“And just rather…” She searched for the right word. “Fussy. Who wants to check all their ingredients against a calendar? It’s a hobby of someone with too much time or money on their hands.”
“I was thinking of giving it more of a home-grown angle. How to source all your food from your country by keeping in sync with the seasons.”
“Bit UKIP.”
“Is it?”
She flared her nostrils in disdain. “Bit.”
“So seasonal is out?”
“I think so. I think we need to go back to the start and think of a new theme.”
I was disappointed—the research and writing of the proposal had taken over a month. I took out my notebook to write meaningless words on that I’d never return to, as a gesture of enthusiasm.
“What are you thinking?”
“Well, quite unhelpfully, I don’t have anything specific in mind yet. I just know your readers want something personal. Something passionate.”
“I don’t know if I can do much more public catharsis after writing about my life in Taste, Viv.”
“No, no more ghastly catharsis. We just want something human.”
“Human. Okay.”
“Have a think. Have some conversations. Live some life, then come back to me.”
Live some life, I wrote down at the top of the page and underlined it twice.
“I will.”
“What else are you working on at the moment?”
“I’m still writing my weekly column, I’ve just finished a big piece on flexitarianism. I’m now working on one about UK-produced wines. Oh, and I’ve just signed another soulless brand partnership deal to pay the mortgage.”
“How soulless are we talking?”
“Condensed milk,” I replied repentantly.
“Oof.”
“So now I have to find ten genuinely delicious and ingenious ways of using condensed milk.”
“Key lime pie,” she said. “With many more limes than you think. They’ll lick the plates. And no-churn ice cream.”
“You have the answer to everything.”
“Right. To the actual business: how did the online dating venture go? I’ve been desperate to know.”
“It went well! I’ve ended up with a sort-of boyfriend from my first ever date.”
“You’re joking?” she said.
“I think I have to accept I’m terrible at casual dating.”
“Perhaps you are. I always rather liked sleeping around. It was all a lot of harmless fun as far as I can remember, apart from the odd bit of disease, but that was no bother really.”
“I don’t think I’m built for it, sadly. I’ve tried.”
“Well, lucky you’ve found someone then. What’s he like?”
“He’s an accountant. He’s very outdoorsy.”
“What does he look like?”
“Tall, broad, sandy-blond hair. A bit like a caveman-surfer in a suit.”
“Oh, heaven,” she said.
“I was going to ask your advice, actually.”
“Go on,” she said, looking pleased.
“I’m about to have dinner with my ex—”
“That charming little bear of a man I met?”
“Yes. You know we’re still very close?” She nodded. “Do you think I should tell him I’m seeing someone? We always said we’d be honest about it, but I don’t know if that seems sort of…presumptuous, to announce it to him, like he’d be bothered.”
She leant back and ran her hands through her sexy sheepdog hair ponderously, as if summoning the part of her brain that dispensed love and life advice on tap.
“Yes,” she said after a few moments. “You should tell him.”
“I thought I should.”
“But be very sensitive. Men always have to keep a low flame burning for every ex. It will be flickering in there for him, even if he doesn’t know it is. Whereas women always have to extinguish it.”
* * *
—
I waited for Joe outside the cinema. He was nearly fifteen minutes late. We were seeing a late-afternoon screening of The Appaloosa, starring Marlon Brando. Westerns had always been our mutual obsession, and we had no one else who would watch them with us other than each other. We both liked the simplicity of good guys or bad guys and the lack of moral ambiguity—it felt like comfort food. The Appaloosa, about a man stealing another man’s horse because it’s sexy, was a particular favourite. You can replace the word “horse” with “gold,” “gun” or “wife” and you’ve got the plot for every single Western ever made.
We had managed to carry almost all of our relationship into our friendship post break-up. We still watched Westerns together, we still spoke to each other first when something went disastrously wrong at work, we still bickered about the correct details of a shared memory—our dynamic was unchanged other than the fact we didn’t have sex. And the last part of our romantic relationship was so sexless, it had acted as a transitional period to prepare us for a platonic one.
In the long two-day sit-in in our flat that was our eventual break-up conversation, Joe and I did a full enquiry into where the sex went to. I don’t think it’s that we stopped finding each other attractive, I think we stopped seeing each other as gateways to a place of excitement or stimulation. We became each other’s portal to comfort, familiarity and security, and nothing else. For years, the person I wanted to have new experiences with, stay up with, discover things with, was Joe. Incrementally that changed, and he was no longer the person with whom I wanted to live life. He was the person I wanted to report back to as we ate Thai takeaway. I wanted him to be the post-match commentary, rather than the main event. I wanted him to be the photo frame, rather than the photo. And that was when we stopped having sex.
I saw Joe’s compact but bulky frame lumbering towards me in one of his lightweight shirt-jackets that I’ve always hated, and I was struck by how different he was to Max in every way possible. Max was confident and withholding with his enthusiasm, Joe was puppyish and keen to entertain. Max was serious, Joe would do or say anything to make people laugh. Joe was soft and round-cheeked, Max was solid and sculptural. Joe was as safe and comforting as a teddy, Max was leonine, dangerous and majestic. Joe looked like he was eagerly awaiting someone to make a joke about him around a pub table, Max looked like a leading man.
“You’re late,” I said as he arrived, out of breath.
“I know,” he said, giving me a clumsy hug. “I’m sorry.”
“What’s the excuse, come on, say it quickly before you can make one up.”
“Don’t have one,” he said, scratching his gingery-brown beard, always so flummoxed by his own inefficiency. “Faffing about this afternoon.”
“Were you playing that football Xbox game thing?”
“A bit, yeah.”
“Does Lucy mind you being late for her?”
“I’m never late for Lucy, Christ.”
“So you’re only late for me?”
He looked at me with a patient smile as he removed what he called his “shacket” and rolled his eyes. “Don’t be needy,” he said, self-consciously pulling his khaki T-shirt down over his round tummy.
“I’m not being needy, I just find it interesting that your current girlfriend gets the benefit of all the tellings-off I gave you over the years, whereas your ex-girlfriend still has to put up with the same old shit.”
“Oh, come on,” he said, putting his arm around me, the smell of his armpit as evocative to me as a late grandmother’s perfume. “I’ll buy you one of those unfathomably big Cokes that you only let yourself drink at the cinema, how about that? And you can drink it all in one, like you always do, and piss everyone off getting up and down to go to the loo, like you always do.” My shoulder sank into his armpit, and I put my arm around his back.<
br />
After the film, we went to a Vietnamese place nearby that I had heard did some of the best pho in London, which I was writing my column about that week. Joe, positively monarchic in his enthusiasm for feasting, always loved joining me on these culinary investigations.
“How’s work?” I asked, in between slurps of soupy noodles.
“Work’s fine, as rewarding as sports PR can be.”
“Are you still looking at maybe going to another agency?”
He wiped at his mouth with the napkin he’d tucked into his T-shirt like a baby’s bib. “Maybe,” he said. “I think something happens in your thirties where you slightly let go of this idea of the perfect career. I have so much fun outside of work, maybe it’s enough that it’s just fine. It pays okay, I get on with my colleagues. At the end of the day, it’s just ye olde day job.” What a relief it was for Joe to make these Chaucerian jokes now and it not pose a threat to my desire for him. “How are you?” he asked. “What’s new?”
“Nothing really, still settling into the flat, have to take my time making it my own as I don’t have any cash and there’s lots that needs doing to it. But I suppose it’s nice to think of it as a long-term project.”
“Yeah, course,” he said, slightly zoning out as he signified to the waitress that he wanted another beer.
“And I’m excited about the new book coming out.”
“I can’t wait to read it.”
“And I’m seeing someone.”
He looked at me, slightly open-lipped. “Since when?”
“Month and a half?” I said, trying my best to seem unbothered by this announcement. “Around that.”
He nodded, plunging his chopsticks back into his bowl to dig around for hidden noodles. “That’s good, you’re seeing someone. I was worried for all that time that you weren’t.”
“Why were you ‘worried’?” I said, annoyed at his attempt to patronize me and conceal it as compassion.
“It was just that you seemed to be not dating anyone for a really long time.”
“I did that on purpose, I was getting my career on track. Leaving teaching, going fully freelance, writing a book, buying a flat on my own. Quite a lot to do while trying to be some girl about town dating.”
“Where did you meet…?”
“Max,” I replied.
“Max,” he said, trying the word on for size.
“On a dating app.”
“I never thought you’d do that.”
“You don’t really have a choice any more, people don’t meet in real life. Look at Lola.”
“Yeah,” he laughed fondly. “Dear old Lola. How’s she doing? I haven’t seen her for a while.”
I’d noticed that “dear old” had become almost a permanent prefix when people referred to Lola. “She’s good, still dating.”
“So what’s he like?!” he asked with reluctant parental enthusiasm.
“He’s…tall,” I said. “Very tall.”
“I thought you didn’t like tall people.”
“What an insane thing to say, why would I have ever said that?”
“You’re always complaining about them blocking your view at gigs and taking the front seat of a car. I specifically remember you saying you’d never fancy a lanky guy.”
“He’s not lanky, he’s very broad.” I could see Joe instinctively puff his chest out. His napkin bib was splattered with brown broth.
“Doesn’t sound like your type at all.”
“That’s what I’ve always thought about Lucy,” I said, instantly regretting how bitter it sounded.
He smiled, put his chopsticks down and adjusted the bamboo placemat ceremoniously. “I’m proposing.”
“What?!”
“I know!”
“When?”
“This weekend.”
“Wow, that’s unexpected,” I said.
“Is it?”
“I suppose it isn’t. We’re in our thirties, you’ve been together for quite a while. Sorry, I don’t know why I’m quite so shocked.”
“I’ve known I was going to do it for months. I designed the ring.”
“Chill out, Richard Burton,” I said, passive-aggressively spooning chilli sauce over my bowl, previously unaware that I could dispense condiments passive-aggressively. “What do men even mean when they say that: designed the ring? You can barely pick out your trousers in the morning.”
“I mean, I sat down with a jewellery designer and told him the sort of thing she’d like. Look,” he said, taking out his phone and showing me a photo of a small round diamond surrounded by other smaller round diamonds. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an engagement ring I could remember.
“That’s beautiful, Joe,” I said. “Really well designed.”
“Thank you,” he said, missing the light sarcasm in my voice.
“I didn’t think you were that keen for marriage,” I said. “We always talked about kids but never getting married.”
“Yeah, but that was with you,” he said.
“Cheers.”
“No, I mean, the future you decide with a person is different for every person, isn’t it? It’s not like you decide what you want, then someone else fits into that. We decided we wouldn’t have got married. Lucy and I discussed quite early on that we would get married.”
“How early on?” I asked.
“Early, I think. Within the first few dates.”
“Was that the date when she took you to a bridal fair?”
“It wasn’t a bridal fair,” he said impatiently. “It was to help her sister pick her wedding shoes.”
“Hot,” I said. “I don’t know how women like Lucy do it. Every heterosexual woman I know is emotionally paralysed in relationships by this fear of ‘scaring men off.’ Then you have your Lucys of this world, these total anomalies, who know what they want and say: ‘I’m the boss, here are the rules, do as I say.’ And so many men seem to love it. Like it’s a relief, or something.”
“Yeah, well, it worked for me,” he said. We drained the remaining soup with our wooden ladles, silent but for slurps.
“I’m really happy for you both,” I finally said. “I can’t wait to see you get married. If I’m invited to the wedding.”
“Of course you’ll be invited.”
“All these things we thought about each other,” I said. “Doesn’t like tall people, wouldn’t join dating apps, never wanted to get married. Funny how wrong we were.”
“We weren’t wrong,” he said. “We were growing up.”
* * *
—
On the bus back home, longing for something unchangeable, I made the mistake of calling Mum and Dad.
“Hello?” Mum barked as she picked up the landline, harried and hassled, as if I were a PPI salesman calling for the fifth time in an hour.
“Hi, Mum, it’s me,” I said gently.
“Oh, Nina, hi.”
“How are you? Everything okay?”
“Not really, no.”
“What’s up?” I didn’t know when this started happening, when I would turn to my mother for comfort and find myself very quickly being her counsellor.
“I am having a nightmare evening. I was meant to be at a local production of A Doll’s House and—”
“Where on earth is there a production of A Doll’s House in Pinner?”
“It’s at the Watford Community Theatre. Gloria’s am-dram group are doing it and I’ve been excited about seeing it for weeks. Tonight was closing night. The cast are going out afterwards to that local nightclub, and we were all going to go dressed up as persecuted women from history. I’ve been working on my costume all week.”
“What happened?”
“I get a call this evening from Mary Goldman, telling me she’s received a condolence letter
from your father about the death of her husband, Paul. Pages and pages, it went on for, about all their memories watching the football together and how he thought he hadn’t been himself or looked well for a number of years. How sorry he was to lose such a special man.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Paul Goldman hasn’t bloody died.”
“Oh,” I said.
“He isn’t even bloody ill, he’s fine.”
“Okay, that’s obviously not great. But it’s clearly just a mix-up. Has someone else called Paul died?”
“No,” she said.
“Has someone else died recently that you’ve told Dad about?”
“Err,” she said hesitantly, annoyed at my line of rational inquisition when she was in a mood to rant. “I mean, Dennis Wray died this week, but Dennis is nothing like Paul. Dennis is an old colleague of your dad’s, we’ve been friends with Paul and Mary for thirty years.”
“It will be that then. He just got muddled, he gets muddled with details and timelines, you need to make things as clear as possible, he isn’t being difficult. It’s like he knows the shapes of things, but he sometimes gets the colours confused.”
“Mary doesn’t care about all that, she’s just beside herself. It really upset her.”
“Well, Mary Goldman is a twat.”
“Nina.”
“She is. She’s a twat for making such a fuss when it’s clear Dad made an innocent mistake and had such lovely things to say about her boring old husband, even if he wasn’t dead. Why don’t you ring a minicab and go join the after-party? It’s only nine o’clock.”
“I can’t now, it would take me ages to get into the costume and by the time I arrive I wouldn’t have long.”
“What’s the costume?” I could hear Mum rattling with impatience at the end of the phone—simultaneously desperate to tell me every twist and turn of this non-existent saga, while being irritated by my questions.
“It’s Emily Davison. But I have to get into all the petticoats, then attach the big toy horse on the back of the dress, and I just can’t—” I heard a voice in the background. “I’m on the phone to Nina. Would you like to talk to her? Fine. Nina, your dad wants to talk to you.”
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