The Broken Hearts Honeymoon Read online

  Lucy Dickens

  * * *

  The Broken Hearts Honeymoon

  Contents

  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

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Lucy Dickens is the pseudonym for Lisa Dickenson. Lisa lives by the Devon seaside with her husband and one very boisterous Bernese Mountain Dog.

  Dedicated to

  anybody in need of an armchair adventure

  Chapter 1

  We had a whole plan

  Dream wedding, dream job, dream life

  Then shit hit the fan

  Has my fiancé always been this much of a wet wipe? The question won’t leave me alone, that question of all things, as if focusing on that, instead of his face and his words and the noise around me, will somehow bring me answers to what is happening.

  What is happening? Is he seriously saying this? Now?

  For ten years Matt and I have been each other’s everything, and for him to drop this bombshell makes me wonder if he’s changed at some point without me noticing, or if he was like this all along.

  Let me set the scene for you.

  It’s Saturday evening and Matt and I are sitting on the floor in front of our coffee table. We share a boxy little flat near to where we both grew up, with none of our own furnishings or decor, but it doesn’t matter because new beginnings are peeking out at us over the horizon. We’ve been working hard and saving the pennies ever since we left university.

  It’s early spring. The sun has journeyed south for the day and outside the cracked window, the sky is a denim blue. A cool breeze is trickling in and making the flames on the two lit candles flicker. The table is lightly peppered with crumbs of cheese and nearly finished bowls of crisps. There’s an empty bottle of red between us, and Billie Eilish is playing on a low volume in the background.

  All feels right with our world. It’s comfy and familiar but also exciting because the whispers of adventure are becoming louder by the day, and those new beginnings are woven with absolute security because our wedding is three weeks today.

  ‘This time in three weeks we’ll be chowing down on our wedding cake,’ I marvel, smiling at his face. ‘This time in four weeks we’ll be in Tokyo. Or will we have left on the honeymoon tour yet …? No, still Tokyo, I think. Which reminds me: we should check if we need to book at that robot restaurant I heard about.’

  He smiles back at me, that ol’ familiar smile that tells me he’s thinking about something, trying to settle on what he wants to say. I know this expression well.

  ‘Charlotte. I have a proposal for you.’

  ‘Another one?’ I joke, reaching for more cheese, but somewhere in the outer depths of my universe where I can barely even feel it right now, a tiny black hole of foreboding has opened up. And it’s all because of the way he pauses before he says:

  ‘We’ve been together since school, which is a really long time, and we’re planning to be together for the rest of our lives, right?’

  I stuff in a lump of Stilton. ‘That’s the plan, unless a Hemsworth brother moves to town.’

  ‘So I’ve been thinking a bit. Well, a lot, actually. I’m not sure what you’re going to think of this so here goes: how about we take a week off, just some time to put the breaks on and have some space, a pre-wedding break?’

  ‘You need a holiday before our wedding?’

  I mean, I get what he’s saying. Between the endless phone calls from my mother about the wedding, and the constant updates from my siblings’ WhatsApp group screenshotting Japanese cat cafes that they have seen online and insist I have to visit, Matt and I haven’t had much couple-time together, but that is what the honeymoon is for, and not forgetting the little thing of spending the rest of our lives together. It’s sweet that Matt wants to do this, but we don’t have the time or, quite frankly, the money to go away three weeks before the wedding.

  I’m thinking of the right way to let Matt down gently when he suddenly blurts out, ‘Not a holiday together, a holiday from each other. A week off from our relationship, to sow some wild oats, to make sure that we’re doing the right thing.’

  Suddenly, the Stilton feels like chalk in my mouth.

  He smiles at me like he’s suggesting we buy blue-top instead of green-top milk for a change, though I can see a little shake in his hands, a nervous flicker to his eyelashes. Meanwhile, I have started choking on the cheese.

  Just to make sure.

  We’re doing the right thing.

  Matt and I were each other’s first kiss. We lost our virginities to each other. We stayed together through school, sixth form and university. Sure, once or twice we both probably wondered what it would be like to try going out with someone else. But to do something about it was never more than a flitter of a thought passing by on the breeze. We grew up together and we stayed together.

  And now, now, he decides it’s a great idea to sow some wild oats, right before our wedding?

  Do you ever have those dreams where someone has crushed your soul but you seem to be invisible no matter how much you scream and cry at them? That’s how this feels. Only I’m not at the screaming and crying stage yet because I’m consumed with the feeling of not knowing the person I had thought I knew most in the world, who I thought would never hurt me, who said he wanted to marry me, who I thought was equally excited about the plans we’d made together, but is now backing out, finding excuses, giving up. And I stare at him, with my seemingly all-important question: has he always been this much of a wet wipe?

  Let’s go back to the beginning …

  4 December 2009

  Friday night, 11.38pm

  ‘Shh, come in here but don’t wake up Mum,’ I whispered to my siblings, ushering all four of them into my room one by one. I unravelled my skinny scarf and threw it on my Twilight duvet cover, and hoiked up my favourite shimmery low-rise bootcut jeans before taking a seat centre stage.

  I was fourteen and had just got home from my first ever proper party, a sparkly Christmas disco the school had put on in an attempt to stop us growing kids from throwing house parties at the snifter of an absent parent. I say ‘us kids’, but I’d not actually been to one of those affairs yet, still, I could feel it like the tremor before an earthquake – the promise of late nights, sips of alcohol, snogging. At this school disco, the year nines had been allowed to stay until eleven o’clock with the year tens and elevens. I’d just got home, and it had been the best night of my whole life, but I had a conundrum, and I needed my brothers’ and sisters’ advice.

  My sister Mara, the oldest of all five of us, who was finishing sixth form next year and heading straight to uni, sat upon my bed. Her reading glasses were pushed up onto her head, and she was still dressed, so I knew she’d probably been pouring over data for her coursework, unable to give it a break even on a Friday night.

  Graham is my older brother. We’ve always called him ‘Gray’, and when later, when Fifty Shades was released I think he milked it, if I’m honest. He was in year eleven but he was too cool for the school disco so he’d spent the evening at one of his mates’ houses. He sauntered into my room with a bare chest and PJ bottoms, and collapsed onto my moon chair and closed his eyes.

  I’m the
middle child, so Marissa is my younger sister, and she was freshly into her first term of secondary school. She was wide-eyed with excitement for being up so late but a yawn gave her away as she curled into Mara on the edge of my bed.

  And finally Benny, the little brother to all of us, just ten years old. He really should have been fast asleep but heard Marissa get out of her bunk and had to follow. He plopped himself on the floor.

  ‘So what’s the problem, Charlie?’ Mara asked, beginning the board meeting like she was already the company director she was planning to be one day. Ten years from now, Mara would be exactly that – she’d always been a girl to stick to a goal.

  ‘I kissed a boy tonight,’ I declared, full of dramatic emphasis. Marissa gasped, Gray groaned, Benny scrunched his nose and Mara just smiled.

  ‘You woke us up for that?’ said Gray.

  ‘You were not asleep, I heard you on the phone to your girlfriend,’ replied Mara.

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Believe me, you are the one that needs to shut up, these walls are thin,’ she murmured, and stuck a middle finger up at him.

  ‘Who did you kiss?’ asked Marissa, the idea of kissing boys being a far-away dream. Though to be fair, if she was anything like me it would be, somewhat. Tonight was my first kiss. Sort of. Not counting when Craig Emmens and I touched the tip of our tongues for a dare in year seven and then he cried and moved tutor groups.

  ‘Matt Bulverton.’ I declared this climactically, like I was the queen bee in one of my favourite high school movies, treating my siblings to the juiciest of gossip.

  Matt Bulverton. He was my dream boy. Or at least, a boy who I had made eye contact with several times over the past few weeks and had subsequently scribed epic paragraphs about in my diary, imagining the heady day he would ask me to the cinema and how I would ask him if he wanted to share a bag of Maltesers just so our hands could meet when we both reached for one and it would cement our LOVE.

  ‘Matt Bulverton is a twat,’ said Graham.

  ‘He is not a twat! You’re a twat!’ I flared, pink with rage, and Graham smirked, scratched his balls and closed his eyes for a nap in my moon chair. ‘He’s really nice, and he has hair like Justin Bieber,’ I told the others. Marissa swooned.

  Mara, practical Mara, said, ‘Don’t let a floppy fringe fool you. Every boy in your year has hair like Justin Bieber. Is he a nice boy and do you want to kiss him again?’

  I’ve never told Matt that the first time I ever heard Graham say his name was to call him a twat. And at the time I’m sure my brother never expected to be asked to be his groomsman one day.

  ‘This is why I’ve called you in here tonight,’ I said. ‘He asked me out. Like, to be his girlfriend. So now it’s more than a kiss, it’s a whole lifestyle decision.’

  ‘Why do you want a boyfriend?’ asked Benny.

  ‘Because when you’re more grown up,’ I answered my little brother, sounding like a pretentious know-it-all, ‘sometimes it’s nice to share your life with someone. Also, I really like him, I quite liked kissing him, and he told some of my friends at school that he was more Team Jacob, which I think might be because he knows I am too.’

  ‘So why wouldn’t you go out with him, he sounds so dreamy,’ teased my big brother and Mara reached over and thumped him right in the crotch.

  ‘Because I’m just a bit …’

  ‘Scared?’ Marissa piped up.

  ‘Well, you’ve never had a boyfriend before,’ Mara coaxed.

  ‘But what if I don’t go out with him and he tells everyone I’m frigid?’

  Don’t judge me – I was a young girl and I know better now. Thank God.

  ‘Believe me,’ said Mara, ‘when you’re older you’ll see how that is not a good reason to go out with someone.’

  She was right.

  I continued, ‘But I don’t think he would do that, he’s really nice. He’s not one of the cool boys or anything but everyone really likes him. He’s so funny, like this time in maths when we were in the middle of a test and he got hiccups and they were so loud so he tried to hide it by humming the national anthem. He’s just really funny like that because he, like, never has good timing.’ And I trailed off, my heart a flutter with the hope and nervousness that I might be on the brink of having my first ever boyfriend. Imagine if fourteen-year-old me knew Matt Bulverton, the boy with the nice hair and bad timing, would become my husband.

  Well, maybe she would have laughed in my face.

  But I went out with Matt Bulverton and we kissed some more, and he was ingratiated into my gaggle of girlfriends to the point that by the time we reached sixth form and were still together, they confided in him as much as they confided in me. We were best friends, unbreakable as a couple, and everyone liked his funny, dorky, charming attitude, including me. Every first from aged fourteen was a first for both of us, together, and we fumbled and giggled our way through our teenage years. We opted to go to the same university together, despite advice from our friends and family that maybe we should give ourselves a little more freedom, and we fumbled and giggled our way through that too, making new friends together, doing everything as part of a group. I was never alone.

  And no, thinking back on it, Matt hadn’t been a wet wipe. He’d been confident and sure of himself and sure of us, and his sureness felt safe and heady and intoxicating all at once. It was always Charlotte and Matt on the path together and I still can’t pinpoint where we took different forks in the road. Were we still stuck in that teenage dream? Should I have done more to pull him towards adulthood with me? Or did I pull too hard, and he wasn’t ready?

  Back to the living room, present day. Where were we …? Right, I was talking about how excited I was to be finally married to my Matt, and he was talking about how exciting it would be to see if there was anything better out there first.

  Now, let me widen the scene for you. Oh, did you think it was just Matt and I having this incredibly intimate, life-altering discussion? Were you picturing us alone, in our home, somewhere we could really thrash it out and I could cry and he could pour his commitment-phobic heart out? I think I’ve missed out one very important detail about this man of mine, probably the thing that most defines him: Matt is completely, laughably, incapable of picking his moments. He doesn’t mean to, but without fail he will always pick the worst possible moment to take any kind of action. For example:

  Matt’s Top 5 Worst Timings

  The not-quite proposal. Matt asked me to marry him three times before I actually heard him. The first time I was in the bath, and he was hanging about reading his book on the loo (don’t judge us – he wasn’t going to the loo, just sitting on its closed lid). I’d dunked my head back and he chose to look up and make some declaration that sounded like nothing more than distant whale noises to my submerged ears, and asked me to marry him. He was very quiet with me for the rest of the day, which I later found out was because he thought I was taking my time and not giving him an answer. The second time was at a restaurant and Matt had planned to ask me just before the starters arrived. He then choked on his prosecco and tried to wheeze the words out anyway, but I thought he was saying ‘will you carry me’ and so I escorted him from the restaurant and tried to Heimlich manoeuvre him on the street.

  The sound of second-hand mortification. In the sixth form, Matt took part in the school play of The Sound of Music, playing lead-baddie, Hans Zeller. Moments before one of his big, intensely Nazi scenes, Matt tried to make his mates backstage laugh by pulling a length of shirt out through his trouser fly. Then got it stuck. And so what should have been an uncomfortably dark but necessary moment of the show became just plain uncomfortable, for Matt, and for every parent in the audience.

  The foot-in-mouth disease. We went to a wedding a year ago for two of our uni friends. Among the guests were a campus golden couple, together from the first year and Hallmark-perfect. Until they split up just before the wedding because she’d cheated on him. The bride warned us all in a group WhatsApp to pl
ease not mention it as they were trying to keep it civil. Matt promptly forgot this and before we’d even all sat down for the meal, managed to steer both of them into him and declare to the table, ‘It’ll be these two next!’ I dragged Matt to his place, hissing that they’d broken up, and he tried to lighten the mood by saying, ‘Whoopsie daisy, sorry mate, did she realise there were better fish in the sea?’ He growled that yes, she had. Matt said, ‘Could be worse, at least it wasn’t with that good-looking brother of yours,’ at which point I kicked him in the shin and the guy lunged for him.

  The funeral. Ah yes. Matt had to give a eulogy at his grandad’s funeral, and to try and calm his nerves and sadness watched an episode of The Inbetweeners just before leaving for the church. He couldn’t stop himself thinking about it, and couldn’t stop chuckling from the pulpit.

  The ‘we were on a break?’. Right now. When he asked me for permission to knob other people three weeks before our wedding, in front of all our friends.

  It’s endearing, usually, something everyone jokes about, but I’m not in the mood to laugh right now.

  So here’s the wide-angle version for you.

  It’s Saturday evening, early spring, sun dipped, window open, cheese on the table, yada yada. Matt and I are sitting on the floor, and around us are seven of our friends. There’s Daisy, Alex and Dev who we went to university with, their partners Will, Carter and Dylan, and Brienne who we went to school with and who is one of my bridesmaids. We’re a close group, even though Dev and Dylan live further up country, and we’re south, but within the next few months all of us will have moved to London, and it’s going to be so nice to finally start our careers in the capital with a ready-made group of friends. In fact, we’ll be neighbours with Daisy and Will, and Brienne is just a short tube journey from our new flat, which has a river view at the Docklands.