The Breakup Bookshop

Prologue

They say bad things come in threes. But after the first two gut-wrenching, heart-crushing bombshells landed on me with full force, I thought that surely I would be spared the third.

I mean, come on. There was no way that my job – the one thing I was clinging on to for dear life, while everything else went to shit – could be taken away too.

Spoiler alert: I was wrong.

I slump back on the sofa and kick my legs up, my shoes still on. High heels and everything.

Fuck you, Seb.

I look around my flat. Except this isn’t even my bloody home any more. Not really. A one-bedroom flat that I’m allowed to squat in temporarily while I sort my life out.

I pour myself a large glass of the lukewarm white wine that someone handed me in the office lobby earlier.

Her name is Claire Something – it doesn’t matter now.

Said she’d swiped three bottles from the company’s communal kitchen on the way out.

I’d lobbed it into the cardboard box they’d given each of us as a parting gift, when we were given thirty minutes to gather our belongings and get the hell out of there.

In the years since I left uni, I’d gradually worked my way from intern all the way up to team leader at Seed Creative, an innovative digital marketing agency that promised to break the rules. Turns out they barely broke even and now Seed Creative is no more.

I put blood, sweat and tears into that place. All three, in that exact order, since the downward spiral started two weeks earlier. How had my life fallen apart so quickly? It’s almost comical now, thinking back on it.

First was the blood. I’d been in a client meeting, presenting our creative campaign ideas and social media strategy for the launch of a new sports-clothing brand, when I’d bent down to pick up my pen and whacked my head on the corner of the table.

There was blood everywhere within seconds and, of course, I was wearing a white blouse.

Our client stepped in triumphantly, offering up an oversized Hello Kitty plaster straight from her designer handbag, because she had, and I quote, ‘such a clumsy two-year-old’ at home.

Then, sweat. Huffing and panting, I took my clumsy twenty-nine-year-old self straight to the Tube after the meeting.

No one gave my blood-splattered white blouse or the cartoon on my head a second glance; they’d all seen far more interesting oddities on the London Underground.

As I hurried out of the station and around the corner towards our second-floor flat, I’d breathed a sigh of relief.

Seb was working from home that day, and I’d been desperate to get back home and tell him everything.

I resist the urge to scrape my dirty heels across Seb’s pristine sofa as I remember the sight – or, more accurately, the sounds – that greeted me when I unlocked the door that day. I’d stood in the doorway, confused by the strange moaning. Guttural. Barely human.

It was like my brain didn’t want to make sense of it.

All I could think of were the birds that had been congregating outside our bedroom window lately, cooing and tapping in the early hours of the morning.

Seb had pointed out that one of the birds was pregnant and, for a fleeting moment, I imagined flinging the door open to reveal Seb coaching a bird through its birthing experience.

Instead, it was like some clichéd movie scene that I’d accidentally flicked on while channel-surfing.

As he hastened to pull on his boxer shorts, I had to stop myself from being sick in my mouth. The woman threw herself underneath our grey duvet cover, but not before I caught a glimpse of her face. That was the biggest shock of all.

Lastly came the tears.

It’s too much to think about right now. I flick my shoes off my feet onto the floor and rub my eyes. Seb had offered to move out for a while and, like a gallant martyr, said I could take all the time I needed to find a new place.

Fuck you, Seb.

Just like Seed Creative agency, my whole life has gone into liquidation.

I scroll through my phone with one hand and take a large gulp of wine with the other, before thunking my glass down in the middle of the coffee table without a coaster.

I feel a sudden pang of guilt. Not for Seb but for Anya, the cleaner he insists on having once a week.

When I first moved in, I was gobsmacked to hear that he paid someone to clean the space.

It’s barely bigger than a shoebox. Plus, Seb isn’t ‘clatty’, as my granny would have said.

He’s neat. He doesn’t leave the toilet seat up.

He has a small selection of almost identical navy-blue and grey items of clothing in his closet, which take up minimal space and are never left scattered on the floor (except when he is otherwise engaged).

Everything he owns, be it his clothes or his furniture, matches because it’s all black, grey or dark blue.

And he is savvy when it comes to recycling, which I always rated.

At one point, I really thought I’d won the boyfriend lottery with Seb.

Now here I am, scrolling through SpareRoom, marvelling at the creative descriptions of each prison-cell boxroom on offer, each accompanied by eye-watering price tags.

Exhibit A: Woolwich. Flatmate required to share with four law students who enjoy quiet nights in and occasional parties. Own single bedroom (mattress available), access to communal bathroom, kitchen and living room. No central heating, BYOEH (bring your own electric heater. Lol). Must like snakes.

Exhibit B: Clapham Junction. ￡450 p/w. Clean female flatmate required who can share responsibility for walking large but friendly dog at least twice a day (since dog dad has left me high and dry!).

Bedroom with garden views and living room with small office space.

Non-smoker preferred, but vaping is okay.

Exhibit C: Acton. Quiet female flatmate. No access to bedrooms, living room or bathroom 6–10 p.m. due to filming taking place in flat. Small balcony available for use during these times. Offers over ￡1,100 pcm.

With an indignant snort, I take a screenshot and click the ‘share’ button.

As my most frequent contact, Macy Miller’s name pops up first. My closest friend since school.

Even my phone knows that she’s who I share everything with, but we aren’t exactly on talking terms any more.

Not since I caught her in bed with my boyfriend.

My heart hurts.

I put my phone down and sigh, looking around Seb’s small living room.

I’d thought I had it all figured out. Get the job, move to London with my best friend in the world, meet the guy.

Tick, tick, tick. I’d been working towards the next points on my checklist: modest but beautiful ring, intimate wedding, two kids and a dog. I’d thought I was on track.

Now, I have to choose between becoming a dog parent, living on a questionable ‘film set’ or partying with four snake-loving students.

Closing my eyes, I will myself to rewind to a happier time when it wasn’t all about achieving results.

A level results to land a place at a good university, exhausting myself at uni to get the grades needed to secure the starry London job, perfect biannual appraisals to get promoted fast and buy a house in Zone 2 before I’m thirty.

All the things my parents wanted. The moment Seb mentioned his six-point plan for early retirement, they were like putty in his hands.

Dad almost asked Seb’s permission to march me down the aisle there and then.

I’d been so close. It’s like I’ve been playing a game of snakes and ladders, triumphantly climbing to the highest point, just a few spaces from the finish line, before a roll of the dice brought me crashing all the way back down to square one.

To a box full of my things and a bottle of lukewarm wine, which, oops, is almost finished.

I pick up my phone, my mind whirring, as I gulp down the last of it.

Everyone always talks about the ridiculous London prices, don’t they?

How much better off you could be elsewhere?

You’d think that my parents, as accountants and self-proclaimed money gurus, would suggest widening my search area to achieve better value for money outside the city.

But they’ve been tied to their high-flying careers in Leeds for years now, while I was encouraged to go for gold in London.

They thought I’d be raking it in in no time.

It was true for a while, maybe, but like all good things, it didn’t last.

Closing the Indeed ‘Jobs in London’ tab, I minimise the SpareRoom results and open another window on my phone.

Instinct takes over. A whim. Let’s just see. In Rightmove, I type ‘Ullapool’.

The first time my parents shipped me to the Scottish Highlands was when I was nine years old.

I’d thought it was a punishment. Six whole weeks at my granny’s house in the middle of nowhere just so they could continue working endless hours without me as a distraction during the school summer break; I thought I’d done something wrong.

I was hardly old enough to appreciate the idyllic scenery: the perfect pastel village nestled in the mountains, the small pier where boats bobbed on the loch, the quiet streets where other kids raced on their bikes.

I huffed as Granny tried to cheer me up, luring me to the kitchen with the smell of her freshly baked scones and bramble jam.

She leapt on my love of books, creating a reading nook for me in the garden, and she let me stay up way past my bedtime as we huddled underneath a blanket on the bench at the front of her tiny cottage, counting the stars in the sky.