Lindsey Kelk
The Single Girl’s To-Do List
Copyright
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London, SE1 9GF
Copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2011.
Lindsey Kelk asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
ISBN: 9780007345632
Ebook Edition © April 2011 ISBN: 9780007383757
Version: 2020-10-09
Dedication
To all the single girls who gave hours of their lives,
livers and lipgloss to research the ultimate to-do list,
especially Rachael Wright, Sarah Donovan, Sarah
Benton, Emma Ingram and Alicia Romano. Your
sacrifice will not be in vain.
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
‘If someone had told you, ten years ago, you’d be…
Chapter Two
Because no plan can succeed without the assistance of reliable…
Chapter Three
By the time the cab dropped me off at home,…
Chapter Four
‘I’m going to kill him,’
Chapter Five
After six bags of crisps, three bottles of wine and…
Chapter Six
‘Morning.’
Chapter Seven
‘Come on, Red, get up.’
Chapter Eight
‘That arsehole.’ My mum dropped a slightly floppy slice of…
Chapter Nine
‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ Emelie groaned, her head…
Chapter Ten
‘Raaaa-cheeeeel.’ I felt a hand lightly tapping the top of…
Chapter Eleven
‘I can’t believe we’re doing this,’ I said, hobbling slightly…
Chapter Twelve
Matthew had been delighted when we’d called him from the…
Chapter Thirteen
‘Hi.’ Dan stood in front of me, back in his…
Chapter Fourteen
‘Oh, you know me so well,’ Matthew shouted over the…
Chapter Fifteen
Between the events on the sofa, the row, and a…
Chapter Sixteen
Fourteen hours, one first-class flight and several glasses of champagne…
Chapter Seventeen
‘I can’t believe you’re actually going on a date with…
Chapter Eighteen
I crawled into bed, still in my sundress, and got…
Chapter Nineteen
‘ohmygodthatwasamazing,’ I exhaled, as Dougie Howser’s backward brother released me…
Chapter Twenty
‘I’m coming!’ I yelled, dashing up the hallway in my…
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Other Books by Lindsey Kelk
About the Publisher
Prologue
Four weeks earlier …
It had been an odd Sunday.
My boyfriend, Simon, had got up and vamoosed for football before I’d even considered rolling out of bed and onto the sofa for a three-hour Friends-a-thon. Even though it was late July, the weather was pretty mediocre and there was nothing compelling me to get up off the sofa other than a judgemental cat staring through the window and the intermittent need to pee. Usually I was mega-motivated on a Sunday. It wasn’t too often I worked a regular five-day week, so Sundays were all together too often the only day I had to get anything done; but on that particular day, I couldn’t bring myself to do anything more strenuous than to repeatedly text my gay best friend Matthew to ask ‘how you doin’?’
I didn’t care if it was a fifteen-year-old joke. It was still funny.
And so it was to me in my faded-to-grey Juicy Couture trackie bottoms, a Pokémon T-shirt I’d worn semi-ironically at university and a greasy topknot that Simon arrived home at four in the afternoon. I rolled onto my back and gave him a sexy grunt. Rowr. Rachel Sexpot Summers.
I knew things weren’t right when, instead of giving me the standard kiss on the cheek and vanishing into the shower, Si sat down on the settee, elbows on knees, staring straight ahead and breathing loudly. After a couple of minutes, I muted Monica and shoved myself into a sitting position.
‘You all right?’ I asked.
‘Do you want to go to the cinema or something?’ He carried on staring at the fireplace. Not into it, just in front of it. As though he could see something I couldn’t.
‘I’m a bit knackered actually.’
So sue me. I wasn’t being that lazy; I’d been working fourteen-hour days all week long. No rest for the wicked, or the make-up artist. ‘Why don’t we get a Chinese and watch a DVD or something?’
He was quiet for another minute. My finger hovered over the volume button while I waited for confirmation. Or at least the suggestion of an Indian.
Eventually,