Rachel Ryan's Resolutions

by Laura Starkey

  To Dan,

  Whose faith, encouragement and excellent tea making made all the difference in the writing of this book.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  University of York: 2009

  London: 2019

  January 2019

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  February

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  March

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  April

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  May

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  June

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  July

  Chapter 30

  August

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  About Laura Starkey

  About Embla Books

  First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

  EMBLA BOOKS

  Bonnier Books UK Limited

  4th Floor, Victoria House, Bloomsbury Square,

  London, WC1B 4DA

  Copyright © Laura Starkey, 2021

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The right of Laura Starkey to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  eBook ISBN: 9781471411458

  This eBook was produced using Atomik ePublisher.

  Embla Books is an imprint of Bonnier Books UK.

  www.bonnierbooks.co.uk

  She was filled with a strange, wild, unfamiliar happiness, and knew that this was love. Twice in her life she had mistaken something else for it; it was like seeing somebody in the street who you think is a friend, you whistle and wave and run after him, and he is not only not the friend, but not even very like him. A few minutes later the real friend appears in view, and then you can’t imagine how you ever mistook that other person for him.

  —Nancy Mitford, The Pursuit of Love

  University of York

  2009

  The thorny branches of the bush she was wedged into scratched at Rachel’s bare arms. As her oversized sunglasses slid down her clammy nose, she offered up a silent prayer that no one was about to pass by.

  Like a character from one of the clichéd cop dramas her mum was obsessed with, Rachel was hiding in a hedge in broad daylight – transfixed by the sight of two people deep in conversation, sitting on a patch of yellowed scrubby grass a few metres away.

  It was late July and, although only around ten o’clock in the morning, the day was already warm in the oppressive way that promises an evening downpour. The moisture now pooling at the small of Rachel’s back and beneath her armpits, however, was less a consequence of the muggy atmosphere and more a result of her rapidly rising heart rate.

  She was willing this not to be real. Hoping it might not be true.

  It wasn’t working.

  They were too close together, too intimate. His hand was resting in hers and their inclined bodies formed a graceful arc, lit from behind by bright sunshine.

  He was wearing yesterday’s clothes.

  Rachel tasted the acrid flavour of impending vomit and wondered if she was going to be sick. Not here, not now.

  Her stomach contracted, muscle and flesh tightening, curling inwards. Just breathe, she told herself.

  She scrunched her eyes shut and gulped down lungfuls of air until the twisting sensation in her gut let up a little.

  Always a sucker for punishment, Rachel made herself look at them again. He was kissing her now – the other woman.

  Even from a distance Rachel could tell this was one of Jack Harper’s special signature kisses: languid but delicious, rich with intent. She hated him for this, but for a split second felt her standard longing for him too.

  She knew she would never forgive him, and yet, as his arms snaked around someone else’s waist, she couldn’t help admiring him. His overlong chestnut-brown hair shone in the sunlight, casting an ironic halo of copper-coloured light around his head. He opened his green-gold eyes as the kissing stopped, and his smile – a wide, lazy grin for this skinny girl with a treacle-dark mane – was a baseball bat to Rachel’s stomach.

  Misery ballooned in her ribcage. Her sadness felt massive – so big it might push vital organs out of place. A sensible voice from somewhere deep inside Rachel insisted that, awful as this was, it still didn’t rank as the worst thing that had ever happened to her. But still, how could Jack be doing this? Today of all days? It was crushing.

  And his doing it here – out in the open, on the lane she so regularly walked down … It was as if the location he’d picked sought to minimise his offence. The thoughtlessness of it implied that, to Jack, hooking up with someone other than Rachel was no big deal. There was cruelty in this, she realised, whether he’d intended it or not: it heaped humiliation on top of hurt, spoke of unequal affections. It made her feel stupid for letting herself care so much.

  That word, stupid, clanged in her head. She should have seen this coming. Jack’s Lord Byron Lite act, as she’d once called it, had seen him motor through girlfriends faster than she sped down their reading list of set texts. But her resolve to keep him at arm’s length despite his obvious charms had crumbled when he’d told her she wasn’t like anyone else, that she was different – that he’d fallen in love with her.

  She had believed him.

  Hot tears filled Rachel’s eyes and she forced her thoughts back to the present, shoving down the hysterical laugh that was bubbling up her throat. This was a ridiculous situation.

  She needed to get home. She couldn’t hide in a hedge forever … Not even for another ten minutes, she realised, checking her watch.

  Rachel’s parents would be arriving soon and they were notorious for being early, particularly on special occasions. And for reasons that only a handful of people knew, including the cheating snake now casually fondling his latest conquest, today was a very special occasion.

  She didn’t want to crash back through her front gate flustered, sweaty and feeling like she’d been freshly disembowelled, only to find them waiting on the doorstep in their Sunday best. She needed to greet them happy, serene and smiling, ready to put the kettle on. The carton of milk she’d popped out to buy weighed heavy in her right hand.

  Like the bile that still threatened at the back of her throat, Rachel swallowed her mess of feelings. Now, she decided, was not the time to throw them up. If she wasn’t going to confront Jack, though, she somehow had to sneak past him and his new friend.

  She wondered how long they were going to sit there, the bastards, alternately snogging and making moon eyes at one another.
Then the bleak truth occurred to her: Jack and this girl were utterly wrapped up in the moment, and the lane was fairly wide … Rachel could probably walk by without them even noticing. The realisation stung, almost as painfully as everything else.

  She took a deep breath, extracted herself from her improvised hiding place and walked – quickly, but not so fast that she’d make herself conspicuous – towards the main road.

  Rachel had less than half an hour to get home, compose herself and start getting ready for the ceremony.

  It was graduation day and her mum and dad were coming to watch her collect her First. They were proud of her. They wanted to celebrate.

  London

  2019

  January 2019

  New Year’s resolutions

  1. Consider exercise an act with actual benefits – both mental and physical – not merely grim punishment for pizzas consumed. Have a proper go at yoga.

  2. Also re-download Couch to 5K running app and actually do the programme.

  3. Apply for promotion at work at first chance. Move to bigger account and try to get pay rise. Avoid, if possible, further projects concerning dog biscuits, disinfectant, high-quality printer ink cartridges, ‘miracle’ grass seed, organic vegetables, etc.

  4. DO NOT agree to further dates with Laurence. Remember: it’s no use having a boyfriend who is good on paper if you do not actually fancy him.

  5. Try to remember Mum means well, even during phone calls where she implies I am doomed to a lonely life of penury because I am thirty with no partner, hardly any savings and no mortgage.

  6. HOWEVER, do not (!!!) speak to Mum when suffering PMT. Set phone alerts for likely spells based on period tracker intel.

  7. Try to address ‘hardly any savings’ situation. (If promoted, set aside extra earnings for future house deposit instead of spaffing it all on ASOS.)

  8. Try to eat my five-a-day. (Remember horrid rule that potatoes do not count.)

  9. Start using proper night cream with retinol.

  1

  Rachel sat on the cold, hard bus shelter bench awaiting the number 19 from Islington to Finsbury Park. Despite the best efforts of the manspreader next to her, both of her arsecheeks were still fully on the seat she’d claimed before the stop got busy. There was no way she wanted to stand outside; it was only just past six o’clock but already pitch-dark, and the air was a whirl of freezing drizzle. She watched her breath misting and mingling with it, enjoying her small victory.

  Four minutes for the bus, according to the electronic display at the top of the shelter. Wincing involuntarily, she wondered if Jessica Williams would be on it this evening.

  Rachel pulled her soft navy hat further towards her chilly ears, though her mass of dark-red waves prevented it from making effective contact. It was the second week in January and, as a worthy-looking man in Lycra leggings and fluorescent trainers jogged by, she reflected that her ‘New Year, New Me’ plans were off to a very slow start.

  Unless you counted several panicked sprints towards trains and buses, she had done no exercise whatsoever. She had swerved several phone calls from her mother, eaten a lot of beige food and had yet to buy the retinol cream she was supposed to be applying each night.

  Nevertheless, Rachel reasoned, she still had eleven and a half months in which to keep the promises she’d made to herself. It was important not to be too self-flagellating in January, what with it being a month of general gloom and destitution.

  She felt a buzzing from somewhere deep inside the large bucket-shaped handbag that was sitting on her lap. Her fingernails dug into her palms.

  Please don’t let this be Laurence calling to ask if I fancy an after-work drink. His office was only around the corner from hers, and he kept insisting that they should talk again about their break-up.

  Rachel fished for her phone, dodging multiple lipsticks, crumpled receipts and the tangled wire of her headphones. There was no way she was shelling out for AirPods until it finally frayed right through.

  Greg calling, the display said, when she finally extracted her phone.

  What the hell could he want? She’d only left work ten minutes ago. Surely he had nothing to say that couldn’t wait until the morning?

  He really had no filtering system, Rachel thought: in Greg World, everything was urgent.

  She took a breath and tapped the green button, then said, ‘Hi.’

  ‘Ray! I got you! EXCELLENT,’ Greg gushed, his familiar Australian burr unnecessarily loud, like always.

  Rachel couldn’t imagine how many times she had politely asked Greg not to refer to her as Ray. It had never made any difference, and now – four years into their professional relationship – she had finally stopped bothering.

  ‘I’m just looking at this copy about the groceries,’ he said. ‘It’s a little bit … blah. You know. Not very sexy.’

  ‘Not very … sexy?’

  Rachel was incredulous, but realised she shouldn’t be surprised by this assessment. As a copywriter at a digital marketing agency, she’d become used to defending her choice of words – often in the face of criticism from people who didn’t know the difference between your and you’re.

  ‘No,’ Greg ploughed on. ‘This copy does not make me go, YEAH, I have just GOT TO HAVE some cauliflower tonight, I can’t live without it, I NEED IT IN MY LIFE.’

  Shortly before Christmas, Rachel and Greg had begun work on a suite of new marketing materials for a grocery box company – one of those firms that sold misshapen but 100% organic fruits and vegetables, delivered to your door for three times the price of the ones you could buy at your local Tesco.

  As the agency’s star client-services man, Greg was hard-working, ambitious and brilliant at schmoozing the right people. His understanding of what copy about cauliflowers could reasonably be expected to communicate, however, seemed typically lacking in subtlety.

  ‘Greg … it’s a brassica,’ Rachel said, groping for a response that felt appropriate. ‘Cauliflower is a pretty bog-standard vegetable. It’s not a dark, exotic new perfume … It’s not a lovers’ weekend in Paris. I mean, it’s not even kale. I was kind of going for the “like your mum used to make” angle. Cauliflower is what British people remember having with Sunday lunch when they were kids – or, if they’re really unlucky, with their school dinners.’

  She made a face then, remembering the bland, overboiled florets that dissolved on contact with her Staffordshire primary school’s plastic knives and forks.

  ‘SEE?’ Greg cried, exultant. ‘THAT’S the kind of writing I know you can do. Dark! Exotic! Lovers! THOSE are the kinds of words that are going to inspire people—’

  He was now yelling so exuberantly down the phone that the people crammed into the bus shelter could hear his every word.

  ‘Greg,’ Rachel said, interrupting his raptures, ‘my point is that I’m writing about groceries. The brief from the client was to make the copy informative, engaging and on-brand. They want it to resonate with people, but I’m pretty sure they’re not expecting Fifty Shades of Grey. This content is about explaining the nutritional benefits of the produce and providing recipe inspiration. We don’t need to … turn anyone on.’

  There was a muffled titter from somewhere to Rachel’s left.

  Greg blathered on at volume eleven, bright and undeterred.

  ‘Ray, all I’m saying is I think we should look at it again before presenting it to the client. Okay? Maybe SEX IT UP just a little?’

  A middle-aged woman on Rachel’s right snorted as Greg began to croon Rod Stewart’s ‘Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?’ down the phone.

  Ugh, he was a nightmare.

  Rachel looked at the bus information board again. The number 19 was still a minute away.

  ‘Fine, fine. We can talk about it first thing,’ she said, desperate to shut him up.

  ‘Great. Meet me at Java Jo’s at nine-ish. We’ll get coffee.’

  Despite Greg’s unparalleled ability to irritate Rachel – and in part thanks to
his obliviousness to this talent – she knew they made a good team. He managed to muster enthusiasm for every project they tackled, and it was often infectious – helpful when, as now, they were working with less-than-inspiring subject matter. Greg’s natural ebullience assured his popularity with both clients and colleagues, and somehow – despite the regular need for her to squash his more outlandish ideas – he and Rachel had become friends.

  As several of her fellow travellers suppressed residual smirks, Rachel poked her head beyond the side of the bus shelter and peered down the road. The number 19 was approaching.

  She got to her feet, gathered her handbag and laptop case, and glanced up at the bus as it slid into position beside the shelter.

  Jessica was there, she saw, for the fourth time this week – though it was only now, as her throat tightened and she felt blood pounding in her ears, that Rachel realised she’d been counting.

  Literally larger than life, a phenomenally gorgeous, perfectly lit Jessica – flawlessly filtered and Photoshopped – was staring down at Rachel from the side of the double-decker.

  A goddess in a white silk camisole, Jessica wore a half-smile on her plush, pillowy lips – open just wide enough to show off her perfectly even, dazzlingly white teeth. One of her eyebrows was slightly raised, a suggestive forward-slash punctuating the smooth golden skin of her forehead.

  Rachel’s eyes swept down the image, taking in the long dark hair that reached almost to Jessica’s tiny waist, and her ample – possibly augmented – bosom.