Liz Wood - The Single Life

Lauren Wilt—Her star falling, this award-winning but aging novelist rejuvenates her career by writing a successful singles column. Too bad it couldn’t do the same for her figure. With her fortunes skyrocketing, she needed a pretty face to live up to public expectations.

Helen Matter—Young. Attractive. Blond. Blue-eyed. Extremely intelligent. Fashion disaster. Dating train wreck. Every man’s dream just wasn’t being advertised properly. Until she became the face of Chicago’s hottest news topic: “The Single Life.”

Enter: gentleman callers, inquisitive media and mutually assured disaster.

Is there a lesson to be learned in loving the single life?

Liz Wood has lived on four different continents and in twice as many countries, but her favorite things remain quite domestic: books, chocolate and coffee, preferably all together. She reads everything from French comics to Italian scandal sheets, German philosophy to American romances (the latter late into the night). When she is not reading, she is trying to train her beagle to do some housekeeping, so she can have more time to, um, read.

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Dear Reader,

The idea for The Single Life came to me one afternoon when a friend and her seventy-something mother described the latter’s recent experiences with Internet dating. As we laughed about the complicated security measures they had adopted to protect her from senile Don Juans and toothless Lotharios, I began to wonder what insights she might bring to a singles column. Were her experiences all that different from younger women who keep looking for a crock of good men at the end of the rocky road to romance?

I’m still not entirely sure about the answer to that question, but I did realize something else that afternoon: it’s never too late to begin again. This realization guided me as I sketched out the story of the unlikely friendship between three women trying to turn their lives around. Though they face very different challenges in their single lives, fifty-something Lauren, forty-something Clare and twenty-something Helen come away with the same lesson: the immeasurable value of friendship.

I hope you will have as much pleasure reading about these singles as I had writing about them.

Liz

Many thanks to Tara Gavin, whose suggestions for

revision went right to the heart of the matter. Thanks

also to Lena Wood for being such a generous guinea pig.

I dedicate this book to my mother who, despite her many

experiences, has never really known the single life.

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

Borrow my words, then!—

Your beautiful young manhood—lend me that!

And we two make one hero of romance!

Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

“You’re going to have to sell the house.”

Lauren shut her eyes tightly, hoping that she hadn’t heard correctly, that she was still asleep and would wake up to something other than the jarring sound of the telephone and Clare’s devastating proclamation. After all those hours spent exploring the varied shades of darkness, she wasn’t even sure she had actually slept. Not until she heard Clare Hanley’s voice at the other end of the line.

“What time is it anyway?” she asked in a hoarse voice.

“Way past the time for you to be still in bed. The last time I looked, it was going on eleven. What happened? Did you stay up to catch the late show?”

“Something like that.”

Lauren didn’t want to go into the details of her sleepless nights.

“Well, I’m sorry if I’ve ruined your beauty sleep, but I’m glad you finally answered. I’ve been trying to reach you for days. Don’t you ever listen to your messages?”

“I listen to them.” She just didn’t bother to answer them. These days she also didn’t bother to answer the phone. She wouldn’t have picked up this time, either, except that Chrissie had said she would call, and Lauren really wanted to speak to her, to hear her voice, to know she was all right.

E-mail could get the news through. It could transmit a quick greeting or forward a funny joke, but it couldn’t reassure Lauren about the subtleties, the unspoken nuances that Chrissie couldn’t hide from her mother.

They had been playing telephone tag for days now. Neither Lauren’s preference for the answering machine, nor the time difference between Illinois and Vienna helped much. So when the phone had rung at 11:00 a.m., Lauren had quickly calculated that it was late afternoon for Chrissie in Austria and a perfect time for a trans-Atlantic conversation. She had wiped her eyes and swallowed the big lump in her throat. By the time the phone had rung a third time, she was rolling across the king-size bed and reaching for the receiver. She didn’t stop to think it might be someone other than Chrissie.

Now here she was, stuck with the effects of another bad night’s sleep, a headache that was getting worse by the second and a conversation she really didn’t want to have.

“As you can probably tell, I just woke up, Clare, and this is really a bad time to talk. I’ll call you back. Bye—”

“Don’t you dare hang up on me, Lauren Wilt! I’ve waited long enough to speak to you, and I’m not going through this again.”

Lauren didn’t say anything, but she didn’t hang up either. Even outside the courtroom, Clare’s voice could put fear in humble citizens like herself.

Clare must have realized it because she switched to a softer tone.

“How’ve you been, Lauren?”

“Fine, Clare. Just fine. As long as people don’t try to get me out of bed before twelve.”

“Mmm-hmm. That’s why you haven’t been answering your phone lately? Or responding to your messages?”

“I’ve been, you know, busy.”

“Yeah, so have I. But I return my calls.”

“You pay other people to do it for you.”

“Same thing. Besides, I’m not just talking about business calls. Even your best friend Alice says you haven’t been returning her calls either.”

“I was going to today. I’ve been trying to finish a chapter.” Trying being the operative word, since Lauren hadn’t managed to finish it. She had spent another day looking at a blank screen—when she wasn’t contemplating her blank mind. She didn’t expect today would be much different. Which was why she hadn’t bothered to get out of bed, even when it was clear she wasn’t going to get back to sleep.

“Look, Lauren, I’m your lawyer, but I’m speaking here as your friend. It’s been more than a year since the divorce came through. You need to start living again.”

It was easy for Clare to talk. She’d never been divorced. Never been married, for that matter. Never had her heart broken. Never had to mend it. Not independent, hard-as-nails Clare Hanley.