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CHAPTER TWO

‘Did she see it? Did she see it?’ Brian sprinted across the roof, knocking several people out of the way as he lunged in front of the big screen. ‘Annie, close your eyes. Take out your contact lenses. No, you don’t wear lenses, poke out your eyes.’

I opened my mouth to say it was fine but nothing came out.

‘Are you all right?’ Miranda asked while Brian began unfastening his button-down shirt in order to cover the screen where the happy couple were busily waving to their thousands of new friends. ‘Annie, talk to me.’

‘I’m missing something here,’ Charlie said, shielding his eyes from Brian’s pasty torso.

‘And I’m missing the game,’ Martin shouted. ‘Get out the way, dickhead.’

‘This is bigger than twenty millionaires kicking a ball around,’ he shouted back. ‘That’s Annie’s ex. Show some respect, man.’

‘Twenty-two!’ Martin gasped in horror at the idea of someone not knowing how many players made up a football team. Charlie, Miranda and Brian all stared, waiting for me to say something.

‘I’m fine,’ I insisted. ‘Really.’

There were at least three dozen people on the roof terrace, some I knew, most I didn’t, but every single one of them was looking at me. If you took off my clothes, threw in a couple of murderous clowns and a box full of spiders, it was my worst nightmare come true.

‘Yes, Matthew’s my ex-boyfriend,’ I confirmed to Charlie with a breezy smile. ‘But very ex. Long time ago. Not a big deal.’

‘Well, it’s not quite been a year, has it?’ Miranda corrected helpfully.

‘Feels like much longer,’ I said, pinching her thigh tightly as I stood. ‘You know, I’m not really in the mood for football. I think I might head home after all.’

‘We’re coming with you,’ Brian declared, shirt still open and streaming out behind him like a factory seconds Backstreet Boy. ‘Come on, Miranda.’

Mir paused for a split second, glancing at her work boyfriend who kept his eyes on the football.

‘Come on, Miranda,’ Brian barked.

‘I don’t mind if you want to stay,’ I told her, lying through my teeth. ‘Honest.’

I would literally never forgive her.

‘I’m coming,’ she replied, leaping to her feet and wrapping an arm around my shoulders. ‘We’re out of champagne anyway.’

I noticed Martin watching out of the corner of his eye but he didn’t say anything to try to stop her.

‘I really am OK,’ I said, sending a silent prayer up to the patron saint of friends for my bests. ‘It’s just the surprise. It’s been ages since we broke up, sorry, since I broke up with him.’

‘Really?’ Brian scrunched up uncertain features as he hustled us across the rooftop, down the staircase to the fourth floor and buzzed for the lift. ‘I thought you were the dumpee.’

I pursed my lips tightly.

‘No, I wasn’t. I ended it.’

Brian looked to Miranda for confirmation.

‘Technically, yes,’ Mir said, rubbing little circles in the middle of my back. ‘She broke up with him.’

He still didn’t look convinced.

‘But wasn’t he already—’

‘Shut up, Brian.’

‘And didn’t you walk in on them—’

‘Shut up, Brian.’

‘The official record shows I did the dumping,’ I insisted as the lift pinged open. ‘And that’s what matters.’

Out of the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of the fourth floor, I could see a glorious sunset breaking across the sky. It was such a beautiful evening and I didn’t want to ruin it for them.

‘You two should stay,’ I said, slipping one foot between the lift door and the wall. ‘I’m going to go for a walk.’

‘No way,’ Brian said. ‘We’re not leaving you alone.’

‘I don’t need a babysitter,’ I insisted, putting on my resolved face. ‘That was admittedly very weird, but I’m fine, I promise. Just not in the mood to go over it all night long.’

Did anyone really like rehashing their break-ups? It felt like a lifetime since Matthew and I had ended things, but seeing him on the big screen had been a shock. I’d done such a good job of wiping him out of my life, such a dramatic re-entry felt like a punch to the gut.

‘As if I’m going to let you go home on your own and be upset over that tosser,’ Miranda said as my resolved face faltered. ‘Matthew was a wanksock, you are the best. It’s like you, then Chrissy Teigen and then Beyoncé.’

‘No way am I better than Chrissy Teigen,’ I argued. ‘Maybe Beyoncé on a good day, but never Saint Chrissy.’

She stared at me with a thoughtful pout and I offered her a genuine, if watery smile in return.

‘Fine, you can go,’ she said, finally. ‘But you have to promise me you’re not going to spend all night stalking their Instagram accounts.’

‘I’m not a sadist,’ I replied, stepping into the lift. ‘I’m going to watch the proposal once or twice, find something he bought me and burn it, have a cry in the bath and then watch QVC Beauty until I pass out in front of the TV.’

‘We can’t argue with that plan,’ Brian said, blowing me a kiss as the lift door slid shut. ‘We’ll see you tomorrow, love.’

My flat was only a five-minute walk from work – if you took the shortest route. But I was in no rush and the long way was calling me. Beautiful weather had been in short supply all summer and it felt good to feel the last rays of sun on my skin as I trotted out into the empty street. Everyone was watching the game, I realised as I peeled off my denim jacket and straightened the sleeves of my pink T-shirt, and the city was mine. Winter had overstayed its welcome well into spring and I couldn’t even count the number of nights I’d stayed late at the office to keep my central heating bill down at home. Such was the glamorous life of a London gal.

There was something reassuring about a warm summer’s evening in the city. People slowed down, they smiled, they forgot their problems and lingered a little longer, another drink, a chat outside the tube station. It was hard to be social when you were running away from the rain or hiding under your hood from an angry gust of wind. But this was perfect wandering weather. A whiff of the chip shop, the clean soapy smell of the laundrette, I could even find a soft spot for City Best Kebabs on a night like this. Or, let’s be honest, any night.

I held my phone in my hand, as I almost always did, and as I turned off the main street it began to ring. I’d been avoiding checking my messages since I left the office. A cursory glance at my inbox on the way down in the lift had revealed more puke-face emojis than I’d had the privilege to see in my entire life. My friends were good people. But this was a call, not a text or a What’s App, and no one called me, save my sister or my mother. This time, it was my mum.

‘Annie.’

‘Mum.’

‘I just saw the news.’

I sighed internally and looked longingly at the fried chicken place across the street.

‘You know I don’t watch the news,’ I replied, keeping my head down and walking on by. I had half a packet of perfectly delicious, three-day-old scones at home that weren’t going to eat themselves. ‘What’s wrong, has the world ended?’

‘Not the news-news,’ she said, sighing externally. ‘The news about Matthew. At the football thing.’

‘Oh, that news,’ I replied, blasé as could be. ‘I saw that. I must drop him a text.’

Mum seemed surprised.

‘Oh.’ It took a moment to choose her next words. ‘I thought you might be a bit upset.’

‘I’m fine.’ How many more times would I have to sing this song before everyone believed me? ‘Me and Matthew broke up forever ago,’ I recited. ‘I’m really happy for him.’

‘Doesn’t feel like it was that long ago to me,’ she replied. Helpful as ever. ‘But that’s age for you. If it wasn’t twenty years ago, it was last week.’

‘Mum, you’re only fifty-eight,’ I reminded her. ‘We’re not carting you off to the knacker’s yard just yet.’

‘You might as well,’ she muttered as I hopped down off the pavement to dodge two tired-looking mothers pushing two double pushchairs. I smiled politely at the women and skipped on quickly. Miranda and Brian were all the children I could cope with for now. ‘Honestly, Annie, I’m falling apart at the seams.’

It was utter nonsense, I’d never seen a midlife crisis go so well. Ever since she’d left London and moved up north, my mother had been through a complete renaissance. My dad left when I was little and Mum hadn’t dealt with it terribly well, then out of the blue, she was thriving. My sister was worried she’d taken herself off to Yorkshire to die but as it turned out, we’d had quite the incorrect impression of Yorkshire. Mum had transformed from a depressed divorcée into a lean, mean needle-wielding machine. One day she was a practice nurse at our local surgery, the next she was opening the first medispa in Hebden Bridge and bringing Botox to the masses. I hadn’t seen my mother’s forehead move in more than two years.

‘You’re sure you’re not even a little bit sad about Matthew getting engaged?’ Mum wheedled. ‘No good can come from bottling up your feelings. You’ll block your chakras, and then I can’t begin to tell you what kind of a mess you’ll get yourself into.’

‘My chakras are absolutely brilliant,’ I assured her. ‘All properly aligned and shiny and fresh and whatever else they’re supposed to be.’

‘Why don’t you take a few days off?’ she suggested. ‘I’m going to Portugal on a yoga retreat tomorrow, with Karen? From the library? We’re adding a studio onto the back of the clinic so I can teach once I’ve got my five hundred hours.’

The image of my mother administering lip filler while in Warrior III tickled me.

‘I can’t take any time off at the minute,’ I said, forcing a little extra regret to my voice. ‘We’re so busy at work and we’ve been nominated for some awards, big ones, so I need to be around. I’m totally gutted though, I’m sure it would be fun.’

‘You’ve really thrown yourself into work since you and Matthew separated,’ she replied with a soft warning in her voice. ‘But you must remember to look after yourself. We work to live, we don’t live to work.’

‘That’s not it at all, I love my job,’ I reminded her. ‘And like I said, everything’s fine.’

‘That’s your theme song,’ Mum said before breaking into song. ‘Everything’s fine, everything’s fine, my name is Annie and everything’s fine.’

‘Mum, you’re breaking up,’ I said, holding the phone at arm’s length. ‘I can’t hear you.’

‘Phone calls don’t break up any more,’ she shouted out of my tinny speakers. ‘Annie?’

‘Sorry, didn’t get all that.’ I held my finger over the end call button. ‘I’ll call you when I get home.’ A grumpy, fat pug grimaced up at me from outside the newsagent’s on the corner. ‘I’m not going to call,’ I confessed. ‘I’m going to go to bed.’

The pug judged me silently.

They say home is where the heart is but I kept most of my other essential organs at the office. My flat was so small, you could walk from the front door to the back wall in five big steps and if I was being entirely honest, I wasn’t the most house-proud of humans. Piles of ironing, piles of mail, piles of books, piles of absolutely anything that could be stacked on top of each other were dotted around the living room, creating an obstacle course of little leaning towers. Every ounce of energy I had went into my job. Home was supposed to be the place where I could switch off. Not literally, of course, that would be insane. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d actually seen my phone with less than 43% battery.

Even though it was small, the flat was mine and I did love it. Little bathroom, little bedroom and a tiny open-plan living room and kitchen that might be a bit more inviting if I ever got around to buying a new settee. It turned out getting hold of an entire flat’s worth of furniture after a break-up was expensive – who knew towels could cost so much? And so, instead of the beautiful mid-century modern West Elm sofa of my dreams, I made do with my sister’s hand-me-down Ikea loveseat. It was too small for two people to sit down at the same time and painfully uncomfortable if you ever tried to lie down on it. Once upon a time, I think it had been white but now it was … well, white it definitely was not.

Carefully placing my laptop bag on top of the second-hand dresser I’d wedged in the space by the front door, I turned on the kettle before taking one giant leap from the kitchen into the bedroom and stripping off my clothes. More wine would not make me feel better. This was a night for tea. Besides, I told myself, I had nothing to feel bad about, other than the bag full of dry cleaning I’d been meaning to drop off for almost six months.

The front of my built-in wardrobe was mirrored from floor to ceiling, meaning at least once a day I had to give myself an all-over once-over. No matter how many body positivity videos I watched, I still preferred not to stare at my backside for too long. Objectively, I knew this was not a worst-case scenario situation; I liked my hair when it didn’t frizz, I liked my legs and thanks to a thirty-day plank challenge, I felt strong in the middle, if not especially skinny. And who wanted to be skinny these days, anyway? Being able to see your ribs was so 2015.

‘I’m happy for him,’ I told Mirror Annie. ‘Because I am a whole and complete person who only wishes joy for everyone in the universe.’

Mirror Annie frowned.

‘Fuck it,’ I muttered. ‘I hope he trips down the stairs and breaks both his legs.’

Yep, that was better.

Sometimes I wondered what would happen if my flat ever made it on to Through the Keyhole. Who would live in a house like this? A smart, small newbuild on the outside, the hoarder-like tendencies of a Deliveroo addict on the inside. The many devices covering every available surface suggested it could be the kind of professional troll who thought Piers Morgan talked a lot of sense. The endless polystyrene cartons and pizza boxes suggested someone who didn’t know how to turn on an oven. So far, so slightly worrying; very single middle-aged shut-in. But the lack of porn and huge stack of online shopping packages to be dropped off at the post office was a real curve ball. I’d lost count of the number of times I’d ordered something from ASOS only to realize, when it arrived twenty-four hours later, that I’d already ordered and returned the exact same thing a month earlier.

I plugged my phone into its charging dock, turned on the tiny TV in the bedroom and fired up my iPad, all while the kettle boiled. Time for one last circle around the socials to make sure everything was good and well with our clients. The influencers, the style vloggers, Fitspo and BoPo specialists, gamers and the mummy, travel and beauty bloggers, we worked with all of them. I’d learned more about different walks of life in this job than I could have ever come across in any other profession, whether it was how to apply perfect winged liner, where to stay on the island of Vanuatu or how to improve your vertical reach in Street Fighter V. Not all of my newly acquired knowledge had proved helpful yet, but who was to say when I might find myself invited to a formal video game competition in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?

As far as I could tell, all was right with the world of social media. Or at least, as all right as it ever would be, I was good at my job but I wasn’t a miracle worker. I carefully avoided my own pages. Even with all the filters and blocks and mutes I’d put on Matthew’s name, there was still too great a chance of seeing their happy, shining faces, and I didn’t want to give myself nightmares. With a fresh mug of tea and the last three broken Hobnobs in the packet, I retreated to my bedroom. My safe, beautiful, man-free bedroom. It was wonderful, not having to explain my every move to someone the way I had when I was with Matthew. I loved not having to justify another late night at work or an after-hours cocktail. I loved eating biscuits for dinner, scheduling my own weekends and never finding softcore porn in my Netflix queue. I loved my life. Would it be nice to occasionally have someone to snuggle up to while I yelled at the TV during Question Time? Maybe. Would it be nice to have a second pair of hands to help bring the shopping back from the supermarket? Of course it would. And yes, perhaps an actual living, breathing man might beat creating a nest of pillows in the middle of the night once in a while, but I was very much of the opinion what was meant to be would be. My life was full and fun and I was happy. Something I couldn’t always say when I was with Matthew.

Munching the last of my crumbly dinner, I turned off the TV and turned on my podcast app. Behind the Scenes had an interview with Mark Ruffalo. Maybe if I listened to it as I fell asleep, I could trick my brain into dreaming he was my boyfriend.

Because that was the behaviour of a perfectly happy, single thirty-one-year-old.

Wasn’t it?