I absolutely loved Gemma Burgess’s debut novel The Dating Detox so when she offered us the chance of an exclusive sneak-peek to post to our readers, I jumped at the chance. If you haven’t yet read Gemma Burgess’s debut novel, then I ask you - why not? It’s fab, it’s funny and you’ll love it. Here’s Gem to introduce you to her extract of book two!

My first book, The Dating Detox, came out in January 2010, and the second is due out in December 2010. Book Deux still hasn’t got a confirmed title (The Dating Virgin? The Late Starter? The Bastardette? The Single Life? Ah, a thousand titles, and everyone has a different favourite, making a decision impossible – the basic premise: girl learns how to be single, rocks out). So it hasn’t got a cover, either. Those things are coming soon, I promise; the talented people at Harper Collins are in the book kitchen, cooking up something tasty. But as I’m dying to tell you about it, I thought an extract might be fun.

Love and other indoor sports,

Gem x

SNEAK PEEK! EXTRACT FROM THE SECOND BOOK BY GEMMA BURGESS

CHAPTER ONE

This is it. My first ever date.

Not many people have their first date at 27, and I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but it’s true, and it’s one of the things you should know about me. Another is that I’m nervous. My stomach hurts from nerves, is that normal? Perhaps I’m coming down with something. God, then I couldn’t snog him. Will I snog him? I don’t even know. How do you even snog someone for the first time? Do people even say ‘snog’ at the age of 27? Or is it passé?

I haven’t had a first kiss since I was 20. I’ve probably forgotten how.

I’m meeting my date at a place Bam-Bou at 8pm, and I’m still on the tube now. In fact, I’m 25 minutes early. Typical.

It’s not like I think he’s that amazing, or even – ahem – remember him that well. Perhaps my sister was right. I should have picked someone I didn’t like at all for the first date. ‘Sharpen your tools on someone blunt,’ was her exact suggestion.

I wonder if I even have any tools to sharpen.

I’m not a recovering nun, by the way. I’ve just been in a relationship forever. As in forever. I mean I was in a relationship. I’m not quite used to making it past-tense yet. I’ve only just stopped saying ‘we’ when I talk about things I’ve done. As in, ‘we loved that movie’, ‘we went there for dinner’. That’s what happens when you have one boyfriend from the age of 20 until 27. To be exact, 27 and a half. And then I left him two months ago and here I am. Officially single. And officially dating.

Paulie’s the first guy to ask me out. Not the first guy to ask for my number, mind you. It turns out that guys sometimes ask for your number and then don’t call, even though you think they will, and you’ll work yourself up into a nervous frenzy every night waiting – at least, I do.

I stop for a drink at a bar called The Roxy, to kill time and check my makeup. A double gin and tonic will take the edge off. Possibly two edges.

My date’s name is Paulie. I met him last weekend and though he didn’t take his sunglasses off (well, it’s been an unusually sunny September, and Plum and I were standing around outside the pub trying to smoke and flirt, or ‘smirt’ as it’s apparently called) I definitely had the impression he liked me.

He gave me his card at the end of the night and told me to email him. So I did.

And here I am. Losing my dating virginity.

It was surprisingly easy to get asked out, after all that I’ve been obsessing, I mean lightly discussing it with Sophie, Plum and Henry for these past few weeks. Everyone had different advice, of course.

“Just laugh a lot,” said my sister Sophie (the only one in an actual relationship). “It always worked for me.”

“When a guy talks to you, touch his arm and flick your hair,” said Plum (last relationship: depends how you’d define ‘a relationship’). “It’s subtle body language, and those signals show that you’re interested.”

“Why do you keep asking me this shit? Get drunk and jump on him. It would do it for me,” said Henry (last relationship: never).

Here’s the thing: I always thought I was, you know, confident. But being single and being confident is a whole different thing from being in a relationship and being confident. David was an ever-buoyant life-vest of reassurance. When my confidence lurched and puckered, he was there. I didn’t have to make new friends, I just had a handful of old ones and shared his. If I couldn’t talk to anyone at party, I talked to him. If I found a group intimidating, he would talk for me. And so on.

So, naturally, the first time I was single and found myself being chatted up by some moderately good-looking guy in a bar, I felt self-conscious and sweaty and couldn’t want to get away. (He seemed to feel the same way about me after about 45 seconds.) When my confidence lurched and puckered, I was alone.

Confidence is a stupid word. It’s not like I think I’m worthless, or anything. Sometimes I just have trouble thinking of something to say. And then, when I say things, I sometimes wonder if they’re a bit shit. I talk to myself a lot, in my head. But everyone does, right?

Perhaps it’s not confidence, perhaps there’s simply a knack to being chatted up, or something… I think I’m getting better at it. Maybe. I like bars and drinks and what do you know, so do men, so we run into each other a lot.

And now here I am. On a date. High five to me.

I wonder how David is. We broke up in July, he moved in with his brother Joe and then took a sabbatical from work and went on a year-long backpacking trip. He said it was one of the things he felt he missed out on by being in a relationship for the whole of his 20s.

Breaking up with him was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. There isn’t much in books or music or films that helps you leave someone who is very very very nice but just not quite right. He’s not mean, you’re not miserable, no one cheats… it’s just a sad, slow process of ending it.

David’s such a reasonable guy that he didn’t even really disagree when I said ‘I don’t think we’re perfect for each other, neither of us ever talks about the future, and since we don’t, I think we should break up’. He just nodded. He would have gone on living with me for years, without wondering whether we actually had a good relationship or just a functioning one. All David really wants is an easy life. And - wait, why am I still thinking about my ex-fucking-boyfriend? I’m almost on a date. Stop it.

I don’t even really like gin and tonic, you know. I just order it sometimes.

Gosh, my palms are clammy. Perhaps I’ll need Botox shots in them. They do that, you know. I wonder if my armpits are sweaty, too. Fuck. I can’t tell. I’ll just have to keep my arms down all night.

Oh, look, I’ve finished my drink. May as well have another.

Thank hell I’m finally going on a date. For the last six months, or longer, the flip side to the thought ‘I’m not happy, I want to leave David’ has been the thought ‘but then you’ll be single, and you’ll have to meet new men, and go on dates, and you don’t know how’. And for a while, that thought – that fear – was enough to keep me from leaving David. Fear of never having anyone think I was pretty, fear of never being asked out, fear of never falling in love again, in short: fear of getting Lonely Single Girl Syndrome, of becoming desperate and never falling in love and dying alone and lonely. Why take the risk?

Pretty standard stuff, right?

And yet, the last two months of singledom have been infinitely more fun than the last year (or three) of my relationship. After the inevitable emotional fallout from ending my old life (my advice: move out as fast as you can, so your new surroundings match your new state of mind, and get a haircut, for the same reason) I immediately started structuring a new one.

I’ve been accepting every invitation that comes my way. Dinners and bars and lunches and parties: you name it, I’m doing it. My social butterfly skills are slowly unfurling their wings. And I spend the occasional night alone, reading in the bath or going to sleep at 8pm covered in fake tan and a hair mask.

God, I love being single.

I love my new flatshare, too. I love it. It’s in Primrose Hill, which is just as delightful as the name implies, and far, far away from Clapham where I lived with David.

I’m renting a room from Robert, a friend of my sister’s fiancé. I haven’t seen him much since I moved in a month ago. When we do meet, in the kitchen or the hallway, we make polite small talk and that’s about it. Which suits me just fine.

My bedroom is on the top floor of the house, so it’s small and quiet, and I have a teeny ensuite with almost no water pressure. But it’s mine, all mine. The wardrobe is tiny, but my clothes have adjusted very well to the transition. They’re such troopers.

I look down at my black peep-toes. Yes, you, I think. You’re a trooper.

What, like you’ve never talked to your clothes.

Okay, it’s 7.50pm. I can walk to Bam-Bou now. I’m sure Paulie will be early. Men are always early for dates, right? I don’t know! God. How did I end up being the only 27-year-old I know who’s never ever gone out on a date?

Now I’m nervous again.

Could I really have a boyfriend called Paulie? It sounds like a budgerigar. Right. Here we are. Bam-Bou. He said he’d meet me in the bar on the top floor.

“Hi!” I say, grinning nervously, when I finally reach the sexy, dark little bar. Paulie is there, sitting on a stool, wearing a very nice dark grey suit and looking kind of slick. He’s handsome, though jowlier than I remembered. Great hair: 80s jock, but in a good way.

“Ali,” he says, putting down his BlackBerry and leaning over to give me a doublekiss hello. Cold cheeks. Nice aftershave.

“Abi…gail,” I correct him. “Abigail Wood.” There’s not really anywhere for me to sit. Never mind. I’ll just lean.

“Right,” he says, going back to his BlackBerry. “Pick a drink, I’ve just got a work thing to reply to…”

I nod, and looking around, pick up a drinks menu and start reading it. What shall I pick? I’m puffed! How embarrassing to be panting this much. Why would you have the bar on the fourth floor of a building with no lift? This is going to make smoking a total hassle. (No, I don’t really, but after a few drinks, or a really bad day, you know, it’s kind of inevitable.)

I choose a martini. He heads off to get it, and I sit down and try to look composed, like I date all the time. Don’t be nervous! Who me? I’m on a date. Who him? He’s my date.

“So. How was your day?” I ask, when he returns with the drinks. Is that a good question? I don’t know. My mum would ask it.

“Scintillating,” he replies crisply, leaning into me. Cripes, he’s hot. Very dashing eyebrows.

“What do you do?” I ask, trying to smile and look interested and nice and pretty, all at the same time.

“I work for a branding agency,” he says. “I’m head of account management.”

“Oh, how interesting!” I say. Wow. I really do sound like my mum. “Where is your office?”

“Farringdon.”

“How long have you been doing that?” But I can’t seem to stop.

“About seven years,” he says. “I started my own company straight out of university, managing chalet bitches, as that was what I loved,” he pauses, and grins to himself for a second. “You know. But that got tired after a couple of years, so here I am.”

“Golly,” I say brightly. “That does sound interesting.” Why do I feel like I’m at a job interview?

“It was,” he nods, his smile faltering slightly.

“Where was the chalet company based?” Is this normal?

“Verbier.”

“Do you speak French?” Stop asking questions.

“I can hold my own.”

“Are you from London originally?” But what if there’s an awkward pause in conversation?

“I am,” he says. “Though I left when my parents split up. My mum moved to Devon and I moved with her. I haven’t seen my dad in twenty years.”

“Oh, I’m… sorry…” I falter. Shit.

He smiles at me, a slightly less enthusiastic smile than before. Perhaps talking about his mum and dad makes him sad. I’ll change the subject.

“So, have you eaten here before?” I ask. My face is boiling. I wonder if the sweat is visible.

“Yeah, it’s great,” he nods. “The pork belly is historic. In fact, our booking isn’t for another 45 minutes, but I bet we could get settled early. Shall we?”

“Yes!” I exclaim, getting up and following him out the door and down the stairs. “I’m so hungry! I had a sandwich from Pret for lunch and I swear they’re basically carbs and air, I am always hungry mid-afternoon, so then I had a chocolate bar, which I know is…” Oh, my fucking God, I’m babbling absolute shit, and he’s not even listening. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up Abigail.

“What shall we order?” I exclaim, as we sit down at our table. I open the menu. Paulie doesn’t say anything. Shit, we can’t just sit here in silence. Without even thinking, I start reading the menu out loud. It’s not something I’ve ever done before, but nerves are enough to make a girl a little, you know, antsy.

“Steamed edamame! They’re lovely. Saigon-style crepe, hmm, not sure about that… Har gau, they’re a favourite of mine. Soft-shell crab! I love crab. Crispy chilly squid? I’m not –“

“Waitress, I think we’re ready to order some wine,” interrupts Paulie, gesturing towards the woman at the door.

“Wine! Great,” I say, and take a deep breath. You’re being a dickhead, Abigail, I think firmly. Sort it out. I can’t, I reply. I’m a rolling snowball of nerves and stupidity, gathering size and momentum every second. “I seem to be impervious to alcohol recently, since I left my, uh, in the last few weeks. I mean, I drink, you know, a lot, but I don’t get hangovers lately. It’s like I’m an alcoholic goddess!” Did you just say that Abigail? You absolute idiot.

“Cheers to that,” says Paulie, and drinks half his glass in one gulp.
I take a deep breath and smile, and drain half my martini in the next sip. Please God. Let this be over soon.

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