LITMIR.BIZ

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still laughing. ‘I suppose a shag’s out of the question then?’

      ‘Please go away.’

      And he was gone, with that killer smile and a shrug, moving on to try someone else.

      Her hangover wasn’t too bad. Daniel was at James’s this weekend so she didn’t have the full-on Saturday packed with activities she now did to make up for the weekends she missed with him. She’d spend the day watching trash TV and nibbling on things.

      It was 8p.m. Grace poured herself a glass of wine – a little hair of a small dog would help no end – and got down the laptop from the bookshelf. She popped some Adele on the music system, stretched her legs out in front of her and placed the laptop on top of them. Time for some mindless surfing.

      She flicked through this and that. Fashion blogs. ASOS. Facebook. Ugh. Why had she opened Facebook? She hated it. It was a mocking reminder of the life she thought she had.

      Before James had gone, she’d been one of those smug, show-offy Facebook mums, constantly sharing photos and happy news with her one hundred and four friends, mostly other mums from Daniel’s posh school. She’d post photos of the three of them on days out, on holiday or at home in the garden, on idyllic weekends. She’d share photos of meals they’d had in restaurants or ones that James had cooked. He was quite an accomplished husband, when he was one; there had been lots of pictures of him smiling proudly over a plate of tuna steaks and chunky chips, piled in a Jenga grid, like they’d seen on the telly.

      Daniel’s achievements had also featured prominently in her Facebook photos. Daniel in his Taekwondo outfit, doing a high kick or whatever it was called; Daniel with a fish he’d caught at Hanningfield Reservoir; Daniel at sports day. She’d even posted nauseating photos of her and James with corny captions such as ‘My best friend, my soulmate, my everything,’ while she grinned cheesily and he smiled that lazy, sexy smile of his. Sometimes, to her now extreme horror, she’d even said she felt ‘blessed’.

      In the post-James days, she posted nothing on Facebook. Nothing at all. She just scrolled through other people’s stuff, getting angry.

      Family life was gone. It was no longer to be celebrated. And, despite opportunities to temporarily drown her sorrows with her friends, the weekends without Daniel were awful. James was making sure of it.

      He was purposely unreliable with pick-ups and drop-offs. The very first weekend he’d had Daniel, he’d been two hours late picking him up on the Saturday. Then on the Sunday he’d, without notice, brought Daniel back three hours early, which hadn’t given her enough time to get rid of the hangover from that girls’ night in at Imogen’s. She’d hated greeting them both at the door with a still-puffy face and unwashed, dandelion-clock hair.

      She remembered that, despite his premature arrival and the fact she may have still smelled a little bit boozy, she’d fallen on Daniel in relief. Her boy – she’d missed him. Daniel had looked mildly horrified, shrugged her off and bounded upstairs to his Xbox, leaving James on the doorstep, attempting to give his famous grin as an apology. She’d ignored it. She’d quite enjoyed throwing him a curt ‘goodbye’ and shutting the door in his face.

      Later, she’d asked Daniel how it had gone.

      ‘Fine,’ he’d said, giving all the usual detail boys of ten like to give.

      ‘What did you do?’ asked Grace.

      ‘Not a lot. FIFA 15 and we got a takeaway.’ Informative. She didn’t dare ask if Daniel had met ‘that woman’. She’d made James promise that when he had their son he wouldn’t see her, but who knows? He could have bribed Daniel not to say anything. She’d rifled through Daniel’s rucksack for new Match Attax cards but found nothing.

      Her ex’s timekeeping had remained purposefully awry since. Just to wind her up. Grace sighed, re-adjusted the laptop to a more comfortable position and sipped her wine. She’d probably get the same tomorrow, when James was due to bring Daniel back. Oh, so much to look forward to.

      Work had been a nightmare as well. Gideon had been horrible.

      When she’d heard, just before her job interview, that the owner of Hats! hat shop was gay, she wasn’t expecting a camp, gossipy and ‘fabulous daaarhling’ cross between Gok Wan and Jack from Will and Grace, but she hoped, if she got the job of course, they’d get on well and have a laugh together – she’d always wanted a gay best friend. Grace got the job, but unfortunately, Gideon disappointed: he was sour, dour and grumpy and totally lacking in charm. Grace often thought he was in the wrong trade: he would tell a woman she looked downright awful in a hat and he swore too much in front of the customers and not in a manner that was remotely hilarious… She still remembered the faces of three rather genteel-looking women when Gideon had emerged from the stock room one time, a cardboard box in his arms, and had announced in an over-loud voice, ‘Oh, pissing hell, isn’t life all such a fucking drain.’

      Still, his bluntness was, in a strange way, very good for business. Women left his shop in exactly the right hat, often a complete departure from the one they came in for. If something suited them, he made sure they had it. And the hats were gorgeous, so that helped.

      This week she’d finally told Gideon about James, expecting him to pull something from the bag in terms of empathy and sympathy (deep, deep from the bag), but all she got was a terse, ‘Them’s the fucking breaks’ and, ‘I hope you’ve got a packet of tissues on you; I don’t want you snivelling all over the ladies.’ She should have known better. She’d been right not to tell him. But once she had, she found the week very hard as she had to put on a horrid brave front that she couldn’t let slip. She wouldn’t have needed the tissues – she had not and would not cry over James – but she’d stupidly hoped Gideon might rustle up some support if she was feeling a bit down.

      It was all hard to get used to. Being alone. Being without James. When you’d hero-worshipped someone for so long, what did you do when your hero has gone?

      He had to go though. He had betrayed her, and he knew that would be the end of them. When they used to hold each other at night and say how much they loved each other, she told him if he cheated, that would be it. He’d be out. ‘Absolutely, sweetheart,’ he’d whisper. ‘Absolutely. But that’s not going to happen.’ Now she knew he didn’t mean he wouldn’t cheat, but that he intended never to be found out.

      She would not be hurt again. She had to compartmentalise James somehow, put him away in a mental box and lock it tight. And any future man would have to give her a cast-iron guarantee he wouldn’t cheat on her. She would make him write her a contract, in blood.

      She flicked up the blind and looked out of the living room window. The street was really quiet when Frankie’s kids were not around at the weekends. Three of them at least would usually be out on bikes, or squealing from the trampoline in their back garden until quite late, all weathers, all seasons. She knew she wouldn’t see Frankie tonight, either. She’d been going on about a date with Mad Men and a bottle of Shloer. And Imogen was with her mum.

      Grace was on her own.

      She took a slug from her red wine. Adele was warbling about finding ‘Someone Like You’. She was feeling slightly tiddly already. She wasn’t a big drinker. She didn’t subscribe to Facebook slogan drinking: ‘Wine o’clock’, ‘Mother’s little helper’, ‘For instant happy woman just add wine’ etc, etc. There were people who responded to anything at all with ‘wine!’ She’d never been one of them, and she would never refer to having a ‘cheeky’ glass of anything. Yet, since James had left, she had been reaching for the wine. Her wine o’clock appeared to be the moment that bastard left her.

      Feeling like a criminal, she quickly opened a new tab on Google Chrome. Hook, Line and Sinker. An online dating site. She’d heard it mentioned by a couple of mums from school, usually accompanied by a lot of shrieking – one was still dating a man she’d met on it. Grace quickly clicked onto her preferred age range: thirty to forty. Most of the men she scrolled through made her scream aloud they looked so grisly

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