Carrie Sutton - After the Break-Up: A Girls Guide

First published in June 2010 by Big Finish Productions Ltd, PO Box 1127, Maidenhead, SL6 3LW

www.bigfinish.com

Editor: Xanna Eve Chown

Managing Editor: Jason Haigh-Ellery

Copyright Carrie Sutton 2010

We have attempted to trace all the owners of copyright materials included in this work; however in any case where ownership has not been traced we will be pleased to hear from any person having a valid claim to ownership of a relevant copyright with a view to any omissions being corrected as soon as possible.

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Cover art and illustrations Jo Goodberry / NB Illustration

All individuals names have been changed throughout. All information in the listings section is correct at the time of going to print. The views of the author are not necessarily those of the publisher. The legal information provided is meant to be used as a guide only and is not a substitute for legal representation nor is it being offered as legal advice.

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After the Break-Up:

A Girls Guide

By Carrie Sutton

* * *

You cannot belong to anyone else until you belong to yourself

Pearl Bailey

* * *

The Day Ginny Phoned

Late one afternoon I got a call. Things had been touch and go with Ginny and Tee for a while and when I heard her voice at the other end of the phone, I knew what had happened. She was tired, sad and needed a place to stay, but for all the obvious upset she seemed quietly settled. It was the right decision.

Ill come and meet you, I said. I put out clean towels and changed the linen for her. It would help. A nice fresh bed had always been something of a comfort to me when Id left my husband two months earlier; the smell of the freshener eased my mind and put me to sleep.

I met her outside Charing Cross station, right in the centre of London. This would become our rendezvous point, and the endless streets of coffee houses in neighbouring Covent Garden our place. It was a hot, muggy summers evening and I saw her straight away through the crowd. She had just one bag of clothes with her, the essentials, and was hugging herself in spite of the weather. Arriving at her side, I lifted her bag onto my shoulder and gave her a hug. Something in that moment cemented our friendship. We would now be closer than ever, joined by our common fate.

She was in the same position I had been just two months ago and in that moment I saw just how far Id come. What was even better was that so did she. And it gave her strength to know that it would get better, easier and that time, true to form, would be a great healer. I was glad I was no longer in that state, she was glad she wouldnt always be and from here one would follow the other through the same trials and tribulations that our own individual separations brought us. That year was the year of the Big Break-Up. And everyone seemed to be going through itthe tears, the trauma and the dates to make you die.

This should all be written down, she said, some months later. There are stories to tell!

And so it was that over a large coffee, a great debate over emotional responsibility and the relating of my most recent dating disaster that the plan to write this book was hatched. Its all thanks to Ginny.

So here it is. The good, the bad and the uglyand the men that came along for the ride.

The End

i) The decision

Im going to do it

Remembering the perfect wedding

No more tears

Admitting youve done wrong

A matter of timing

Im going to leave

Im sitting on the bottom step and it strikes me that I will do it. Im going to leave; actually going to do it. Oh, holy crap! How in the name of hell have I ended up here?

The dog is sitting by the front door returning my befuddled expression with a chirpy look of Are we going to the park now? We are not. I pick her up, snuggle her, smell her, and she licks my face clean, something I have never successfully managed to stop her from doing.

I sit her on my hip and wander aimlessly round the house looking at our thingsmy things, his things: the DVDs of Buffy the Vampire Slayer , the cushions, the computers, the clutter in the hallway, the drawer of useful things. The puppet that was never really mine, and the Chinese unit that was never really his. I look at our wedding photographs.

The luckiest girl in the world

It had been a very sunny day in the end, our wedding day, and Id felt like the luckiest girl in the world. English weather is pretty unpredictable at the best of times and the day before there had been rain of the horizontal varietywe had to get the wedding favours from the car to the hotel in what can only be described as monsoon conditions! It was absolutely lagging it down and the wind (Arctic, Im quite sure) froze my fingers as I gripped my lacy almond parcels for dear life! I prayed the next day would be warmer as we shimmied past that days bride, who was now wearing not white, but a strange shade of beige with big chocolate-coloured stains up the back of her frock. She looked a sorry old sight. Her big meringue, dull as it was, had been completely ruined, yet she still stood there smiling, complete with four soggy bridesmaids, a muddy mother-in-law and a drenched flower girl, who all started traipsing after her as she slopped her way out of the hotel garden.

They seemed happy enough, but still I prayed for good weatherPlease, please, please dont let that be me!and I got my wish. I didnt spend the day looking like a drowned rat with half the churchyard up my underskirt, so I felt lucky. I was getting married and I was happy. And the pictures would be beautiful. The pictures seemed so important at the time. The pictures are beautiful. We look greata little too much like brother and sister if Im being honestbut great nonetheless, and were smiling, everyones smiling, everyones delightedand were all just a little bit pissed. I wonder if the photos will be all that is left of us in the end?

Im brought back to reality by the dog who is now French-kissing my ear, attempting a tunnelling mission into my brain with her tongue. She has her legs round my waist and feet up on my shoulder like a small child and I realise that it wont be like this for much longer. So I give in and take her to her favourite park. It was the last time we ever went there.

Just a matter of time

By the time I reached The End, Id already cried so much that I didnt think there were any more tears left to be had, even if Id tried to suck them out with a Dyson. I found Id done quite a bit of the hard grieving already and, in my heart, Id known it was coming, as if it had all been just a matter of time. Like when you see something out of the corner of your eye. You know its there but you can happily go on ignoring it, whistling away tunelessly to yourself, as it sits waiting.

The last year or so had been testing, trying, confusing and complicated, and wed already done a lot of the actual breaking up: the in-depth discussions, the tears, the tantrums, the rows (oh God, the rows!), the seemingly endless compromises, the half-acceptance that things really werent working any more.