High Heels and Pink Glitter (18+) COMPLETE, FREE TO READ CHICK LIT

You're On Your Own, Love

"Hi there, how are you?" Kelly couldn't help herself. Already a smart phone addict, nowadays she checked it compulsively. Nate sent her texts regularly. He asked her how she was. "Morning Ms Kelly! Are you fighting fit today?" He messaged her at lunchtimes on WhatsApp. "Hey. What's your lunch today?" He included a snap of his own repast. It was always disgustingly healthy. Kelly sent back joke pics – a screwed up packet of crisps and an empty can of pop. "Your Glasgow breakfast of champions, thank you very much."

It was all very pleasing.

She had phoned him to double check he was still on for tonight. They were still at the date stage where dates had to be meaningful and exciting. Drinks in a bar. Lunch somewhere. Dinner in a restaurant that was at the top of TripAdvisor's Glasgow picks or a stand-up comedian in a bar who was the next big thing.

Tonight, was the stand-up gal. On the grapevine, Kelly had heard that her event had sold out and word to the wise was that they should arrive in plenty of time.

The phone rang for a while before it was answered. "Hey." The voice sounded flat and Kelly stomach clenched, a familiar dread attacking her intestinal track as it always did when she started to suspect that something wasn't quite right with Love's Young Dream.

Reluctant to sound needy, Kelly stalled. "You don't sound good."

"Yeah, look I'm not feeling very well. I've got a bit of a temperature. I don't think I can make it tonight."

Kelly took a deep breath in. It sounded like... oh, she had been here before. Loads of times. Sometimes she was dignified in her response, sometimes she wasn't. She prided herself on her communications expertise. What people said was one thing. What they didn't was far more revealing.

No – I'm really sorry. No, I'm letting you down but I'll make up for it when I'm better and we'll do...

Blah, blah, blah.

"Don't worry about it," she said. "I'll find someone else." And she would. She'd phone Nell or she'd ask Leon and Martin. She would not sit in and mope.

"Take care," she added, keeping her tone light.

Two days later, he phoned her. There had been no apologetic text, email or WhatsApp message saying – so sorry for cancelling you, was it a good night etc. Kelly answered the call warily.

"I've got herpes." Clipped, brusque.

When she'd been diagnosed with it, Kelly read up about herpes extensively. She'd gone so far as to join the Herpes Association, a support group that offered information, advice and even hook-ups for the similarly afflicted.

(God help her – she had considered it.)

After that initial encounter with Mark's cold sore, Kelly hadn't had an attack of herpes. A year passed and she assumed she was one of those lucky people – the folks who got herpes once and then never got it again. The blessed percent.

Sometime after she and Nate got together, Kelly experienced a burning sensation when she went for a pee. Several pees later, she was forced to the conclusion that she was not a member of that lucky minority percent. Herpes had returned. Still, she didn't think Nate was at risk. She looked it up. Various medical sites outlined the risks. Surely not, eh?

And now, surely so. Sat in an armchair in her sitting room, she stared out of the window. Was it going to offer up ways of dealing with this most delicate of situations? NO, boomed the window. NO, boomed the wall. You're on your own love.

Deny it? Claim ignorance? Pretend she got cold sores and, as she had most definitely employed her best fellatio skills on Nate, pretend it was thanks to that?

"Ah. I'm sorry. I got herpes some time ago. I assumed I was one of those lucky people who don't get it again. I was wrong. We should have used condoms. I'm sorry."

There was a long silence. Kelly's fingers stroked up and down her thigh as her head tilted from side to side. "Say something Nate, talk to me..."

The dial tone sounded. He'd hung up.

The Kelly who always stood outside herself – Mark's a tosser, stop idolising Daniel, do remember your achievements! – stepped to the fore.

"Well, Kelly – if he can't be bothered asking you for more information, then he's not worth bothering about!"

Unfortunately, that Kelly's voice was never loud enough.

I liked him, I liked him... I thought he was... Why did other people find it so easy to pair up? Kelly looked around her all the time. Here was he, here was she. Everyone managed it. Years ago, when she'd worked in the council she remembered two of the women in the office. They spent their time moaning about their respective other halves. The disloyalty appalled Kelly and she wanted to yell at them, "well, if he's so bad, leave him!" But even though they never had a good word to say about the husband and the fiancé, they had still managed to bag someone.

And there was Kelly. If she'd been with someone, she wouldn't have bitched or moaned. She would to have sat in an office listing her husband's faults to people who were not her friends.

Nell told her all the time she was attractive, funny and kind, and that she did not understand why a permanent fixture of a man had yet to come along. She didn't know about the attractive bit – average, maybe – but looks weren't the whole picture when it came to the rules of attraction. The funny and kind bit she agreed with.

Was Nate so shocked that he couldn't even ask for an explanation? Didn't anything else about their relationship strike him? The fantastic sex, the fun they had together, the jokey texts and messages?

It seemed not. Kelly burst into tears.