The Dating Detox by Gemma Burgess Read Free Book Online Page A

comfort. So I turn to some very old Levi 501s, a soothing, eight-year-old grey T-shirt I call Ol’ Grey, a brown cardigan, woolly socks and Converses. I look like a Smashing Pumpkins fan. A male one. In 1992. This isn’t working. Normally, when I doubt my outfit, I give myself the ‘if I think it works, it works’ speech, but I can’t make this one fly.
    I take everything off and think for a moment. What else is comforting? Living in the 70s would be comforting, I think. No email or mobiles, you could smoke everywhere, and use a typewriter. How simple. So I put on some very flared blue jeans, a ribbed white top, my Converses again, pull my damp hair into a side plait, lace a mildly retro silk (polyester, whatever) scarf from H&M through the belt loops and tie in a side knot, and consider myself again. Ah yes. Vaguely Co-Ed 1972.This will do fine. Thank fuck I work in advertising and can wear anything I want; if I had to put on a suit right now I’d slash my wrists…Make-up…hmm. My eyebrows are being blatantly annoying, and I don’t have the patience to deal with them today. Lots of mascara, some bronzer and blush to fake good health, lipbalm. I add a beige checked men’s coat I bought in a charity shop and voilà. Slightly watery-eyed, but not bad. I check my watch. It’s taken me twice as long to get ready today as yesterday. This is the reason that I don’t drink. (Much.)
    On the tube on the way to work I ponder the Dating Sabbatical. Obviously, it’s kind of a silly idea. But also so easy. An easy way to put off dealing with being back in the singles game.
    I could go on a Dating Sabbatical and nurse my aforementioned bruised heart—OK, OK, so it isn’t bruised and I didn’t really give Posh Mark much thought at all yesterday. (Jeez, you’re a tough crowd.) But my heart is very shy right now and it doesn’t feel like coming out to play for awhile. It would rather eat chocolate in the bath and read Jilly Cooper’s Polo.
    I open my lucky yellow clutch to take out the Dating Sabbatical Rules for a quick review, and pull out a bunch of receipts from drinks last night adding up to over £60. Yikes. I mentally add this to the spreadsheet I keep in my head of incomings and outgoings. (No, it’s not a foolproof way to plan my finances, but it works for me. Ish. Since I don’t earn much money, I have to make some sacrifices to spend as much as I like on what I consider essentials, like clothes and vodka and black cabs. So I don’t belong to a gym, never get my hair done, and spend almost nothing on things like, you know, food. I eat a lot of baked beans, tinned tuna, bananas and toast.)
    I get to work, the perfect coffee in hand, and email Bloomie:
    Duuuuuude. I’m still in.
    She replies:
    Ha, really? Fine. You can test it tomorrow night at Mitch’s party.
    I reply:
    Roger that.
    I hide behind my computer all day. Andy doesn’t look at me once, and though I’m meant to talk to him about a new brief, I decide to send him an email about it when he’s out at lunch. I just can’t face him today.
    I’m meeting up with Kate for dinner. She’s the third in our trifecta from university, but is slightly more absent from our social lives over the last year or so as she’s in a ridiculously stable long-term relationship. We meet near her work in Mayfair at The Only Running Footman, a pseudo-rustic pub. It’s packed with finance-type people drinking away their worries but we find a seat in the restaurant bit downstairs. I notice quite a few very good-looking men here. Shame I’m on a Dating Sabbatical and not looking, I remind myself.
    Over burgers and beers I explain the theory of the Dating Sabbatical to Kate. She nods very seriously and poses relevant and poignant questions, all of which I answer with what’s becoming rather slick aplomb, till—
    ‘Alright, Sass. This all seems like a very you thing to do. But what if you meet someone you actually want to go out with?’
    I pause, chip in the air.
    ‘How