Kissing Frogs

by Tori Turnbull

  Chris laughed.

  He was good-looking, dressed to impress in a pale pink shirt, cream trousers, and brown deck shoes. He’d taken a navy blazer off when we sat down, folding it over the back of his chair. His build was chunky, more rugby player than football player, and he had thick, dark hair in a messy style. In fact, he reminded me of a shorter, heavier version of Mark. “So, have you been on any other dates?”

  “Oh, have I been on other dates…” I settled down. “There was Rob, who climbed out the bathroom window. Or there was the hygienically challenged mummy’s boy who fell to his knees in the middle of the street, wrapped his arms around me, and cried when I said I didn’t want to see him again. I can’t believe you’re laughing at me.”

  “I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing with you.”

  “I’m not laughing.”

  “I can see your lips twitching. You want to laugh, you just don’t want to lose the argument.”

  “I don’t have a sense of humour about this.”

  “Yes, you do. Otherwise you wouldn’t have told me about it and you wouldn’t keep dating.”

  “No. What I have is a neurotic mother who’s fixated on fixing me up.”

  He glanced over my shoulder. It wasn’t the first time. I’d thought we were getting on with each other. Was I boring him? Maybe I should ask him more questions about him. Men loved talking about themselves.

  “Ah, someone’s trying to get your attention.” He motioned towards the window.

  Shit! I had a sinking feeling. I didn’t want to know who was out there.

  I didn’t look.

  Ignorance is bliss and all that.

  “They’re probably looking for someone else.” If it was Mark or one of my friends, they’d come over to say hi and check out my date. Anyone else, I didn’t want to see them.

  “No. He’s pointing now. He definitely seems to know you. He’s got his face all smashed up against the window. He’s leaving smeared marks against the glass like a dog in the back of a car.”

  Oh, God! Reluctantly, I turned, then quickly turned back.

  “Is he a friend of yours?”

  “Nope.” A stalker was not the same thing as a friend. “He must’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

  I felt a rush of cold air, signalling the door had opened, a second before… “Hello, Kate.”

  If I ignored him, he’d go away.

  If I ignored him, he’d go away.

  If I ignored hi–

  “Someone you know?”

  “I–” I shrugged, shaking my head. A pathetic response. I was just exhausted with this. What could I have done in a former life to deserve this?

  “He seems to know your name,” Chris pointed out.

  Damn. “Lucky guess?”

  Chris stared at me, obviously confused and unimpressed by my treatment of John. It wasn’t that I’d lied about my dating history to make myself sound better…

  Okay, so that was exactly what it was like.

  I hadn’t told him the whole John saga. It wasn’t funny enough to make a joke out of, unlike some of my other dates, just annoying.

  “Are you going to ignore me, Kate? Pretend you don’t know me?” Yes. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your friend?”

  “No,” I said. “You don’t get to come in here and act all hurt and like we’re friends.”

  “I guess I’ll just have to introduce myself. I’m John–”

  “Please don’t encourage him,” I begged Chris.

  Chris ignored my plea and the hand I placed on his arm. “Chris Martin.” He stood, shaking hands with John, seemingly unaware of the fact John was dripping wet from standing in the rain watching us and had just wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “You know Kate?” Chris asked.

  “I’m her boyfriend.” Shit. It was like feeding pigeons – give them a crumb and you’d never get rid of them, and then you were covered in shit.

  “No, John. You. Are. Not. My. Boyfriend,” I said firmly, pointing towards the door. “Go away. I have a restraining order.”

  “We dated.”

  “We went on a date. One. Singular. It was not an experience I chose to repeat. Nor does one date make you my boyfriend.” There, that was to the point. Mark would be proud.

  “I gave you flowers, carnations.” Clearly carnations are the flower of preference for weirdos.

  “You stole my handbag!”

  “I stayed up all night with you when you were sick.”

  “Until the police arrested you for peeping into my bedroom window.”

  “I walked you home from the Underground.” His voice was getting louder. People were beginning to stare.

  Chris was shifting uneasily in his seat. It seemed he didn’t find disastrous dates so amusing when he was participating in them.

  “You followed me home from the Underground every night for a week, John. That’s stalking. It is not the same as walking someone home.”

  “I bought you gifts.”

  “And left them on my doorstep.”

  “I… I…”

  “Stole my handbag.” Now I was angry. “Get lost before I call the police.”

  “I just wanted something of yours. A memento. You wouldn’t talk to me. I wrote a song for you.”

  Please, God, no.

  He shuffled up beside my chair, dripping water on me, capturing my hand (I should’ve sat on it), and started to… sing? Had he been comparing notes with Romeo?

  It was like something off the X Factor rejects show.

  Unable to free my hand, I closed my eyes and tried to sink in my armchair so no one could see me. Please, let it be a nightmare. I opened my eyes, but he was still there. Still singing.

  Only it was worse with my eyes open. I could see everyone staring at me or filming me on their phones and laughing. With my eyes open, there was no pretending it wasn’t real. Even daytime soaps didn’t stretch to scenarios this horrendous.

  “Sorry, miss, but we can’t have all this noise in here,” a waiter said. “People are trying to enjoy their meals.”

  “Don’t tell me,” I said. “I’m not the one making the noise. I’m suffering more than you are. I have a restraining order.” My words were drowned out by John’s singing.

  “She walks like a dream, with hair all silken brown and shining…”

  “You’re disturbing the other diners.”

  “I’m just trying to have my drink and enjoy my date.”

  Chris looked over his shoulder, avoiding my eyes. He’d shuffled his chair back from the table, distancing himself from me, like I was the weirdo in this scenario.

  “Her eyes like sapphire haunt my mind…” I couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like he was using the tune of Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” from the Titanic movie.

  “This is not cool. I am going to have to ask you to either stop or leave,” the barman-cum-waiter, a young Australian, said in a harsh whisper.

  “It’s not me!” I was shouting now and close to tears. “I want him to stop and leave too. I have a restraining order!”

  “I looooove yooou.” John dropped down on one knee beside my chair, his crescendo drowning out my words. When did men start to believe it was sexy to embarrass a woman by singing to her in public? Even Cyrano de Bergerac had the good sense to hide in the dark and to sing to Roxane when there weren’t other people around.

  “Get lost.” I half rose, trying to grab Chris and tug him back, but was hobbled by John’s hold on my hand. “No. Not you, Chris. Him. John. I don’t want you to go.”

  “Look, you’re a nice girl, Kate, but you’ve obviously got stuff going on in your life at the moment, and I’m not interested in getting involved in anything complicated. Sorry.” Chris scraped his chair back, grabbed his coat, and hurried out into the rain, so desperate to get away from me that he didn’t even pause long enough to pull it on.

  “But–” And that was it – easy-going professional male had proven just how easy-going he was. Mark, for
all his irritating habits, wouldn’t have bailed on a woman when she was obviously being harassed by some guy. “Stop it! That’s enough, John. I’m calling the police.” I fumbled for my mobile phone. “I have a restraining order and you’re breaching it.”

  “But I love you…”

  “Go away!” I screamed, stamping my foot like a tantruming two-year-old.

  “Out!”

  The doors were flung open and I went outside, “encouraged” on my way by a couple of the male bar staff.

  “Oooh!” I caught my coat mid-air as it was tossed after me and stumbled into the rain and straight into a wall of man.

  “Hey, hon.” Mark caught me on the rebound, stroked the damp hair off my face, and tucked me under his arm. Taking everything in at a glance, he turned the full force of his fury on Stalker John. “You’ve got ten seconds to get out of my sight. After that, I’m going to beat the shit out of you.”

  My hero. I sank into his warmth.

  John ran.

  I tucked my face in the crook of Mark’s neck, inhaling the scent of safe, piney, warm male. Yummy. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was just passing by.” He switched from fury to nonchalance in a heartbeat.

  I wasn’t falling for it. “Mark?”

  “I might have been a bit worried after you told me about your earlier dates. I thought I’d just walk past, look in the window, see how things were going.” Thank God for Mark. “Come on, honey. Let’s pick up a takeaway and flag a taxi and we can go home. Sexy as those shoes are, you’re never going to be able to walk home in them.” Hmm, sexy and practical.

  Chapter 18

  You might not be the best-looking person here, but beauty is only a light switch away.

  “Everyone knows finding a date in the city is getting harder and harder… so what does a loving mother do when she’s desperate for grandchildren and her daughter can’t get a man? After the break, we’ll talk to Muriel Turner, who went to extremes to fix up her daughter Kate. Back in five.”

  I cringed as Penny Shepherd gave a leader into the advertisements. It seemed that the Penny – that Mum had passed a message through Mark about – didn’t have a convict or mentally unstable male relative to palm off on me. She had something much, much worse. The Before Lunch breakfast show on TV. I’d thought appearing on billboards was humiliating, but it was nothing compared to appearing live on Before Lunch.

  I would’ve refused, but Mum had already accepted for herself, and leaving her to attend alone would be social suicide by mother. Plus, although she seemed pretty emotionally stable at the moment, it didn’t take much to set her off, and I wouldn’t want her to have a meltdown on TV with no one there to look out for her. That said, it had taken all my ingenuity to hide the old video tapes and her mobile phone, so she couldn’t supply any footage for the show. Now I just had to defuse what she said.

  “If you can wait on the suede sofa, we’re going to fit you in between the cooking segment and Top TV.”

  I followed the directions of a young woman dressed in a black t-shirt and blue jeans who was looking after us. There were a few seating groups on set, one with modern-looking leather and steel sofas, a glass coffee table, and a faux-fireplace. A smaller seating arrangement had rigid-looking chairs grouped around a TV.

  We were led to a brown sofa. Large vases of flowers stood on planters beside it. Exposed brickwork surrounded a real window overlooking the Thames. Strips of red flock wallpaper were pasted here and there, giving what I guessed on TV looked like a homey setting.

  A low glass and metal coffee table sat in front of us, heaped with papers, mugs of coffee, and glasses of water. Behind us were shelves with lilac and red vases, books, and various other things. Off to one side, Penny and Pete, the hosts, chatted, coming to attention seconds before the commercial break ended.

  I turned from watching them to face black t-shirt girl, who’d halted us by the sofa, her ponytail swinging with suppressed energy. She wore a headphone set and carried a clipboard that she referred to compulsively.

  “No, not you.” Her hand shot out, preventing me from sitting. “You sit here, Mum, closer to the camera. Kate, you sit there.” She checked her clipboard. “It should work. How does it look, guys?” She waited for a response through her headphones, nodding at whatever was said. “That’s good.”

  Clipboard girl’s eyes lost their unfocused look and zoned back in on me. I wasn’t expecting anything good to come from the concentrated attention. I wasn’t disappointed.

  “Sorry about that, Kate. I had to do it. Otherwise, on camera, the pattern on your shirt will make one of your arms look huge and the other really skinny, and we’ll get lots of calls, emails, and letters from people wanting to know what’s wrong with you.”

  Mark’s laughter echoed from just off set. I squeezed my eyes shut, taking a couple of deep breaths.

  There was a flurry of activity to my left, and suddenly Penny’s voice sounded just beside me. “Everyone knows getting a date in the city is getting harder and harder… So, what does a mum do when she’s desperate for grandchildren and her daughter can’t get a date?”

  Hey! Thanks for the intro, again, Penny.

  “Some people try dating websites; others ask their friends to set them up with people they know.” The camera light flicked off and the camera next to it lit up, words moving up the screen. Pete Somerfield took over the commentary. “Muriel Turner came up with a novel response to finding a date for her daughter Kate.”

  Jesus, it didn’t get better. The introduction had set the tone: I was desperate and incapable of finding a man for myself.

  “She bought advertising space and created digital posters advertising for a date.”

  I hoped my makeup covered the tide of embarrassment flooding my face.

  “What gave you that unusual idea, Muriel?”

  “Well, Pete, approximately five million people use the Underground every day in London,” Mum began. “Over thirty thousand people a day use Pimlico Station, let’s say half of them that’s fifteen thousand are professional males. I just assumed that some of them must be single and interested in going on a date. Even if it was just one man and he was the One, it would be worth it…”

  Pete sat on the right-hand side of the left sofa, closest to camera. Penny sat closest to the window. Mum and I faced them. I sat closest to the window and Penny. My mother (with her perfectly proportioned arms) sat closest to camera.

  “She’s your baby and you just want to see her settled and happy. I can understand that.” Penny nodded along to my mother’s words.

  Mum lapped it up. “You understand what it’s like being a mother. You do your best for your children, but you don’t get any thanks.” I rolled my eyes. I didn’t even care if the camera caught it – Penny was only a couple of years older than me. Her kids probably hadn’t even been potty trained yet.

  Pete, eyes sparking with amusement, his raven’s-wing-black hair a perfect foil for his startlingly blue eyes, took over the conversation. “What was it like for you, Kate? What did you think when your mum told you?”

  “She didn’t tell me,” I replied. “I just saw it when I was coming home from shopping one day. It was a complete” – I tried to think of a word I could use on morning television – “surprise. A complete surprise.”

  “I bet. You must have done a double take that first time.”

  “You could say that.” I grimaced. Move on already.

  “She got arrested.”

  “Mum!” It was a nightmare. If my boss was watching this and heard, I’d probably lose my job. I scanned the room for emergency exits and saw Mark watching from the edge of the set, beside one of the cameras. The clipboard woman was standing beside him casting him flirty looks. He flashed me a thumbs-up accompanied by a dazzling smile.

  He was laughing at me again.

  Bastard.

  “Arrested?” Penny scented an interesting twist to the story and latched on.

  “I was horrified. I c
ouldn’t believe she’d–”

  “It was just a small misunderstanding,” I said, cutting Mum off before she said anything worse. “As I said, it was a shock seeing one of the worst photos of me ever taken, one that I thought had been deleted, turned into dozens of digital posters and stuck up all over Pimlico Underground Station like calling cards in a telephone booth–”

  “It was nothing like that. Those women are prostitutes. I’m advertising to find a father for my grandchildren.”

  “A date for your daughter,” I corrected Mum, turning to her, so frustrated that I forgot I was on TV. “It’s not like you bothered telling me what you were going to do. And then people were making comments about me and I didn’t know why… and then I saw the digital posters of me. I thought it was some horrible joke. I just wanted to get rid of them.”

  “I didn’t raise her to deface public property.” Mum shook her head sadly, looking at Pete and Penny.

  “It was just a shock,” I said. Pete gave a small smile of sympathy. “And just in case my boss is watching, I did not commit a criminal offence. I only got a caution. I don’t have a criminal record or anything.”

  “I don’t see why you had to try to deface that lovely picture.”

  “I have to ask for everyone at home, Kate – what exactly did you do?” Penny was laughing inside, her eyes watering from holding it in. Pete was trying not to look at her. His face was getting redder and redder.

  “It was a horrid picture of me, not public property, and I didn’t deface it… exactly.” I was losing control. I felt like I was twelve again and having to explain how I’d ended up with detention for a fortnight because of a caricature I’d drawn in art class. “I pressed the emergency stop button on the escalator, so that I could reach the digital poster box thingy to try and” – break it – “switch it off.”

  “Have we got a copy of the advertisement?” Pete looked across at clipboard woman, who nodded vigorously.

  “No!” I might have shouted (okay, I definitely shouted), causing half the people on set to wince and my microphone to feed back.

  “Yes.” Pete nodded and smiled. “There it is.” There was a second of stunned silence as everyone looked between the poster, shown on a TV, and me. “Can we split-screen it, so we can see the poster and Kate side by side?” I didn’t bother to say no, just resolutely blinked back the tears. “You certainly look different here today. I probably wouldn’t recognise you at first glance. You’ve lost weight and your hair looks lovely and, ah… healthy when it’s down like it is now.”