All the Single Ladies Read Online Free PDF Page B

thought what I now wanted was some roots: a house, a career, my friends and family. Plus, while I’ve never
allowed myself to even think about marriage and kids, deep down I know that that’s only because I’ve never dared.
    Now, though, all those things are irrelevant compared with the one, overriding thing that I want. Jamie. If I have to give up everything else for him, I’m prepared to do it. My lips
tremble as I await his response. It isn’t the one I’d imagined.
    ‘Sam,’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Every part of me wants to say: let’s do it. But I can’t. And I can’t for the best of reasons.’
    I frown. ‘What reasons?’
    ‘Because you’d be doing it for me and not because it’s what you really want. You want the house, the career . . . your friends and family. You want to drink cocktails and go
shopping.’
    I sit back, stung by the implication that I’d prioritize such shallow luxuries.
    ‘And why the hell shouldn’t you?’ he continues hastily. ‘Not everyone wants to live in South America. In the jungle. With no running water or shops or insect
repellent.’
    I pretend I haven’t heard that last bit. ‘I . . . might,’ I reply weakly.
    ‘You don’t,’ he whispers, pulling me towards him, burying his wet face in my hair. It’s the saddest embrace I’ve ever known.

Chapter 7
    Returning home for the first time after the upheaval of last night is the emptiest experience of my life.
    The Victorian terrace house Jamie and I have shared for three years is one I’ve spent endless amounts of time and energy getting right. Despite the expensively restored fireplace, lovingly
sourced flooring and the Moroccan rug I almost broke my back carrying home (admittedly from Ikea, as opposed to Morocco), the rooms aren’t welcoming tonight.
    The house is in my name, but we always considered it as much Jamie’s home as mine. And, while most of the decor was chosen by me, it was with both of our tastes in mind. There’s only
one thing that Jamie actively didn’t like and that’s the huge pop-art print of New York’s Times Square on the living-room wall.
    It was the source of some debate over the years. Jamie thought it was naff, a gaudy image too ubiquitous in home-furnishing departments.
    But he never loved New York like I did. I’ve visited four times and have never been disappointed. It has held an endless fascination for me since I first watched Breakfast at
Tiffany’s as a teenager.
    Besides, this is different from other Manhattan prints I’ve seen; its vivid colours against the black of night make me feel alive; it is a reminder of a place that makes the blood in my
veins buzz as soon as I step off the plane.
    Tonight, I can’t bear looking at it. It’s a symbol of my failure to compromise, to make him happy, to make him love me enough to stay. I walk to the wall and lift it off, carrying it
awkwardly up to the spare room, where I slide it under the bed.
    Then I walk silently around the house, going from room to room, but soon realize that the picture isn’t even half the problem. Jamie is everywhere.
    He’s in the bottle of beer abandoned on the patio table, the blurry pictures of his travels on the kitchen wall. He’s in the T-shirt lying on the bathroom floor and the faint smell
of deodorant on our sheets.
    I flop onto the sofa and, with blurred eyes, put on my iPod, feeling an instinctive pull to a song I’ve always loved but which has never before meant so much.
    Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’.
    Her words make my stomach clench as a downpour of tears soaks my cheeks in the bitter realization that these things – the bottle, the T-shirt, the pictures – will shortly be
gone.
    Jamie was everywhere in this house. Soon he’ll be nowhere, nowhere at all.

Chapter 8
    Having a sister ten years older than me is great in every way but one: people can never tell which of us is the younger.
    Although she is thirty-eight, Julia’s results on a Ten Years Younger survey