Emma Ever After: A feel-good romantic comedy with a hilarious modern re-telling of Jane Austen

She turned on the episode and turned up the volume. He didn’t know what he was talking about. She had merely gasped in surprise.

Half an hour later they paused the show when the Turkish takeout arrived.

‘Do you think we’re stuck in a rut?’ Gee asked around a mouthful of carrot dipped in humus.

What did he mean? There was no point her going out on the town and getting drunk for at least another twelve months. Then she’d have to put some serious thought into finding ‘the one’.

The hummus was a bit drier than normal, she thought as she struggled to swallow.

‘What do you mean a rut?’ she answered.

He definitely was dating, that was what this was about. Or he wanted to. Who was it? No, she didn’t want to know. There was no point in her getting attached to them.

As if she ever did.

Maybe she could make sure her next clients needed someone to travel with them? Then at least she wouldn’t be around. And by the time she was back it would be over.

But then they would have a clear run at him, she thought, they wouldn’t know that Emma and Gee came as a pair.

‘I mean, it’s a Friday night and we’re staying in with takeout and Netflix. And we aren’t even using it as a euphemism. You’re not yet thirty and I have a Brit Award and a VMA in the downstairs toilet. What has happened to us?’

Okay, maybe he wasn’t dating. But he was obviously having a midlife crisis. Early.

‘See, this is all because you don’t have a life plan,’ she said as she found the energy to wrap her kebab up tighter, so she didn’t lose any. She watched in fascination as Gee stuck his tongue out to lick the juice travelling over his hand. It was disgust she was feeling, definitely disgust. It couldn’t be anything else, she thought, as she watched, mesmerised.

‘What has a life plan got to do with us being stuck in a rut?’ He gestured with his kebab, another stream of juice starting to coat his fingers.

She had to stop staring. She shook her head. Life plan. That is what she needed to think about.

She swallowed her mouthful of kebab. How many times had she had this conversation with him?

‘Okay, you map out your life, right. Break it down first by year. Then work out where the big milestones are going to be. When you want to be promoted at work, when you want to get married, when you want to have kids, that sort of thing. Then you make sure that you put in month by month all the stuff you need to do to get to achieve it.’

Why didn’t he get that it was as simple as that? Everything plotted out.

‘So, you’re telling me you have a calendar entry for September 3rd that says “Netflix and takeout with Gee”? Because that is weird and slightly scary. And I’m not sure how that adds up to you getting your life plan done?’

He put his feet up on the large battered coffee table and actually started eating his kebab instead of waving it around.

‘No, it isn’t that detailed. Well, only in places.’ Was he seriously asking this? Maybe he wanted to make it up to her since their earlier fight about her job.

If only she could get him to understand. She put her kebab down, wiped her fingers with a napkin, because she wasn’t a savage, and picked up her phone so she could illustrate her points.

‘See, at the moment I’m in my career growth period.’ She waved the graphs on the Google doc that she checked every morning and updated weekly at him. ‘All social events that I go to need to be focused towards growing my professional network or be somehow related to work. Anything else would be a waste of time and energy. But if we move forward to next year, that is the beginning of my professional and personal period. I’ll start having to go out socially, I’ll probably join a dating service. Then after a period of three months, I should find Mr Right. I give it another six months before we move in, then engaged a year after that…’

She looked up.

Gee was staring at her with his mouth open, his kebab halted halfway to it.

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