The Plus One. Sophia Money-Coutts

      SOPHIA MONEY-COUTTS is a 32-year-old journalist who spent five years studying the British aristocracy while working as features director at Tatler. Prior to that she worked as a writer and an editor for the Evening Standard and the Daily Mail in London, and The National in Abu Dhabi. She writes a weekly column called ‘Modern Manners’ for the Sunday Telegraph and has appeared on various radio and television channels talking about topics like Prince Harry’s wedding and the etiquette of the threesome. The Plus One is her debut novel.

      Twitter: @sophiamcoutts

      Instagram: sophiamcoutts

       www.sophiamoneycoutts.com

Copyright

      An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

      First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

      Copyright © Sophia Money-Coutts 2018

      Sophia Money-Coutts asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Ebook Edition © August 2018 ISBN: 9780008288488

       Version: 2018-10-29

      To my family, who are madder than any

      of the characters in this book.

      But that’s why I love you all so much.

      Contents

       Cover

       About the Author

       Title Page

Copyright

       Dedication

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

       SIX MONTHS LATER …

       EXTRACT - WHAT HAPPENS NOW?

       ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

       About the Publisher

      I BLAME SENSE AND SENSIBILITY. I saw the film when I was twelve. A very impressionable age. And more specifically, I blame Kate Winslet. She, Marianne, the second sister, nearly dies for love. That bit where she goes walking in a storm to look at Willoughby’s house and is rescued by Colonel Brandon but spends the next few days sweating with a life-threatening fever? That, I decided, was the appropriate level of drama in a relationship.

      I consequently set about trying to be as like Marianne as I could. She was into poetry, which seemed a sign because I also liked reading. I bought a little book of Shakespeare’s sonnets in homage, which I carried in my school bag at all times in case I had a moment between lessons when I could whip it out and whisper lines to myself in a suitably dramatic manner. I also learned Sonnet 116, Marianne and Willoughby’s favourite, off by heart.

      ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love, which alters when it alteration finds…’

      Imagine a tubby 12-year-old wandering the streets of Battersea in rainbow-coloured leggings muttering that to herself. I was ripe for a kicking. So, yes, I blame Sense and Sensibility for making me think I had to find someone. It set me on the wrong path entirely.

1

      IF I’D KNOWN THAT the week was going to end in such disaster, I might not have bothered with it. I might just have stayed in bed and slept like some sort of hibernating bear for the rest of the winter.

      Not that it started terribly well either. It was Tuesday, 2 January, the most depressing day of the year, when everyone trudges back to work feeling depressed, overweight and broke. It also just happened to be my birthday. My thirtieth birthday. So, I was gloomier than anyone else that morning. Not only had I turned a decade older overnight, but I was still single, living with Joe, a gay oboist, in a damp flat in Shepherd’s Bush and starting to think that those terrifying Daily Mail articles about dwindling fertility levels were aimed directly at me.

      I cycled from my flat to the Posh! magazine offices in Notting Hill trying not to be sick. The hangover was entirely my own fault; I’d stayed up late the night before drinking red wine on the sofa with Joe. Dry January could get stuffed. Joe had called it an early birthday celebration; I’d called it a wake for my youth. Either way, we’d made our way through three bottles of wine from the corner shop underneath our flat and I’d woken up feeling like my brain had been replaced with jelly.

      Wobbling along Notting Hill Gate, I locked my bike beside the Posh! office, then dipped into Pret to order: one white Americano, one egg and bacon breakfast baguette and one berry muffin. According to Pret’s nutritional page (bookmarked on my work computer), this came to 950 calories, but as I hadn’t actually eaten anything with Joe the night before I