Fiona Collins - A Year of Being Single - The bestselling laugh-out-loud romantic comedy that everyone’s talking about

Grace had been so startled. What the hell was this and who’d sent it? Work ? That was a bit vague. She swallowed and threw the phone back down on the table. Oh God. Was James cheating?

‘What the hell’s this?’ she’d said, furious and unnerved, as James came out of the downstairs loo, fiddling with his tie. He’d looked at the phone and laughed.

‘It’s nothing,’ he’d said. He said a friend had sent it to him, that it was just a photo doing the rounds: one of those photos blokes pass around ‘for a laugh’. Hilarious, she’d thought. He did always think it all a laugh, that sort of thing – looking at girls on the street, gawping at Baywatch -type beauties on the telly. She’d catch him at it and he’d say, ‘What?’, all laughing innocence.

She accepted his explanation, but still, she wondered about it, after he’d slid his phone into his briefcase, kissed her fleetingly on the lips and left the house. He had a very important meeting that day: he was high up in oil. They’d met when he’d been further down in oil and Grace had worked in the millinery department at John Lewis in Oxford Street.

The photo wasn’t especially porn-y. The breast wasn’t edged in black lace or peeping out of red PVC. It didn’t look sensational enough to be something shared over and over, however pervy and childish the men were. It looked like a real woman’s breast, on a real woman’s bed; it looked personal . But, she’d really wanted to believe him. She liked a quiet life. Her, James and Daniel. The three of them. She was desperate to believe him and for life to carry on as normal.

So it had. For four days she’d bought it.

Until this morning. Way before her alarm was supposed to go off so she could wake Daniel for football, Grace had been woken by a random truck clattering down the road. She couldn’t get back to sleep so lay there for a while. James was sound-o. Over his sleeping body she could see his phone on his bedside table. He’d been a bit funny with that phone since the breast episode – protective. He’d even started taking it into the bathroom with him.

She’d got up and, careful to avoid all the annoying creaks in their new-build floorboards, had tiptoed round to his side of the bed and picked it up. She knew his password, tapped it in and swiped. There was a message on the screen.

Bleach!

Bleach ? How strange. What did that mean? And who would send that? His mother? Why? James didn’t clean – and neither did his mother, actually. Was it a random message sent by mistake?

Then she saw it was from ‘ Work ’ .

Her heart pounding, she clicked open the message thread. From the top of the screen, in their jaunty speech bubbles, the messages went like this:

Great night on Thursday!

Mmm. Great, great night! Thank u

Did you get that gravy off your blouse?

Blouse? When was I wearing a blouse? ;-)

At dinner, sexy!

Oh yes I remember! Briefly. Yes, I managed to get it off.

With a lot of scrubbing? Friction?

Funny. Ha.

Then in the same grey reply bubbles:

No.

Bleach!

James stirred in his sleep, made one of his little noises. Grace carefully placed his phone back on the bedside table, walked into the en-suite bathroom and quietly threw up.

When she’d staggered back into the bedroom, her face red, her eyes bloodshot, her hands shaking and an awful taste in her mouth, she’d paced, left to right, right to left. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be happening.

This was happening.

She’d sat on the bed, on James’s feet.

‘Ow!’

‘Wake up.’

He harrumphed, turned over and pulled the duvet over his head.

‘Wake up !’

‘ What?! ’

‘Wake up, NOW!’ She was hissing; she didn’t want to wake Daniel.

Reluctantly, James sat up. Grace shoved the phone and the messages in his face.

‘You’re having an affair.’

He actually snorted! It turned into a cough. He ran the back of his hand across his mouth.

‘What! You’ve well got the wrong end of the stick! That’s just a client I went out for dinner with. Just a random client.’

‘A random client you call sexy ?’

‘For God’s sake. That’s just a turn of phrase! Business speak.’

‘ Sexy is not a turn of phrase!’ she snarled, in a terrified whisper. ‘Come on, James! I’m not a bloody idiot! I suppose rubbing and friction is some business jargon, too! Was it an all-hands meeting ? Did you have an ideas shower ? She said her blouse was off! You’re shagging her!’

His head was lowered. He wouldn’t look at her.

‘That was her breast,’ she said quietly.

‘What breast?’

‘You’re unbelievable, James. The breast on your phone.’

‘Oh, that.’

‘Yes, that!’

He shrugged. ‘A tit’s a tit,’ he said. His hair was all sticking up and he had a five o’clock shadow. She used to find it endearing. Now she just hated him.

It was typical of the sort of thing he always said, with that cheeky, handsome smile of his. Tits are just tits; there’s no harm in looking; more than a handful is a waste (although considering the size of Work ’s, he didn’t stand by this sentiment). She was appalled to realise that she actually used to find it funny when he spoke about women like that. Everyone did. He was a good bloke was James, a laugh. If he said things like that, people just shrugged and smiled. He could get away with it. He was a top man. The best.

Grace had had a lot of boyfriends; she was one of those girls who always had a boy waiting in the wings. They were all okay, nothing special. Not quite good enough for her. Then James had come along. He was special. Tall and dark blond and ridiculously handsome. Funny and brilliant and surrounded by adoring people – his mum, his brothers and sisters, his work colleagues. Everyone she met when she was with him told her what a great guy he was: she was surprised he didn’t receive applause just for walking down the street. She had thought, yes, at last . James was special. James deserved her; at last there was somebody who did.

That was all gone now.

‘A tit – God I hate that word – is not just a tit! I want you to admit it, James.’ James was ruffling his sticky-up hair like Stan Laurel, but he still looked unruffled, unaffected. ‘So I can kick you out. Have you been sleeping with someone: yes or no?’

‘What?’ He turned his baby blues directly towards hers. Those eyes with the eyelashes that were longer than hers. Those eyes she had stared into on their wedding day and seen everything in.

‘Yes or no? Tell the truth. I’ll respect you more.’

Another hair ruffle. Was he about to do the Stan Laurel whimper? Unlikely. He wasn’t the whimpering kind. He tried to turn on his age-old charm. He smiled his slow, sexy smile and narrowed his eyes. ‘If I tell you the truth would there be a chance I don’t have to go?’

‘Yes.’

He paused, then said, ‘Okay, then it’s true. I’m bang to rights. Sorry, Grace.’ And his winning smile became a pleading smirk, one that always made her stomach flip and made her forgive him anything. Not now. She felt like she’d been punched in the gut. She would have collapsed onto the bed next to him if she could bear to be that close. She would never put her body that close to his again.