Cloudy with a Chance of Love: The unmissable laugh-out-loud read

Prologue (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One: Imogen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Two: Frankie (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Three: Grace (#litres_trial_promo)

Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter One (#ulink_c90d9403-29d1-5424-addf-26c02dc17977)

Sunday

I have a large bottom. If I had to quantify it, I would say it was somewhere between the size of a space hopper and a meteorite. It’s pretty big, and it needs quite a bit of upholstery to keep it in check. Big knickers. Spanx. Industrial scaffolding like you might see on buildings in major cities. But I like it. I’m used to it. It has always been behind me.

It’s a relief to find that it’s very fashionable to have a big bum these days. It never used to be. Women used to spend hours in the gym trying to whittle the damn thing down to nothing; now they’re trying to build it up. Make it round and firm and sticky-outy. Women have operations where things are stuffed into it: fat from other parts of their body, cotton wool, sandwiches… A big behind has recently become an asset and I finally find it’s something to be quite proud of. I could definitely give Kim Kardashian a run for her money, in the backside stakes, although I’m not sure I could ‘break’ the internet (unless I sat on it, of course) – I’m in my mid-forties for god’s sake. I no longer resemble the mildly sexy goddess I once was. But I do have a fashionably big bum.

My big bottom is currently coming in very handy. I’m sitting on it, on the cold ground, in Trafalgar Square, and laughing my head off. The denseness of my large behind means I probably won’t feel the cold for another – ooh – three minutes and I’m laughing because I’ve just chucked my wedding ring in one of the fountains. Yes, it’s gone, just like that. I stood up, on the edge of the fountain and, without fuss or war cry, just lobbed it in. I thought it might land with a satisfying clunk, but it didn’t. I couldn’t hear anything, which was a bit of a disappointment. It just sank to the bottom, without ceremony, and now it sits there, rather forlornly, with all the pennies and the euros and the ring pulls from cans of Coke. Still, it feels wonderful, getting rid of it like that. It’s gone. I feel light, I feel free. I also feel slightly drunk; I may have had three or more cocktails in a bar off The Strand.

I’d struggled to get it off. Well, it has been on my left hand for fifteen years. Sam had to lend me her little blue tin of Vaseline, so I could lubricate my finger.

‘Rub it all around the knuckle, that’s it, then wriggle,’ she’d said.

‘It’s bloody stuck!’

‘Wriggle it a bit more. Keep trying. You can do it, Daryl.’

I kept trying. I smeared on a bit more Vaseline and wriggled it a bit more and finally the damn ring was free of my knuckle and off my finger and at the bottom of the fountain. Thank goodness for that. Let a Portuguese language student have it, for all I care. Let it fund some eagled-eyed teenager’s first Nissan Micra. Let it languish there for ever. It was nothing to do with me any more.

‘Well done,’ said Sam. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Oh god, Sam,’ I said. ‘I feel giddy and bloody wonderful!’ She hugged me and we did a little Fagin-ish jig, right there and then, in front of a group of Japanese tourists who were huddled together offering the peace sign to the world and taking selfies.

I’ve been wonderfully giddy since this morning, to be honest, when I received my divorce papers.

People don’t normally receive notice of the end of their marriages on a Sunday. Divorce papers come in the post, usually, along with everything else and if mine had arrived with Saturday’s post, they would have just plopped on my mat in the same yellow envelope as all the other boring solicitors’ missives I’ve received over the last year. I wouldn’t have noticed anything special about this particular envelope. Nothing would have alerted me to the fact that its contents were anything much different to all the others – no klaxon would have gone off; the envelope wouldn’t have flashed red, like the Batphone; there would have been no thunderbolt from the sky with accompanying, dramatic timpani music. But this particular envelope didn’t even land on my mat. My neighbour – my new neighbour, I’ve only lived in my new house for a week – smilingly handed me my decree absolute over the doorstep this morning.

‘Your hunky new neighbour’ said Sam, when I told her. He is quite hunky, which is not quite what I need when I’m embarking on a new start and don’t need any distractions – especially in the male form – but what can you do?

Will, my hunky new neighbour, said there was a relief postman on at the moment obviously making all sorts of rookie errors and sorry he hadn’t noticed it yesterday, but he had some post for me. I thanked him in the embarrassingly gauche way I seem to have adopted with him (he is very good looking) and opened the envelope in my kitchen, expecting another drily-worded, highly expensive and baby-step advance in the slow-grinding cog of torture that was the dismantling of my marriage… It should have been simple – our daughter Freya is twenty-one and has left home, so there hasn’t been need for disputes over child maintenance or anything like that – but I don’t think it ever is simple, is it? The whole process was dreadfully and soul-crushingly slow.

It had been so slow that I was really surprised to discover, via the ponderous words of my bumbling and rotund solicitor (too many cakes, not enough time), that the deed was done; Jeff and I were divorced.

I did a little whoop, then had a little cry, then gave another whoop. It was done, it was over. I was divorced – Jeff and I were no longer married and he and my very-much-former best friend, Gabby, were free to do whatever the hell they liked.

I immediately called Sam; we got the Tube up to central London from Wimbledon, where we both live, and we’ve been here since half eleven, in a bar since quarter to twelve and it’s not yet three o’clock and we’re really rather tiddly and my ring is at the bottom of a fountain in Trafalgar Square.

‘So let’s have it, Daryl,’ Sam says, stretching out her legs in front of her and admiring her new boots (dark tan, riding in style; something a Jilly Cooper character would be proud of), ‘What are your plans for the future? What do you want to do?’

I’m full of daiquiri so I can only think of four things.

‘Date but not fall in love.’ I start counting them off, on my fingers. ‘Enjoy my freedom. Make it up to Freya, who’s had to mother me for the past twelve months, when it should be the other way round. And decorate my new house.’ I stretch out my legs, too, which only reach to about Sam’s knees. I’ve got my favourite ankle boots on, the black suede ones with the glittery bits on the toes – I might make it into a Jilly Cooper novel too, as a dumpy, blinged-up stable hand. ‘Apart from that, who the hell knows?’

‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ says Sam. ‘But it’ll all be written in the stars, anyway.’ I look at her and shake my head. I’m not into mumbo jumbo and pie-in-the-sky pseudo-psychic jiggery-pokery, but Sam is. She’s into it all: horoscopes – Virgo with Sagittarius rising in a lunar coulis or whatever – tarot cards, Feng Shui, reiki, cosmic ordering, crystals and tea-leaf reading. She adores all that stuff. She pulls those long legs up to her chest, slaps both knees with her manicured hands and says, ‘Let’s do your fortune!’

‘What? How? Are you going to read my palm?’

‘No. Online fortune teller. Let’s stand up, though. My bum’s gone numb.’ We haul ourselves to our feet. I really am about four foot shorter than Sam, and with a much larger bottom, so it takes me a bit longer. ‘We just go on my phone and use my new app.’

‘Online fortune teller…’ I groan. ‘As it’s you, I’ll indulge you, but I bet it’s a right load of rubbish.’

It’s not!’ says Sam, flicking her glossy brown ponytail from side to side. ‘You know my friend from Pilates, Jan?’

‘Jan with the thighs? The one who’s been on a hundred dates and is still single?’

‘The very same. Except she’s not single any more. She went on the same app two weeks ago – Madame L’Oracle’s Love Fortunes, it’s called – and Madame L’Oracle told her she was going to meet a man that night and she did! She met a guy from DelightfulDates.com that very night and now they’re engaged!’

I dust down my backside. It has a leaflet explaining the Tower of London stuck to it. ‘After only two weeks? Come on! He’s a conman or a nutter, he has to be.’ From what I’ve heard, the only people who are ‘successful’ on DelightfulDates.com are men who manage to achieve sex with a stranger two hours after messaging them. It’s not for finding long-term love. Not that I’m looking for that, ever again. It’s going to be fun, flirting and frivolity for me, all the way now. I’ve done all my moping and my crying; it’s high time for me to be fabulous.

‘No, he’s a proper bloke! A nice bloke. One of the few. He’s turned out to be amazing. That’s what Jan said.’

‘But I don’t want a bloke, do I? All I want now is to go on a few dates and have some fun.’

‘It’s just a laugh,’ says Sam. ‘We’ll do mine first.’

I suspect Sam hopes it’s a little more than that. She always does. She’s definitely on the lookout for a man and love. She’s been divorced for five years now, from Graham who she met at school; they consciously uncoupled when they realised they didn’t really like each other any more and hadn’t noticed each other’s haircuts for over three years…

‘How much is this nonsense?’ I enquire.

‘It’s free, but Madame L’Oracle, the Psychic Queen, guarantees she’ll be uncannily specific.’ There’s a picture of Madame Oracle on the app. Sam shows me. She’s in pink fur and pearls, her hair bigger than RuPaul’s.

‘Just give me a second…’ says Sam. I wait as she taps away at her phone. ‘Right. Now we wait two minutes. Accurate predictions take time, it says.’ I poke her playfully in the ribs and try not to roll my eyes as I focus on the screen. It’s all pink and white. On a jacquard background a picture of a crystal ball is oscillating whilst white cloudy stuff swirls in it, and an old-fashioned clock counts down the minutes. What laughable hocus pocus. Still, Sam’s one of my best friends; I’m going with it because I always do.

One of the Japanese tourist peers over Sam’s shoulder.

‘Oi, nosey! Bog off! Right. Here we are. Ooh, okay, this is mine: You have an eighty percent chanceof heat bringing you love.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes! Heat will bring me love! Simples!’

‘But that could mean anything! I thought it was supposed to be specific! That’s totally vague and really random,’ I laugh.

‘It could be specific. I just have to focus. Heat, heat…what could it mean? Should I book another trip to Lanzarote?’ She pulls her wool coat more tightly round her. It’s really cold for the end of October and the skies are darkening already. Rain is due in about an hour, I know. ‘Right, your turn.’

‘If I must.’