Chapter 1
âI canât believe Iâm the one before The One.â
Helen Pines stared at the picture: it had Jonathanâs familiar face scrunched up next to a pretty blonde woman, her arms tied around his neck, with a noticeable diamond ring on one finger.
Proposal in Kenya â classy.
She closed her laptop a little more forcefully than usual, and stared around her childhood bedroom: it felt slightly dustier and smaller every time she visited. Earlier, she had even discovered a fossilised glitter lip balm that had come free with Shout magazine stuffed down the side of her bed. There were stacks of NOW! CDs (that really should have gone to a charity shop years ago) were scattered on her dressing table and her sixth form prom dress still hung in the wardrobe. Her mum, insisted on not throwing it away. She had a bad feeling that the only time she could convince her mum to chuck out her prom dress would be when it was replaced with a meringue-shaped dress of a different kind. Walt Disney had a lot to answer for.
The dress was a fussy, puffy, midnight blue creation that sat side by side with a fussy, puffy, lilac dress sheâd worn aged six for her local Carnival Queen competition. A bad, niggling memory of trying out for Carnival Queen occasionally resurfaced and still made her feel embarrassed for her six-year-old self. Her mum, in the audience, wildly gesturing for her to curtsy, an underwhelmed group of local parishioners feebly clapping, and Nanny G reassuring her that sheâd look good in a bin bag, as someone crowned the pretty blonde girl, Charlotte, Carnival Queen instead. Really, someone should have realised there was something a little irresponsible about traipsing young girls around beauty pageants full stop. But that was parenting in the nineties for you.
Helen sighed and leaned back on her bed, her socked feet dangling off the edge. Today, she had learned that there were few things in life that made you feel more inadequate than witnessing your ex-boyfriend getting engaged to someone else on social media. With added gut wrench for it being in some glamorous (and surely really expensive) destination. Any holidays they had taken together seemed to revolve around his friends. Her strong hints to romantic mini-break destinations had gone ignored, as had crying into his shoulder one night asking why he didnât want to do anything romantic with her.
His answer at the time was that he just âdidnât believe in that kind of thingâ, and âhe wasnât that kind of guyâ; except he was, just not with her.
It had all started so well: it was New Yearâs Eve when she was invited by a friend of a friend to Jonathanâs house party. He lived in a fancy apartment with a terrace overlooking the Thames, and had employed actual waiters to serve champagne to his guests. There were so many glamorous people there, all doing glamorous things: so when she felt his hand touch the small of her back as the fireworks went off, she couldnât believe he was choosing her. It was all too perfect. He said they could meet any night that week for dinner. Then he didnât message. She messaged him instead, and rather than whisking her off into his life, she spent the next two years trying to convince him to like her as much as he had the first moment theyâd met, when he didnât have eyes for anyone else. She must have messed it up badly. And now he was with a woman who probably did all the right things, and never said anything neurotic, and was prettier than her. Helen just wasnât good enough to keep him: plain and simple.
So here she was, back at her parentâs house in Cornwall, whilst Jonathan and his wife to be were undoubtedly clinking their Malbec glasses to the sight of a bull elephant, gazing up at the stars, and ⊠urgh, it really wasnât worth thinking about.
At her bachelorette pad in London (read: studio apartment in Hackney), Helen had decided that with a total personal wealth of ÂŁ1,568 (if you didnât deduct her overdue student loan), there was no way she could justify a holiday this year.
So, for Easter break she had decided to âstaycationâ with her parents in Cornwall. At the time, she had told herself that it would be great to reconnect with her family, that she would love the walks and fresh air, that she wanted to meet her brother Henryâs girlfriend. That would be nice! Wouldnât it? Instead, from the moment she stepped onto the so-crowded-you-canât-move-in-the-aisles Great Western service to Penzance, she was hit with a wave of dread.
She was living in some kind of Groundhog Day of singleness.
The train journey down was a little too much like the trip down over Christmas, which was a little too much like the trip down over Christmas the year before, just after she and Jonathan had split up. She was so heartbroken that year that she had survived the entire six-hour journey on nothing more than a packet of Maltesers. She had intended to be blasĂ© about the split to her parents, and make up some âcover storyâ that he was moving away for work, that things had just run their course, yet the second she had stepped off the platform and seen Nanny G, tears had already started to pour down her face. Her mum had just sighed in resignation that Helen had messed it up again.
The following week had been a bad combination of parental sympathy and sickeningly romantic Christmas movies. Her mum had made all her favourite food in an effort to lift her spirits, and she slid from self-imposed starvation to eating an entire tray of leftover cauliflower cheese from the fridge at 2am when she couldnât sleep. Her dad had nobly ignored his daughterâs anguish, but when he spotted Helen in the corner of his eye, holding a cushion up to her face to mask her tears during the opening scenes of Up!, he wordlessly lifted the remote and changed the channel. Henry had placed his arm around her and pulled her onto his barrel chest for a hug.
That Christmas, she felt like a loser. No matter how many, Iâm not searching for my other half because Iâm not a half memes her two best friends, Elle and Sophie, sent to her in their group chat, Helen couldnât shake the feeling that being dumped shortly before your thirtieth birthday was a bad thing. She didnât feel like slinging on stilettos, marching out to a bar, and starting all over again, so she spent an unhealthy amount of time fantasising about possible ways she and Jonathan could get back together. He was a polyglot, whilst Helen still mumbled through the pronunciation of âcroissantâ: maybe she would take a language class and then in a yearâs time bump into him on the Eurostar (she would be on the way to an important meeting in Paris) and impress him with her effortless French? Maybe he would wake up next to his fiancĂ©e Katy one morning, and realise that heâd made a huge mistake? Heâd knock on her door ⊠take her on a romantic holiday to make it all up to her ⊠slay a dragon to prove his love âŠ
Of course, now that the engagement picture was staring at her out of her phone, she knew definitively that wasnât ever going to happen. A small, embarrassed part of her that was still holding out hope heâd come back, whimpered, and scuttled away into the recesses of her mind. The Carnival Queen dress glinted in her wardrobe. She clearly wasnât good enough.
Helen didnât generally see herself as ânot enoughâ. Most days, her self-esteem was okay, and she made a concerted effort not to feel down when her followers shrunk on social media, or a vlog that she produced limped up to ninety-six likes. However, as the months ticked by, and she met no one that she actually liked, she felt forgotten about â like her thirties were destined to be spent mouldering away in the shade. A feeling probably not helped by her unshaven legs (regrettably down to sheer laziness, and not a feminist statement) and descent into 24/7 loungewear.
She was really starting to worry that there was something wrong with her. Because if there wasnât, why was she still single? Her mum would say it was because she âscared them offâ, Nanny G would wink and say she needed to forget finding a boyfriend and learn how to have fun instead.
Thatâs not to say she wasnât liked; Helen had always had friends, just never ârealâ boyfriends. Her love life was heavy on âsituationshipsâ and low on Valentineâs Day cards. She considered herself essentially a nice person: she worked hard, she had good friends, and a blogging business with real (if unrealised) potential. But as much as it rankled every bone in her body to admit it, there was something about turning thirty that had changed things, at least for her. A heavy feeling of pressure dwelled around her dates, going out with a totally-not-right guy didnât feel so funny anymore, and she started to notice the monthâs ticking down to her next birthday.
No matter what her friends said about it being totally normal to be single in your thirties, Helen felt herself oscillating between feeling flat and sheer panic. Rather than being an âup and comingâ baking influencer, she now felt unquestionable pressure that she should have âup and comeâ by now. Her best friend Sophie had coupled up with Frank, and they seemed alarmingly happy. Elle was still single but seemed to revel in the role of always being the dumper, rather than the dumpee. There was probably a picture of her under the entry âfiery Latinaâ on Wikipedia that predictably drove men wild. âTreat them mean âŠâ she would say, tapping her false nails on her phone. In fact, Helen got the feeling that Elle thought her desire for a cosy relationship was a little lame. Maybe even weak.
Then there were her parents. Since joining them for Easter, Helen had been dodging questions about her single status like a downhill slalom. Even her younger brother was coupled up; an unfortunate injustice that was always destined to happen. Now, next time they pried about whether she and Jonathan might ever get back together, she would have to spit it out that he was actually engaged to someone else, like some monumental hairball that conceded her defeat.
To be clear, things hadnât ever been bad with Jonathan: in fact, they were really nice. At least most of the time. She had adored him. The only snag was he seemed eternally on the fence about her. He had told her she was the most amazing woman he had ever met, but he wasnât sure they were right together, all in the same day. Helen couldnât quite fathom why, if he thought she was that incredible, he could never fully commit. He kept saying statements that, when placed together in a sentence, seemed to conflict with one another. Towards the end of their relationship, Helen had felt so confused by it all that she hadnât realised just how badly her confidence had been eroded by his lack of certainty.
Her days had turned into a fug of worrying whether he loved her, or not; was he seeing someone else, or not, and who was that woman who had just followed him on Instagram? Etc. She became so on edge that he would walk away and pull the plug definitively on their two-year romance, that she had started to walk on eggshells around him. She tried to be the perfect girlfriend, tried to pretend that she was totally cool with him taking his time, and it had mercifully, eventually, ended when she had given him space to think about what he really wanted, and he had met Katy. Looking back, she had spent years of her life trying to recreate the first moment they met, when all the promise of the romance stretched out before her. When she thought she was The One for him.
As soon as Jonathan had ditched her and found Katy instead, his commitment issues seemed to evaporate overnight, and social media had reliably informed her that her boyfriend, in everything but name, was definitely not hers anymore. Her friends had told her that it would be the same story with his new girlfriend, and that he would never settle. But he just had. Apparently, his total inability to commit was in fact a reflection on her all along. It was because she wasnât enough for him.
She sent a screenshot of the engagement picture to her WhatsApp chat âQueens xoxoâ with Elle and Sophie.
Iâm so glad youâre not with him anymore babe. He never treated you right!!
And his new fiancee Donât know what heâs thinking ⊠Sophie: Sorry babe :-( as @Elle says, it just wasnât the right guy.
Remember that Instagram isnât real life, and we donât know whatâs really going on there.
Most important thing is that youâve both moved on and now that the door is closed, you will meet someone better. I promise! I can feel it Let me know if you want to voice chat later? Xx
I just donât know what went wrong there â or how he suddenly changed overnight??*
*Okay itâs been a year but still!
Hard not to take it personally :-(
Howâs things with Frank @Sophie?
Mumâs calling (yes, I might as well be 13 again not 31!) brb! Xx
Helen sat down at the dining table and was grateful that her parents werenât the kind of people to mention that sheâd been wearing the same yoga pants and hoodie for three days now. She instinctively sat next to Nanny G â her favourite grandparent, and officially the last woman left standing of her older relatives. She was wearing her trademark lavender-coloured blouse with diamante butterfly brooch, and was nursing a small glass of port and brandy sheâd been warming on the radiator.
âHow are you my dear?â Nanny Gâs voice had the timbre of an old-fashioned wireless set.
There was something about how close Helen felt to Nanny G that stripped her of all her resolve to not make a fuss, and she felt her face growing warm. If sheâd fallen over when she was a child, her mum would have said, âstand u...
