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

No one had explained it properly. No one had spelled it out to her. She’d had this ridiculous, fuzzy vision of marriage and babies when she was younger: a sweet-smelling, talcum-powder-dusted oasis of flowers and baby bubble bath and sunny days and holding hands with her husband while her beautiful children ran fresh-cheeked through a meadow. No one had spelled it out to her that marriage and babies actually meant years and years of drudgery.

And, most devastatingly, giving up any semblance of your life. The life you had before.

She was done.

Except she could never be done. This was not a job she could resign from. She had to stay here for ever. In that house. With that husband. With those children…

She had to get out.

Now.

Or she would go stark, staring insane.

Frankie went into her bedroom, silently packed a small overnight bag, and walked out of the house. She was shaking but determined. She was going.

The GetAway Lodge was five miles away. As she’d driven there, ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ had come on the radio and tears had clichéd down her cheeks. She was a lost and lonely wife. Well, not lonely. The opposite of lonely. She was surrounded by loads of the buggers. But lost, for sure. Self-preservation. That’s what needed to go on today. GetAway Lodge, GetAway Lodge, GetAway Lodge. She was coming. It had been a bright light, an oasis, a little piece of heaven in the distance.

She’d gone, breathless, to reception and asked for a room for the night. The girl there had looked at her in a funny way. Was it because Frankie’s surname was Smith? Frankie had almost laughed. Was this young girl – clearly hung-over and looking like she had hastily slapped Saturday’s make-up on top of Friday night’s – expecting some swarthy fella to suddenly appear from behind the potted plant, in a jaunty necktie? With a lascivious look. And dubious shoes.

‘Just you?’ the girl had said, her over-drawn eyebrows twitching and vodka breath distilling over in Frankie’s direction.

‘Yes, it’s just me.’

After checking in, Frankie had walked to the neighbouring petrol station and bought four magazines, three bags of Minstrels, a Galaxy, a Boost and a large bag of salt and vinegar Kettle Chips. Then she’d returned to her lovely room, and ate and watched telly until midnight. Unhindered. Uninterrupted. Unbothered. She’d replied, I’m fine, to each and every one of several texts from Rob, once she’d told him where she was. He shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d threatened it often enough. His texts had started off angry, then worried, then resigned. He obviously thought she was just having an episode. She could visualise him, on the sofa at home, trying and failing to work out when she’d had her last period, before returning to his television and snacks.

I’ll be back tomorrow, was the final text she’d sent, at about midnight, before she’d turned out the light and snuggled down, alone, under the white cotton sheet and the limited comfort of the dodgy striped comforter. The thought of being back had filled her with dread, but for those rapidly passing hours of bliss, she was free.

Frankie had arrived home at ten this morning and it was like she’d never been away. Actually, it was worse than if she’d never been away. She had let herself quietly in the front door. Shoes had littered the hall. A child’s padded jacket had been flung on the second stair up. A congealing, pink plastic cup of milk had been randomly placed on a windowsill.

She’d walked into the kitchen. There had been remains of a Saturday night takeaway strewn all over the table, an empty styrofoam burger box open on the floor like a Muppet’s mouth, an almost-empty bottle of lemonade on its side on the worktop, a sticky dribble coming from it and dripping down the under-counter fridge. Cupboard doors and drawers were gaping; there was a sink full of dishes and empty tins filled with water, and an overflowing bin. For God’s sake!

‘Rob!’

Silence. There had just been the slight rustle of the white plastic bag the takeaway had come in, left redundant on the table and flicking in the chilly January breeze coming through the wide open back door.

‘Rob!’

‘In the garden!’

They had all been out there. Rob, in his bright red fleece and Timberlands and, despite the weather, those bloody shorts she detested, the ones with the tar stains on the knees. Harry and Josh, duelling with cricket bats. They duelled with anything these days: light sabres, plastic pirate swords, and if it came to it, rolling pins and tubes of tin foil and cling film. At least they were doing it in the garden; they usually fenced at the top of the stairs when she was trying to come down with a massive basket of laundry. Tilly was doing cartwheels on the wet grass in double denim, and three-year-old Alice was plomped on her bottom on the overgrown lawn (where was the waterproof-backed picnic blanket?) and noshing on a very unseasonal choc ice. Half of it appeared to have exploded over her face, and all the children looked overexcited and under-dressed.

‘Mummy!’ Tilly had hollered, mid-wheel, and Alice had run over to Frankie and wiped her chocolatey cheeks on her mother’s leg. Frankie hugged Alice, waved ‘hello’ at the other children then retreated back to the kitchen, where she’d started tidying up. Within ten minutes, Harry had come into the kitchen for something and ended up telling her she was ruining everything, as always (she had dared ask him if he had finished his science project for school tomorrow) and Rob had stormed into the kitchen demanding to know where his phone was.

‘How the hell should I know?’ said Frankie, swiping at a ketchup splodge on the table with a sodden yellow sponge.

‘It’s been moved,’ growled Rob, ominously and incorrectly, and he marched off upstairs, huffing about ‘turning this place upside down until I find it.’

‘Oh, bog off!’ Frankie had mumbled, under her breath, then felt her spirit die a little as she remembered she’d promised them a big Sunday roast this weekend.

She’d only just got back, but she wanted out again.

Frankie gave a deep sigh as she peeled a Brussels sprout off the floor with one hand and scraped a strand of frizzy hair off her face with the other. The blissful night at the GetAway Lodge was becoming a distant memory. As soon as she’d stepped through the door and seen those littered shoes and the congealing cup of milk, the wife and motherhood juggernaut had started its engine and it was now rumbling again at full, reluctant pelt as she cleared up the aftermath of the roast dinner. She scraped more dishes in the bin, wiped the table, put the table mats away, swept the kitchen floor, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. She still wanted out. She wanted her P45. She’d had enough.

She shook her head and tried to rally, which was quite difficult as she’d just stood on a squished, half-chewed potato and nearly slipped over. She’d chosen this life! She’d wanted this husband, these children. She’d not said ‘no’ to any of them, when she had the chance. They were hers and she was theirs. She just had to get on with it. Embrace them. Continue to smother them all in love and roast potatoes…

It was no use. She felt worse than before she’d escaped. Crisis point had been reached and there was only one solution. A solution that would give her time on her own, like those blissful hours at the GetAway Lodge, at least every other weekend.

It was radical. It was major. It would cause a hell of a lot of upheaval. But it could be done. She knew a school mum who had this very set-up. Free, blissful time on her own every other weekend. Every other Friday she’d have a chilled night with her girlfriends. Every other Saturday she’d go out and get wrecked. Alternate Sundays she’d lie on the sofa until 5p.m., her shoes from the night before still toppled together on her (Frankie imagined) white, fluffy rug. She wanted some of that and there was only one way she could get it.

Frankie chucked the flattened roast potato into the bin and kicked the dishwasher door shut.

She could leave Rob.

Chapter Three: Grace

Grace’s silent scream was at the side of a Sunday morning football pitch whilst having a bit of mindless small talk with Charlie’s mum.

‘Oh bless, look at my Charlie, one of his socks has fallen down.’

‘Oh yeah. Yeah, look at him. Oh bless.’ Grace smiled and put her hands in the back pockets of her skinny jeans. She didn’t really know where to put them. She barely knew where to put herself.

That bastard! How could he do this to me?

‘At least they’ve got good weather for it. It was chucking it down yesterday.’

‘Yeah, that’s right. It’s cold, but it’s nice to see the sun.’ Another smile, another platitude. Grace didn’t really know what she was saying.

Cheat! Liar! I’m never going to let him come back. Ever.

‘Goal! Yes! Go on Charlie!’

‘Yay! Brilliant. Well done, Charlie.’

No man is going to hurt me like that again.

Grace grinned in what she hoped looked like happiness, or at least something that didn’t look like her soul had been wrenched from her body, and she and Charlie’s mum walked towards the brick changing rooms.

Anyone glancing at her would think she was a normal, contented football mum enjoying the bright, crisp January day, the white clouds scudding across a chilly marine sky and her son’s hat-trick. That the worst part of her day would be cleaning muddy football boots and scouring the freezer for what to cook for tea. To a casual onlooker, Grace knew she would look perfectly at ease.

Blimey, she was good at this, she acknowledged. She should maybe have been an actress, instead of someone who worked in a hat boutique. No acting required there. Well, maybe a bit. She sometimes had to tell old battle-axes they looked nice in their pink mother-of-the bride hats or anyone they looked good in a fascinator.

Charlie’s mum had certainly fallen for her act this morning. She had no clue that Grace’s husband of twelve years had admitted to her before football this morning that he was cheating on her.

Grace had kicked him out. Kicked him to the kerb. He’d talked to the hand ’cause the face wasn’t listening. They used to watch programmes like that together. Jerry Springer. At the weekends. They loved trash TV. They’d laugh smugly at all those pathetic people airing all their hilarious, dirty laundry in public. The affairs, the drama, the grubby awfulness. Awful Jerry. The terrible people with mullets and missing teeth. Those appalling beefed-up bouncers hamming it up and marching around. It was the sort of programme you could really enjoy for an hour or two, before it started making you feel ill.

She now felt really ill: sicker than she’d ever felt. A terrible, grubby drama had played out in her own kitchen and James’s dirty laundry had flapped everywhere like filthy pigeons’ wings, whacking her in the face and making her fight for breath.

He’d talked to the back of her head as he’d packed his bag. Each time he’d tried to wheedle his way out of things, she’d turned her body. Every time he tried to say it wouldn’t happen again, she’d edged further away. Eventually, she’d found herself in a corner of the kitchen, by the bin, facing the tiles and thinking they needed a good scrub.

She’d heard the front door close. She’d turned round to find James gone and Daniel standing by the fridge, with his football bag. Grace had to find a way to tell him.

That his father had done the dirty on her and wouldn’t be coming back.

Grace smiled again at Charlie’s mum and nodded at a story about the funny thing Charlie had said at dinner last night. Her silent scream was nowhere near loud or long enough.

The Wednesday before, at about half past seven in the evening, she had grabbed James’s phone to check the weather for Daniel’s district cross-country rally the next day. She needed to know exactly what to bring: fleeces or raincoats or both. (James wasn’t coming of course; too busy.) She wanted to get the bag of water and energy-boosting snacks packed and ready for the morning. She wanted to be organised.

Grace kept a pristine, and ridiculously tidy and organised home. Everything had its place. If things didn’t work or weren’t needed, they were gone. If there was a mess anywhere, it was eradicated immediately. Her friends always teased her and said that you needed to hold on to your handbag in that house; if you put it down on a table for longer than five seconds, Grace would chuck it out.

Her phone was upstairs. James’s was on the hall table. As she’d picked it up, she saw there was a thumbnail photo on the screen. It looked like a breast. A naked breast! She quickly clicked on the photo and made it full-size. Yes, a breast. A big one. Bigger than hers, certainly. With a really dark, erect nipple. It was just the one. Not a pair. Sender: work. The breast looked like it was lying on a bed, on its side.

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.

‘I lied,’ she said. ‘You have to go. Now.’

She knew he would have loved to slam the back door as he left, but he chose not to let the entire neighbourhood know he was highly displeased. He was all about appearances, our James. And Grace had to keep up hers.

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.