Big Sexy Love: The laugh out loud romantic comedy that everyone's raving about! Read online

  Big Sexy Love

  Kirsty Greenwood

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Kirsty Greenwood has a really cool newsletter. She sends new release updates and gives away good stuff (mostly books, lovely bookish things she’s spotted online, and sometimes booze). You can sign up by clicking here. She will never spam you for as long as you both shall live.

  For my dad, Dave Greenwood, who taught me how to be funny. And how to be weird. And that I should always look for the positives in every situation. I love you, Dad.

  Chapter One

  I’m calling it. This year is officially my most rubbish year yet.

  Olive Brewster’s Most Rubbish Year Yet.

  My top five reasons for this declaration are as follows:

  Reason Number One: My brother Alex and his girlfriend Donna are kicking me into the teeny box room of the house we share. Donna wants to use my big room as a studio for her new scented-candle business. She hasn’t even started making any scented candles yet! But apparently they ‘want to be prepared for when it happens’ and need me ‘not to be a dick about it’.

  Reason Number Two: I’m twenty-seven years old and I work as a fishmonger in Manchester Indoor Market. It was supposed to be a temporary job to help me pay my way through university. Nine years later I’m still here. It’s not terrible, I suppose. But it’s not exactly captivating either. The regular customers are pretty sweet and I know the job back to front, but mostly I’m skint and spend way too much time elbow-deep in cod, avoiding eye contact with all the fish who still have their heads and are definitely staring at me.

  Reason Number Three: I haven’t had sex in almost ten years. Not even a tiny bit of sex. The entire world tells me it’s something that would make me feel amazing if I did it. But I’m entirely convinced that sex is a really dumb idea. I’ve seen first-hand how it makes people lose control, become selfish, turns them into reckless boneheads ruled only by their peens and vajeens. I don’t want to be like that! I like my life simple. Safe and sure and certain… and sex-free. Or at least I thought I did… Because the thing is, last month I watched Atonement for the first time, and you know that scene where Keira Knightley and James McAvoy do it standing up in that posh library? Well, it gave me a rather pleasant and curious sensation in my very own vajeen. A rather pleasant and curious sensation indeed. My sans-sex lifestyle has never, ever bothered me before. My first time was fumbly and awkward and not something I was eager to repeat. Plus, I’ve not met anyone I fancied in years, so it’s never really been an issue. But… now I’m starting to wonder. What if everyone is right and I’ve been missing out? I can’t get the thought of that steamy library sex out of my mind. I think of it multiple times a day and it won’t bugger off.

  Reason Number Four: Last month I did one of those Buzzfeed quizzes that let you know which Harry Potter character you are. I got Buckbeak. Yeah, I know. I couldn’t remember Buckbeak either. Not even one of the main players. Not even a human. I mean, why even include that as a possible result on the quiz? It’s just hurtful. I only thank God that I wasn’t in Hufflepuff. Ain’t nobody want that shit.

  Reason Number Five: My best friend Birdie is dying.

  ‘Are you all right, dear? You look like you’re about to cry.’

  I’m tugged out of my melancholic daydreaming by the customer I’m serving – an elderly fellow called Norris who comes to the market every single Thursday afternoon to buy a peppered tuna steak for his supper. He’s been coming here for as long as I’ve been working at this place. Always Thursday afternoon, always a peppered tuna steak. I find the routine of his turning up so regularly, always choosing a certain dish on a certain day very comforting. He’s a man after my own heart. Where possible, it’s nice to know what to expect! Birdie objects when I say this. She reckons the fun of living is all about the unexpected. But I’ve experienced the unexpected and let me tell you, I am not about that life.

  ‘Oops, sorry, Norris.’ I smile at him. ‘My mind was somewhere else! Tuna steak, yes?’

  I reach into the chilled counter to grab the fish fillet when Norris’s gravelly voice stops me.

  ‘Actually, love, I think I’ll go for a seabass today.’

  I freeze, my hand dangling mid-air inside the counter, my eyes sliding across to my colleague Tall Joan and then to my boss Taller Joan. They don’t seem to notice that Norris, who has been getting the same tuna for time immemorial, has suddenly changed his regular order to sea bass.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I ask suspiciously, wondering what on earth has caused Norris’s unforeseen change of habit. ‘Are… are you… is everything okay, Norris?’

  I think my question comes out more accusatory than I intend it to, because Norris frowns, his thick white eyebrows lowering so much that they almost obscure his heavy lidded blue eyes. ‘I just fancied something different is all, Olive. Nice to switch things up once in a blue moon.’

  Nice to switch things up? The last time I switched things up was in 2010 when I bought some coloured contact lenses on a ‘whim’ and people thought I had glaucoma.

  ‘Oh.’ I say, fumbling over his new order. ‘Cool. Totally! Great!’

  Something different.

  Fancy that.

  On my way home from work that evening, I button up my plum-coloured duffle coat and wander through central Manchester towards the tram stop that will take me back to the rural suburb of Saddleworth where I live. The sky is still blue and bright, the springtime weather crunchy and fresh like a Granny Smith apple right out of the fridge. I amble through Piccadilly Gardens, saying hello to the friendly florist with her pretty pop-up flower shop. At Café Milo, I stop, as I do each week, to pick up a big cup of tea, cheese and ham baguette and custard tart for Mickey, the homeless man who can always be found on the benches by the fountains.

  I smile as I approach the busking cello player outside Superdrug. He’s there playing for the commuters every Thursday night without fail. I toss a pound coin into his cello case.

  ‘Thanks, Olive!’ he yells cheerfully as I pass.

  ‘Cool cello playing, George!’ I call back, giving him a thumbs up. I have Fridays and Saturdays off work so I won’t see him again until next week. ‘Have a brilliant weekend, George!’

  ‘You too!’

  I’m about to reach the tram stop but, before I do, a smiley-faced woman jumps right in front of me and blocks my path. Who is this person? What does she want from me? Why is she in my face, smiling so loudly? If I were a c
at, I’d be all puffed up right now, fur on end, hissing, all of that.

  ‘I’m not looking to invite Jesus into my life at the moment,’ I explain, concluding that a person so smiley can only be someone who has recently discovered the lord and wants me to do the same.

  ‘Ha ha! Good one!’ the girl says, handing me a paper flyer printed with the words ‘Secret Comedy!!!’

  ‘Secret Comedy, three exclamation points?’ I ask, intrigued. ‘Why is the comedy a secret? Who is it a secret from?’

  ‘It’s just a marketing trick,’ the girl explains. ‘Secret stuff is all the rage nowadays, right? Secret bars and secret speakeasies, secret gardens, secret cinema, secret pot brownie in your bottom desk drawer at work for when your boss is talking about Excel macros and you wonder how long it will be until your head pops off with boredom, you know? Ha ha.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Anyway, it’s a free improv comedy show we’re putting on. And there’s usually an open mic session afterwards, if you’re up for it?’

  I feel a little frisson of interest somewhere deep in my stomach. But it’s Thursday night and that’s always The Big Bang Theory night with Alex and Donna who are obsessed with The Big Bang Theory. We have dinner and then we watch it together as a family. They’re expecting me to be there. And even if I wanted to go to this secret show, I really need a shower because, let’s face it, eau de seafood is not a good bouquet on anyone. Plus, I can hardly go to a comedy club on my own. That would just be strange. What if more strangers tried to talk to me? Or the comedy folk peer-pressured me to getting on the open mic? And somehow I decided that that was the time to spew out all of my worried thoughts about poor Birdie into the ether. And someone in the audience shouted ‘What do you think this is? The damn therapist’s office?’ And everybody laughed at me, instead of with me. And I became the joke of Manchester and probably the entire secret comedy world at large?

  ‘Ah, it’s all a bit last minute for me, to be honest,’ I say eventually, backing away from smiley woman. ‘But thanks for the invite!’

  The girl shrugs and wanders off to some other Manchester commuter, chirpily convincing them to come to her gig, expecting them to abandon their prior plans on a weeknight, like that’s such a simple thing to do. I watch, and for a moment wonder, enviously, what it would be like to be her. Brave enough to stand in front of people and be funny. Confident enough to approach strangers and boldly ask them to come see it! Someone completely unafraid.

  With a wistful sigh, I turn on my favourite distracting 90s pop playlist, reach my tram stop and wait patiently for the tram to arrive and take me back to real life.

  Chapter Two

  Olive’s phone Reminders:

  Book dental check-up (Filling needed? Skanky tooth?)

  Order that rose gold Kate Spade coffee mug for Birdie

  Download ‘Still Minds’ meditation app

  Listen to Day 1 of ‘Still Minds’ meditation app

  If my home life were a sitcom it would be called The Alex and Donna Show. Which is a shit title for a sitcom, I know, but you get my point. I would be the pale, oddball sister living in the basement, popping up occasionally to make some dry remark but mainly serving as the audience for Alex and Donna to act out in front of.

  If it were Friends, I’d be Gunther.

  I’ve been living in this house since I was born. It used to belong to my parents. And then, two weeks after I started university in Manchester, we found out Mum had been having a sordid affair (is there any other kind?) with a French man who had been visiting the city on business. Out of nowhere she decided to leave dad, my brother Alex and me for a new life in Marseille with her rando French fancy. Her whole family carelessly left behind because of a stupid affair! She only stayed with Luc for a year, but she met someone else in France and still lives there.

  Dad was so broken about it all that he spent most of the next six months eating tinned pies in the living room with the curtains closed. And then, just as I was doing my first-year exams, he transferred the mortgage to Alex and upped and moved back to his home town of Scotland where he now goes from girlfriend to girlfriend to girlfriend, desperately unhappy and bitter about how things turned out.

  So then it was just me and Alex.

  I don’t really speak to my parents anymore. Everything kind of fragmented after Mum bailed. Not that I’m still messed up about it. (Except that, of course, I totally am.) Once, when she was drunk, Birdie said that all of my current foibles can be traced back to the unexpected break-up of my family, that I was ‘emotionally traumatised’. It’s a bit of a Psychology 101 suggestion in my opinion, but… I did used to be a lot braver when I was younger. I was the girl who, at the park, ran up the slide rather than slide down it. Badass.

  I like it here at the house in Saddleworth, despite the shit that went down here. It’s home: a nice roomy semi-detached, on a quiet street, with a pretty gravelled garden, countryside not too far away. Inside it feels cosy and full of memories that were happy and safe, of times before our family’s sudden split. I know the place so well that I can find my way to the bathroom in the dark without even using my hands to feel along the wall.

  As I enter the floral papered hallway, I smell the delicious tomatoey scent of Donna’s lasagne wafting through the house. I yell a quick hello into to the kitchen and dive upstairs so I can shower off the day’s work.

  Afterwards, in my room, I get changed into my comfy navy jersey dress and dry and comb my ginormous wilful russet curls up into a ponytail, securing them tightly with a retro scrunchy.

  Down in the kitchen, I do my duty and offer to help Donna with the cooking. She shrugs, blowing her wispy blonde fringe out of her face as she stretches and rolls her home-made focaccia dough out onto the floured kitchen island.

  ‘All the hard stuff is done,’ she answers with a worthy smile. ‘A truly authentic lasagna takes a very particular set of culinary skills.’ She says ‘lasagna’ in a terrible, over-the-top Italian accent, and she’s not even messing about. ‘You could set the table, I suppose? If that’s not too much trouble for you, Olive?’

  She’s an odd one, is Donna. I don’t think she likes me very much. I mean, everything that comes out of her mouth is technically nice and perfectly polite. But there’s this underlying antagonism which makes me constantly feel like I’ve done something to upset her. She always acts so formal with me and she says my name a lot, which creeps me out. I know she’d much rather have this house for her and Alex without me cramping their style and taking up the big room that, for the record, I’ve been sleeping in since I was born.

  ‘No probs,’ I say, grabbing the cutlery out of the drawer and laying three places at the kitchen table. ‘How was your day at work?’

  Donna sighs wearily, opening the oven door to check on her authentic lasagna. She’s an Information Strategy Manager at a supermarket head office in Chester and pretty high up in the pecking order, by all (her own) accounts. ‘Busy and exhausting as usual,’ she answers, closing the oven. ‘My brain is fried!’ She gives me an envious glance. ‘Gosh, it must be so relaxing to not have to think too much at your job, Olive!’

  ‘Um…’

  I go to protest, but she’s right. My job doesn’t take a whole lot of thinking. Mega knife skills, extensive crab knowledge, expert de-scaling abilities? Absoutely. But brain-frying levels of thinking? Not so much.

  ‘Well,’ Donna continues. ‘I suppose when my candle venture takes off things will get better. You wouldn’t believe how hard it is, Olive, doing a corporate job when your soul is as deeply artistic as mine.’

  ‘Mmhhmm!’ I say, sitting down at the table and nibbling at one of the breadsticks that have been laid out in a shabby chic jar.

  ‘Napkins!’ Donna says with a smile. ‘Don’t forget the napkins, Olive.’

  Alex and I never used napkins before Donna moved in last year. If we were eating messy food, we’d use a bit of kitchen towel or, sometimes in a pinch, toilet roll. But Donna insists on actual clot
h napkins, which she starches and irons and everything.

  ‘What’s up, guys!’ Alex strides into the kitchen, setting down his briefcase by the tumble dryer and heading over to give Donna a kiss on the cheek. His gentle round face is pink-cheeked and beaming, his usually neat auburn hair a little sweaty at the front. ‘Big Bang Theory night! I can’t wait!’

  ‘Me too!’ Donna says, clapping her hands together so that a cloud of flour poofs up around her. Her face breaks into a genuinely excited smile. ‘Bazinga!’

  ‘Bazinga!’ Alex adds.

  The pair of them turn to me expectantly.

  ‘Bazinga,’ I say with a smile that attempts to be as psyched as theirs.

  ‘Oh, Sheldon,’ Donna laughs, shaking her head as if she’s recalling a fond personal memory. ‘What a stand-out character!’

  ‘We’re living in a golden age of sitcoms, for sure!’ Alex adds, loosening his tie and grabbing a bottle of beer from the fridge.

  I lay out the napkins on the table and wonder how many more episodes of The Big Bang Theory there will be until the season ends and we can finally watch a new box set.

  ‘The great thing about this business idea is that some candles have inspirational quotes on them and some are scented. But mine? Mine will be inspirational… and scented!’