Getting Over Mr. Right by Chrissie Manby Read Free Book Online

let alone shouting obscenities. In my walk-of-shame outfit, clutching the twenty-pound note that Michael had just pressed upon me, I must have looked very dodgy indeed. The woman crossed the road away from me, as though I might be a bad influence on her pedigree Chihuahua.

So, I was down, but was I out? No way. Michael may have thought he had broken up with me for real now but I had a very different idea. Was I going to accept my dismissal? Was I hell!
    I was determined that I would not let Michael’s decision stand. Even before I got home, I tried to call him fifteen times to tell him so, but, surprise, surprise, he let me go to voicemail. Breathing deeply in the back of the cab, I replayed the previous evening and our horrible fight in the bathroom. It was ridiculous that Michael thought he could throw away two and a half years with just one conversation. There had to be further negotiations and there would be. I consoled myself with the fact that he obviously still found me attractive—the sex had proved that—and that he had said he would call. When he did, I needed to be ready to take full advantage of that window. As I realized that, I felt an odd calm come over me. All was not yet lost.
    I called my office and told Ellie I would not be coming in again before the weekend. I claimed that the food poisoning had left me too weak and listless to do anything but lie in bed.
    “People normally get over food poisoning in twenty-four hours,” said Ellie.
    “I’ve got it really bad.”
    “And it sounds like you’re sitting in a taxi,” said Ellie, tuning in to the diesel engine.
    “I’m leaning my head out of my bedroom window,” I told her. “To get some air.”
    Bloody Ellie. Her job title may have been assistant, but I frequently felt as though she was the boss in our relationship.
    “All right,” she said. “Get better soon. We’re all thinking of you.”
    I accepted her platitudes, though I knew that if her dreams came true, I would not get better at all. Ellie had been after my job since the day she started at Maximal Media. Any disappointment she expressed at my absence was entirely perfunctory. I imagined she was already standing in my office, deciding where she would put her degree certificate and photos from her gap year. It was a risk, giving her the opportunity to step into my shoes for however short a period, but something bigger than my job was at stake here.
    By the time I got back home, I had decided I needed a new strategy. The Internet was my first resort. I didn’t even bother to change out of my little black dress before I fired up my laptop. Changing, washing, eating, drinking meant nothing to me now. I could only focus on what I could do to make Michael change his mind. I typed the words “get boyfriend back” into the Google window. They were three little words that were the key to a world I could not have imagined.
    The good news was that plenty of other people had put their minds to the problem of rescuing a relationship. The bad news was that the first twenty sites I looked at came up with twenty different methods. They didn’t agree on a single strategy that made any sense.
Call him. Don’t call him. Cry. Don’t cry. Learn a new sexual position and try it out on his best friend …
    There were literally thousands of pages and chatroom threads devoted to the subject of winning back an ex-lover and no way of knowing what really worked. Still, taking up a pencil and using all the research skills I had honed over my career,I started to make notes and gradually saw a pattern emerge. The advice wasn’t so diverse after all. It actually fell broadly into two camps: Ignore the lover who spurned you to reignite his interest, or, more controversially, stalk him relentlessly until he decides it would be easier to take you back than put up with you shadowing him at work. I read through sites for the brokenhearted until my eyes started crossing, not even stopping to make a cup of tea. I