Chapter One
Abbey
I was a reluctant holiday-maker. Bedraggled, weary and extremely conscious of being single. But I was in the Maldives and the resort, well, it was lovely. Postcard-perfect. It was all palm trees, nicely swept paths and warm, welcoming lights. The staff were helpful in that ‘hotel’ kind of way, where they make you feel significantly more important than you are when checking in, but you strongly suspect they will talk about you meanly the minute you step away from the counter. But despite their charm, I could barely muster a polite smile.
It didn’t help that the past several hours had revealed that I was a nervous flyer. I never used to be. I was so nervous that the lady beside me suspected I was having a panic attack, and a flight attendant, who looked like Hannah Waddingham, gave me a Valium out of her handbag and a vodka to wash it down. By the time I arrived at the resort, the overwhelming feeling I remember was, well, relief. Followed closely by exhaustion, plus the solid conviction that my life was rubbish, and that going on a holiday by yourself was a one-way trip to Loserville.
The porter (Hot. Model hot. Twenty-five max.) opened the door to the beachfront room, and then we both just stood there while I took a deep, miserable, shuddering sigh. It was the perfect room, literally perfect. I walked into it slowly, taking in the lustrous white linen covering the enormous bed. It was so spacious I could stand there with my black tote held at arm’s length, spin around and not hit a goddamn thing. It had better cupboard space than my house, and a gorgeous bathroom with subway tiles, fancy shampoo and conditioner in those exclusive smaller bottles, and a window to let you look out at the ocean from the tub. A bottle of champagne sat cooling in a silver bucket, three-quarters filled with ice cubes and two glasses laid out with their stems crossed in front of the bottle, suggesting there should be a couple staying here.
There were double doors with light-diffusing curtains draped from the ceiling. The doors were open, and a gentle warm breeze flittered into the room, making the soft curtains dance. From the door to where the ocean gently lapped was perfectly pale sand, the kind that squeaks under your feet and gets extremely hot in the sun. To add insult to injury, a full moon hung perfectly low, like a neon welcome sign in the night sky. It was the moon that pushed me over the edge, and I burst into tears and fell on the bed.
I don’t know what happened to the hot porter. Perhaps it wasn’t every day he showed someone the perfect room, only to have them collapse into a ball of grief and sadness. He had evidently made himself scarce, leaving the emotional wreck alone.
I cried a marriage-worth of tears on that perfect bed, bits of my tubular mascara balling up and marring the perfect white surface. Once I had noticed, I began trying to brush it off, but that just made the smudges much worse, so I simply gave up. Walking over to the champagne bucket, I reached into the slushy ice and wiped a little of the freezing liquid over my eyes. Then I popped the cork and poured out a glass, downing it, failing to care about the not-quite-ladylike burp that came out. Unsatisfied with the glass’s capacity, I placed it neatly beside the cooler and drank the next mouthful directly from the bottle.
Internally, I was prepared to acknowledge that it appeared I was bottoming out and having some sort of crisis. Maybe I was entitled to one. Six months and seven hours ago, I had been dumped by my husband of thirteen years. He came home, ate the mediocre dinner I had prepared for him and told me he was in love, just not with me. He laughed in a ‘I cannot believe this has happened’ kind of way, which reminded me of Elizabeth Bennet telling her father how much she loved Darcy at the end of the love-it-or-hate-it 2005Pride & Prejudicemovie. I had laughed too, though I was not amused. He moved his stuff out that day and left it to me to explain to our daughter.
Peter (deadbeat ex-husband) had insisted that I go on this holiday to recover, which I think he felt was a vaguely magnanimous gesture. This holiday, that we were supposed to take together, to reconnect.Now that is pretty fucking funny.
My phone vibrated on the perfect side table.
Hey Mum, just checking you got there okay? Miss you. E xx
My thirteen-year-old daughter, Ella. She would be anxious about me being away, even though she would pretend not to be. I took a deep swig from the bottle and smiled to engage my Mum personality, texting her back a bright and cheery message. Anything that did not scream, ‘I’ve just arrived in a foreign country without waterproof mascara and am having a bit of a crisis’.
Here safe and sound, chickadee. It’s gorgeous, looking forward to reading books on the beach tomorrow. Miss you. Love you. Mum xxx
Another message, this time from my sister, Kate.
Abbey, remember even though you are 42 years old, you’re still bangable.
I stared at my phone, unable to respond to this message. I looked down at my boobs, which were not quite as high as they once were, and my stomach, which was soft instead of firm. I didn’t feel very bangable. I felt like an emotional wreck, whose life had been going along fine until a crisis was forced upon me by the one person who had vowed in front of loved ones not to let me down. And, okay, I wasn’t heartbroken, not really. It wasn’t anything like the same devastation I’d felt when my first boyfriend had dumped me for my friend when we were sixteen. This was more a combination of humiliation and the sensation that my life was falling off the rails. It was miserable.
I tried to pull my shit together for a second, reminding myself that this was a fork in the road or an alternate ending. Reminding myself that I should look for positives. It was choose-your-own adventure time.
Except right now, I could not summon the energy for fresh thoughts.
The last time I had been single, I was twenty-two, hot, and my vagina had not delivered a small human. Now I was cruising towards perimenopause and upping my health insurance to include joint replacements. Could anyone but my grandmother even fall in love over forty?Fuck. Probably not.
My misery was allowing me to rapidly make my way through most of the champagne, sitting there on the perfect bed in the perfect room. I raised the champagne bottle to the light, estimating that there was still a glass left – the irony that I was still measuring in glasses, even though I was no longer drinking out of one, was not lost on me. I hadn’t bothered to check the label, but it tasted French and expensive.
A stronger breeze rustled through the open doors, drawing my attention to the beach on my doorstep.You know what? Fuck it. When in paradise, right?That was as close to a positive thought as I was going to get tonight. I stood up and slipped out of my slides, stretching ruby-red toes in the plush charcoal rug, before stepping onto the sand, clinging to the champagne bottle like an alcoholic hobo in a pretty floral dress.
The sand felt warm under my feet, as if it was still being kissed by the sun even though it was late. My plane had been delayed and then the transfer took forever, so I estimated it must have been around eleven o’clock. Everywhere was quiet, not a soul around. My room seemed to be at the very end of the resort, which reached back towards the left, sprawling towards the restaurants near reception. I peeked at the corner room next to mine, the last room in this section. The beach appeared to go out to a point in front of it. The views must be wonderful from that room. It looked pretty much the same as mine, but larger; the open doors and the fluttering of the white light-diffusing curtains seeming to indicate that I had a neighbour. The horrifying thought came to mind that it might be a honeymooning couple, filled with dreams of happily ever after, who I would have to make small talk with. That made me worry I might not actually survive this holiday, but at least that was a problem for the next day.
I wandered slowly down to the water’s edge past several sun loungers, tables and chairs with folded-down, off-duty umbrellas. I leaned over and planted my champagne bottle into the sand, twisting it back and forth until it found enough purchase to stand upright. Two more steps and my feet touched the water, which felt warm – not bath warm, but not steal-your-breath cold either. I had another nervous look around the empty beach until I was confident I was alone. Peter had bought the holiday in a sale and booked it for the very beginning of the off-season, so it seemed fair to assume that not many people would be here full stop.
I stood in what my sister would call my thinking pose, with one hand on my hip and the other on my grandmother’s pendant around my throat. The rectangle filigree pattern stamped into my finger, and I felt along the three small diamonds, centring myself. Grandma Iris was a bloody powerhouse. If she were here now, she would have told me, ‘Abbey, stop being feeble.’
Non-feeble Abbey took a deep breath, channelling Iris. I slid the strap of my dress off my left shoulder, then repeated the motion on the other side. I lowered the dress over my chest, wiggled it down my hips and stepped out of it, throwing it back for the champagne bottle to look after.
It should be noted, before we go on, that it was not normally my style to get naked in public. I will blame the aforementioned crisis and the quickly drunk champagne on an empty stomach. My hands reached around my back, unclasping my bra, feeling the sweet relief of getting it off after wearing it all day. I was tipsy enough that I heard striptease music, and I threw my bra back for the French champagne bottle, like a stripper in a Kings Cross brothel.Lucky you, champagne bottle, I’m still bangable after all.
The water was black and inviting, and I walked in, throwing myself under. The sound of the sea echoed cavernously in my ears, and I stayed beneath the surface for as long as I could, holding my breath, trying to let go of all the shit I was carrying around daily. It was time for a rebirth, time to let go of the sadness, of trying to hold on to what had been. Time to let go of Peter, or the idea of Peter, or the idea of Peter and me.
I made a vow, then and there, under the water, to come back from this holiday a different person, to reset into someone who could move past disappointment, someone who could set some rules for a better relationship next time. Sometimes life changed in more ways than one, and I knew in my heart that I just had to be elastic and stretchy enough for the changes not to break me. When I was reaching the end of my oxygen, I bent my knees, pushed my feet into the ever-changing seabed and surged up to the surface to come out of the water. I hit my head on something solid. Shocked, I tried to step back, but the solid mass grabbed me, and I took a huge breath into a firm, male chest.
‘Christ, are you all right? You were under so long I thought you were drowning.’ He dropped his arms to my waist, pulling me against him. His crisp, low voice seemed to almost vibrate in his chest. ‘Oh, my God, you’re topless. I did not realise that I, ummm, apologise. I’m so very sorry.’
