The Single Girl’s To-Do List

  ‘Dan isn’t what you had in mind,’ Matthew said after one more round of whoops. ‘But it doesn’t ever really work out like that, my love.’

  ‘Are we not evidence enough of that?’ Em pointed towards the two of them. ‘I’ve had a crush on your idiot brother for ten years, and Matthew’s going back to the cheater. No offence.’

  ‘None taken.’ Matthew said with a slap. ‘She might be horribly tactless but she’s right. You can’t choose who you fall in love with, any more than you can choose when it happens.’

  ‘But I don’t know what to do.’ Now I’d started talking about it, I couldn’t stop. ‘I really like him, I just never realized. But since the thing at The Savoy, then after you left the party and we, you know, oh my god. It was like a punch in the face. I’ve fucked up so badly and I’ve known him for all these years and now it’s all new and I’m confused and he’s like a different person, and-oh-I don’t know. What if he doesn’t feel the same? What if it was just a thing for him?’

  ‘You haven’t fucked up; you’re just going to have to tell him how you feel,’ Matthew sighed, resting his arm around my shoulders. ‘Oh young padawan, you have so much to learn.’

  ‘You have to call him,’ Em produced her phone and held it out. ‘Right now.’

  ‘I’ve got my own bloody phone, Emelie,’ I replied, waving the evidence in her face. ‘I just don’t know if I can.’

  ‘Bottom line,’ Matthew held his hands out. ‘Are you happier when you’re with Dan than when you’re not?’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘What if he was just nice Dan? Not shouty Dan. What if it was just the kissing part?’

  ‘I can’t pretend that idea fills me with horror.’

  ‘Then you call him and tell him that.’

  I looked up at my giant, Teutonic beastie.

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘Love you too,’ he kissed the top of my head. ‘Even if you’re a moron.’

  I looked at him and Emelie. They didn’t move. In fact, they seemed to settle in and get comfy.

  ‘Do you two want to fuck off a minute?’ I suggested, pointing towards Blackpool in the distance. ‘If I promise not to throw it up, will you bring me another burger?’

  ‘I could go another one actually.’ Em patted her tiny belly and dragged Matthew away with a smile. ‘You’ve got five minutes.’

  Staring out at the water, I watched Maid of the Mist boats glide along the placid surface of the water before turning in towards the Canadian side of the falls where they were suddenly bounced along like tiny toys. It didn’t look fun. More fun than calling Dan, but less fun than sitting quietly in a corner and eating a burger.

  Bloody men. Maybe I shouldn’t just stay single, maybe I should go the whole hog and give celibacy a try. It seemed to be working out OK for the Jonas Brothers. Britney hadn’t fared so well, though. Hmm. I knew too much about celebrities. Maybe I should just be alone and get a cat. Maybe two cats. I would call them ‘tragic’ and ‘spinster’ and they would be my babies. I would dress them up in nappies and bonnets and push them around in a pram.

  Dear god, I’d finally gone insane. Probably the best time to make the call.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Dan? It’s Rachel.’

  I wasn’t expecting a chorus of angels to greet me on the other end, but the near minute of complete silence was a bit awkward.

  ‘Dan, without wanting to be an arsehole, I’m on an iPhone 3 and the battery on this thing is rubbish,’ I said finally.

  ‘Fine. What?’

  OK, it was a start.

  ‘I just thought I’d give you a call.’ I searched for the right words but nothing seemed like a sure-fire winner. ‘Say hello.’

  ‘You waited until midnight to call to say hello,’ he asked. ‘Are you drunk?’

  I looked at my watch. It was almost seven. Which did in fact make it almost midnight in London. Cock.

  ‘I’m in Canada,’ I explained. ‘Sorry, I totally forgot about the time difference. I didn’t wake you, did I?’

  ‘Canada?’

  ‘I’m visiting a friend,’ I fudged. Had I told him about Ethan? I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember anything. ‘It was all a bit last-minute.’

  I was not making a very good job of this. Dan was right to assume drunk – I wished I was. Why would anyone attempt to have this sort of conversation sober?

  ‘I was wondering if we could have a chat when I’m back?’ I just wanted him to put me out of my misery. I was fairly certain I actually preferred it when he was shouting at me in car parks.

  ‘You and me?’ He didn’t sound as charmed as I’d hoped he would be. ‘A chat?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘What can’t you say right now?’ Dan asked. ‘Or can you not speak in front of your Canadian boyfriend?’

  He didn’t have to make it sound so stupid.

  ‘No,’ I swung my legs, hoping the movement might pump some sense back into my brain. ‘I need to talk to you about the me and you stuff. The stuff you said the other night.’

  I heard a loud sigh followed by a swallow. Well, at least someone had a drink in their hand.

  ‘When are you back?’

  ‘Thursday?’ I was fairly certain that was right. ‘Dan?’

  ‘I won’t be here on the Thursday,’ he replied matter-of-factly. ‘I’ve booked a job in LA. You remember jobs?’

  I bit my lip hard and drew blood.

  ‘You’re going to LA? Before Thursday?’ I touched my lip gingerly, feeling the sting. ‘For how long?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’ve got a work visa, might stay for a while.’

  ‘A while?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s the weirdest thing,’ he replied. ‘I told this girl how I’d liked her for years and she fucked off to Canada to see another bloke. So I made this list to help me get over her. It basically says: go to California, shag a load of models and never speak to her again.’

  I couldn’t usually argue with a list but it really didn’t sound like this one was going to work out well for me.

  ‘Dan, don’t, I’m trying.’ I’d done so well not to cry for so long but, after everything I’d been through in the past week, I was past caring. ‘Don’t be like this.’

  ‘Don’t you remember Rachel? This is who I am. This is what I do. Have fun in Canada.’

  He hung up before I could even say what I wanted to say. Whatever that was. I redialled straight away but the call just cut off. It didn’t even go to voicemail. And this was why falling for the butterflies was never a good idea. I didn’t feel all bubbly and excited now. I felt cold and broken and empty. I was all of the parts that never made it into love songs or Mike Newell films. Mike Leigh maybe.

  ‘Rachel?’

  I looked up to see Matthew and Emelie holding out fresh food. Their shiny hopeful faces fell when they saw mine.

  ‘Did you talk to him?’ said Matthew.

  ‘What did he say?’ asked Emelie.

  ‘Nothing good.’ I took the brown paper bag and began shoving chips into my mouth. Ahh, lovely salty chips, unburdened by gravy and cheese curds, clogging up my arteries all on their own. Chips never let me down.

  ‘Are you crying?’ Matthew poked my cheek with a rough finger. ‘You’re crying. Stop it please.’

  ‘Can’t,’ I mumbled through a steady stream of tears and fried potato. ‘I don’t know why I’m doing it.’

  ‘Brilliant, we’ve got PMT to deal with on top of all of this.’

  ‘It’s not PMT.’ I gave him a weak laugh to show willing but it just dissolved into a very pathetic choked sob. ‘Since you’re so interested, I’m not due for—’

  ‘Rule twenty-four in the straight/gay friendship handbook, your monthly visitor is not up for discussion.’ He gave me another giant hug while Emelie squatted at my feet and held the bag of chips. I felt like a junk-food-craving horse. ‘Tell us exactly what he said. What did you say?’

  ‘I didn’t really get much of a chance to say anything.’ My bi
tten lip began to sting from the salty chips. I let it. ‘I said I wanted to talk to him when I got back and he said he didn’t want to because he’s going to LA on Thursday. For “a while”.’

  ‘Oh Rach, that’s shit,’ Matthew doubled the hug. ‘When?’

  ‘He just said he wouldn’t be around on Thursday,’ I mumbled. ‘He’s going for a while.’

  ‘Then we have to get you home tonight,’ Em reasoned, looking up at Matthew for approval. ‘Right? We just get her home before he leaves?’

  ‘It’s as good a plan as any,’ he agreed. ‘Why the fuck not? I’ll give Jeremy a ring, see if he can change our flights.’

  I sat on the bench, eating my chips and trying not to start hyperventilating while Matthew marched up and down the footpath trying to get through to Jeremy. There was no way he was in bed at midnight. I wasn’t even sure if Jeremy slept at all.

  ‘It’ll all be all right, you know,’ Em promised, stealing a chip.

  Not if you take any more of my dinner, I thought, but rather than threaten my sort of amazing friend, I nodded and smiled. And then shoved another handful of potato-ey goodness into my mouth before she could get back in the bag.

  We sat there for nearly an hour while Matthew made arrangements. Normally I would have had to get involved, be writing things down, generally sticking my nose in, but this time I was perfectly happy to sit on my bench, eating my chips and snuggling inside my sweater. And, by happy, I did mean emotionally dead and physically exhausted.

  Tourists came and went, snapped pictures in front of us and then left, drawn away by the siren song of the WWE gift store or, on my frequent recommendation, a Wendy’s number seven chicken sandwich.

  Just as Matthew returned, looking very pleased with himself, Niagara Falls officially got tired of being ignored. The moment he took his seat on the bench, fireworks exploded in the sky over the waterfalls, echoing like thunderclaps and lighting the water with pretty patterns.

  ‘Oh my god,’ Matthew sat down slowly, never taking his eyes off the skies. ‘Look at it.’

  And we did look at it. For fifteen straight minutes the three of us sat in silence and watched the display play out over Niagara Falls, deaf to the oohing and ahhing taking place around us. Em put down the bag of chips and reached for mine and Matthew’s hands. The waterfalls were beautiful on their own but, for such a longtime firework whore as myself, this was the icing on the cake. I was sure there would be purists who would say it was gilding the lily, but they were wrong. No case to be argued. Fireworks over Niagara Falls, a completed to-do list and my two best friends. What more could I possibly, possibly ask for? Plus, it was the quietest the three of us had been in each other’s company without a television being present for as long as I could remember. This was monumental for so many reasons.

  I was about to burst into tears again when I heard a very loud, very masculine sniff at the side of me. And another less manly sob to the other side.

  ‘Are you crying?’ I asked, checking both sets of tear-stained cheeks. ‘Both of you?’

  ‘It’s just so beautiful,’ Matthew wailed. ‘And I’m just really happy.’

  ‘I know,’ Em agreed tearfully. ‘I know it was your list and everything but I feel a bit like we’ve all been on some bullshit caring-and-sharing learning adventure.’

  And I knew exactly what she meant. Without Emelie and Matthew, I’d be a quivering wreck, hiding out in my mum’s spare bedroom. Or, worse, I’d be back with Simon. Now we could do anything. I could do anything. I could colour my hair, I could start running, I could get a tattoo, I could hunt down my first crush, I could buy myself something obscenely expensive and selfish, I could write Simon a letter that explained exactly what a knob he was, I could bungee jump-ish, I could break the law, I could travel to a country I’d never visited before and I could find a date to my dad’s wedding who made me feel fantastic about myself because he was my best friend. The point of the list wasn’t just to tick items off and forget about them, it was to learn something new. And the most important thing I’d learned was that I could do anything. Maybe realizing how I felt about Dan was just another lesson. A bloody harsh one but still. I’d get over it somehow because I could. I knew I could.

  Once the fireworks and chips were finished, we hauled ourselves up off the bench and made our way back to the car. It was almost physically painful to leave the falls. I was still absolutely elated but simultaneously terrified of losing the feeling. Jeremy had managed to get all three of us on a flight out from Toronto first thing in the morning that would get us back to London for ten p.m., twelve hours earlier than our original flight. I just hoped that would be enough.

  The drive back to the hotel was considerably more subdued than the drive out, mostly because Emelie was asleep in the back and snoring loudly instead of yelling ‘road trip’ and signalling for truck drivers to sound their horns at every opportunity. I sort of missed it. Staring out of the window in silence, I felt a strange sense of optimism creep over me. Yeah, I’d told a boy I liked him, or at least I’d tried, and he hadn’t said it back, but at least I’d said it and now I was doing something about it. I wasn’t sitting around hoping everything would get better on its own because I realized now that doing nothing was the only sure-fire way to be certain that nothing would happen.

  We arrived back at the hotel incredibly quickly, Matthew having subscribed to my list a little and destroyed the Canadian speed limits more or less all the way back to Toronto. A two-hour journey so easily became a ninety-minute drive when you put your foot down. After handing the car over to the valet, he dragged Emelie out of the back and resigned himself to carrying her up the stairs while I took care of the bags and bags of snacks still littering the car.

  ‘Ms Summers?’ The same receptionist from the night before called me over as I attempted to sneak past her up the stairs. ‘I have a package for you.’

  ‘A package?’ I was genuinely flummoxed. Unless Ethan had left me a horse’s head, I had no idea what this could be. I was still a little surprised that he hadn’t even replied to my Facebook message, but I couldn’t imagine he was the dead-puppy-in-a-box-type either. I set the bag of snacks on the counter and opened up the great big blue box with my name on it. Inside, sitting on a bed of beautiful gold material, was a note. It was from Jenny.

  Rachel, I read, Sorry I couldn’t stay and talk longer. It was fun hearing about your list! Here’s a little something I hope will help you out at that wedding, date or no date. Knock ’em dead. Jenny xoxo

  The receptionist was almost more excited than I was. I laid the card to one side and picked up gold fabric. Only it wasn’t just fabric, it was a stunning pale gold dress, high boat neck, three-quarter-length sleeves and a full tulle skirt that looked as if it would fall a little way below my knee, fluffed out with more layers than I could possibly count. It was the most beautiful dress I’d ever seen in my entire life. I held it up in front of me and looked up to see the receptionist with her hand clapped over her mouth, tears in her eyes.

  ‘It’s just so pretty,’ she breathed after a moment.

  ‘I know,’ I replied in exactly the same voice.

  That just settled it. Jenny hadn’t been real after all; she was my fairy godmother. I held the dress out in front of me and stared into the mirrored wall of the hotel lobby. Yes Cinders, I watched as the colour of the fabric lit up my skin and made my bright new hair shine, you shall go to the ball.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  ‘I’m coming!’ I yelled, dashing up the hallway in my beautiful gold dress and delicate borrowed Jimmy Choos, clutch bag wedged into my armpit, one diamond stud in my ear and one in the palm of my hand. But the knocking at the door didn’t stop.

  ‘But Miss Summers, you look beautiful.’ Matthew stood at the front door, resplendent in a new grey suit and pale gold tie, purchased especially to complement my dress. ‘Really, you look amazing.’ He leaned in to give me a delicate air kiss on the cheek that wouldn’t smudge my make-up.

  ?
??You scrub up all right yourself,’ I commented, while he did a twirl. ‘I’m almost ready. Why didn’t you let yourself in?’

  ‘Just wanted to make a grand entrance,’ he called from the hallway. ‘You put the pictures up all by yourself? They look great.’

  ‘I am capable of hammering a nail into a wall as it happens,’ I replied, applying one last coat of mascara in the living-room mirror. ‘I put them up yesterday.’

  After arriving back in London, I’d made a last-ditch dash over to Dan’s place, calling en route and hoping I’d make it before he left for LA. But he wasn’t home. And, according to the neighbour who’d come out to see what exactly all the racket was about, he hadn’t been home in a day or so. I was too late, he’d gone. Instead of throwing myself off Waterloo Bridge, I got back in the taxi and let him drive me back home. There was nothing I could do until he decided to talk to me, whenever that might be. Until then, I’d decided to keep myself busy.

  Once I’d prised myself out of bed sometime on Thursday afternoon, I went for a run, then came home and gave the hallway a fresh coat of paint to cover up the sad shadows where mine and Simon’s photos had once hung. And, on Friday, after another mid-morning run, I took myself to Ikea and came back with a cartload of new picture frames to fill. There was the photo I’d taken on my phone of my new do, a ticket from the charity do at The Savoy and even the scrap of paper bearing Asher’s number. I’d framed my Agent Provocateur receipt. I’d taken a photo of my, Emelie’s and Matthew’s tattoos and framed them as well. I put up what felt like several thousand photos of me in the slingshot bungee ball and several thousand more of me and my two best friends at Niagara Falls. In two short weeks, I’d been able to rewrite my entire hallway. And, in the living room, in prime position over the sofa, was a worse-for-wear-looking napkin, covered in scribble, mounted in a huge black wooden frame.

  ‘Emelie’s already gone?’ Matthew wandered into the living room and picked my new Mad Men DVD up off the top of the TV. ‘She’s not coming with us?’

  ‘She went home last night.’ I gave myself one last look in the mirror. Hair was shiny, dress was spotless, make-up pretty, fresh and – as experience had taught me was essential – waterproof. ‘I don’t think she wanted Paul to pick her up from here.’