1. Don’t give out your last name, phone number or email address.
2. Do let Chloe know where you’re meeting him and send a text message when you’re on your way home so she knows you haven’t been Roofied and date-raped.
3. Don’t talk about diets, weight-loss or your crazy fitness regime.
4. Do ask lots of questions and try to look interested when he answers, even if he’s duller than mud.
5. Do offer to split the bill, but don’t be too forceful about it.
6. Don’t put out. A kiss on the mouth is acceptable but only use tongues if the second date is already locked down.
7. Check all exits on your way in, so you can make a speedy getaway while he’s having a wee.
8. Try to have some fun.
Neve didn’t think she’d ever been so terrified as she slowly walked along High Holborn to meet Tom outside the tube station. She could feel beads of perspiration popping out on her forehead, though it was the coldest February in thirty years, and she was sure that when she opened her mouth, she wouldn’t be able to speak. Even breathing was an ordeal.
‘It’s only a date,’ she kept telling herself as she reached the traffic-lights opposite the station and scanned the crowd for Tom. He’d looked quite cute in his photo – a boyish face smiling shyly out at the world – and his punctuation had been absolutely perfect in the two messages he’d sent her. But Neve couldn’t see anyone boyish and shy outside the station, just a stream of commuters dodging the hapless men brandishing free copies of the Evening Standard.
Somehow her feet carried her across the road so she could stand outside the station and peer anxiously at the sea of faces.
‘Are you Neve?’ said a voice behind her, and she turned to see an ageing goth who was neither boyish nor shy, to judge from the quick but comprehensive once-over he gave her.
Tom was nearer to forty than the thirty he’d claimed to be, and Neve suspected that the closest he’d ever got to martial arts and Asian cinema was watching Kung Fu movies.
Once they found a corner table in a pub that stank of stale chip fat, he crossly told Neve that she didn’t look anything like her profile picture, and while she was still thinking, Kettle meet pot, you’re black, Tom started talking about something called Linux for ages while staring at her breasts, until he got up to go to the bar and Neve slipped out of the side door without a second’s hesitation.
As she walked back to Gray’s Inn Road to collect her bike, Neve felt strangely exhilarated. She’d done it! She’d actually been on a date. Her first date. And yes, it had been horrible and scary, but nothing could be as bad as that first foray into the unknown. Now she knew what to expect – as little as possible – and maybe on the second or the third date, she might even get the opportunity to talk about herself for a few minutes. Right now, Neve couldn’t wait to get home and confess everything to Celia because she was beginning to understand what Chloe’s flatmate had meant when she’d said that the debrief was usually more entertaining than the actual date.
On Tuesday she had early-evening drinks with an ambient trance DJ, who made it pretty clear that Neve didn’t have one iota of cool (’You’ve never heard of David Toop? You have to be fucking kidding me!’).
Wednesday night was a date with an estate agent. Neve had had grave misgivings about it even though Chloe had insisted that there had to be some nice estate agents. It turned out that David wasn’t one of them. His hands had brushed the underside of Neve’s breasts when he’d gallantly helped her remove her coat, and she’d only had time to take one sip of her white-wine spritzer before he asked, ‘Are we going to fuck later? If we’re not, then this is really a waste of my time.’
By Thursday, Neve was seriously flagging and in no mood for her date with Adrian, but Philip had gone to great trouble to set it up, incurring the wrath of Clive who thought that his staff were his own personal property. With zero enthusiasm, she set off to meet Adrian outside Foyles on Charing Cross Road.
Her heart was somewhere around her knees, but when Neve saw Adrian waiting for her with a sulky expression on his pretty face, it plummeted all the way down to her ankles.
‘I’m gay,’ he snapped, as soon as she was within earshot.
‘Oh! I kinda knew that,’ Neve said, and when she tried a tentative smile, Adrian smiled back. He really was very pretty. He wasn’t quite so pretty when he looked at her properly and his eyes bulged in their sockets.
‘Neve from Oxford?’ he queried. ‘Fucking hell! Have you had one of those gastric bands fitted?’
‘I did it the old-fashioned way,’ she said, failing to dial down the smug tone. ‘Diet, exercise, blood, sweat, tears. Still a way to go though.’
Adrian gave her an appraising look as if he was about to send her off to market. ‘You look fabulous.’ He paused and Neve could see him come to a decision. ‘Let’s go for a drink. You don’t mind if we go where there’s eye candy, do you?’
It was the most fun Neve had had all week. They spent a very enjoyable hour bitching about the vile, perfidious Clive and how Adrian had to pretend to be straight at work as it was the only way to fend off his lecherous advances.
‘Though he keeps telling me that once I have cock, I’ll never go back,’ he confessed to Neve, who squealed in horror.
Adrian even promised to think of single, straight friends to set her up with and the evening only came to an end when the barman that Adrian had been flirting with all evening finished his shift.
And on Friday there was Edward, who Neve had a really good feeling about. He’d sent her twelve messages in the last two days praising her intellect, prose style and beauty, and it was a huge relief to correspond with someone who knew who the Poet Laureate was.
Edward was shorter than she’d expected but, by this stage, Neve was adding five years to the age of all her dates and shortening them by five inches, and he was even more nervous than she was, which was a nice change. He was sweating profusely and once they were seated in a little pub by the Law Courts, he swayed from side to side but listened intently as Neve described her day’s transcribing.
‘And what about you?’ Neve asked, when she’d said all there was to say about the literary estate of a minor poet. ‘You said you were a writer?’
True, Edward had said he was a writer, but his writing largely consisted of blog posts about the Kennedy assassination. As he talked, he got more and more agitated until he finally admitted that he’d had a manic episode three months ago and was currently living with his parents and temping on the days he could actually get out of bed.
At least there was plenty to talk about, Neve thought, as she tried to steer the conversation away from Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath and other famous suicides. Max, whom she’d been trying really hard not to think about, had asked her what she’d be bringing to her first relationship other than an exit strategy, but as she patiently answered Edward’s questions on Freudian analysis, Neve realised that if she went out with him, she might be able to effect some positive change in his life. Besides, he was looking at her with something approaching reverence as she described the difference between psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. No one had ever looked at her like that before.
He wasn’t so bad-looking, Neve reasoned, as Edward walked with her to Tesco Metro so she could buy some skimmed milk before she cycled home. Rose from work would call him ‘a fixer-upper’ and if he got rid of the ponytail of lank hair and stopped sweating so much, he could be quite attractive, and it wasn’t as if she was giving Angelina Jolie any sleepless nights. Besides, going out with Edward would mean that she never had to walk ‘the green mile’ with pounding heart and a flat metallic taste in her mouth to meet any more prospective dates.
‘So, Neve, I think you’re wonderful,’ Edward breathed as they stood outside Tesco’s. ‘Do you think you might want to see me again?’
‘That would be lovely,’ Neve said decisively, and she was just wondering if now the second date was locked down, it would be all right to give Edward her phone
number, when he raised one hand to cup her cheek.
It was a prelude to a kiss that never happened, because one touch from Edward’s hot clammy hand on her face had Neve shuddering violently. It felt as if her skin was trying to crawl off her bones because even though her head had made a reasoned, rational decision and her heart was ambivalent, her body was absolutely, unequivocally repulsed.
They both pretended that it hadn’t happened. Edward gave Neve his phone number, she promised that she’d call, and even though she had a tiny moment of shame when she got home and discovered that Edward had already sent her three messages to say that she was gorgeous and that he couldn’t wait to see her again, her body shuddered again at the line, Have a wonderful weekend, honey. How could you date someone when you went into spasms of disgust just because they’d typed a casual endearment? You couldn’t.
There were no dates on Saturday because Celia, Rose, Chloe and Chloe’s flatmate had all decreed that anyone who went on an internet date on a Saturday night was a sad, desperate loser, making Neve a sad, desperate loser by association. Besides, Rose was hellbent on dragging Neve to a salsa club on the Charing Cross Road.
Rose was something of an enigma to Neve. She was in her forties, had worked at the Archive since she was eighteen and had never married, because she’d spent most of her adult life looking after her mother who had MS. Her mother had died five years ago and now Rose’s social life, which rivalled Celia’s, centred around meeting and ensnaring young men from South America, then discarding them a few weeks later when she got bored.
It was odd, because Rose looked exactly like a woman in her mid-forties who’d spent the best years of her life caring for an elderly parent. She was tall and buxom with a determined set to her face, which came in handy when Mr Freemont was being absolutely unbearable, and at work she favoured tailored separates and sensible shoes.
But on Saturday night she was transformed into a middle-aged sex kitten in a red sparkly dress that showed more cleavage than Neve thought fitting for a woman of Rose’s age. Her mousy-brown hair had been swept up into a mass of ringlets and she was wearing skyscraper heels and a feral smile. Neve was wearing a black wrap dress, black cardigan and flats, though Rose forced her to remove her cardigan before the salsa lesson.
‘You’ve got to show a bit of flesh,’ she enthused, looking down at her own chest with satisfaction. ‘I’ve got some body glitter in my bag. Really draws the eye to the breasts.’
Neve didn’t want anyone’s eyes on her breasts, which were heaving after an hour’s salsa lesson – an experience which had confirmed all her worst suspicions that she had no sense of rhythm. While everyone went left, she went right, and she could only move her hips from side to side, rather than swivelling, circling and thrusting them like everyone else.
‘You’re doing great,’ Rose called as she mamboed past Neve in the arms of a Chilean dishwasher called Esteban who looked like a young Antonio Banderas. Neve was left to tread on the toes of Jorge, who was very sweet about it, but as soon as the lesson ended and the more experienced dancers began to arrive, he kissed Neve’s hand, made his excuses and left.
After a couple more dances, Neve was left on the sidelines – word had got out that she was a toe-stepper. She was relieved to rest her aching feet and slowly sip a lime and soda as she watched office workers from Croydon and minicab drivers from Edmonton sashay across the floor as if they had Latin blood flowing through their veins. Everyone was having a good time because it was Saturday night and for a few short hours, the trials and disappointments of the past week were forgotten. Saturday night was about drinking and dancing and flirting and shucking off whoever you had to be Monday to Friday.
Neve sat there in her basic black and wondered what was wrong with her. It was as if, once the pounds began to disappear, they’d taken her sense of fun with them. She’d been happy going to nightclubs with her friends when she was at Oxford and she could concentrate on having a good time (and minding everyone’s coats and bags while they were dancing) because she didn’t have to worry about trying to pull. Now she was desperate to be pulled, but she was still minding Rose’s leopard-print fun-fur and matching bag while she did an energetic mambo. These were the wrong kind of thoughts to have at eleven thirty on a Saturday night sat in a dark corner of a heaving club as everyone else gyrated and whooped around you. Neve waited another five minutes for her sense of fun to make its presence felt, then she went to find Rose to tell her that she was going to catch the last tube.
As the tube pulled out of the station, Neve had to tense her facial muscles in an effort to stop glaring and grinding down on her back molars because the woman sitting opposite her was looking quite concerned. But really, the mores of modern dating were horrific and completely unjust.
It shouldn’t be about numbers and carefully worded dating profiles and messages specifically designed to sell a version of yourself that didn’t even remotely resemble the real thing. Even casual, no-strings affairs should be about romance, about connecting with someone, about eyes meeting in a crowded room, a shared smile across a dark club. But with the exception of poor, hapless Edward, there wasn’t a single man she’d met that week who seemed to be searching for the one girl that made his heart go pitter-pitter. They just wanted a girl who was easy on the eye, untaxing on their frontal lobes and who’d drop her knickers in exchange for a glass of white wine.
All Neve needed was a fairly normal man to have a fairly normal relationship with, and she’d only met one of them in the last few weeks.
Neve pulled out her phone as soon as she got out of Finsbury Park station. She was going to do it right here, right now, before she even started walking home, because she knew that in those fifteen minutes she’d start thinking of all the reasons why she shouldn’t and then she’d decide to sleep on it. Then by the morning, she’d have come up with a gargantuan number of obstacles and stumbling blocks and she’d prevaricate and procrastinate, then push it to the dusty corner of her mind where she put all the stuff that she didn’t want to deal with. That dusty corner was already bursting at the seams.
Yes, she was going to do it now because she still hadn’t got round to deleting Max’s number from her phone. As usual, her subconscious was far ahead of her regular, bumbling conscious.
Max answered on the third ring, which was just as well as Neve had a feeling that she’d have chickened out by the fifth. ‘Hello?’ he said warily, as if he didn’t like having an unknown number flash up on his screen.
‘Max? It’s Neve.’ She turned around so she was huddled against the London Underground map, just like she’d been that night when he’d kissed her, and willed herself to carry on. ‘Are you free to talk?’
‘What? Who? I can’t hear you,’ Max shouted over what sounded like the noise of a Mardi Gras parade. ‘Hang on!’
Neve hung on, counting silently in her head as she made a deal with herself that she’d hang up if she got to fifty.
‘Sorry, who is it?’ Max asked when she’d only got to thirty-seven.
‘It’s Neve,’ she said again. ‘Sorry for calling you this late on a Saturday night.’
‘Ah, the night has barely begun,’ Max drawled. ‘So, how the devil are you?’
‘Oh, I’m fine. Absolutely fine.’ Neve realised she didn’t know what to say. ‘Congratulations! You’ve been the successful candidate for the position of my pancake boyfriend,’ probably wasn’t the right way to go. ‘How are you?’
‘I’m fine too,’ Max said. ‘So … what’s up?’
You just have to construct one sentence of about ten words, Neve told herself. ‘I was wondering if you’d like to go out on a date. With me,’ she added, just in case Max wasn’t clear on that point. ‘If you’re free. In the next week or so.’
Chapter Ten
Twelve hours later, Neve was walking down Crouch Hill towards Crouch End Broadway because Max was there having brunch in the Italian Food Hall and she had an open invitation to join him, after he’d taken pi
ty on her complete inability to think of a time, venue and day for their date.
She was nervous, that was a given, but she wasn’t coasting a tsunami of terror as she had before her other dates. At least with Max she knew what to expect, as much as she could with someone who was as mercurial as he was, and it was just one date. She was literally a veteran of ‘just one date’ by now and after she’d got that out of the way, she could get some organic olives from Waitrose and browse the shelves of the Oxfam bookshop and the stationery store, Neve told herself as she marched up to the Italian Food Hall at precisely five past twelve.
Neve peered through the window, trying to see beyond the deli counter to the seated area at the back. The damp air had smeared condensation on the window, making it hard to see, so Neve had no choice but to go in and wander through the tables and booths until she found Max – that is, if he’d actually turned up and hadn’t just been playing a cruel trick on her.
There was a moment of dithering before Neve marched purposefully to the entrance – and then she stopped. At the side of the building was a canopied seating area completely deserted apart from one solitary figure who looked up from his newspaper and waved at her.
Neve waved back and now she was committed to clomping down the narrow walkway between the empty tables as Max got to his feet so he could lean forward and kiss her cheek when Neve reached his side. Neve bumped her nose against Max’s chin as she tried to return the favour, while Max was aiming for her other cheek. She always forgot that Celia and her fashion friends did the double kiss and now she was flustered as she sat down and fussed with her bags.
‘So, you and me on an actual date – who’d have thought it?’ Max said lightly.
Neve smiled vaguely in response as she watched Max slip his BlackBerry and an iPhone into an inner pocket. It was the first time Neve had seen him in daylight or what passed for a murky kind of daylight, and there was something decidedly exotic about him. Maybe it was the slant of his cheekbones or the honey tinge to his skin. His hair was so dark that it was almost black and had some serious product in it to try and kill the curl. She’d forgotten how handsome he was; only his bloodshot, puffy eyes made Neve feel slightly less intimidated.