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448 Pages
448 Pages
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Have you ever wondered what happened to your first love? Imagine bumping into her twelve years after you last saw her and realising you still fancy her rotten. This is what happens to Dig Ryan when he sees Delilah again.
Now imagine you're Nadine. You've been Dig's best friend for the last fifteen years, and you've just realised that you're in love with him. Delilah was your nemesis at school and it turns out she stills is. When she resurfaces, you might find yourself feeling extremely jealous and start doing really childish things. Like phoning your first love, Phil, just to get your own back....
This is a story about ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends and what happens when you start messing with the past. And how sometimes what you're looking for isn't in the past or in the future, but right under your nose.
About the Author
Lisa Jewell was born and raised in north London, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. Her first novel, Ralph's Party, was the bestselling debut of 1999. She is also the author of Thirtynothing, One-Hit Wonder, Vince & Joy, A Friend of the Family and 31 Dream Street, all of which have been Sunday Times bestsellers.
Now imagine you're Nadine. You've been Dig's best friend for the last fifteen years, and you've just realised that you're in love with him. Delilah was your nemesis at school and it turns out she stills is. When she resurfaces, you might find yourself feeling extremely jealous and start doing really childish things. Like phoning your first love, Phil, just to get your own back....
This is a story about ex-boyfriends and ex-girlfriends and what happens when you start messing with the past. And how sometimes what you're looking for isn't in the past or in the future, but right under your nose.
About the Author
Lisa Jewell was born and raised in north London, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. Her first novel, Ralph's Party, was the bestselling debut of 1999. She is also the author of Thirtynothing, One-Hit Wonder, Vince & Joy, A Friend of the Family and 31 Dream Street, all of which have been Sunday Times bestsellers.
Industry Reviews
Bubbly and addictive, the best romantic comedy we've read in ages * Company * Will keep you up all night in a sweaty, addicted reading frenzy * The Times * Very entertaining and very funny * Heat * Jewell writes with invigorating zest and lashings of emotional intelligence - pop fiction at its proudest * Independent * Warm, funny, realistic and immensely readable * Cosmopolitan * A lovely book . . . informed with a wholesome desire to please and entertain * Daily Telegraph * This is a gem * Mirror * Stands out from the mass of chick-fic like a poppy in a cornfield . . . Glitters with insight * Nova * Praise for Lisa Jewell * - * Addictively readable * The Times * Terrific * Sunday Times * A joy . . . a fun summer read * Guardian * Tackles serious issues with humour - proving that chick-lit can be intelligent, interesting and huge fun * Sunday Express * A triumph * Hello * Top marks. Fantastic * Heat * Moving and intelligent * Independent * Magnetic, unpretentious and bursting with one-liners * Cosmopolitan * Jewell's readability and emotional intelligence make her the cream of pop fiction * Glamour * Fans of chick-lit will understand when I say that this is a book you simply disappear into * Sunday Telegraph *
Extract from : Thirtynothing
Dig woke with a start.
The first thing he was conscious of was the taste in his mouth – a rancid coating of … what was it? – onions? Garlic? Some kind of battery acid type-thing going on in there, as well. He slowly brought a hand from beneath his duvet and cupped it around his mouth. He let out a small puff of coagulated breath and sniffed it back in. Jesus. Grim beyond belief. He clamped his mouth shut again.
The second thing he was conscious of, was his head. Which appeared to have had a large shipment of ball bearings dumped in it over night, while his blood-supply felt like it had been transfused with silica and come to a grinding, desiccated halt somewhere around his temples.
The third thing was his stomach, a large churning area of gas and corrosive fluids, swishing and swirling around together like a kind of miniature primordial soup. He felt a bubbling tube of gas begin to wriggle through his stomach, around his intestine and down towards his bowel. He could tell it was going to be bad, when it departed his body in a hot and silent phut and before long his airless room was ripe with the stench of yeast and garlic.
'Oh Jesus – what the fuck is that smell?'
Which is when Dig became aware of the fourth thing.
The girl in his bed.
He turned his head slowly, and there she was. A girl. A girl with messy blonde hair and black stuff smudged under her eyes and bare bony shoulders and a tattoo of a sea-horse on her left arm and one hand being used to cover her mouth and nose, while her face wrinkled up with distaste.
'Jesus!' The girl turned over onto her side with a disgusted flounce. She had some sort of accent and another tattoo on her back, of a butterfly. It was very nicely done. Dig slowly manoeuvred himself onto his elbow and surveyed the girl as if she was some kind of strange sea-creature that had been washed up onto his bed by the tide. She looked young. Surprise surprise. About twenty, probably. And thin. Very thin indeed. Another surprise. He wondered what she was called.
'Do you have any Nurofen?' her voice was muffled through her hand but now recognisably Irish. Northern Irish, to be precise.
'Uh-huh,' Dig's hand found the little tablets on his bedside table, and the glass of water he'd put there last night, a sign that at some point between getting home and going to bed he'd obviously been mentally and physically functioning to some extent. Which also indicated to him that relations had more than likely been had with this small, bony girl in his bed.
He turned to look down at the floor by his bed. Yep. There it was. A shimmery sliver of pearly latex with a neat little knot at the top. Well, that was something at least.
The sound level of traffic wafting through the half-opened window from Camden Road outside led Dig to believe that it was probably some considerable time after the six in the morning his head was telling him it was. He turned painfully to look at his radio alarm – 11.48 am. It was also hot, stiflingly hot. Strange for the middle of November.
He passed the glass and pills to the bony girl.
'Thanks', she gulped them down in one. 'What time is it?'
'Ten to twelve'
'What! Fuck, you're joking!' she sprang out of bed, like a little pink whippet and began jumping into her clothes; a tiny black vest top, no bra, hard little nipples poking through, G-string, no buttocks, combat trousers, pierced belly-button, trainers. 'Fuck fuck fuck.' She heaved the curtains apart, sending Dig recoiling across the bed with one elbow over his face. She surveyed the street below.
'Where the fuck am I? Is this Tooting Broadway?'
'What? No – no – Kentish Town – Camden Road.'
'Oh no! Oh fucking no. I have to be in Clapham in ten minutes. Jesus! Can I get a bus from here? Where's the tube? D'you have a car?'
'No. Five minutes that way. Yes, but it's in for repairs.'
'Oh Christ – I'll have to get a cab. I only have a fiver. D'you have any cash?'
Dig peeled the last crumpled tenner from his wallet and handed it to her.
She kissed it. 'I'll pay you back'
'Where are you going?'
'Work'
'On a Saturday?'
'Yeah – I'm a waitress – shit – it's going to be murderously busy today – look at that sunshine – but it's only a temporary thing, y'know, part-time.'
'You're a student?' Something had come back to him from the night before.
'Yeah – that's right.' She was scraping her hair back into some kind of knot. The sun was playing on her and she looked quite pretty. She looked strong, bright.
'Where d'you study?' Dig was suddenly feeling vaguely sociable, like he might quite like to see her again.
'God – you can't remember a thing we talked about last night, can you?' she smiled. She pulled a pair of yellow sunglasses from her rucksack and sat them on top of her head. 'Well,' she looked pleased with herself, a little embarrassed, 'I'm at sixth form college right now, but my tutors reckon I'll get a place at Oxford next year – if I get my grades.'
Grades? Grades? Jesus! 'What – er, what grades?' Dig rubbed at the stubble on his chin.
'A Levels, of course.'
'So – you're, how old?'
'Seventeen'
Oh dear God!
She was standing at the door now, her rucksack on her back, looking all of a sudden like a child, like a small girl wearing big girl's clothes. She seemed to transmogrify before his eyes, her hips disappearing, her breasts deflating, her waist expanding, her hair morphing as he watched from stylish top-knot to perky-pigtails. Oh, Jesus Christ! Seventeen!
'Hey look,' she was saying, waving his ten pound note at him, 'I'll find a way of getting this back to you – I promise. I have your number – I'll ring you.'
I'll ring you. I'll ring you! There was a child standing in his bedroom doorway, with a pierced belly button, waving his money at him and telling him she'd ring him. Jesus, what was the world coming to?
'Oh, and by the way – Happy Birthday.' She smiled at him, a nice, warm, intelligent smile, and then she was gone.
Happy Birthday. Oh yes, Happy Birthday indeed. Thirty-years-old. He was thirty-years-old. A thirty-year-old pervert. A dirty thirty old man. A heinous, raincoat-wearing, boiled-sweet-carrying, dribbling, drooling old man.
He'd slept with a seventeen-year-old.
OK, so it was the stuff of dreams, the stuff men of his age made lascivious, lustful jokes about over pints in pubs. But to have really done it. To be confronted with the reality of a seventeen-year-old in his bed. His little sister was eighteen and if he'd found out that she'd … with a man of thirty … he'd have … Well, anyway, it just didn't feel right.
The previous evening was starting to come back to him in dribs and drabs. Tequila slammers at Nadine's. Opening presents. Pints at the Lady Somerset with the rest of the crowd. All piling into a cab at midnight. Some club somewhere in town (a club? They never went to clubs anymore). More tequila. And then dancing – dancing for hours ... God, he'd probably looked like a right arse. And that girl, that child … Katie! That was it, that was her name – Katie. Except she'd pronounced it 'Kayday' – dancing with her and telling her, over and over again, 'it's my birthday! It's my birthday!' And then – a curry? Shit, it must have been nearly morning by then … where the hell had they managed to find a curry at that time of night?
And that girl, Katie, had been there. And … yes, that's right, Nadine had started on Maxwell in the restaurant and she'd tipped her raitha into his korma, for some reason or, more probably, for no reason whatsoever. Poor Maxwell. It looked like his days were numbered. And then? Well, they must have got a cab or something. He couldn't remember anything after that.
Dig wrapped himself up in his dressing gown and made his way to his gleaming little Ikea kitchen where he got himself some coffee. He switched on his ioniser, lit another cigarette and let his hangover wash over him for a while, while he trawled his memory for more detail, but nothing came to him, just blurred images and fuzzy fag-ends of conversation.
The coffee and cigarettes combined with the unimaginable gunk that was already in his mouth when he woke up, had pushed his breath to crisis point. He absolutely had to brush his teeth.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror as he brushed. There's the crunch, he thought, there it is. A couple of years ago I could have had a heavy night and woken up the next morning looking like something that vaguely resembled a human being, instead of this monstrous, clammy-complexioned, open-pored, dark-shadowed, grey-skinned sack of old bones that's staring back at me from my bathroom mirror. But now I'm thirty and although I still have youth ahead of me, I have left the greatest part of it behind me and my body is no longer on my side, will no longer collude with my systematic abuse of it. My body is asking for a break, and my punishment for not giving it a break is to make me look this hideous in the mornings.
Still, he thought, he didn't have much to complain about as he entered his fourth decade. He had a great social life and friends who he'd known half his life. He was liked and respected by nearly everyone he came into contact with. He could pull pretty girls, he owned his own flat - OK, so it was small and it was noisy and it was up three flights of stairs, but it was his – he had the job of his dreams working as an A&R manager for a small record label in Camden – alright, so it was poor pay for long hours and very little success, but he loved it. Unlike most men he knew of his age, he still had all his hair and he had a good set of teeth. His family lived just round the corner so he got to see his precious mum at least once or twice a week. And now he was thirty.
Thirty wasn't so bad.
Yeah. Thirty was fine.
Actually, it wasn't that different to twenty-nine.
Dig woke with a start.
The first thing he was conscious of was the taste in his mouth – a rancid coating of … what was it? – onions? Garlic? Some kind of battery acid type-thing going on in there, as well. He slowly brought a hand from beneath his duvet and cupped it around his mouth. He let out a small puff of coagulated breath and sniffed it back in. Jesus. Grim beyond belief. He clamped his mouth shut again.
The second thing he was conscious of, was his head. Which appeared to have had a large shipment of ball bearings dumped in it over night, while his blood-supply felt like it had been transfused with silica and come to a grinding, desiccated halt somewhere around his temples.
The third thing was his stomach, a large churning area of gas and corrosive fluids, swishing and swirling around together like a kind of miniature primordial soup. He felt a bubbling tube of gas begin to wriggle through his stomach, around his intestine and down towards his bowel. He could tell it was going to be bad, when it departed his body in a hot and silent phut and before long his airless room was ripe with the stench of yeast and garlic.
'Oh Jesus – what the fuck is that smell?'
Which is when Dig became aware of the fourth thing.
The girl in his bed.
He turned his head slowly, and there she was. A girl. A girl with messy blonde hair and black stuff smudged under her eyes and bare bony shoulders and a tattoo of a sea-horse on her left arm and one hand being used to cover her mouth and nose, while her face wrinkled up with distaste.
'Jesus!' The girl turned over onto her side with a disgusted flounce. She had some sort of accent and another tattoo on her back, of a butterfly. It was very nicely done. Dig slowly manoeuvred himself onto his elbow and surveyed the girl as if she was some kind of strange sea-creature that had been washed up onto his bed by the tide. She looked young. Surprise surprise. About twenty, probably. And thin. Very thin indeed. Another surprise. He wondered what she was called.
'Do you have any Nurofen?' her voice was muffled through her hand but now recognisably Irish. Northern Irish, to be precise.
'Uh-huh,' Dig's hand found the little tablets on his bedside table, and the glass of water he'd put there last night, a sign that at some point between getting home and going to bed he'd obviously been mentally and physically functioning to some extent. Which also indicated to him that relations had more than likely been had with this small, bony girl in his bed.
He turned to look down at the floor by his bed. Yep. There it was. A shimmery sliver of pearly latex with a neat little knot at the top. Well, that was something at least.
The sound level of traffic wafting through the half-opened window from Camden Road outside led Dig to believe that it was probably some considerable time after the six in the morning his head was telling him it was. He turned painfully to look at his radio alarm – 11.48 am. It was also hot, stiflingly hot. Strange for the middle of November.
He passed the glass and pills to the bony girl.
'Thanks', she gulped them down in one. 'What time is it?'
'Ten to twelve'
'What! Fuck, you're joking!' she sprang out of bed, like a little pink whippet and began jumping into her clothes; a tiny black vest top, no bra, hard little nipples poking through, G-string, no buttocks, combat trousers, pierced belly-button, trainers. 'Fuck fuck fuck.' She heaved the curtains apart, sending Dig recoiling across the bed with one elbow over his face. She surveyed the street below.
'Where the fuck am I? Is this Tooting Broadway?'
'What? No – no – Kentish Town – Camden Road.'
'Oh no! Oh fucking no. I have to be in Clapham in ten minutes. Jesus! Can I get a bus from here? Where's the tube? D'you have a car?'
'No. Five minutes that way. Yes, but it's in for repairs.'
'Oh Christ – I'll have to get a cab. I only have a fiver. D'you have any cash?'
Dig peeled the last crumpled tenner from his wallet and handed it to her.
She kissed it. 'I'll pay you back'
'Where are you going?'
'Work'
'On a Saturday?'
'Yeah – I'm a waitress – shit – it's going to be murderously busy today – look at that sunshine – but it's only a temporary thing, y'know, part-time.'
'You're a student?' Something had come back to him from the night before.
'Yeah – that's right.' She was scraping her hair back into some kind of knot. The sun was playing on her and she looked quite pretty. She looked strong, bright.
'Where d'you study?' Dig was suddenly feeling vaguely sociable, like he might quite like to see her again.
'God – you can't remember a thing we talked about last night, can you?' she smiled. She pulled a pair of yellow sunglasses from her rucksack and sat them on top of her head. 'Well,' she looked pleased with herself, a little embarrassed, 'I'm at sixth form college right now, but my tutors reckon I'll get a place at Oxford next year – if I get my grades.'
Grades? Grades? Jesus! 'What – er, what grades?' Dig rubbed at the stubble on his chin.
'A Levels, of course.'
'So – you're, how old?'
'Seventeen'
Oh dear God!
She was standing at the door now, her rucksack on her back, looking all of a sudden like a child, like a small girl wearing big girl's clothes. She seemed to transmogrify before his eyes, her hips disappearing, her breasts deflating, her waist expanding, her hair morphing as he watched from stylish top-knot to perky-pigtails. Oh, Jesus Christ! Seventeen!
'Hey look,' she was saying, waving his ten pound note at him, 'I'll find a way of getting this back to you – I promise. I have your number – I'll ring you.'
I'll ring you. I'll ring you! There was a child standing in his bedroom doorway, with a pierced belly button, waving his money at him and telling him she'd ring him. Jesus, what was the world coming to?
'Oh, and by the way – Happy Birthday.' She smiled at him, a nice, warm, intelligent smile, and then she was gone.
Happy Birthday. Oh yes, Happy Birthday indeed. Thirty-years-old. He was thirty-years-old. A thirty-year-old pervert. A dirty thirty old man. A heinous, raincoat-wearing, boiled-sweet-carrying, dribbling, drooling old man.
He'd slept with a seventeen-year-old.
OK, so it was the stuff of dreams, the stuff men of his age made lascivious, lustful jokes about over pints in pubs. But to have really done it. To be confronted with the reality of a seventeen-year-old in his bed. His little sister was eighteen and if he'd found out that she'd … with a man of thirty … he'd have … Well, anyway, it just didn't feel right.
The previous evening was starting to come back to him in dribs and drabs. Tequila slammers at Nadine's. Opening presents. Pints at the Lady Somerset with the rest of the crowd. All piling into a cab at midnight. Some club somewhere in town (a club? They never went to clubs anymore). More tequila. And then dancing – dancing for hours ... God, he'd probably looked like a right arse. And that girl, that child … Katie! That was it, that was her name – Katie. Except she'd pronounced it 'Kayday' – dancing with her and telling her, over and over again, 'it's my birthday! It's my birthday!' And then – a curry? Shit, it must have been nearly morning by then … where the hell had they managed to find a curry at that time of night?
And that girl, Katie, had been there. And … yes, that's right, Nadine had started on Maxwell in the restaurant and she'd tipped her raitha into his korma, for some reason or, more probably, for no reason whatsoever. Poor Maxwell. It looked like his days were numbered. And then? Well, they must have got a cab or something. He couldn't remember anything after that.
Dig wrapped himself up in his dressing gown and made his way to his gleaming little Ikea kitchen where he got himself some coffee. He switched on his ioniser, lit another cigarette and let his hangover wash over him for a while, while he trawled his memory for more detail, but nothing came to him, just blurred images and fuzzy fag-ends of conversation.
The coffee and cigarettes combined with the unimaginable gunk that was already in his mouth when he woke up, had pushed his breath to crisis point. He absolutely had to brush his teeth.
He stared at his reflection in the mirror as he brushed. There's the crunch, he thought, there it is. A couple of years ago I could have had a heavy night and woken up the next morning looking like something that vaguely resembled a human being, instead of this monstrous, clammy-complexioned, open-pored, dark-shadowed, grey-skinned sack of old bones that's staring back at me from my bathroom mirror. But now I'm thirty and although I still have youth ahead of me, I have left the greatest part of it behind me and my body is no longer on my side, will no longer collude with my systematic abuse of it. My body is asking for a break, and my punishment for not giving it a break is to make me look this hideous in the mornings.
Still, he thought, he didn't have much to complain about as he entered his fourth decade. He had a great social life and friends who he'd known half his life. He was liked and respected by nearly everyone he came into contact with. He could pull pretty girls, he owned his own flat - OK, so it was small and it was noisy and it was up three flights of stairs, but it was his – he had the job of his dreams working as an A&R manager for a small record label in Camden – alright, so it was poor pay for long hours and very little success, but he loved it. Unlike most men he knew of his age, he still had all his hair and he had a good set of teeth. His family lived just round the corner so he got to see his precious mum at least once or twice a week. And now he was thirty.
Thirty wasn't so bad.
Yeah. Thirty was fine.
Actually, it wasn't that different to twenty-nine.
ISBN: 9780140279283
ISBN-10: 0140279288
Published: 7th September 2000
Format: Paperback
Language: English
Number of Pages: 448
Audience: General Adult
Publisher: Penguin UK
Country of Publication: GB
Edition Number: 1
Dimensions (cm): 19.8 x 13.0 x 3.0
Weight (kg): 0.32
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