The first decision about her new life was easy to take: the weight wasn’t going to stay on. She’d lost it before, could do so again. It wouldn’t be easy because her body seemed to be programmed to be bigger than men liked. But she’d work on it.

The main decision kept eluding her, however. Where should she go? Should she try to get a new job and move right away from here? She had enough computer and graphic design skills to find a job easily, even if it wasn’t a particularly highly paid one. Yes, that might be a good idea. If she stayed in Bristol, everywhere would remind her not only of Darren but of her carefree years of working hard during the week and squeezing out time for her own art at weekends.

She still had a few friends around the place, good friends, too. She’d neglected them after she got married because Darren preferred them to go out mainly with his friends. Why had she let him do that to her? Why had she just given in? She’d hardly been out at all since they broke up, too ashamed of the failure of her marriage to face the success of her friends’ relationships.

She’d go round some estate agent offices this morning. Surely there would be something available to rent in her price range?

She knew what she really wanted to do. Her parents weren’t the only ones to have a dream. But she doubted that it’d be possible to make a living from her art, however hard she tried.

She wasn’t going to buy a place of her own until she was sure where she wanted to live long term. She’d really loved the little house they’d bought when they married. So had other people. It had sold very quickly, bringing them a good profit to share.

The profit was mainly down to her and so she’d told Darren, but he’d shrugged and said the courts would share things out equally, so they might as well save themselves a pile of legal costs by halving everything themselves.

He’d been right but it wasn’t fair because she’d been the one who’d had the ideas as well as the one doing most of the renovations. Her father had brought her up to use tools and build things. Darren was clueless about do-it-yourself and not at all interested in learning, so he’d worked as a barista three evenings a week to bring in the extra money they needed for the renovations.

That was how he’d met the other woman.

Stacy understood now that another thing he hadn’t liked about his wife was her being more capable in practical matters than he was. Well, too bad. She wasn’t going to pretend to be a helpless female unable to use a hammer, just to stoke his ego, or any other man’s either.

She’d heard that Darren had recently split with the other woman and couldn’t help being glad about that. The only thing she was certain about was that she was going to move forward on her own. She’d done with men.