebrows at me. At least, I was fairly certain he was raising his eyebrows: it was hard to tell.

  ‘Of course not. It’s Dan. Remember, very tight jeans? Shags models? Is a dick?’

  ‘Dumps supermodels for you? Turns up on your doorstep out of the blue? Snogs your face off?’

  ‘Oh shut up,’ I said. ‘It’s still Dan. He’s hardly the father of my children, is he? He’s the bloke you call after you’ve been to the doctor to ask if he’s the reason you’re itching.’

  ‘Thath dithguthin,’ Matthew lisped. ‘Buh tru.’

  ‘I can’t believe I let it go as far as I did.’ I tried not to think about just how far. Or how good. ‘I can’t believe I did it.’

  ‘Were you wearing the underwear?’ Em asked. ‘You were, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I peered down the front of Dan’s sweater. Thankfully I was still wearing it now. Just. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘That explains it.’ She held her hands out, as though whatever she was getting at was obvious. ‘It’s the underwear’s fault. Men think with their dicks because they’re outside their body, leading them around all day long. They can’t not think about them.’

  ‘S’troo,’ Matthew nodded fervently. ‘S’juss there.’

  ‘We don’t because we’re all neatly tucked away. It means we can get on with things without constantly thinking about sticking our genitals into something. But once you’re wearing expensive, sexy lingerie? Game over.’

  I liked this theory. It absolved me of all responsibility and explained why I couldn’t shake the memory of Dan’s warm, strong hands around my waist. We were past stomach flips. We were onto double somersaults from the top diving board, right off into a swimming pool full of you-bloody-idiot.

  ‘That said, is he unbearably beautiful with his clothes off?’ Em, as usual, completely ignored my request. ‘Are his arms like little tiny barrels?’

  ‘He’s not Popeye,’ I sighed. ‘But yes, basically yes. I don’t know, I just cocked up. He kept going on about how he didn’t think I was “that kind of girl”, and I was like, but you’re that kind of boy! And then he got all defensive and angry and now I’m probably not going to Sydney.’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure where Australia came into this.’ Em tied her massive hair up in a high ponytail. ‘And I know this is all new to you, but, honestly, when you’re going to use someone for sex, you don’t actually tell them you’re going to use them for sex.’

  ‘I wasn’t going to use him for sex,’ I replied, wildly offended.

  ‘He’ll get over it,’ she tried to reassure me. ‘I bet he’s already called you.’

  Ever the conscientious hospital visitor, I peeked at the iPhone I blatantly hadn’t turned off when the nurse on reception had loudly reminded me I had to. No missed calls, but there was a Facebook message.

  ‘No calls, new message from Ethan though.’

  Lovely, uncomplicated, thousands-of-miles-away Ethan. Ahh, he said he’d be having a much better weekend if I was there. As long as he didn’t have a nut allergy, maybe.

  ‘Rach.’ Em gave me her best serious look. ‘This Dan thing. Are you sure there’s nothing to it? You’ve been friends for years, after all, and he does seem to be making an awful lot of effort just to get into your pants.’

  I considered her point for a moment. We were friends, to a degree, and it was true, things had been different since I’d told him about Simon and me. And it wasn’t as though I didn’t think he was hot: getting up off that sofa had been one of the hardest things I’d ever had to do in my life. But he could be as funny and sweet and attentive as he liked – he was still Dan.

  ‘You thud go and get thum theep,’ Matthew lisped while I read. ‘You muth be knackered.’

  Realizing his attention was elsewhere, namely on the hot boy in the opposite bed, I accepted he wasn’t just being kind and grabbed Emelie’s hand. Time to leave.

  ‘Home, James. Let’s leave the invalid to it.’ I gave Matthew a gentle hug goodbye. ‘Talk tomorrow.’

  Em patted him on the head. ‘If you can talk tomorrow.’ She turned to me with a wicked grin. ‘Seriously, tell me everything.’

  After giving Em, half the lower deck of the number 205 and anyone we happened to pass on Amwell Road a PG version of my assignation with Dan, I was incredibly happy to collapse on my sofa alone. Em had gone straight to the bathroom to brush her teeth for bed, the excitement of my evening altogether too much for her. Lying on the sofa alone, still wearing Dan’s jumper, wasn’t nearly as exciting as lying on the sofa wearing Dan. More so than lying there with Simon, but Simon wasn’t exciting, he was Simon. He was sweet and clever and wonderful and funny and he’d dumped me on my arse because I ‘wasn’t the one’. A statement roughly translated from boy into English to mean ‘I want to sleep around for a bit’ or, at least, ‘I want to sleep with someone else and I’m using this ridiculous terminology to absolve myself of blame. It’s not my fault, it’s yours for not being the one.’

  I had been a brilliant girlfriend. I reminded him of his mother’s birthday every year. I always made the bed. I shaved my legs every day. I dressed up in nothing but stockings and a Liverpool shirt on his birthday, even though my Man United-supporting dad would have spun in his grave if a) he’d found out and b) he had been dead. What was his problem?

  And what was Dan’s problem? He’d made all the moves. Surely he should be happy that I hadn’t kicked him in the nuts and thrown him out the door. And even Ethan, what was he playing at? All these flirty emails that had no real intentions. Maybe I should invest my energies into something more potentially productive, like inventing a time machine to go back to the nineteenth century where I’d be married with four kids by now. Four kids and cholera, maybe – but still. Eurgh. Boys.

  ‘Rach?’ Em poked me in the shoulder. ‘You’ve gone all quiet on me. You’re not going to get hammered and start singing “All By Myself”, are you?’

  ‘I’m not drunk and I don’t sing,’ I replied. ‘I’m just trying to work out how all of this happened.’

  ‘Well, if you come up with an answer, remember to show the working out.’

  ‘I think it’s more of an essay question.’ Ooh. I had an idea. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘Night, beauty.’ She kissed me on the top of the head and vanished into her room. She was ridiculously good to me. There was a perfectly wonderful one-bedroom flat in West Hampstead with a giant king-sized bed that had sat empty for a week now because she’d been sleeping on Ikea’s second cheapest sofa bed just to make sure I didn’t top myself. Now that was love.

  Despite the fact that we were closing in on three a.m., I was wide awake. I pulled my writing set from the drawer underneath the coffee table. When my mum had bought me this two years ago, I’d responded by teaching her how to use Facebook. I don’t know which of us was the stupid one. I hadn’t written a letter since my Year Nine French pen pal decided to post me pictures of his penis, but she couldn’t leave Facebook alone. And you can’t defriend your mother. They get very, very upset about it. But this was a genuine pen on paper situation, the full Basildon Bond.

  Dear Simon.

  I shuffled into a sitting position and held my favourite turquoise pen over the paper. How to begin?

  There are a couple of things I wanted to let you know that I really couldn’t put into words the last time we spoke. Happily, I’ve had all of an hour to think about it now so it won’t come out an incoherent mess and you will get the considered, eloquent response your recent actions deserve. You are a coward. A weak, sad little coward who doesn’t deserve to be happy. You don’t even deserve to be unhappy. You deserve to be miserable and alone and one of those sad little men who die in a house full of shit because no one cared enough to come around and check you were putting
the rubbish out, and then, when they break in because they can smell your body from the street, they find bin bags full of takeaways dating back to 1997. And loads of cats. You deserve to die surrounded by angry cats.

  I paused for a moment to breathe. This was coming out far too easily. Writing angry letters was fun. Especially when you’d had a couple of drinks earlier in the evening but definitely were not drunk. Definitely. I put the pen back to the paper.

  I’m not angry because you broke up with me; I’m angry because of the way you did it. You said it was just a break, that we weren’t breaking up. You said that. Generally, when someone tells someone something, especially someone they love, who they live with, who they own a house with, it’s what they mean. Of course, this might not make sense to you because you have a penis and I realize that confuses you. Especially where right and wrong and telling the truth and telling lies is concerned. I should have made it easier for you. But you, you horrible little cockweasel, were just too spineless to tell me that you wanted to break up with me so you just twatted around in that spare room, waiting for me to get bored and break up with you.

  Break for a quick fact check. Yep, all OK so far.

  That’s pathetic. You’re pathetic. I’m angry because you’re pathetic. I really thought that we had a future together. I thought you wanted to have kids and be a family but, no, you want to shag your way around London. I hope it really works out well for you and I hope you don’t catch something horrible that makes your knob rot off. It’s not OK to treat someone you say you love the way you did. It’s not OK to say one thing and then change your mind two seconds later. It’s not OK to expect someone to be a mind-reader. It’s not OK to say come to Sydney or Toronto and expect them to know what you mean.

  I reread the last sentence. There was a slight chance I’d gone off topic, but I didn’t have any Tipp-Ex so it was staying in. Did people still use Tipp-Ex? Had the Conservatives looked into this? Was there a think tank on how we could get people from Tipp-Ex factories back to work? Anyway …

  Anyway, all I wanted was for us to be happy. I’m sorry that wasn’t enough for you. I’m sorry you’re weak and emotionally retarded and that you basically just made the biggest mistake of your life but, let’s be honest, you probably did me a favour. I’m pretty great. And pretty great is too good for you. Just so you know, next time I see you in the street, I’ll be crossing the road and not waving. We’re not friends. You’re a cockweasel. Would you want to be friends with a cockweasel? No, didn’t think so.

  Have a nice life,

  Rachel

  It was even better than my A level General Studies essay and that was amazing. I folded the letter up neatly and slipped it into a corresponding envelope, writing Simon’s name on the front and adding a flourish before setting it on the coffee table. Before putting the pen away, I took the napkin out of my handbag and crossed off ‘write a letter’. All that was left on the list was to bungee jump, travel to a new country and find a date for my dad’s wedding. It was like getting down to the toffee pennies and coffee creams in a tin of Quality Street.

  Definitely time for bed.

  When my phone buzzed into life the next morning, I was still unconscious and tangled in dreams involving chasing weasels through the woods near my mother’s house while Dan followed, half-naked, waving a Canadian flag. Understandably, it took me a couple of seconds to work out what was going on when I opened my eyes.

  I rolled across the bed to grab the phone off the floor and scream at whoever had disturbed my much-needed beauty sleep. Except it was Matthew.

  ‘You’re not dead then.’

  ‘I’m not but I nearly was.’ He sounded far too perky for, good god, seven a.m. on a Sunday. I’d had less than four hours’ sleep. I wondered what exactly they’d given him at the hospital. And whether or not he had any left. ‘And my near-death experience got me thinking. This to-do list thing is fine, but we need to step it up, Rach. I mean, any one of us could die any day.’

  ‘Matthew, you’ve been allergic to nuts all your life,’ I yawned. ‘You’ve been hospitalized five times, one of those times because you ate a Walnut Whip on a dare. Besides, we’re very much down to the step-it-up section of the existing list as it is. What do you want?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he lied. Matthew’s normally laconic tones always got squeaky when he wasn’t telling the truth. It was a symptom of the gay gene; he just wasn’t as smooth a liar as straight boys. ‘I just think we need to take more chances in life.’

  ‘Can we take chances after I’ve had another three hours’ sleep?’ I gave myself a desultory sniff. ‘And a shower?’

  ‘You need to shower and you need to pack.’ He sounded worryingly excited. East 17 reunion tour excited. ‘I’ll be round for you in an hour. We’re going away.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ It really was far too early for his madness. ‘Away where? I’ve got to talk to my agent about getting back to work. I’ve had a week off already.’

  ‘One more week won’t hurt,’ he said. ‘You haven’t had a holiday in ages and I’ve already put the tickets on hold. I can’t save them for more than an hour. Tell Emelie to get herself sorted as well. I assumed you’d make me invite her. You need your passports.’

  ‘Matthew, I need to hang around here in case Veronica manages to get me on that Sydney job, you know that,’ I whined. Sydney. Sun. Sand. Half a planet away from Simon.

  ‘Yeah, because Dan is absolutely going to take you to Australia on a job now, isn’t he?’

  Ohhhh. Good point, well made.

  ‘Passports. One hour. I’m on my way.’

  It took every ounce of strength not to remind Matthew that my estranged dad, whom I hadn’t laid eyes on since I was two years old, hadn’t died twelve months previously, leaving me with a gaping father-figure complex and buckets and buckets full of cash. I had to work for a living and to pay off my ever-increasing credit-card bill. But in the moment it took to decide that, no, he needed to be told, Matthew hung up. And that was that.

  I flopped back down against my pillows, taking a moment to enjoy the massive empty bed before committing myself to standing up. Wherever we were going, there’d better be lots of opportunity to lie down.

  Em was already in the living room, eating a slice of pizza that had clearly been left out all night after the party. She was disgusting sometimes. She was also reading my letter to Simon.

  ‘Matthew just called telling me to get my arse into gear and not to forget my passport,’ she shouted at me as I shuffled through to the kitchen for coffee. ‘Did they give him the wrong drugs at the hospital? Has he got brain damage? Have you given Matthew brain damage?’

  I turned around to see her holding up her hand for a high-five. I shook my head and she put it down again, disappointed.

  ‘Apparently he’s got some flight on reserve and he’s coming to get us in an hour,’ I explained. ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t love being friends with an ex-trolley dolly,’ she began. ‘It’s just that he never calls and says, I’m taking you to Honolulu, does he? If it’s Düsseldorf again, I’m not going.’

  ‘Düsseldorf was OK,’ I reminisced privately over a particularly good schnitzel. ‘I mean, as a place, it was lovely.’

  ‘Düsseldorf was OK?’ Emelie raised an eyebrow. ‘Whatever.’

  ‘I’m not really in a rush to go anywhere.’ I leaned against the fridge with my coffee. ‘Especially not in the next hour. Can’t we just watch Hollyoaks and then get twatted over Sunday lunch like normal people?’

  ‘Amen, sister,’ Emelie nodded. ‘You can tell him that when he gets here. After you’ve finished apologizing for poisoning him.’

  ‘Hmm,’ I sipped the lukewarm cup of Nescafé. ‘Maybe I’ll go and pack …’

  When Matthew’s keys rattled the lock, I was sitting on the sofa, looking at my mini-suitcase and glugging down a second mug of coffee. It was still only eight a.m. and I wanted to be awake when Matthew announced we
were going to the arse end of Norway for a week. Em was in the other room, screaming at a pair of ‘piece of shit Jimmy Choos’ that refused to fit in her bag. I could have offered to put them in mine, but listening to her yelling at inanimate objects while Simon Rimmer and two of McFly failed to make a risotto on the telly was far more entertaining. It was terrifying how much stuff she’d carted over here in the space of the last week. She had more clothes here than I now owned. Which had made packing something of a piece of piss for me.

  ‘Who’s ready for an adventure?’ Matthew threw himself on the sofa and looked at me with wild eyes.

  I pressed my lips together and gave him a narrow-eyed look. ‘You made me spill my coffee.’

  ‘You poisoned me,’ he replied with an equally catty look. ‘Even?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I relented. ‘So where are we going?’

  ‘OK.’ He rubbed his palms on his jeans. ‘So, the whole nearly dying because you don’t know how to make a cheesecake thing sort of got me thinking. I know we’re trying to train you up to be a good single girl, but I think it’s also important that we start taking chances. So we’re going to Canada.’

  ‘We’re not going to Canada,’ I responded immediately. Almost as quickly, Emelie’s head appeared around the door.

  ‘Canada? No way.’ She shook her head. ‘There’s no way we’re going to Canada. I have a busy week.’

  ‘You, why not?’ he said to me. ‘And you, you haven’t had a very busy week since 2003.’

  ‘I work very hard,’ she said. ‘Just because I work from home, doesn’t mean I don’t work. I have to approve all the new Kitty Kitty products; I’m developing new style-guide art; I‘m working on—’

  ‘Wah wah wah,’ Matthew made a very unflattering quacking gesture with his hand. ‘Whatevs.’