I’d rarely talked to Amanda about Freya or how I’d felt at the time. It had been too much to deal with on top of everything else so I’d buried it. I wondered if Freya was helping to choose the dog today. I also wondered, not for the first time, if things might be different one day…
I stared out of the window and into the Mews, hoping the intervention was well and truly over. I shouldn’t have to hide from my neighbours on Easter Monday to avoid an unsavoury situation. The last few days with the antibiotics, my thievery, which I now regretted, and the whole puppy thing raking over old coals had left me feeling disconsolate. Yes, yes, Mini Amanda, I KNOW I should just honour the feelings, sit in my misery and work through it, but I don’t want to. It’s a bank holiday, people are supposed to have fun, not sit around looking into their pain and welcoming it with a cup of tea and a digestive. I could feel the walls closing in on me. Everyone was away or busy with boyfriends or husbands. I hadn’t even spoken to a man for months (in the romantic sense), having actually heeded Amanda’s advice about not diving back into the shark pool. Well, maybe it was about time things changed…
I slid my phone out of my back pocket and opened the App Store, attempting to forget all about work and feeling crap. I clicked on Tinder and downloaded it. I’d previously tried internet dating with Guardian Soulmates when Amanda and I had lived together but it had been an unmitigated disaster. The guy had walked in the bar with hunched shoulders and a pigeon chest, having lied about his age, his height and the fact that he’d developed a wattle chin in the ten years since his photo had been taken. Not wanting to be rude, and having had a skinful of Merlot, I had shagged him in my attic bedroom when he’d missed his return train to the Shires. I suffered the horrors all the next day and had tried to whittle away the shame by working on my flowery cross stitch Mum had sent me as a Christmas present, the idea being that the wholesome activity would absolve me of carnal guilt. It hadn’t.
Tinder was something Ursula dipped into occasionally during dating dry spots but it was an alien concept to me. There was a plethora of other apps that promised to hook you up with a perfect match but, according to Ursula, Tinder was the best one if you were in your forties. ‘All the divorced dads are on there looking for wild sex after being incarcerated in an institution for fifteen years!’
The main problem, according to Woman’s Hour on Radio Four, was that they were all looking for twenty-eight-year-olds, while I was looking for a long-term love. However, right now, I just wanted a distraction. I wanted some fun, to flirt and to see if I still had ‘it’.
Tapping into the mercurial world of Tinder, I set my distance preference to five miles and age range from thirty to fifty, and up popped a gaggle of profiles. Swipe left for the munters and right for the potential shags. I was keenly aware it was so appearance-based and ageist, but I settled down anyway with a cup of tea and Radio Four bumbling away in the background, there to alleviate the seediness. Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. Since when had every available man grown a skanky hipster beard and enjoyed brewing their own kombucha? Where were all the normal blokes? Oh, hang on – I burst out laughing – Nick the Spy was on there! I studied his face up close now – he was kind of cute if you fancied geeks. Without the cap his hair had a distinct ginger tinge, and he was only two years younger than me and worked for the CPS, a bona fide grown-up. Swipe left or right? Would he know if I had swept him into the bin or not? He might not even fancy me. I wasn’t even sure I fancied him; it was just the proximity was so handy! I sensibly swiped left and waved bye-bye. Two swipes later I came across Ifan.
‘You wanker!’ I shouted at my phone. The profile picture (that I had taken) had Grace sinisterly cropped out of it. It was from Christmas in the hotel room at Amanda’s wedding. ‘You’re sick!’ How could he use that picture? But of course it was a good picture and he looked gorgeous in a suit, that was why. I wanted to hurl my phone at the wall, but shakily swiped left instead. In a rage now, I swiped left so many times (so many munters) that I almost missed blindingly handsome Rory. Rory was a vet, which meant he loved animals, and common sense would dictate he couldn’t be a bastard. Swipe right. I carried on swiping but before long got bored and just as I stopped, a message popped up.
Hi, Ali, wondered if you were free at the weekend for a coffee?
Well at the risk of sounding too keen, I’m busy at the weekend, but I just happen to be free now.
*
‘Hello!’ a deep sexy voice said behind me an hour later amid the bedlam of the Blue Mountain Café. I spun round and came face to face with Rory the vet. He was well over six foot and was wearing a lovely navy pea coat to guard against the April chills. ‘I saw you come in – I’m sitting by the door back there. Do you want to go somewhere quieter so we can talk properly? It’s mental in here.’ His eyes looked hopeful and a dimple punctured his stubbly left cheek. No visible wattle chin and his photo was up to date. He was adorable.
We retired to the new Greek place on Lordship Lane where he bought me a huge slab of orange polenta cake to go with my latte while he had a black coffee and a walnut muffin.
‘So what did you do last night?’ I asked, stirring my latte and picking at my cake. My tummy was churning with nerves but I didn’t want him to have me down as a food dodger.
‘I was on call at the animal sanctuary where I volunteer twice a month.’ I swear a shining halo materialised around his head and angels began singing ‘Close to You’ by the Carpenters. Why do birds suddenly appear…
‘Oh, how amazing,’ I squeaked out, my cheeks flushing at the thought of him labouring over some fragile injured creature and nursing it back to health, then coming home and masterfully ripping my clothes off. ‘Where’s that?’
‘In Norwood. We get so many poorly woodland animals. People come from miles around to drop off birds with broken wings and squirrels that have been hit by cars. What did you do last night?’ He made eye contact and appeared genuinely interested in my reply.
‘I went to my neighbour’s Easter party with my little girl.’ I cleverly reminded him of Grace, like a test to see if he balked. He didn’t. We chatted for ages about his work, my work, the fact that I was a single mum, his love of animals, my cat allergy even though I had lived with Ginger, Amanda’s cat. We breezed over past relationships – he had been single for two years, something I found hard to believe.
‘So when are you next free at a weekend?’ he asked me as I thought about how I would be plague-free in another week. I imagined him meeting Grace and showing her his veterinary surgery. Maybe she would want to be a vet one day like him? He could get her a chinchilla like Ursula’s. She had been pleading with me for ages. She wanted to call it Vince.
‘Two weeks,’ I said, hoping he was going to say that was too long to wait and ask for a date sooner than that – maybe I could get Amanda to babysit.
‘Well, I wondered if you’d want to come on a special date with me then?’ he smiled expectantly.
‘Well, it depends what it is.’ I felt a jolt of excitement in my stomach as some kind of elaborate Pretty Woman fantasy played out in my head. Maybe he was going to jet me off to the opera in Rome for the weekend in his private plane. No, he was a vet, not Richard Gere! He was probably going to take me on a romantic dinner in town… In the movie flickering away in my head it would be somewhere like The Wolseley or Le Pont de la Tour with a view over the river, soft piano music tinkling in the background as a waiter popped the champagne cork…
‘I thought you might want to come to a rave in the woods in Kent.’ I could feel my face drop in disappointment but he blindly ploughed on, while I tried to rescue my fantasy. A rave, well, it might be like a cool festival with bell tents and a zen healing field. ‘It’s near where my parents live and we do it once a month. You’d have to bring a tent, and your own costume.’ By this point I could hear Mini Amanda on my shoulder shouting: Abort, abort, nutter alert, don’t listen to any more of his shit; get up and leave!
‘Costume?’
> ‘Yes! We all dress up as woodland animals. I’m a squirrel, but you can be anything you want. Not a tiger because tigers don’t exist in the wild here. But you get the idea – it has to be indigenous. I think you’d look good as a deer.’ The recently ingested polenta cake sank like a brick in a swimming pool. How had I managed it again? He wasn’t an actual psychopath; he was just a fucking fruit loop with the face of a Greek God.
‘A deer?’ I whispered.
‘Yes, with antlers. They’d suit your cheekbones and the fact you’re so statuesque.’ It was a backhanded compliment if ever I’d heard one. ‘Once we’ve set up the decks and the camp, we all take acid and trip out. It’s so cool.’
‘Will you excuse me? I just need the loo.’
He nodded and picked up his coffee. Fortunately, the loos were halfway down the café towards the cake-laden counter. I put my head down and I pushed open the door, and cantered up the road past the bus stop like Bambi’s doomed mother trying to escape the hunter. The universe was trying to tell me something. Amanda was right: I should just be on my own. I could hear her buzzing in my head: One day you’ll listen to me.
12
Who the F*ck Is Alice?
Looking down at my phone, I tried not to swear. Why was Hattie ringing me? I let it go straight to voicemail. I didn’t want to have a conversation with her in public. I knew about the puppy and didn’t want to get dragged into a weird alternate universe where I had to sympathise about her lack of a baby. Grace was closely inspecting the ice cream freezer while I listened to her message.
‘Hi, Ali, it’s Hattie. I just wondered if you could ring me. It’s urgent. Nothing to do with Grace or Jim, but I need to speak to you.’
Anxiety flared up like a grumbling appendix. I didn’t want to ring her, but I couldn’t not ring her if it was urgent. Should I wait until we got home? We were nearly finished at Sainsbury’s, with just a few more items to find. I doggedly pushed the trolley towards the bread aisle, calling Grace away from the ice cream but she reluctantly dragged her feet and pulled her spoiled brat face.
‘I want ice cream,’ she whinged in a devil-spawn baby voice.
‘Not today, Grace. We still have some in the freezer.’
‘But I want that chocolate one. You promised.’
‘No I didn’t! Don’t make things up!’
‘I’m not. You said I could.’
‘I said you could choose some ice cream last week when you finish the one in the freezer.’ Grace remembered everything I ever said, every swear word, what tone of voice I used and what it referred to. I was thinking of enrolling her as a police cadet. She would make an excellent detective.
‘But I don’t like that one.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it. You liked it the last time you ate it.’
‘Don’t like it any more.’
‘Tough.’ I wasn’t giving in today. Bad cop was on duty.
‘That’s not fair.’ She was gearing up for an argument when my phone started ringing again. This time I answered it to avoid the scene.
‘Ali?’
‘Hattie. What can I do for you?’ Grace stalked off towards the ice cream freezer. I turned my back on her; I could only deal with one impending crisis at a time.
‘Have you heard from Alice? She said she was going to ring you.’
‘Well, she hasn’t. I spoke to her briefly last week but she’s been avoiding me. She owes me thousands from jobs I did ages ago.’
‘I’m afraid you won’t ever see that money.’ I almost dropped my phone and had to lean on the Mr Kipling display to steady myself, almost taking down the Bakewell Tarts and the Fondant Fancies.
‘What? Hattie? Fucking fuck, has she done a runner?’ It was every freelancer’s nightmare – their agent running off with all their wages or going bankrupt owing bailiffs all your hard-earned cash.
‘She’s gone bankrupt. And yes, she’s done a midnight flit. She rang me from a number I didn’t recognise to say she’d be in touch once she got herself sorted. Her flat has already been repossessed.’
Stunned into silence, I scrabbled around for some words, any words.
‘Are you there, Ali?’
I nodded.
‘Ali?’
‘Yes,’ I whispered, tears now gushing from my eyes and fear draining my body of any heat. My teeth started chattering.
‘Do you have income protection?’
‘No,’ I sobbed. ‘I’m completely fucked.’ A man walked past pushing his baby in a buggy and stared at me. I turned away and watched a thin-lipped Grace steamroller towards me with a tub of the expensive Belgian chocolate ice cream that worked out at three quid a spoonful.
‘I don’t know what to say,’ Hattie muttered. ‘I can’t believe she’s done this. You think you know someone…’
‘How am I going to pay for anything? How are we going to afford to live?’ I was hyperventilating now as I mentally tallied up my credit card bills, groaning from the weight of all the expenses I had racked up prepping for jobs, all the while waiting for Alice to cough up my wages.
‘I’m sure you’ll find a way,’ Hattie said, sounding pained. ‘Maybe Jim can help a bit or lend you some money.’
If I wasn’t so floored I would have laughed contemptuously. Jim was so tight with me that any extra money he did need to shell out for Grace was handed over like he was doing me a huge favour, ‘helping me out’ by paying for his own child. I think Hattie was forgetting he’d turfed me out of our home when Grace was a newborn and expected us just to survive on the mean streets of East Dulwich.
‘I won’t hold my breath,’ I managed to force out. ‘I’m in Sainsbury’s and I’m going to go. I’ll see you later.’ I cut her off before she could pity me further.
Grace looked at me defiantly and dropped the ice cream in the trolley. I stared at the mound of shopping – the two emergency bottles of red wine, the posh crisps, the fancy medjool dates, the multi-pack of salmon, the organic eggs, all the fresh fruit that Grace would refuse to eat, and I walked away.
‘Mummy, the trolley, I can’t push it, it’s too heavy.’
‘I’m leaving it. We don’t need any of that stuff.’
‘Mummy! I want the ice cream!’ she cried. I’d only ever smacked Grace once, when she was being a little monster and wouldn’t stop screaming at bedtime over a disallowed chocolate bar the first week after we’d left Amanda’s to live on our own. I’d crashed so low I’d been unable to rein in my rage so I’d smacked her bum in a fit of desperation, stopping her mid-scream. ‘Why did you hit me, Mummy?’ she’d asked, sounding more puzzled than hurt. I’d burst into tears and apologised, and she’d gone on and on about it for weeks. ‘Will you hit me again, Mummy?’ The worst was when she told someone at nursery that I had hit her and I was called in for a one-to-one with Sheila, her key worker, and shamefully admitted what had happened. I’d felt like Myra Hindley. Grace loved a drama and she loved to chat and tell people everything. I couldn’t get away with anything.
I sharply turned round, about to shoot my mouth off, more tears ready to fall, when I spotted the man with the pushchair and the baby, eyeing us up. He was standing pretending to choose some wholesome organic rye bread for his wheat-intolerant perfect wife at home who never shouted or said ‘dammit’ (let alone ‘fuck’, ‘cunt’ or ‘wanker’).
‘Grace, we have to leave,’ I said as calmly as I could, the tears receding. ‘I’ve got to do something and I need to speak to Amanda.’
‘Can we take the ice cream? Meg likes ice cream.’
‘No, but please put that back in the freezer.’ She was about to kick off when she thought better of it. Maybe the fear of Amanda telling her off dissuaded her. She compliantly grabbed the ice cream and ran over to the freezer, then ran back to me. In the early days of our exodus from the Single Mums’ Mansion, I would use Amanda as a regular threat to force Grace to eat her dinner or go to bed. ‘If you don’t eat all the pasta, I’m ringing Amanda.’ But sadly, the amount of times I �
��rang’ was so ridiculous, that Grace soon cottoned on that Amanda wasn’t there.
‘Excuse me, are you just going to leave that here?’ Mr Rye Bread said in a Judgy McJudgy tone, motioning to my trolley with his saintly loaf.
‘Yes, what’s it got to do with you?’ I challenged him.
‘Someone will have to put all that back before it goes off.’
‘You can do it then, can’t you? Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had a shit storm of a morning and I need to leave. Enjoy shelf stacking.’
Ten minutes later I turned up at Amanda’s door, knocking unannounced, praying she would be in and not hauling the kids out on some educational visit to a museum or something like she always seemed to do during the holidays. I was about to give up when the door flung open and Isla stood there wearing a full face of make-up, a pink silk nightie and back-combed hair.
‘Is Mummy in?’ I asked, anxiety clawing in my chest. I needed a glass of wine and it was only half-past ten.
‘She’s on her exercise bike. Come in.’
Grace ran in in front of me. ‘Is Meg upstairs?’ she asked Isla.
‘Yes, come with me, we’ll find her,’ Isla said, taking her hand.
The familiarity of the house, the homely vibe, the mad yellow and brown flowery wallpaper that looked like the eighties had exploded in the hallway never failed to make me smile. But today all it made me want to do was sit on the bottom stair and cry for happier times. It was days like these that I wished I still lived here in among the creaky floorboards, the perpetual hanging washing like Aladdin’s laundry in a panto, the sprawling kitchen with the central island that doubled up as Majestic Wines underneath the worktop, and the crazy haphazard purple living room that had been unconsciously modelled on Monica’s apartment in Friends, Amanda’s favourite TV show. I wandered into the kitchen at the back to find a beetroot-faced Amanda in the playroom, pedalling away like a demon, covered in sweat. She was reading a book and kept dabbing the pages with her towel. Only Amanda would read an actual book on an exercise bike. She looked up and momentarily appeared confused, then she smiled.
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