‘You’re definitely something that sounds like rock,’ I grumble.
‘And I love you, too, my precious Christmas angel.’
‘And I’m still cross with you, my garish Christmas cock.’
‘I sound just like one of the decorations hanging from my tree.’
‘Thank you for that piece of festive imagery, but if it’s all the same to you, I’m hanging up. Mainly because I don’t have a bottle of brain bleach handy.’
‘You’re not that easily offended.’
‘Maybe not but I still have to go. The roads are horrendous, and the weather is worse. And the prospect of attending this wedding stag makes me want to cry, but the icing on the shit-cake of my life is that I can’t even rely on my best friend’s support.’
‘Sweetie, have you got your period?’
‘Goodbye, Mo.’
With a final huff, I push the button on the steering wheel with such vehemence, I’m surprised I don’t break my fingernail. I’m angry with everything—the weather, the bloody window I can barely see through, my new Roberto Cavalli suede boots that clearly were made for admiring and certainly not to be worn in torrential rain. But mostly, I’m angry with my own stupidity.
When Clare had called with the news of her wedding one sultry summer evening earlier this year, I’d been in a dark place. Literally.My bedroom, actually. The lights were off, and the drapes drawn, and wonders upon wonders, a man was lying in bed beside me. Not just any man but a man I’d been dating for six weeks. I’d held out that long for sex, determined to do it right this time. As my phone lit up with her call, I’d slipped from under his arm, absolutely glowing with a post-coital warmth. She told me her boyfriend, Hamish, had proposed, and for once, my first thought wasn’twhen will it be my turn?Don’t judge—a girl can be unhappy for herself yet happy for her friend. It’s what happens when you’re hurtling towards the big three-oh, or in my case, three-oh-oh, having passed that milestone almost three years ago. Oops!But I had a man in my life, a man I liked, and who seemed to like me. I was genuinely happy she’d found her very own version of Jamie Fraser.
Fast forward a couple of months to how I’d discovered Oscar hadn’t labelled me the same.Mainly because of the whole wife thing.As it turned out, I wasn’t his girlfriend. I was just his bit on the side. Apparently, we had our wires crossed. When I’d confronted him, he didn’t hang around long enough for me to strangle him with his wire. After years of disastrous dating, I decided I was done. No more looking for Mr Right. I’d deleted Tinder, unsubscribed from MySingleFriend, which was Mo’s idea to sign up to anyway, and thrown myself into my work. I hadn’t given Clare’s wedding another thought until last month when a reminder flashed on my social media.
Who gets married in early December, anyway?
The saner path would’ve been to admit my romance had come to nothing—and I’d meant to. It wouldn’t be the first time I’d made Clare laugh with my tales of dating woes. That’s not to say she’d laughedatme but morewithme as I’d regaled her with the trials and tribulations of my disastrous love life. She’d said at one point I had to consider I hadn’t been kissing princes masquerading as frogs but rather toads. Not even toads pretending to be princes, but lowly frogs.
She’d suggested I’d been settling, so I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth. Especially not as she’d gushed about the perfect romance of it all—her Christmas wedding to the man of her dreams. In the end, I’d decided to ignore the posts until the last minute possible before citing the oldboyfriend’s family emergency.It seemed like the path of least resistance, and she’d be too busy with last-minute wedding arrangements to pay attention to anything else.
In three-hundred yards, turn right onto Meh-rh-icat Lane.
The disembodied voice of the navigation system pulls my eyes momentarily from the little I can see of the road.
‘Mehri-what? Stupid thing, it’s Merricoat Lane.’ I might’ve mentioned that it’s raining—positively pissing down—the kinds of volume that’d give Noah pause. So not only can I barely see the road, but I also can’t see my surroundings, so I’m a little worried I might not actually see the right-hand turn. But I do, and I quickly slow to a crawl as the road becomes little more than a pot-holed track that my tiny rental car bumps and bangs along. I’m suddenly aware that the tension in my shoulders has leaked into my arms, and that my fingers have a death grip on the steering wheel. And what’s worse is the navigation system seems to be recalibrating.
‘No... not now! Fuck, fuck, fuckity,fuck!’ I don’t care that I’m cursing—I don’t care at all. All I know is my muscles are tight, and my head is aching, and I’ve seriously had enough. ‘I’ll never find the place at this rate! Oh.’
The headlights catch a fence post, the remains of a battered plaque with the wordsFaileasscrawled across it in black paint. And right at that moment, the disembodied voice fills the interior again.
You have reached your destination.
Reached my destination?
I don’t know about that, but I feel like I’ve reached the end of the road.
