Lindsey Kelk - The Single Girl’s To-Do List

Harper

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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.

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ISBN: 9780007345632

Ebook Edition © April 2011 ISBN: 9780007383757

Version: 2020-10-09

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.

Cover

Title Page Lindsey Kelk The Single Girl’s To-Do List

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

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Other Books by Lindsey Kelk

About the Publisher

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, he spoke. ‘OK. So I’ve been thinking.’ Whatever was in front of the fireplace continued to entrance him. ‘We should take a break.’

‘We’re going to Croatia in September.’ I gave him a nonplussed stare and draped my legs across his.

‘Yeah.’ He stretched the word out almost all the way through an Asda commercial. ‘No. I meant from … like … us.’

Now he had my attention.

‘We should take a break?’

Whatever it was that was so fascinating in the empty space in front of the fireplace had apparently just started doing a jig. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him concentrate on something with such intensity that wasn’t attached to an Xbox.

‘Are you dumping me?’ I pulled my legs up off his knee and curled into a semi-foetal position. I really wanted to brush my hair.

‘No,’ Simon shook his head. ‘It’s not that, I just need a bit of a break.’

‘Sounds like you’re dumping me.’ I was trying very, very hard not to cry. I already looked bloody awful; tears were not going to help my case. But then, neither was talking in a voice so high and squeaky that it made dolphins sound like they were smoking twenty a day. ‘What are you saying?’

‘Stop freaking out. I just need to sort some stuff out in my head. I’m not breaking up with you.’

‘Is there someone else?’

Oh my god, there was someone else. Five years, a mortgage, a co-signed car loan for a crappy secondhand Renault Mégane and he was seeing someone else.

‘No,’ he practically shouted. ‘Of course there’s not someone else.’

Fair enough.

‘Is this because I don’t want to go to the cinema?’ I wrapped my arms around my knees.

‘Do you want to go to the cinema?’

I shrugged, not knowing what else to do. ‘I might.’

And that was it. We ended up going to see the new Pirates of the Caribbean film but, to be honest, it was a bit difficult to concentrate. And when Johnny Depp can’t hold your attention, what chance does anyone else have? When we got home, I ran a bath and Simon moved his stuff into the spare room.