Practice Makes Perfect

Chapter 1

I’ll Try Anything Once (but I won’t try that)

You never know what’s going to end a relationship, do you?

People break up for all sorts of reasons: money; infidelity; simply falling out of love; irreconcilable differences, like one of you wanting children when the other doesn’t.

With me and Mr Handy, it was a disagreement over poo. I wonder if that’s a first.

If you’d asked me at the start what would make me end it with Mr Handy, I might have said it would be his cultural snobbery, the annoying habit he had of putting empty containers back in the fridge or that he was very stingy with his kisses during sex.

In the beginning, I could see any number of reasons why I might break up with him. Poo was not one of them.

He was a slow burn for me. When we began dating, I didn’t think he was a keeper.

He was too neat, too serious, too intense.

He could be a bit tight with money. But he kept showing up, and eventually he made it into my regular rotation by dint of his persistence and his mad oral skills.

He grew on me, and I started to consider going exclusive with him.

He was perfect boyfriend material – nice house, good job, lovely chubby cock.

And his hands! I’ve written whole blog posts about his hands.

His incredible sense of touch more than made up for the lack of kissing.

But this week I broke up with him over coffee and cake at Starbucks.

There were no tears, no recriminations, no bitterness.

No one’s heart got broken – we weren’t in love.

But it was sad. We cared deeply about each other and we always had fun times together, both in bed and out of it. We were sad that it was over.

In the end there were irreconcilable differences: he wanted to take a dump on me and I didn’t want him to.

It may not seem like enough of a reason to finish things.

We could probably have compromised, worked around it.

But I saw how disappointed he was by my refusal.

I could tell that he saw me as his best shot for making this happen.

I’m the most adventurous girl he knows – he’s told me so many times – and I wondered if that was the reason he’d stuck around.

Had he been building up to this all along?

When I realised how much the idea excited him, I knew it was time to let him go.

Because the point is, we don’t have to compromise – either of us. That’s the beauty of not being in love.

I’ll miss his tongue, the way he would go down on me for hours on end, his snarky commentaries on movies, and most of all, his amazing hands. I hope he can find another girl who will be everything he wants. Someone who can deal with his shit – literally.

As for me, I’m an open-minded person, and I’ll try most things. But I won’t try that. It’s not a turn-on for me, and I don’t want to bear the brunt just because some guy failed his—

‘Toilet training!’

‘Sorry?’ Claire’s head snapped up as she simultaneously clicked out of her blog. A woman was standing in front of the cash desk, agitated, a toddler grizzling in a buggy beside her.

‘I’m looking for a book on toilet training,’ the woman said breathlessly, almost hopping from foot to foot, as if she was desperate for the loo herself, while she jiggled the buggy.

‘Okay, follow me,’ Claire said, jumping up from her seat.

‘I’ll show you where they are.’ As she stepped away from the desk, she glanced back at her computer screen to make sure that her blog was definitely closed.

She led the customer across the shop floor to the ‘Babies and Parenting’ shelves, and pointed out the section devoted to books on toilet training.

‘Oh, there are so many.’ The woman sighed. ‘Which one is the best?’

‘Why don’t you have a look through them and decide which you think would—’

‘I don’t have time for browsing. Can’t you recommend one?’

‘Well, this is very popular,’ Claire said, pulling out a book and handing it to her. ‘It’s got lots of great reader feedback online, and it’s recommended by Unholy Mother – you know, the blogger?’

‘I don’t do mummy blogs,’ the woman said, flicking through the pages impatiently and far too rapidly to take anything in.

‘Oh, you should read Unholy Mother.’ Claire smiled. ‘She’s hilarious. I don’t even have children and I love it. She’s done this really funny series of posts recently about toilet training her son that I think you’d find—’

‘Yes, well, I do have a child and I’m far too busy actually being a mother to have time to read about some bint’s hilarious escapades with her special little snowflake.’

‘Oh… right.’ It was on the tip of Claire’s tongue to say that Unholy Mother wasn’t like the typical mummy blogger, but she thought better of it.

‘I’ll take it,’ the woman said, shoving the book at Claire. Her child had kept up a low-level wail throughout the exchange and cranked it up a notch as they all trooped back to the cash desk.

When she had paid, Claire put the book into a bag and handed it to her customer with a smile.

‘Thank you.’ The woman tucked it under her arm. ‘Do you have a bathroom?’ she shouted, over her child, who had now graduated to piercing screams.

‘Er… no, sorry. Not for public use, I’m afraid.’

The woman tutted, rolling her eyes. She stuffed the book into the bottom of the buggy and turned towards the door, the child’s howls fading as they exited the shop. Yvonne was restocking shelves near the door and held it open for them.

‘Another satisfied customer, I see,’ Yvonne said, as she joined Claire at the desk. ‘What was her problem?’

‘She bought a book on toilet training, then asked if we had a loo she could use. I think she wanted to get stuck in right away.’

Yvonne laughed. ‘Pity she didn’t buy the latest Jamie Oliver. She might have made us lunch if we’d let her use the kitchen.’

‘At least she’ll bump up my weird-customer score,’ Claire said. ‘Put it on the chart.’

‘It’s a tough field this week.’ Yvonne pulled a chart from one of the desk drawers. ‘You’re going to have to up your game if you want to topple the supreme champion,’ she said, gesturing to herself with a smug smile. ‘I’ve been top of the league every week since I started here.’

‘You have an unfair advantage,’ Claire said.

‘I do seem to be a bit of a magnet for the unhinged.’

‘It’s not that you’re a magnet for them. You encourage them, so you get all the loony repeat business.’

‘I just try to be helpful.’

‘Right, like the time that customer was looking for signed copies of Jane Austen’s books and you said you could get them for him.’ Jane Austen was his wife’s favourite author, he had explained, and he wanted them as a gift for her birthday.

‘And I did!’

‘Yes, signed by you. It’s fraudulent.’

‘No, it’s not. I signed them “on behalf of”, so it’s not like it was forgery.’

Claire rolled her eyes. ‘And every time someone comes in trying to find a book they can’t remember the title of, you always sell them something.’

‘You say that like it’s a bad thing. I’m giving them what they want – that’s good service.’

‘You’re a charlatan.’

‘You’ll miss me when I’m gone.’

It was still a few months away, but she would miss Yvonne when she left, Claire thought, as they giggled their way through a quiet morning in the shop.

She was only working part-time at Bookends while she was at college, and would leave at the end of the summer, when she was taking a year out to go travelling.

Tom, the owner of the shop, would miss her too, much to his own bemusement.

Yvonne had never ceased to surprise him since the first day she’d turned up for work, looking like she’d got lost on her way to a Vogue fashion shoot.

She’d been a vision in cashmere and silk, and the bag clutched under her shoulder would have cost most of Claire’s monthly salary.

With her smooth blonde hair and flawless skin, she looked like she lived on Evian water and alpine air.

Claire and Tom had watched with wary skepticism as she’d taken up her position behind the cash desk, clapped her hands and said, with kindergarten-teacher enthusiasm, ‘Right. Let’s sell books.

’ But then she had proceeded to do just that, with breathtaking capability.

Claire had never met an actual trust-fund baby before, but Yvonne was the real deal.

Her father, a multi-millionaire who had made his fortune in plastics manufacturing, gave her everything his money could buy – from the pony she’d got when she was ten to the car she’d picked out for her upcoming twenty-first birthday.

At first Claire couldn’t understand why she was working at all.

She certainly didn’t need to pay her way through college, and her meagre salary wouldn’t cover so much as the tips of her Hobbs shoes or the taxis she regularly got to work when she was running late, which was most days.

But she soon came to realise that what Yvonne craved most was her father’s attention, and this job was one way of making him sit up and take notice. Yvonne had father issues up the wazoo.

But she was unfailingly good-natured, a cheerful, willing worker and a good laugh, and Claire had grown very fond of her.

‘You’re still coming on Friday, right?’ Yvonne asked.

‘Oh yes. Definitely.’ Claire made an effort to sound excited about the party.

One of Yvonne’s friends was opening a new upmarket bar, and Yvonne had asked her to the launch.

Claire wasn’t really a party person and she wouldn’t know anyone else there.

For once she wished she had the excuse of needing to keep her mother company, which was her usual fall-back.

Yvonne was constantly inviting Claire out, but Claire usually had to turn her down.

This Friday, for once, there was nothing stopping her.

‘Yay!’ Yvonne clapped her hands. ‘It’s great that your mum’s in hospital and you can go out and have a bit of fun.’

‘Yeah, brilliant.’