Are We Nearly There Yet?

by Lucy Vine

Genres: Women's Fiction; New Adult Romance; General Fiction

Synopsis

Alice is turning thirty and is stuck in a rut. Her friends are all coupling up and settling down, while she's still working as a temp, trying (and failing) not to shag her terrible ex, getting thrown out of clubs, and accidentally sexting her boss...

She decides to throw caution to the wind and jets off on a round-the-world adventure to #FindTheFun and find herself. Of course, she's no more likely to find the answer to true happiness on the beach in Thailand than she is at the electric beach in Tooting, but at least in Thailand there's paddleboard yoga.

Can Alice find happiness on her travels? Or is she more likely to lose herself all over again...?

(p) Orion Publishing Group 2019

Release date: April 18, 2019

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

 

Prologue

AWOL.COM/Alice Edwards’ Travel Blog: Living My Dream and Feeling Very #Blessed/EDIT MODE

20 April – 2.15 p.m.

ROUGH DRAFT

NOTE TO SELF: DO NOT PRESS PUBLISH YET!!!

 

Welcome to my new travel blog, dream chasers,

My name is Alice Edwards and I have quit my very important and glam job and my really fulfilling life back in the UK to spend the next three or four months travelling the world. I shall be going to many exciting and unusual places like LA and Thailand. I will be out here all on my own, as I feel that is important for my spiritual journey. #Brave. I have just arrived in Los Angeles, known as the City of Dreams and it is really, really nice. The sea is blue like a gleaming sapphire and the sand is pure white and soft like creamy Country Life butter but without any of those toast crumbs in the corner.

So far, my new friends, I have only been here in this city of dreams for one day, but I can already feel the bohemian, relaxed vibe changing my very soul. I am quickly realising that American people are v tanned and v good looking. It is like the sun sees into their very being and then it shines out from deep in their hearts. I am excited to see more of these strange and foreign people, and what effect they will have on me. I will be staying briefly with my friend who is a very famous actress – I cannot name names – and we will be mingling and vibing with some very cool people like YouTubers and Instagram influencers. I have met a few already and one was wearing a top hat. V cool, I’m sure you will agree.

Goodbye for now, my new friends. I have many more adventures ahead of me, many roads to travel, many beaten paths to get off – and I will share it all with you, if you will join me. I look forward to going on this journey with you all and I shall end my very first blog post with a famous quote that I feel is very apt here:

‘A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.’ Sir Albert Einstein.

 

#TravelBlogger #Travels #Travelling #Wanderer #GoneAWOL #Hashtags #AliceEdwardsBlog #OffTheBeatenTrack #BloggerLife #Blessed #Brave #DreamChaser #ComingBackWithATan #ConstanceBeaumontWannabe

 

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1

One Month Earlier

What’s on your mind, Alice?

2 hrs · London · Friends only

 

I can’t believe it’s my last night of being twenty-nine! Wish me luck for tonight, everyone. I think this evening is going to be truly wild and MESSY.

 

Checked in at: The Gherkin, London

Like Comment

4 likes

 

Alice Edwards: No one’s reading this, right? Because Facebook is over, yes? What is the point of anything, why am I here, what am I doing?

 

Alice Edwards: But if Facebook is ovah and Twitter is ovah and Instagram is ovah, where am I meant to do all my attention seeking?

 

Alice Edwards: Why am I still asking questions when no one is listening?

 

Mark Edwards: Jesus Christ, Alice, commenting on your own status is a new basic bitch low, even for you.

 

I am thinking about sex. I mean, I’ve had two double gins, so of course I’m thinking about sex. But it is also because tomorrow I will be thirty, and therefore used up, dried up – unappealing in all the up ways – according to everything I hear from the internet. And so I am thinking about sex.

I mentally paw through my phone contacts. Who can I text? Who would be available for shagging my brains out later tonight but then also pretending to care about me afterwards?

No one.

Honestly, most people in my phonebook are there so I know not to answer when they call.

 

Across from me at the table, Amelia suddenly barks a happy birthday in my direction. She is a socially awkward barker, always has been. When there is a momentary silence of any kind at a gathering, she will nervously start barking things. Usually I love that about Amelia, but tonight it makes me want to claw at my own skin. To be honest, right now everything makes me want to claw at my own skin.

I laugh heartily for a second too long, clinking my drink to hers and nodding politely at the beige boyfriend beside her. I can’t remember his name, what is his name? I look around at the sea of plus ones I don’t know around me. Who are all these extra people here at my birthday? When did all my friends couple off?

I stare down at the empty plate in front of me and feel my misery crank up a notch. I suddenly feel intensely disappointed.

Dinner. Dinner? For my thirtieth birthday? A fancy dinner, sure. A fancy dinner in a tall building, but still, dinner.

For the last ten years my friends and I have had the same messy, sticky routine for my birthday, which has gone as follows:

Disgusting pre-game shots over at mine and Eva’s South London flat with our friends Amelia, Karen, Slutty Sarah, Isabelle (when she’s in the country), my brother Mark, and his best friend, Joe, plus any other casual acquaintances I happen to have accumulated that year.

Then disgusting pink drinks at bars called, like, Strawberry Moons, or Infernos, or basically anywhere where they play appallingly cheesy nineties music (Ideally East 17 and the Honeyz).

Followed by a lie-down on the sticky floor at around 10.15 p.m.

Followed by screaming at each other because we’ve lost a member of our group – usually Eva – and then a bit of angry crying in the loos.

Followed by finding Eva asleep outside on a pile of bin bags and everyone happy crying, which – from an outsider’s perspective – is not that different from angry crying.

Followed by someone suggesting we get a kebab as the whole lot of us scream eating is cheating and then the arrival of too many Ubers because no one coordinated.

Followed by getting refused entry at a club for being too drunk.

Followed by offering to sleep with the bouncers and getting humiliatingly rejected in front of a long queue of people wearing designer clothes.

Followed by getting home en masse and binge-ordering leopard print maxi dresses from ASOS that will need returning but will never be returned.

Followed by burning sausages under the grill (kitchen fire optional).

Followed by group-passing out in my room because it is slightly bigger than Eva’s.

Followed by three hours of sleep and then hangover fear so bad that picking at the dried-out, charred sausages to block out all feelings seems like a good idea. And because there is nothing else to eat.

 

But now, because I am turning thirty, it has apparently been decided that I am too old for fun any more. Now we must be adults who eat food. And there aren’t even any sausage options on this menu.

So that is why I’m thinking about going to see a man about some sad comfort-sex. And come on, there must be someone.

Correction: there must be someone who is not him. Surely there is more than one option?

But there is not. There is only one person: TD.

I loathe him, I loathe him. But at least it would be easy. He will be free, he will put it in me without much fuss and then he will scratch my back afterwards. I will hate myself enormously afterwards, of course, but what other option is there? Yes, I could go on Tinder right now and find a shiny new man to do it with. That part would be easy, but, oh the effort of getting naked with someone new.

Plus, I’m feeling very insecure about my vagina after my smear test last week. I had an idea in my head – since I’d had it done once before and was obviously therefore an expert – that I would be very cool and laid back and, I don’t know, French this time round. I would casually whip off my cigarette leg trousers (v French) and be like HERE IS MY VAGINA, DO WHAT YOU WILL. But then I got into the nurse’s room and climbed up on the bed – immediately ripping the thin tissue paper with my sweaty buttocks – and was suddenly seized with panic about my socks. Like, I know you don’t wear socks for sex, but a smear test isn’t sex, is it? Don’t answer – I know that for a fact.

So, I kept them on but suddenly felt very silly. I was also very aware of my hairy legs. I was worried the nurse might be offended I’d made no effort before getting naked for her. Then she got down there with her scalpel (I know it’s not a scalpel but come on, it feels like it is a scalpel) and muttered, ‘It’s too small’.

And lads, I was momentarily DELIGHTED with my tiny vagina. My vagina, that is too small for inspection. Too small for insertion. So small it is basically sewn up! No wonder I never get any sex – it’s because men sense I am too charmingly delicate down there.

Then the nurse spoke again, tutting as she declared, ‘Yes, it’s too small, I need a bigger one. I’m not sure they do them any bigger though?’ And I realised it was not my vagina that was a tiny fragile flower, but the device. My vagina was, in fact, a giant gaping monster. A wide, pink cave that eats speculums for breakfast.

And so.

You understand.

Right now, it’s my ex-boyfriend, Twat Dan, or no one.

 

The waiter passes my chair and I swipe at him, catching a fistful of shirt sleeve.

‘Three more double gins just for me,’ I hiss, and when he looks appalled, I smile blankly, adding, ‘And four shots of tequila please.’

I watch him glide towards the door and I blink hard several times, hoping I can magically make Eva walk in.

Where is she? I miss her so much suddenly. She’s my best friend and my flatmate, it’s her actual job to be here first, holding flowers or something. She texted an hour ago to say she would be a little late but had ‘a big surprise’. And she used a bunch of emojis she specifically knows amuse me – the octopus will always do it for me – so I expect she’s been picking up my present. Late as ever. Late as Eva.

I kinda hope the present is a taxi away from here.

The waiter is back, and he lines up my drinks judgementally before me. Amelia barks cheers nervously across the table and I grin at her as I do the first shot. The warmth of the liquid coats my throat but the rest of me feels cold. I do another one. If I have to be thirty and if I have to be here, eating like a cheat, then I’m at least going to make sure I get really, really drunk.

‘Can I have one?’ my brother Mark asks, leaning across from his seat on my right.

‘Get your own,’ I mutter belligerently, and he raises an eyebrow as I pound my second shot.

My brain begins to swim nicely as I stare broodily at the door.

And finally, she is here. I smile widely as Eva walks in, jumping up and scraping my chair loudly across the floor.

Ooh, I’m drunker than I realised.

Eva is here! Yessss, Eva is h . . . Oh fucking what! She’s brought Jeremy. Ugh, yuck, Jeremy. Why did she need to bring him, he is awful, I hate him so much. Nobody used to bring partners for our sticky nights out, and now – look around – it’s a sea of beige boyfriends and even beiger husbands as far as the eye can see.

Eva and Jeremy have only been dating for seven months, but Eva’s, like, obsessed with him. I don’t get it, he’s so dull. I do not understand why she’s chosen him over me. She’s fully replaced me in every aspect. She’s even replaced me in her Facebook profile photo, which was, until recently, a picture of us cross-eyed drunk from our holiday to Cornwall last year. Right after that picture was taken, we decided Justin Trudeau was in the same bar as us, so we spent the whole night following him around until he told us to shag off in a very distinctive Cornish accent and we realised it probably wasn’t him. Now her profile picture is of her and Jeremy from last Halloween. I have been literally replaced.

I hate Jeremy.

‘Alice!’ Eva screams, throwing her arms around me, ‘Happy birthday!’ She hands me a gift bag and a very large helium balloon that says ‘Birthday Wanker’ on it.

OK, that is a great surprise, well worth waiting for. Things are looking up at last.

‘I missed you so much, Eva, it was rubbish here without you.’ I sigh into her coat.

‘Rude,’ Mark mutters good-naturedly beside me, but we both ignore him.

‘I’m sorry Al, I had to stop off after work to get the balloon. I brought it on the tube and these middle-aged white people glared at me the entire length of the Piccadilly Line.’ She giggles, delighted. Jeremy leans over, interrupting our moment, and I fight the urge to scowl at him.

‘Happy thirtieth, Alice, are you having fun?’ He smiles and it is such a boring smile. It’s the only way to describe it: boring. Even the adjective I choose for him most is a boring one: boring. Bleugh. I nod vaguely and pick my drink up from the table, taking a large gulp. My head is starting to swim. I wave at the disapproving waiter, gesturing for him to come over.

‘Yep, loads of fun, thanks for coming, Jeremy . . .’ even though you weren’t invited, you fish-faced weasel, ‘. . . let’s get the two of you drinks.’ I pound another shot. ‘I’m already well on my way to being wasted. You’ll have to do some doubles to catch up.’

‘Hum, well, actually Al,’ Eva puts her hand on my arm and looks at Jeremy, who gives her one of those coupley supportive nods.

Fuck you Jeremy, Eva and I used to have a secret language too.

She looks back at me, and shifts the weight from one foot to the other, awkwardly. ‘Please don’t be annoyed, Al, but I’m not going to drink alcohol tonight.’

‘What!’ I say too loudly, outraged.

I catch Mark rolling his eyes beside us and Amelia barking a laugh. ‘But you have to drink,’ I say lowering my voice, but still distraught. ‘It’s my thirtieth birthday, Eva! I know that last hangover was awful and I’m not saying you should get so bad you puke on a gravestone again, but just start your sober thing from tomorrow or whatever.’

Eva pulls me away from the table and the Birthday Wanker balloon hits Jeremy in the face. I smirk as she pulls me out into the hallway.

‘Listen Al, you know I said I had a surprise?’ she says breathily.

‘I thought the balloon was my surprise?’ I say, giving the string a pleasing yank.

She laughs but it has the edge of hysteria to it. ‘No, Al, it’s . . . I can’t believe I’m saying this, but . . .’ she trails off. I shake my head, and later, when I think back to this moment, I cannot believe I was so unprepared.

‘Alice . . . I’m pregnant.’

I wait.

Pregnant with what? Anticipation? Pregnant with the evening’s possibilities? Because of course she cannot mean she is pregnant with child. No sir, that is not an option.

We stare at each other.

She giggles. ‘Alice, I am pregnant. I’m pregnant.’

Again, my brain searches for an alternative meaning. She can’t be pregnant. That is impossible. Ridiculous, silly. No no no. That’s not what the plan is. Not now. Not yet. Not with fucking Jeremy. We were going to wait until we were both forty and dicked-out, and then she was going to marry her old neighbour, Reuben, and I was going to marry Adam from Year Nine. We hadn’t even made a plan for the kids part. It seemed so far off and unlikely.

Not Jeremy. Not now.

I am lost for words. I don’t understand how this can be right, how this could have happened.

Something in the pit of my stomach aches.

The silence goes on a beat too long before I can muster a smile.

‘Wow, Eva!’ I try to say as genuinely as I can. ‘That’s so . . . exciting! Is it . . . um. You’re . . . keeping it?’

She giggles. ‘Honestly Al, I don’t think your Uber rating could take another trip back from a Marie Stopes clinic.’

I have not been able to get above a 3.5 since I escorted Eva home from that abortion, four years ago. The driver was deeply unimpressed with our backseat conversation, particularly the part where I said that our trip was ‘at least proof she’d been getting some’.

‘Wow!’ I say again, as enthusiastically as possible, adding quietly, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe it.’

‘Neither can I,’ she says a little shakily. ‘It wasn’t planned, and I know we haven’t even been together that long, but I don’t know . . . It sounds weird, but I’m . . . I’m happy.’ I look at her properly and she does indeed look happy. She is bright and shiny in a way I haven’t seen before. She keeps going. ‘I know it’s out of the blue, but you know how I feel about Jeremy. I’m in shock, I am, but I swear, we’re both really happy.’ She pauses. ‘I know this wasn’t the plan, Al, but he’s The One, and he’s going to make the best daddy ever . . .’ The sentence chokes her up, and it chokes me too, as I remember the last time I heard Eva say ‘daddy’ – in reference to a hairy older man she wanted to get off with.

We both swallow hard as she keeps going, ‘. . . And when we had the scan this morning Al, and I heard that tiny heartbeat, I can’t . . . I don’t even know how to describe the feeling . . .’

I interrupt her. ‘Wait, what, the scan?’ I am puzzled. ‘Why would you have the scan so early?’

‘Oh,’ she smiles wide. ‘It wasn’t early. It was the three-month scan. That’s why we can finally tell people!’

My head spins. Three months. Three months?! She’s kept this from me all this time? For months? She has kept this thing inside her, literally and emotionally, for weeks and weeks and weeks. Was she pretending to drink all those times we’ve been out? When she vomited on a grave, was that all a morning-sickness-related LIE? Every day we chatted and texted and FaceTimed, she didn’t say a word. Eva and I have never hidden anything from each other, ever. I know everything. Every single thing.

But not any more, apparently. Not only has she gone off and taken a giant step without me, she’s done it behind my back. She and Jeremy are having a baby, and that means they have a private, secret life that I’m not allowed into. The stomach ache becomes a tight ball of pain.

I can feel tears stinging my eyes, and she takes my emotional display to be a good sign, hugging me as Amelia approaches.

‘Eva!’ Amelia barks happily, as my best friend, who’s been keeping this secret for months, whispers in my ear, ‘Don’t say anything to anyone, I want to tell them!’

She and Amelia bustle off conspiratorially, and I stand there for a few more seconds. I don’t know what to think, I can’t believe it. I mean, of course I’m happy for her. Of course I am! Aren’t I? I mean, if I wasn’t happy for her that would make me a Full Monster and I’m not Full Monster, am I?

Yes, I’m happy for her! She’s happy, so I’m happy. Everyone around me is having babies and getting married and bringing their husbands whose names I don’t know to my birthday dinner and having lives and moving on and I am totally, absolutely, completely happy for everyone.

Happy happy happy.

I look down at my hands and they’re shaking a bit. All the information jumbles around my brain like a washing machine.

Eva and Jeremy are having a baby. Eva didn’t tell me. Jeremy will now be around forever. Even if they break up – which obviously they will at some point because they’re so wrong for each other – he is going to be in our lives for good. He’s going to be the dad to Eva’s child. Eva’s going to have a child.

Then the rest of it hits me: Shit, I’m going to have to move out. It’s Eva’s flat – her parents own it – and she’ll want it for her, Jeremy and the baby. After eight years of living together, Eva will throw me out, to make room for her new family. Her new gang, which I’m not a part of.

Fucking hell.

I knew everything was going to change when I turned thirty, but I thought it would be more along the lines of hand wrinkles and body confidence. Instead, I’ve lost my best friend and my home all in the space of a few minutes.

I feel so lost, standing there at the edge of my own birthday party, and a sudden intense longing for my bed overwhelms me. I wish I was there right now. I wish I was under my duvet armed with a five-pack of Creme Eggs.

The thought makes a single tear dramatically roll down my face. It’s my birthday and it’s such a small want, but I can’t even have that.

Fuck this, I’m texting TD.

Dan Heam – also known as Twat Dan or TD – and I have been on/off for the last four years. I say on/off, but he ‘doesn’t really like labels’ so we were never really officially ‘on’ or properly together. Even though of course we were! We were mad about each other at one point. I know he loved me and I know I was his girlfriend. Nobody else really understood our relationship, but I did, and he did. We got it. It was us against the world. And there were times it was so good. So good. And also bad. But that’s any relationship, isn’t it?

Either way, we are definitely off right now. Except I keep sleeping with him because I’m an idiot and I hate myself. There’s no point trying to fight it though. I am who I am. And that person is an idiot with no self-control or willpower.

‘You awgknf?’ I type. Shit, I’m a bit blurry with the emotion, and also probably all the shots.

I try again: ‘You around?’

His reply is instant: ‘Yep cum over.’

Not even a question, just a command. Twelve characters of non-affection. He didn’t even invest the effort it takes to write ‘come’ properly. Because obviously an ‘o’ and an ‘e’ require so much more time and care. Maybe if he’d added a comma after ‘Yep’, maybe I could’ve seen some kind of yearning in that, some kind of sign of love. Commas are on the other keyboard, so that would’ve signalled intention and interest.

But no. I cannot find any evidence of actual effort.

God, I hate him and his presumption – as if I am powerless to his demands! As if I will obviously do what he says, without question!

And, OK, fine, yes I will come/cum over. But not yet because I have some dignity! And also, I need to eat dinner, which is just coming around now.

 

An hour and a half later and I am sitting under the table. I can hear Slutty Sarah stage-whispering about ‘attention-seeking’ but she can bloody talk. Who even uses the word slut any more? No one, that’s who. It’s an awful nickname but she insists we keep using it. We’ve tried casually calling her just ‘Sarah’ – we’ve even tried to explain how sexist the word ‘slutty’ is – but she is adamant. She made a speech about empowerment and reclaiming words but everyone knows that is all patriarchy double-agent bullshit, she’s doing it for the shock value and because she thinks it’s funny when she introduces herself to new people and in-laws.

Anyway, I don’t care if everyone – even Slutty Sarah with her nipple-ring party trick – is judging me. I’m drunk, it’s my birthday, I’ve lost my best friend and I have nowhere to live. I have a right to throw a tantrum and hide under a table.

Obviously I would hide in the loo, but then people might not notice I’m throwing a tantrum?

The legs wobble around me as Mark lifts the table cloth and climbs under to join me.

‘Feeling a bit sorry for yourself, are you?’ he says nicely, as he plops himself down. ‘What is it?’ he says patiently.

I sigh. ‘Everything is changing around me, Mark. Why is everyone else doing stuff with their lives? What’s wrong with keeping everything the same? What’s wrong with staying put for ever?’

He looks at me hard. ‘You haven’t texted TD have you, Al?’

‘No,’ I lie, hating how well my big brother knows me.

‘Give me your phone, Al, I’m not letting you do it,’ he says, hand out.

‘You are not the boss of me,’ I shout-slur. ‘I can texcht TD if I wanch. You dunt tell me what to do. I’ll text him whenever I want, I’ll do it right now.’

I pointedly pull out my phone and squint at it.

‘Don’t, Alice,’ Mark says, a warning in his voice

I exaggeratedly pull up a new message, and begin typing elaborately.

‘You . . . are a dickhead . . .’ I write, reading it out loud as I tap. ‘I’ve wasted all my best years on you. But I still want to hump your stupid brains out just to prove a point to my dumb brother. Even though your penis has a weird bend in it that like hurts my kidneys.’

Mark sighs loudly. ‘Fine, great message, send it.’

He is calling my bluff, which he shouldn’t do when I’m this drunk.

‘I will send it,’ I say, waiting for him to take my phone.

He doesn’t.

‘FINE,’ I say louder and scroll through my contacts for TD’s name.

‘SEND,’ I shout, fake pressing it, but – in my blurry state – actually sending it.

Shit.

Oh well. I’ve sent worse to TD. I’ll still probably go back to his in few minutes. If I can just stand up.

Mark only examines his cuticles in response. ‘Are you done fake texting morons?’ he says. . . .