Five Parks

by Ross McGuinness

  I am emailing you because I am considering going on a date with your ex-boyfriend, who has forwarded me your email address.

  The question I have for you is simple: should I?

  As I feared, this message was the first time most of the women I emailed had heard their ex wanted to use them in order to obtain a date with me. And they were angry, turning themselves into something of a sporadic online movement. For one afternoon, #ImAnEx trended on Twitter, as female users revealed on social media that their exes had submitted their email addresses. While a few bragged about this honour, most were more than a little pissed off, not so much with their former flames, but with the evil spider bitch enticing them into her web. . . me.

  It all got a bit out of hand. My intentions were honourable – I wanted to interview the ex-girlfriends of potential candidates and let them play the key part in the application process, not start a witch hunt. But once you’ve become the subject of a witch hunt, it’s hard not to play the part of the witch, and I couldn’t resist a few barbed tweets at some of the more vitriolic exes who publicly questioned my intentions.

  After my initial group email to ex-girlfriends, I ruled out anyone whose email bounced back (Rob’s plan wasn’t completely foolproof) and those who didn’t reply. I also dropped those who did reply, but only to say they didn’t want to go through the ignominy of being interviewed about their ex on a blog that was garnering about one million views a week thank you very much.

  Others were more forthcoming in answering my question of whether I should consider their ex for a date.

  ‘No way. Not if he was the last two-timing prick on Earth,’ read one.

  I also liked, ‘Perhaps if hell freezes over … twice.’

  Some were keen to see their previously beloved win the date, but for the wrong reasons.

  ‘Yes, you should go out with him! Can you humiliate him just like you did with that last guy in Greenwich Park? That would really help me get over him.’

  None of these made the cull, nor did any woman who emailed back: ‘Which ex do you mean?’ If she had to ask that, he couldn’t have been that special.

  I was also turned off by any reply that extolled the virtues of an ex-boyfriend. I didn’t want to be painted some picture of perfection – I wanted the truth.

  The ex-girlfriends who sounded unsure about whether or not I should date their old beaux were the ones that really intrigued. It’s a question that requires thought, not knee-jerk reactions.

  All of this brought me down to only a dozen candidates who were willing to participate to some degree, and I emailed each of them with a few basic questions and a request for photographic and internet evidence that they had in fact been in relationships with these men. I waited for their replies, then decided who I wanted to meet in the flesh.

  28

  ‘Date #4: The Ex interview with Penelope Pitstop’

  Posted by Suzanne

  Friday, July 22, 2016

  Penelope has passed the first test; she doesn’t look anything like me. I don’t want to go on a date with someone who fancies me just because I resemble his ex. That is not a problem with Penelope. What is a problem with Penelope is that Penelope is gorgeous. And she isn’t even trying. She agrees to meet me at a coffee shop near Belsize Park in North London, not because she lives there but because she runs there. Usually it’s rugged Hampstead Heath, but since she’s squeezing me in today, she did a few intense loops of petite Primrose Hill. She’s ten minutes late for our meeting, which is ten minutes early in London time, and huffs and puffs her way through the empty café to greet me. She is clad in black Lycra leggings with matching bright pink top and trainers and she unties a tight bun to unveil a luscious furl of wavy auburn hair. She is a whirlwind. Can I match up to this?

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I must decide if I like what she has to say about her ex-boyfriend, who has put her email in the hat in the hope of securing a date with me. She is here because of Aaron.

  She is quite blasé about this whole thing – she’s ten minutes late and she’s fitting me in between her daily run and her work; she runs some kind of media consultancy firm in central London, but on Friday she does it from her laptop at home. I’m packed into her mid-morning schedule.

  Her casual approach to this bizarre meeting disarms me, but in a good way. Had I expected her to genuflect in adoration in my presence and pay homage to the new first lady of online dating? I can’t deny that would have been nice, but it’s far better that she isn’t making a big deal out of this.

  ‘So Suzanne, what do you want to know?’ she asks once we’re ensconced on either side of a distressed wooden table with our coffees; cappuccino for me, double espresso for her.

  I hold up a Dictaphone, wait for her nod of consent, switch it into life and drop it in between our drinks.

  ‘I want to know everything. I want to know everything about you and Aaron.’

  SUZANNE: How did you and Aaron meet?

  PENELOPE: We met at uni. In our final year. It was the end of February. He was lucky I met him at all. I was studying flat out, but one night my housemates dragged me out to a party down the road. I really didn’t want to go, especially when I heard it was going to be populated with people from computer science.

  Anyway, my housemates ditched me at the party, as housemates tend to do, and at one point I went off into the kitchen to find another beer. When I opened up the fridge door, I heard some guys chatting on the other side of it about the last Lord of the Rings film, arguing over whether or not it would win Best Picture at the Oscars. I couldn’t help it, but I let out an annoyed sigh when I was rifling through the fridge. After I’d found my beer and closed the door, there was a face waiting for me.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘We don’t all live up to the geeky computer science stereotype… mostly.’

  That was how I met Aaron. We stayed in the kitchen chatting for the rest of the party. He told me he was convinced The Return of the King would clean up at the Oscars – and he was right. And I was right to ditch my prejudice against computer science students and give him a chance.

  He walked me home after the party and asked if he could call me sometime, if it didn’t interfere with my studying. I told him he could call me right then. So he did. He took out his old brick Nokia, I gave him my number, and he called my old brick Nokia. And that’s how it started. We went out for a drink on March 14. I know it was the fourteenth because he gave me a Valentine’s Day card. He said he felt bad we’d started seeing each other just after Valentine’s Day so wanted to make it up to me. And that’s why, for us, for the next six years, we always celebrated Valentine’s Day on March 14.

  SUZANNE: What was the most romantic thing he ever did for you?

  PENELOPE: Ever since the Valentine’s card thing, I knew he was very sweet and liked a grand gesture. And in the first few years we were going out there was plenty of that. He would take me to the airport but not tell me where we going, then we’d head off to Berlin or somewhere– the usual stuff couples do, which was great.

  But the one time he really surprised me, really left a lump in my throat, was when we moved into our first flat together in London. It was a place we rented for four years in Shepherd’s Bush. We were due to get the keys on a Friday morning and had both taken off work and rented a van to move my stuff from the place I’d been staying with a few girlfriends. Like most men I know, Aaron didn’t really have any stuff.

  He got a call first thing that morning – he took it in front of me when we were on our way to the estate agent’s to get the keys – to say there had been some problem and we wouldn’t be able to access the flat until the following week. I was pretty annoyed but he said there was nothing we could do – we may as well go to work and cancel the van.

  I went to work, was in a foul mood all day, and that evening, Aaron called me to say he was outside the new flat, because the estate agent had asked to meet him there to discuss a new problem, something about a leaking
boiler or a bust pipe. So then I was really pissed off, and rushed off when I finished work to the new flat. When I got there, Aaron was sitting on the steps, disconsolate. He said I’d better go have a look and see for myself. And I got a real shock.

  When I went upstairs into the dark flat, the lights flicked on and about twenty of our friends were there, welcoming me to our new home. They had moved all our stuff in and the place looked really homely.

  There was never anything wrong with the flat – Aaron got one of his mates to phone him in the morning and then he hoodwinked me. I was there when he took the call; I have to admit he was a terrific actor. He didn’t cancel the delivery van and he didn’t go to work, he and a few of his friends spent the whole day loading everything into the flat, and then he invited all our mates round to celebrate with the ultimate housewarming.

  That was the most romantic thing he ever did, because it wasn’t just about me or him, it was about us being with everyone we loved. He totally deceived me. But I loved him for it.

  SUZANNE: What did your friends think of him?

  PENELOPE: They loved Aaron. He knew I wasn’t one of those girls who, once they’d found a man, disappeared from her friends’ radar. He knew I was at my happiest when surrounded by a big group of our friends, and so made sure that happened as often as possible.

  We weren’t really one of those couples who had to spend every moment in each other’s company. Because we were both doing our finals after we met at university, we took things slow, gave each other plenty of space, which I think served us well later when we started properly going out.

  He wasn’t one of those boyfriends who texted me to ask when I was coming home during a night out with the girls. He just let me get on with it. When we did break up, my friends were devastated.

  SUZANNE: Did you and Aaron have a song?

  PENELOPE: You promise you won’t laugh? Don’t worry, I laugh every time I think about it. We did have a song, yes. And it was ‘Toxic’ by Britney Spears. Can I have the next question now, please?

  SUZANNE: Was there anything about Aaron that you hated?

  PENELOPE: Apart from his love of Britney Spears? We were together for six years, so there were only about, I don’t know, 327 things he did that got on my nerves. He was like two people sometimes – I suppose all of us are – everything to do with his computer or his work was so orderly and regimented, but there wasn’t a piece of crockery in our kitchen that he hadn’t refused to wash. Dishes weren’t his forte. And when we finally got a dishwasher, he didn’t bother with it either. Said it was too complicated. This was someone who wrote software code for a living! He was funny sometimes.

  What else? I hated the way he always brought a book with him whenever he went to the loo. Although, I guess I should have been thankful he was an avid reader.

  I hated arguing with him, not because I hated arguing, but because he was so difficult. If he was in the wrong, I’d let him know, but he’d let me exhaust my side so much that by the end of the discussion I was the one who felt guilty, and that was when he’d drop some sucker punch to make me feel like I had been at fault all along. If the computer programming thing hadn’t worked out, he would have made a terrific lawyer.

  Oh, and he sometimes wore V-neck T-shirts. I hated that.

  SUZANNE: Did you ever discuss marriage or children?

  PENELOPE: We did. We were still going out when we were in our late twenties, so marriage was always on the horizon. We kept the chat about it light and jokey, but I’m pretty sure we both wanted to do it.

  Children was a bit more of a taboo subject. I didn’t want them back then and I’m certain I don’t want them now – and that’s with my biological clock ticking away. But Aaron wanted kids. He brought it up once and I made it clear I didn’t want to discuss it, and that was that. He didn’t manage to make me feel guilty in that argument. I know we differed over it, but it wasn’t the reason we split up or anything.

  SUZANNE: Why did you and Aaron break up?

  PENELOPE: It was simple, really. I made a mistake. A big one. I cheated on him. When I told him about it, a week after it happened, he was crushed. But he forgave me. He was angry, but took it as a sign that he had let me down in some way, and that he would have to work harder, we both would and we both could. He was wrong; he hadn’t let me down. I had been a selfish bitch and I had hurt him. I knew it would hurt him and I still did it. Aaron forgave me but I couldn’t forgive myself.

  We went through the motions for a few weeks but I couldn’t keep doing it, I’d ruined everything we had. So I broke up with him. You must think I’m a heartless witch. I cheated on him and I dumped him. It seems unfair. It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done and it took me another few years to get over it, to feel happy in my own skin again. It’s not easy to tell someone this – I don’t even know you – but I find it healthy when I force myself to tell the story, because it reminds me of my own cruelty and makes me promise myself to never do something like that again.

  SUZANNE: What is your relationship with Aaron now? Do you have one?

  PENELOPE: We accumulated so many of the same friends over the years – all my friends love Aaron – that we were always going to cross paths.

  Our friends were good after we broke up, in a mean way, in that they refused to make any allowances for us; we both kept getting invited to the same gatherings. After I’d cried off the first few invites to birthdays and house parties, two of my friends sat me down and told me, as politely as they could, that I had to grow up. They didn’t want to stop seeing both Aaron and I, and if I couldn’t deal with that then they would see me less and less. It was good they gave me no choice.

  At the first couple of gatherings, Aaron and I would sit at opposite ends of a long table that never seemed long enough, then slowly but surely the number of chairs between us at these dinners became smaller and smaller. Until at a friend’s birthday we were the first two to arrive at the pub. I think that was about a year after we split up. Before everyone else arrived, we just talked like normal people, asked about each other’s lives, and I held in the urge to apologise to him again for what I did.

  So we still see each other in big groups; birthdays, christenings, weddings, the usual… and can even manage to chuckle when someone makes a joke about our former glories together at our expense. Things really do move on.

  Two years after Aaron I met my husband Richard – we got married eighteen months ago. I didn’t want any secrets; I told Richard all about Aaron. He was great about it, even said he had no problem if I wanted to invite Aaron to the wedding, but I didn’t. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t want to put Aaron in an awkward position. Polite as he can be on the surface, I don’t really think he wanted to be there.

  I know he’s been through a few long-term girlfriends since we split – I met one of them a few times, Lydia, she was lovely, and I thought he was still with her – so I was surprised to find out that he had passed my email address to you. I didn’t even think he still had it. That’s what happens when you never change your Hotmail.

  SUZANNE: Should I go on a date with Aaron?

  PENELOPE: Ha! That is entirely up to you. I’m sure you have plenty of outstanding candidates. We had a lot of fun in our six years together and I really do hope he finds someone. Whether or not that’s you isn’t really for me to say.

  I don’t want to give you a rose-tinted view of what our relationship was like – like every couple, we had our ups and downs, and he was far from perfect – but all I can say is that I am glad we were together.

  The coffees have been quaffed, and Penelope glances at the pink Fitbit strapped to her wrist, which measures time as well as athletic prowess. She looks like the kind of woman who is always running off somewhere. I take the hint.

  ‘Thanks Penelope, I think that’s all I need, you were really great. That was so helpful, so honest.’

  ‘Great! I really do hope it helps. Good luck with the rest of the blog, whether you choose Aaron or not. I’m goi
ng to be really rude and run off, I’m afraid, but I’m sure you have plenty of other ex-girlfriends to speak to today.’

  And with that, the whirlwind has gone, and I ease back in my chair, privileged to have been one of Penelope’s pitstops.

  I admire her. She looks like she’s got it all figured out. But she was wrong about one thing; I don’t have any more ex-girlfriends lined up to interview. She was the only one I liked on paper. If I hadn’t liked her in the flesh, then Five Parks was finished. You can’t go on a date in a park if you don’t have a date.

  But after my powwow with Penelope, I do have a date. I have heard enough. Date #4 will be Aaron.

  29

  ‘I’m not yet finished with Date #4’

  Posted by Suzanne

  Sunday, July 24, 2016

  I probably shouldn’t be doing this. There is no probably about it. I definitely shouldn’t be doing this. But I can’t help myself, I’m too excited. It’s so long since I’ve had a guy back to my flat – so long since I’ve met a guy I wanted to invite back to my flat – that I’m struggling to contain myself. So I’ll just come out and say it: Aaron is here.

  He texted me this afternoon to tell me what a great time he’d had in Regent’s Park yesterday and I replied with a few blundering attempts at emoji flirting. Texting men has never been my strong point, and it was only getting in the way of what I really wanted, so I called him up and invited him over.

  ‘TOO SOON!’ I hear you all shout into your laptops, but I’m done with playing it cool, finished with getting hard to get. I like Aaron and I invited him round – what could be more innocent?

  I’m writing this from the kitchen. He’s back downstairs in my bedroom, which sits at the bottom of our duplex flat, all on its lonesome. Around me are the various remnants of the roast dinner I just made; a gravy stain on the linoleum, a trail of escapeas (Haha!) behind the door. I have made quite a mess.