She’d had to swallow down the tears she wanted to cry her heart out with and take Daniel to Sunday football.
That evening, after the football kit had been washed and tumble-dried and Daniel had gone to bed with his iPad, Grace put love in the bin. Large cream, wooden letters that spelt L.O.V.E. to be exact. They used to sit on the mantelpiece in the living room, when love had meant something. Along with them she dumped a wooden plaque that said LIVE, LAUGH, LOVE and a slate heart that had hung in the kitchen on the wall by the fridge that said MR and MRS. It left a lighter, heart-shaped space on the paintwork. She frowned; she’d have to touch that up.
The lid of her posh, soft-close bin settled back into place and she opened the fridge and took out a bottle of wine. She wasn’t much of a drinker, but tonight she needed wine. She’d stopped off at the Co-op on the way home from football to get some while Daniel had waited in the car. A glimpse of herself in the reflection of the shop’s chiller door had horrified her. It was a catastrophic hair day. Really bad. The wind on the football pitch had whipped her thick, blonde curls into an unruly bush. A cowlick bounced on her forehead. James liked her hair; he always said it was cute. Bastard. Maybe she’d straighten it now; maybe she’d iron out everything James had ever liked about it.
She stood by the fridge and poured some of the bottle into the glass ready and waiting on the worktop, and her eye caught her calendar. It had three columns, one for James, one for her, one for Daniel. She used three different coloured pens for each of them, perfect and precise.
She quite liked it when her friends called her ‘Princess Grace’. They didn’t mean it nastily; she wasn’t princess-y: she didn’t have pouting hissy fits and expect people to bring her cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off, on velvet cushions or anything, nor was she a J-Lo style demanding diva. But she did like kitten heels and pale pink nail varnish, cashmere cardis and pretty ballerina flats. She never overdid her make-up or wore tarty clothes. She liked small, delicate stud earrings. She would be horrified at anything remotely Pat Butcher. She was a princess but not princess-y: if she had the perfect life she had worked hard to get it.
She believed in morals. She believed people got what they deserved. Her favourite book, as a child, was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and she knew exactly what Roald Dahl was saying. Good children were given chocolate factories; awful children got what was coming to them. Follow the path; toe the line.
She took a pair of scissors from the kitchen drawer, carefully cut off James’s column from the calendar and threw it in the bin. The calendar was now lopsided so she took some Blu-Tack and glued the drooping corner to the back of the kitchen door. Then she took the green pen from her neat pen pot and threw that into the bin as well.
She was done. With James. With men. If James, the very best man of all, had turned out to be a traitor, a hurter, a destroyer, then there would be no more men for her. H.O.M.E as declared in big letters on the wall of her living room was now just about her and Daniel.
Men were a mistake. A big mistake.
And no man would ever hurt her again.
Imogen fastened the buckles of her favourite, perilously high ankle boots and admired her legs in the mirror. She had dressed carefully for tonight. Okay, she was only having Frankie and Grace over for drinks and nibbles, but she liked to make an effort at all times. She liked skirt-ready legs, shiny hair and foxy make-up; it was just the way she’d always been. She smoothed down her black pencil skirt, flicked a silver cuff high up on her toned, bare arm and made her way downstairs.
She’d been looking forward to this night for days. Ever since the Dave Holgate incident. And especially now her friends were manless, too. She’d been really surprised, when she’d phoned up Frankie to tell her about Paris, with lots of exaggeration thrown in she knew would make her laugh, to learn that Frankie’s Rob had just moved out.
‘Really?’ Imogen had said. ‘I know he’s a lazy git, but I didn’t think you’d ever do anything about it.’
‘Yep,’ Frankie had replied. ‘He’s gone. I kicked him out on Tuesday night. And I feel amazing.’ Indeed, Imogen noted, there was a lightness to Frankie’s voice she had not heard for a long time.
Frankie was one of Imogen’s oldest friends. They’d grown up together just a few streets from where they both lived now, Chelmsford in Essex, a surprisingly pretty place to live and not too stereotypically Essex… People didn’t go round in orange tans and inflated lips shouting ‘ream!’ and ‘I ain’t done nuffin!’ at each other. They’d gone to the same town-centre primary school and remained friends despite going to different secondary schools – Frankie to a St Philomena’s, an all girls’ school that sounded like St Trinian’s and which she travelled to on a riotous bus, in a rolled-up skirt; Imogen to the dull and grey local comprehensive, which she walked to in sensible buckled shoes. Frankie had run amok and not got a lot done. Imogen had been a right little swot and excelled. But throughout it all, they remained thick as thieves.
They reminisced all the time about their teenage years. The things Frankie got up to at school. The way Imogen would refuse to open the door to her when she was revising. The summer nights they spent in a tent in Frankie’s garden, scoffing still-warm cakes dripping with melted butter icing that they’d baked super quietly at midnight.
After school Imogen had gone off to London to fly high in an exciting career and Frankie had packed away her hitched-up skirt to muddle along as a secretary at the local technical college, before marrying local guy Rob, who’d been in the sixth form at Imogen’s school.
Imogen had reluctantly moved back to Chelmsford two years ago, when her mum got ill. There was a new build for sale a few doors from Frankie’s 1930s semi and walking distance from her mum, who had never moved. Encouraged by Frankie, Imogen bought it. She was momentarily worried when she found out Frankie already had a really good friend in the street, Grace, who dared to be younger than them, but thankfully Grace turned out to be absolutely lovely and really great company.
They became the three of them, and they talked about everything. So when Frankie told Imogen on the phone that Grace was also now single, having kicked her husband out for being unfaithful, Imogen had called a summit meeting – in other words, a huge gossip, with loads of wine.
‘I’d love that,’ Grace had said, in a wobbly voice, when Imogen had knocked on her door before work one morning to invite her. ‘It’s ages since we’ve had a night together.’
‘Far too long,’ Imogen had replied. ‘Bring a bottle. I’m going to get loads of snacks in. Let’s see if we can’t cheer you up.’
Female company was all Imogen craved at the moment. She’d avoided men, as an entire species, since she’d dropped Dave off at the Gatwick Express and sent him on his way without so much as a peck on the cheek. She’d have booted him up the backside, if she could. What an absolute loser he was. She was literally glad to see the back of him, as he trundled his stupid suitcase up the pavement away from her to the taxi rank, in his stupid slightly too-short jeans and his stupid try-hard navy blazer, with his stupid thinning hair flapping in the breeze. He’d even been so thick-skinned as to say, ‘Call you later, babes,’ before he’d ambled off, despite her telling him it was over and she didn’t want to see him again. Honestly, some men were so thick!
Indeed, he’d called her, at work the next day, as though nothing had happened.
‘Oh, Dave,’ she’d said. ‘I’m going to have to be blunt. It was fun – well, some of it – but frankly, you’re a bit of a tosser. Don’t phone me again. Goodbye.’
And that was the last man she’d spoken to all week. She usually chatted to men at work – there weren’t many, admittedly; she was currently temping for a small TV production company and most of the people in the office in West London were