AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Chapter Six
Wow. Last few moments of being thirty-eight. In approximately ten minutes, I would be thirty-nine. Otherwise known as one year away from the big 4-0.
As I sat in my bed clutching a glass of chilled prosecco, I did a mental scan of my achievements so far, which had become a kind of pre-birthday ritual:
Professional Life:
Turnover and profits:up by 27 percent compared to this time last year. Check.
Team:amazing. Staff retention remained high. Check.
Clients:I had my dream portfolio of clients. Good mix of beauty, fragrance, hair and well-being brands. We’d even been approached by a few multinational communication agencies who wanted to buy us. The figures they’d been mentioning sounded very attractive. Sounded a bit too good to be true—there were probably lots of clauses and catches. I hadn’t studied the offers in enough detail, as I didn’t think I could ever give it all up. This business was my baby.
Anyway, in short, career was great.
Personal Life
Hmm, I didn’t think I even needed to go through a checklist to know this wasn’t going to be good…
Personal life in general:poor, but set to improve…(let’s think positively)
Relationship:non-existent…
Children:non-existent…
Non-work-related happiness:yet to be discovered…
Fun:currently hovering around the zero mark.Butin twenty-four hours’ time, it could all be different as I reckoned I’d enjoy learning how to cook authentic Italian dishes…potential check?
If this was a school report, I’d be getting an A* for my professional life, but my personal life grading would probably read ‘D’ with comments such as:Room for improvement. Sophia shows great potential, but she needs to apply herself more.Surely the first step to recovery, though, was recognising that you had a problem, and I was actively taking steps to rectify it.
For example, rather than staying in a country hotel like I always did, tonight (well, I was literally seconds away from it being my birthday), I would be having a dinner party at my parents’ house. Then Saturday morning would be when the real fun would hopefully start, as I would be flying out to Tuscany for my long-awaited cookery holiday. I was really excited.
At exactly one minute past midnight, my phone pinged. I picked it up from the duvet and read the text message flashing on the screen:
From:Mum Mobile
Happy birthday, darling! See you this evening at 7 p.m. sharp!
I lovedthat Mum always messaged me at the same time every year.
On the subject of my birthday, I know I’d said on my MAP plan that I’d have a party, but as I had been so busy at work and was also still trying to get my head around my break-up with Rich, there was no way I would have had time to organise a proper one this year. So I’d decided to do it next year instead. I know I was supposed to be living my life now and ticking everything off the list. But rushing it, or not doing it the way I’d like to, would only make me unhappy, which was the opposite of what the plan was designed to achieve. Also, I reasoned that would make more sense, as it’d be my fortieth, so it would call for an even bigger celebration.
Right. Lots to do today, so time for bed.
Leavingthe office at 6 p.m. when you’re about to go on holiday for four days and need to tie up loose ends was no mean feat for a workaholic like me. I was supposed to be at my mum’s in an hour and hadn’t even gone home to get dressed yet, never mind the fifteen-minute journey time to their house in Streatham.
I had a quick shower, then stepped into one of my favourite parts of the house: the dressing room. Like most of this property, my dream of the ultimate walk-in wardrobe had been brought to life by Rich and the expert team at his firm. I had a lot to thank him for.
The dressing room was connected to the bedroom. Once I opened the frosted glass double doors, it was like entering my own personal clothes, shoes and handbags paradise.
It had been fitted out just like a mini department within Selfridges. At the back of the room was an illuminated shoe wall with no fewer than fifty pairs of the finest footwear, including everything from strappy Jimmy Choo sandals and a variety of Louboutins to more practical, yet still glamorous boots and courts.
Either side and above the shoe wall were mini coves housing a display of handbags. Prada, Saint Laurent… there was a bag in a colour, size and style to suit every occasion.
And then there are the clothes: Armani, Burberry—a million miles away from the geeky getups I used to have stuffed into my teeny wardrobe during my student days. Everything here had been organised to military precision. First according to occasion, e.g., evening wear, daytime/work, casual; then by type, e.g., all dresses within that category together and also by colour, making things much easier to find.
In the centre of the brightly lit white room was a square island. The top had transparent glass drawers where I kept my jewellery and accessories, and in the ones underneath was an underwear drawer, another for tights, and also a separate section for belts.
