Granted, that was a statement that carried a lot more credibility on a bottle of Johnson & Johnson’s Baby Shampoo, but I had to make myself believe it. I was not going to waste any more tears on someone who had left me a note. I was not going to make myself sick over someone that thought five years could be written off in fewer than four sentences. I was not going to break my heart over someone who could break my heart and still think it was OK to take my toothpaste at the same time. I was done. Heading back into the living room, I curled up on the armchair and shook my head at Drunk and Drunker. It had been a hard day for the both, clearly. Trying not to wake them, I pulled the to-do list out of my bag and read it over again. I would never do any of these things. Never in twenty-nine years would I have considered any of them. I wasn’t the kind of girl who would do any of these things but I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of girl would.
And I couldn’t help but be a little bit excited to find out.
CHAPTER SIX
‘Morning.’
I rolled over to feel something soft on the other side of my bed.
‘I thought you said no same-sex experience on the list?’ Emelie mumbled.
‘If I went gay, it wouldn’t be with you,’ I replied.
Why was Emelie in my bed? Where was Simon? Why did my brain feel as if it had been taken out, tumble dried without so much as a sheet of Bounce and shoved back up my nose?
Oh.
Right.
‘It’s too early,’ I rolled back over and mumbled into my pillowcase. Maybe if I lay face down long enough, I’d smother myself into a coma. That would be a nice long nap, wouldn’t it? A lovely, lovely coma. Alternatively, I realized, opening my eyes, I should get up and be with other human beings as there was every chance I wasn’t terribly mentally stable. Wishing yourself into a coma isn’t usually A Good Thing. ‘I want a lie-in.’
‘It’s almost ten, that is a lie-in,’ Em said, bouncing up and off the bed like an Andrex puppy. ‘Today is the first day of your single life. That’s exciting. Get. Up.’
I felt the sunshine on my face and made a mental note to pick up some blackout curtains as soon as humanly possible. Silver lining number one.
‘I feel like shit.’ I pushed my legs over the side of the bed, hoping they would somehow catapult the rest of my body over there. ‘Is this part of being single?’
Em stretched and nodded. ‘We need to work on your alcohol tolerance. I’ll put the kettle on, see if he’s up.’
After passing out on the sofa, the rest of last night was a bit of a blur. I remembered waking up around seven, throwing up again, drinking tea, ordering a pizza and playing ‘guess who’s going to die?’ when Matthew turned on Casualty. Afternoon hangovers were the worst. Once it had been established that I wasn’t going to cry myself to sleep, Matthew and Em had allowed me to slope off to bed. Still, it made a change from my regular Saturday rituals of doing the washing, watching DVDs and going down to Pizza Express early enough to be home for Match of the Day.
Yawning, I combed my hair out of my face and tethered it behind my head. Was it weird that yesterday had probably been more fun than any other Saturday in years? Maybe fun wasn’t the right word. It was definitely the most interesting.
The hardwood floor in my bedroom was never warm, not even when the sun was streaming in, like it was this morning, but only one foot was cold as I forced myself to stand up. Glancing down, I saw that was because one foot was standing on something white. Something soft. I dropped back onto the bed, releasing the fabric. It was Simon’s T-shirt. It must have got thrown under the bed during our Friday night sexcapades. Closing my eyes, I held onto the worn cotton tightly and tried to breathe slowly. The main reason I hadn’t cried myself to sleep the night before was that I was just exhausted. My body’s first line of self-defence was to shut down and go to sleep, but that wasn’t an option today. I was going to have to do something.
‘Do you want shower or tea first?’ Em stuck her head round the door. ‘Matthew’s in there now but you can go next if you want?’
I shoved the T-shirt into my pillowcase and stood a bit too quickly. The afternoon hangover had definitely become a morning hangover, bleurgh.
‘Shower.’ I was desperate to get out of the room, to put some distance between me and that T-shirt. ‘Definitely shower.’
Sitting down and drinking tea would inevitably lead to conversation. Conversation would inevitably lead to talking about Simon. Talking about Simon would inevitably lead to my brain exploding. I needed a distraction. A six foot four gay man in a towel wasn’t quite what I was thinking about, but that was what I found in the living room. And I supposed it was technically a distraction. Just not as good a distraction as the other thing I found in the living room. My single girl’s to-do list.
‘Jesus, how much did we drink last night?’ Matthew pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned his wet hair back against the sofa. ‘Or, actually, all day? I haven’t felt this shit in ages.’
‘Apparently we need to build up our alcohol tolerance,’ I said, trying not to catch sight of myself in the mirror. The glimpse of the scarecrow-cum-crypt-keeper I’d got before I could avert my eyes was bad enough. ‘I don’t know how she does this.’
I picked up the knackered napkin and took a pit stop on the sofa beside Matthew. His skin was still hot from the shower and he smelled clean. I smelled like evil.
‘Planning your bungee jump?’ he asked, eyeing the list.
‘Maybe not today,’ I replied, considering each point. Hmm.
‘We really do have some bright ideas when we’ve had a drink, don’t we?’
Makeover. Exercise. Bungee jump. Tattoo. Date for the wedding.
‘Still, kept you from slitting your wrists – and, you know, avoiding that in the first twenty-four hours is pretty important.’
Buy something. Write a letter to your ex. Travel. Find your first crush. Break the law.
‘Are you safe in the shower this morning or do you need a buddy?’ Matthew was still talking. ‘I can see from here your legs need shaving and I don’t know if you’re safe with a blade.’
‘I’m safe,’ I promised, placing the list on the coffee table and heading purposefully into the shower. ‘Trust me.’
The mirror was still misty from Matthew’s shower – that boy was always in there for a lifetime, but one quick swipe with my hand revealed just how bad my situation was. Straw-like ponytail, dull skin, yesterday’s T-shirt. As a make-up artist, I was used to scrutinizing faces, looking at every different angle, settling for nothing less than perfection, but I never turned that same gaze on myself.
If I was being entirely objective, what did I see? My skin was grey and dull, my eyes red and swollen and the angles of my face were lost in the shadows of my hair. My hair … I would never let a model go on set looking this way. It was horrible. Awful. And Simon loved it. Suddenly I couldn’t bear the weight of it dragging me down for another second. Without one more look at the girl with the long blonde hair, I opened the bathroom cabinet, grabbed the scissors out of the first-aid kit and hacked away at the ponytail, right underneath the hair tie. When I looked back in the mirror, I had a pair of scissors in one hand and a two-foot-long ponytail in the other.
‘MATTHEW.’
‘What?’ He peeked through the door cautiously. ‘Are you naked? Is there a spider? Are you naked?’
I held up both hands as the ponytail holder slipped out of my newly bobbed hair and hit the floor. My new do fluttered defiantly above my shoulders. And not in a good way.
‘Oh sweet baby Jesus.’ Matthew slapped his hand over his mouth, eyes a mirror of mine. Wide, confused and slightly