Strings Attached

by Erin Reinelt

Genres: Erotic & Steamy Romance; General Fiction; Contemporary Romance

Synopsis

The laugh-out-loud romantic comedy, all about the highs and lows of modern dating, with a cheeky twist...

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Newly single Jean is dating again... it just so happens that she's dating a married couple.

Straight-laced Jean has just broken up with her overgrown baby of a boyfriend. At 30, she's always done what's expected of her – by her traditional parents, by her demanding boss, and by her disaster of an ex-boyfriend – and if she doesn't have some fun now, when will she?

Taking her life into her own hands, she decides to do something that takes her out of her comfort zone, and embarks on a sexual awakening. A woman heels-over-head, and not head-over-heels, in love. Jean's sexual liberation is off to a cracking start when she meets married-but-open pianist Gabriel. What better way to explore all that modern romance has to offer than with a polyamorous love affair? From navigating tricky waters with Gabriel and his wife, to dating a pansexual couple, via a masked sex party and orgasmic meditation retreat, Jean screams 'Yes!!' to life.

But can relationships last, without entangled hearts being broken?

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For fans of Dolly Alderton, The Wrong Knickers, Hot Mess and The List, anyone who enjoyed Netflix series LOVE and SET IT UP, and for fans of TV shows FLEABAG and GIRLS.

(p) Orion Publishing Group 2019

Release date: July 1, 2019

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 304

Sample

‘Wheelie bin races tomorrow afternoon!’ Charlie exclaims with the easy joy of a small child, as he takes in a chalk sign outside the door of the Three Horseshoes. He parks the Mini convertible haphazardly across two spaces, before opening Jean’s door with a flourish. ‘I knew there’s a good reason this is my favourite pub.’

‘We have the post-nuptial brunch tomorrow,’ Jean reminds him, lurching out of the car and patting her hair back into shape. The neat chignon she’d fixed that morning has blown flat and sideways, like a bad toupée.

She eyes the thermos bottle lying on Charlie’s seat suspiciously.

‘Ah, but brunch is at eleven! The races start at two,’ Charlie says, swooping her off the gravel into his arms and carrying her through the entrance to deposit her in front of the barman. Jean used to giggle when he did this, at the ostentation. The old-fashioned chivalry! But for some time now she has suspected his motive is to be served as quickly as is humanly possible.

‘I thought you’d never been to Kent! How can this be your favourite pub?’ Her knees wobble as she leans against the bar. She had been holding them together, vice-like, throughout the swerving drive.

‘A boozehound never tells,’ Charlie says, tapping his nose with one finger over an impish grin. ‘But I’ll give you a clue: proximity.’

Jean rolls her eyes. The mirror behind the bar, scuffed as it is, does not paint a flattering picture of them as a couple. Charlie’s longish black hair stands at a seventy-five-degree angle from his scalp; his suit is askew, one white shirt end flapping over his trousers. Jean’s lilac dress brings out a sallow tone to her skin. Her face is a mottled puce, with red splotches high on her cheekbones.

They both look like they’ve been spat out of a tornado.

‘Two pints of lager and three whisky chasers, my good man!’ Charlie orders with a twinkle in his eye. ‘Maybe four. Jeannie?’

‘Charlie, the ceremony starts at five!’ Jean protests, checking her watch. It was nearly 4 p.m. ‘And don’t call me Jeannie.’

‘The venue is only five minutes away,’ Charlie says, turning his huge, brown, melting puppy gaze at her. That look still has the power to twist Jean’s heart, even as his irises are increasingly swamped by ballooning purple eyebags.

‘I haven’t seen Sarah in almost a year. I don’t want to be rude!’ Jean hates the shrill edge that has been creeping into her voice, more and more of late. She can’t help it. It has become as natural to her as shallow breathing and anxiety.

‘Pish tosh! Grown men don’t take orders from confectionary.’ Charlie smiles, fluttering a layer of her pleated dress with his fingertip.

Jean inspects herself, wounded. She can see now that the multi-layered maxi style the pushy saleswoman had insisted was ‘Timeless, seventies’ looks exactly like a stack of upside-down cupcake wrappers. Not so long ago, she would have found this funny. Today, it makes her want to cry.

‘It’s timeless and seventies,’ Jean says defensively.

‘You can’t be timeless and seventies,’ Charlie points out.

‘Here you are, mate,’ the bartender says, passing over the tumblers almost flirtatiously. Charlie always had this effect on people. Whether it was his slightly fey manner or air of adventure, every stranger became an instant friend. If Charlie were a perfume he’d be called: What Larks!

As soon as the glass touches wood, he necks two of the whiskies in quick succession, and Jean motions to the barman for the bill. She pays before Charlie has a chance to order another round. On their first date, Charlie had merrily described himself as a ‘bedwetting alcoholic first, journalist second’ and so, fairly warned, Jean never took him to task for his drinking. More of a liability than a mean drunk, his occasional buffoonery had seemed a small price to pay for his undeniable charm.

Unfortunately, on special occasions, she had to watch him like a hawk.

Jean sips her pint and turns her agency iPhone on.

Shit.

‘Five missed calls …’ Jean says, her heart pounding. ‘Jez is going to kill me!’

‘Tell him to fuck off!’ Charlie says, somewhat bitterly. Of late, his own work has been drying up, a touchy subject. And increasingly, his advice seems geared towards getting her fired. ‘It’s Saturday.’

‘It might be an emergency,’ Jean says, dialling back nervously.

Charlie snatches the mobile from her hands.

‘It is never an emergency. And it’s your best childhood friend’s wedding. What’s her name again?’

‘Sarah!’ Jean reminds him for the fifth time, wrestling the phone from his hands. ‘I’ll be two minutes.’

It’s Charlie’s turn to roll his eyes.

Her boss calls at any hour of the day or night, no matter the occasion. Jean even left her grandmother’s funeral early, after Jez feigned a heart attack to lure her to the office. To be fair, working for the best political PR firm in London means 24-7 availability, and that had been during a top-secret crisis with the Prime Minister’s dodgy uncle.

‘Why does everyone have a dodgy uncle?’, Jean wonders aloud to herself, as the phone rings.

‘What the hell are you on about,’ Jez says by way of hello.

‘Oh, you know,’ Jean laughs the tittery social laugh she has developed listening to the comedy of MPs. ‘Weddings! Weird uncles abound. Is something wrong?’

‘Have you not read Twitter?’ Jez shouts down the line.

Jez always referred to Twitter as if it were a work of great literature she could be shamed into consuming.

‘My phone is low on battery! We were in a rush,’ Jean cringes, gulping her pint for Dutch courage.

PR had been much more fun before social media turned into a dragon eating its own young. When she’d started out it had been a heady mixture of parties, policy and power. Unmissable conversations happened in real life and her clients appeared to actually want to improve the lives of the people. Over the past few years, however, her list had been overwhelmed by despotic overgrown schoolboys.

‘Lord Kinder was picked up cruising on Hampstead Heath!’

‘That’s recoverable!’ Jean says, breathing a sigh of relief. Yes, the Tory MP with his pearl-clutching appeals for family values would find this personally humiliating. But post #MeToo, a bit of anonymous cottaging was practically twee. ‘Tell him to whack himself in the eye and we’ll go for the confused-after-mugging excuse. Does he have a dog?’

‘I don’t bloody know! That’s your job! So do it!’

He hangs up abruptly.

‘I’ll get in touch with the papers. Have a great weekend! Thanks, I will. Bye bye,’ Jean says calmly to no one, pretending to have been treated with normal conversational etiquette in front of Charlie.

Jean had quickly adapted to Jez Addington’s aggro-dictator style when she’d started at Addington Media Agency fresh out of university. She found it strangely comforting, perhaps because Jez was so similar to her father. And it was a good buzz, the scandal and panic, or rather the re-framing of scandal and the calming of panic. On her good days, it made her feel strong, capable, almost magic. Like if Glenda the Good Witch helped sex perverts to keep their constituencies.

On her bad days, which were becoming more frequent, she worried that her only life skill was clearing up clusterfucks left by grown men.

‘I told you to put your foot down. He’ll never respect you if you don’t assert your boundaries!’ This coming from her boyfriend of three years who has never respected her boundaries, and is now patting her on the shoulder patronisingly as Jean rapid-emails her contact list.

‘Not now,’ Jean shrugs him off.

‘You’re not still in a huff about those shoes, are you,’ Charlie said with a pout, poking her playfully in the ribs.

Jean looks up with a glare. ‘I hadn’t been. Until you reminded me.’

These days it wasn’t uncommon for Jean to wake up alone in the flat they shared in Peckham, only to find Charlie passed out on the doorstep. Brewer’s droop had murdered their sex life, but at least the bedwetting had actually been a joke. Charlie always made it, if not to the actual toilet, at least to a potted plant or the closet. As Jean kept her shoes placed in cardboard boxes, neatly folded in tissue paper, they had mostly gone unscathed. Except for those brand spanking new velvet stilettos she had been planning to wear today.

‘What’s happened to you? I said I’d replace them,’ Charlie says, finishing off his pint. ‘You never used to be such a bore.’

In Charlie’s world, this was the worst possible thing someone could be accused of. Lie to his face, rob him blind, piss on his shoes – all would be forgiven if you made him laugh.

And Jean used to make him laugh, all the time.

Her throat constricts against a sudden knot. What has happened to her? Is it attending the wedding, her third this year? Is it her age? Is turning thirty the tipping point where you transform into a nag-shrew with shit clothes and no sense of humour? Her older sister had offered to buy Jean a course of colonics for her birthday, and she had been very excited about it. Until she realised it was a cruel joke about her anal-retentiveness.

Jean looks down at her phone again. She finishes off her correspondence. She enjoys the satisfying swoosh of emails sent. The only reliable part of her life. Technology.

Jean had decided that this weekend, she would turn off her phone and be fully present. She and Sarah hadn’t seen much of each other in recent years, and Jean was touched at the invitation. Also, Sarah’s family made her nervous. They were the sort of people to cut you forever dead in Waitrose if a ringtone disturbed a speech. Not that being ignored in a supermarket is the cruellest punishment ever, but to the Kent bourgeoisie, it is equivalent to pistols at dawn.

Jean turns off her mobile resolutely. The act makes her heart pound.

‘We’re late,’ Jean says, finally looking up.

The barman sets down two more pints before them.

‘Charlie!’

‘What? You were on your phone. We could be here for hours!’

Jean takes Charlie’s arm and steers him towards the door. He wriggles out of her grasp and trots to the bar.

‘Jean, don’t be mad. What’s five more minutes? I’m just trying to have fun! Like we used to. Have fun. Remember that?’ He raises the glasses in Irish handcuffs, sipping from them simultaneously and giving a saucy wink.

Jean couldn’t tell any more if she was over-reacting or under-reacting to Charlie. She had lost sight of what was normal behaviour. But she could sense herself morphing into the kind of girlfriend she used to see bitching out their men at the pub, when she was young and foolish enough to pity the boyfriend.

‘We can have fun. At. The. Wedding!’ Jean yells. The barman coughs to hide his laughter. Sensing an audience, Charlie sets down the pints, drops to his knees and recites, hand on chest.

‘“Never give all the heart, for love will hardly seem worth thinking of to passionate women if it seem certain! And they never dream that it fades out from kiss to kiss—”’

Yeats. It had been a favourite of Charlie’s since his mother told him she was leaving his father for their gardener, three months ago. ‘I’m an adult child of divorce!’ he had wept piteously in her arms. ‘You’re certainly an adult child,’ Jean had responded, fondly at the time.

Jean puts her head in her hands. When she looks up, she catches a girl staring at them from across the room, smirking.

You wouldn’t think him so charming if he’d pissed all over your goddamn shoes, thinks Jean. She considers shouting the sentence, but restrains herself. Because she is not feral. She is a grown woman, in control of her life and boyfriend.

‘We will have fun at the wedding,’ Jean states again, calmly this time.

She collects herself and walks out to the car, Charlie trailing behind her. She gets in the passenger seat and looks out the window, arms crossed over her chest. Her body jerks as the Mini barrels forward onto the main road.

Charlie sips from his thermos as they speed towards Mount Ephraim Gardens, the ends of his satin bow-tie flapping wildly behind him. Jean resists the urge to cross herself. She wonders again if it is actually filled with coffee, as he insisted. He wouldn’t do that to her, surely? There was a vast difference between stopping at the pub before a five-minute jaunt down a country lane, and drunk-driving the A2 all the way from London.

‘Could you please slow down?’ Jean says, the seatbelt digging into her flesh through her dress. ‘I’d rather be late than dead!’

‘Nearly there! We’ll be bang on time,’ Charlie says with self-satisfaction. He sets the thermos aside as he takes a left turn towards an enormous country house.

As he pulls into the parking lot, Jean takes the thermos from the cup holder. Charlie freezes. Jean sips. It isn’t coffee. It isn’t even an Irish coffee.

Straight vodka.

Charlie parks the car. She can see his hands trembling a little as he lets go of the steering wheel.

‘I never drink in the mornings,’ Charlie says defensively, before Jean has the opportunity to accuse him of anything.

‘No,’ Jean smiles wryly, ‘that would require waking before noon.’

Jean necks what remains.

‘I’m sorry,’ Charlie says, head down, his eyes peeping up at her under dark lashes like a shamed little boy. But he wasn’t a boy. He was a thirty-five-year-old man. And she was his babysitter.

‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea if you come any more,’ Jean says, looking into the distance. She can see a wooden sign painted with ‘Sarah and Toby’s Wedding’ in gold calligraphy, pointing towards a path leading into the woods.

Jean knows she should be upset that Charlie has endangered both their lives on the drive down from London, but oddly, she’s not. Neither is she surprised. It is one in an endless list of things she has let slide. She looks down into her lap, fingering the cheap lilac chiffon. She had chosen this man. This sick man. Mystifyingly, she had also chosen this dress. This hideous dress.

It’s funny the things you notice when a part of your life is ending forever.

‘I’ll behave, I promise, Jean. I love you,’ Charlie says, pathetically.

The thing was, he did love her. She never doubted that. He would declare it, loudly and wildly, when he brought her toasted crumpets with Marmite in bed and read to her on lazy Sundays in the park. When he brushed her hair when she was unwell and teased her back to good humour when she was feeling down.

But who wouldn’t love the woman who bit her tongue, held back, never told you off, and let you be exactly who you wanted to be, holding her cheerful façade together so perfectly you had no idea she was crumbling under the weight of it? Jean’s fate, should she stay with Charlie, and what she once thought of as her reward, was to be loved as a falsehood of her own design.

‘I don’t know,’ Jean whispers, suddenly blinking back tears. ‘I just don’t know any more.’

‘Jeannie,’ Charlie’s voice cracks. ‘Don’t do this to me.’

‘Take our bags to the hotel. We’ll talk things through later tonight.’

Jean stumbles out of the car towards the garden path, her vision blurred, hearing the sound of wheels crunching gravel behind her. She searches her bag for a mint to disguise the cheap vodka on her breath, as she follows a trail of balloons tied into the foliage with ribbons.

And to think this weekend she had hoped they might reconnect sexually, after a year of coitus-toodrunktofuckus.

‘Jean! My god darling, it’s been ages!’

Jean looks up, mournfully.

Sophia, Sarah’s cousin, quite literally barefoot and pregnant with a garland in her hair, waves from across the bridge. Her whole body wiggles with the movement, in an ecstasy of excitement better suited to an electrocuted custard. While there is no other word for her than adorable, her jolly-hockey-sticks-on-crack-itude is just the thing to tip Jean into true, bleak despair.

‘I love your dress!’ Sophia says as she waddles near. She will be the only person to say this and mean it, and somehow this makes Jean’s sense of futility weigh on her all the more.

‘Thank you! It was in the sales,’ Jean says, through a strained smile.

‘Oooh, I do love a bargain. Isn’t it so happy! Like a springy spring cloud!’ Sophia beams. ‘Lovely colour. Like cupcake icing!’

Sophia’s most endearing and most annoying quality is relentless good cheer.

‘Is this number …?’ Jean asks, motioning in the direction of Sophia’s bulging belly. Two? Three? Six? Even as a child, Sophia always seemed to have small children underfoot. Jean’s vaguely proffered hand is grabbed and pressed hard against the pit of Sophia’s groin.

‘Four! Can you believe it? Oh, he was just kicking a moment ago,’ Sophia says as Jean gently prises her hand away. Even when her best mate Tess was pregnant with her son Fynn, Jean had struggled not to find The Bump a bit disturbing. Luckily, Tess never became one of those miracle-of-life types. She had described giving birth as ‘Like A Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Alien mash-up in your goddamn pum.’

‘I hope we’re not late! How far is the ceremony?’ Jean says, turning to look anxiously over her shoulder. Why did she have to almost break up with Charlie before the twenty-four hour stretch of politely bumbling small talk interspersed with dad-dancing that she knew was to come? She had seen Sarah and Toby sporadically over the years, but she hardly knew their friends. If ever there was a time to get absolutely hammered with your alcoholic lover, it was now. In fact, it was expected.

‘Oh gosh, you are right, mustn’t dawdle. I had to make a dash for the loo. Third time in an hour! Sarah is running behind. Disaster coiffure. Her favourite stylist was booked and his assistant did this vertical layered jobbie that looked most odd. All very nineties apparently, but one doesn’t want to look like a “Grunge” on one’s wedding day!’

‘Quite right,’ Jean smiles, feeling guilty about her impatience towards a woman so completely harmless that she took grunge to be a noun.

Sophia takes Jean’s arm and shepherds her through the trees to a manicured expanse of rolling lawn, at the top of which stand red brick stairs beneath a wrought-iron gate. Eggshell blue tents peak in front of the mansion, the alfresco dinner protected from the chance of summer rain. Guests in sorbet frocks, suits and swooping hats sit on a row of white chairs lined up before a bespoke altar, garlanded with pink roses.

The vicar stands beneath it, all kindly beneficence. Toby waits beside him with the groomsmen, vibrating head to toe with nerves. A white grand piano perches on a stage. The pianist plays Chopin, wearing a lilac linen suit the same shade as Jean’s dress.

It must have cost a bomb, and Jean hasn’t even seen the banquet yet.

‘Beautiful,’ Jean murmurs as they approach the ceremony. She casts around the crowd for familiar faces. Apart from the best man, Sean, and Toby and Sarah’s parents, she doesn’t recognise anyone. Jean’s family had moved out of Kent after primary school and Sarah had preferred to visit her in London, finding the fresh air dreary and the rolling hills stifling. She seemed happy to stay in the countryside now, however. Aga, Range Rover, accountant hubby. Tick, tick, tick, dream life sorted.

‘Yes, but what a grey, grey day!’ Sophia sighs tragically. ‘But look! A hint of sunshine through the clouds!’

There is no hint of sunshine, not a sliver of a fragment of a ray, but Jean supposes that Sophia can’t bear to be construed as having said anything negative.

‘I’m sure it will brighten up in no time!’ Jean agrees, wishing she could say the same about her future. If only Charlie could control himself.

Of course, if he could control himself, he wouldn’t be Charlie. Wasn’t that what had drawn her to him in the first place? His flagrant excess and flouting of convention, so different from Jean’s square, efficient duty. He comported himself like a seventeenth century wastrel-lord, and she was his devoted valet.

If only she didn’t still love him.

As the tune changes to the Bridal Chorus, Sophia squeezes Jean’s hand and wiggles in her happy Labrador way to join her family near the altar. Three cherubic heads turn to greet her. Jean looks for a seat.

The only empty space is at the very back, next to a man who is crumpled in his chair, as if half-hiding. A man who turns to stare up at her, hopefully.

Charlie.

Bugger it all.

Jean laughs, despite herself. Charlie beams at this promising sign, as Jean takes the vacant seat next to him.

‘Have you forgiven me?’ Charlie whispers in her ear, one arm sliding over her shoulder.

‘Never,’ Jean says, but with a playful curve to her lips. She can feel her resolve slipping away.

Sarah shines with joy as she strides up the aisle on her father’s arm. The gown is a cream lace Dior, more girlish and less princess than Jean thought she would choose. The coiffure disaster has been solved by the garlanding of almost her entire head in daisies. From a distance, it is impossible not to get the impression Sarah sports a 1950s bathing cap, but the idiosyncrasy of it somehow makes her even more charming.

Her bridesmaids follow in wispy pink frocks at a mincing, less eager pace. The fact that Sarah is practically charging towards her future husband draws a titter from the older guests. Jean wipes a tear from her eye as Sarah takes her place beside Toby and the ceremony begins.

‘Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today …’

A beam of sunlight pierces the expanse of grey sky as the couple exchange rings, as if the Holy Spirit itself graces them in celestial blessing.

The couple say their ‘I dos’, then laugh and nuzzle each other.

Toby dips Sarah in a swift ballroom move, before kissing her full on the lips. The pianist starts playing ‘Your Song’ as the guests stand up and cheer.

‘I knew you’d come round,’ Charlie says to Jean with a grin, as they watch the couple walk back down the aisle together, ducking confetti, hand in hand.

At this, Jean’s smile slips. She opens her mouth to protest, but they are drawn into a crowd of well-wishers before she can set him straight.

After the bridal party are photographed beneath the garland, in front of the steps and in picturesque spots in the surrounding woods, the guests make their way towards the alfresco banquet. Platters strewn with rustic delicacies are laid out under a blue marquee in front of the Victorian manor house. Jean and Charlie heap their plates with smoked salmon, beef Wellington and roast vegetables, arguing under their breath about the necessity of The Talk, while also avoiding The Talk.

‘I don’t understand,’ Charlie says, as he spears a bouquet of asparagus. ‘Am I to await my execution all evening, making idiot small talk with the parents of people you went to primary school with?’

‘Execution is a strong term,’ Jean hisses. ‘And I don’t see how hard it is to speak to the father of the bride without saying his daughter looks like she should be wearing a bathing costume in a 1950s musical.’

‘It’s not my fault she appears to have scalped a synchronised swimmer!’

Jean shudders to remember Sarah’s father’s face at the not-so-veiled insult. He had terrified Jean as a child, all stiff, performative kindness over a steely core. Although he insisted she call him John, he will forever be Mr Marsh to her. She had wanted to impress him today. Mr Marsh has friends in advertising PR and she had hoped to follow up the wedding with a friendly email and investigate a change in career path.

Now that idea was shot to hell.

‘Can you please contain yourself for the course of one evening,’ Jean tries to say firmly, though her voice shakes. ‘This is not the time nor the place to discuss your problems.’

‘Contain myself?’ Charlie says in a tone of sheer horror.

Luckily, two seats at Sophia’s table are still free by the time they have filled their plates. Probably because it is more akin to a crèche.

‘I do hope you will behave in front of the children,’ Jean whispers like a schoolmarm in Charlie’s ear as they sit down.

‘Behave,’ Charlie repeats. He has had at least six glasses of champagne and his boisterous high spirits have turned combative.

‘We’ll talk later,’ Jean smiles. ‘Sophia, are you still living in that charming gated house with the thatched roof?’

‘What is there to talk about? I won’t do it again!’ Charlie interrupts in a stage-whisper. Jean kicks him under the table.

‘Talk about what?’ Sophia asks, in . . .