The Stand In

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The Stand In Page 21

by Alam, Donna


  And I did that. I made him look like he was trying not to lose his mind.

  If I’m not very sex positive, how come all I can do is think of sex with him?

  ‘So, what are you going to do?’

  Pretend to see Archer between work hours for a few more weeks, if he’s amenable, and see where things go with Barney over email, I suppose. I expect I’ll alternate between mooning over Archer and getting annoyed when I actually speak to him because that’s the sort of relationship we seem to have.

  ‘What am going to do is go on a date with a banker from DeHoare tomorrow night.’ You know, the private investment bank.

  ‘Ha, good one. You nearly had me there.’ Vivi presses her glass to her lips before pausing. ‘Why do I think you’re actually telling the truth?’

  ‘Because I am.’

  ‘You’re adding another one into the mix. How is that going to help?’

  ‘Because Archer is clearly uninterested in anything other than boffing me, and as fun as that was, it’s not a great plan for the long term. Barney’s not going to be around for a few weeks, and quite frankly, I think I could do with the practice.’

  ‘Sex?’ Daisy squeaks.

  ‘No, socialising. Dating. Before that arse dumped me on my birthday, I hadn’t dated in months. My socialisation skillset isn’t exactly stellar to begin with. If I want to give this thing with Barney a go when he gets back from Africa, then I think I’m going to go on a few dates.’ Not to mention the whole dating thing makes me feel ill, both mentally and physically.

  ‘And where are these dates going to spring from?’

  ‘This.’ I pick up my pone and waggle it between us. ‘I’ve reinstalled the E-Volve app.’

  ‘I really don’t think you’re cut out for the online dating jungle.’ Vee frowns sort of hesitatingly over at me. ‘The words Christians, throwing and lions spring to mind.’

  ‘Nonsense, I’ll be fine. And Jeremy from DeHoare Private Bank is expecting to meet me tomorrow for a drink.’

  ‘No! Not drinks for a first date!’ she cries. ‘Daylight and a coffee shop, which means you can cut it to ten minutes if it’s not working for you or let it run longer if you’re having fun. And preferably a place with multiple exits, if you can, in case you need to escape on the sly.’

  ‘That all seems very complicated. It’s just a drink in a pub.’

  ‘On Saturday night. Heather, Saturday nights are reserved for friends and people you’ve already met in real life.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘I don’t make the rules. It’s just the way London dating life is. If you’re available to meet a virtual stranger on any given Saturday evening, you’re either saying I have no life or I want to have sex.’

  I eye my friend critically. I know she lives this life, casual dating and sometimes casual sex, but I also know she never gives any man a chance. Should I be taking dating tips from her?

  ‘Look, what’s done is done. Just be sure to give me a call if you need to escape.’

  ‘Now you’re just being melodramatic.’

  ‘No, I’m being serious. There are some real creeps out there.’

  ‘How creepy can he be? He works for DeHoare, for goodness’ sakes! He’s a banker, just one step up in terms of excitement stakes from a civil servant!’

  ‘Creeps come in all shapes, sizes, careers, and bank balances. And if he’s available for a first date on a Saturday evening, chances are he’s probably a creep. Or he’s looking for sex. Possibly both.’

  ‘He looked very normal on his profile.’

  ‘They never look like they do on their profile,’ Daisy chirps.

  ‘Dais, you’ve been engaged to the same man since you were a baby. You’ve never even downloaded a dating app on your phone.’

  ‘True, but I work with lots of people who have, and I hate to say it, but I’ve heard some horror stories in the staff room from both men and women.’

  ‘If you’re really going to do this, and I know you are because you’re stubborn, you need to remember the rule of fives,’ Vee advises sternly. ‘You need to see at least five candid images of them to be certain they look like they imply they do, often by virtue of being good with camera angles or using photos from years ago. Also, you should always minus five inches from their height and add five years to their age.’

  ‘Look, I’m not interested in what they look like. I’m not looking to fall in love. I just want to get my feet wet a bit.’

  ‘It’s not wet feet men are looking for. Although, I have come across one or two with a thing for feet.’

  ‘Eww. I can’t see how it’ll even come to that. We’re talking about a succession of first dates, not an intimate friendship when you divulge these sorts of things.’

  ‘You poor, sweet deluded fool.’

  ‘If you’re trying to frighten me, it’s not working, Vee. Men can’t all be bad, can they? Look at Daisy all coupled up and in love. And Barney is a good sort. Hell, even Archer! He’s upfront about not wanting to get involved beyond sex. No one can fault him for that.’

  ‘You never talk about your love life,’ Daisy says quietly. ‘I do wonder what makes you so resistant to getting involved.’

  ‘I suppose I just haven’t found the right one.’

  ‘But you’ve dated lots of nice men,’ Daisy persists. ‘You just haven’t dated them for very long.’

  ‘Okay, so I have trust issues.’ Vee leans forward, grabbing a stuffed Piquante pepper and popping it into her mouth.

  ‘But why do you?’ Daisy persists.

  Vee laughs without humour. ‘You mean, apart from growing up with an absent father and a revolving succession of men going in and out of your mother’s bedroom door, shortly followed by her drunken wailing and overplaying of Queen’s “Love of My Life”, and her occasional suicide attempts. Or could it be because I longed for the opposite, devoting myself to the first and only boy I’ve ever loved, even following him to the same university.’

  ‘Why do we not know this stuff?’ I ask gently.

  ‘Because it’s in the past. Because it doesn’t matter anymore.’

  ‘But it does, because it looks like it’s still making you feel like shit.’

  ‘Tell us about it, lovely.’ Daisy moves to the sofa, laying her hand over Vee’s. ‘A problem shared—’

  ‘Is usually a trending topic in my line of work.’

  We all laugh, the cloud of disharmony melting along with the sounds.

  ‘Look, I haven’t told you because it’s something that happened a long time ago. He was the love of my young life, and things ended badly.’

  ‘Relationships hardly ever end with a hale and hearty handshake,’ Daisy offers. ‘Breakups are by their nature unpleasant.’

  ‘I didn’t say it was unpleasant,’ she replies with a familiar gleam in her eye. A gleam that reminds me of nights where lacklustre waiting staff are reprimanded and bothersome men put in their place. Yep, Vee is that friend. The feisty one. ‘In fact, I’d say it was almost satisfying. For me, at least. And once I’d got over the fact that he was cheating on me. Anyway, it was all a long time ago. You’re sure you want to hear this?’

  ‘Only if you want to tell us,’ I answer on behalf of us both.

  ‘Well, take this as a warning, young Padawan. He and I may not have met through a dating app, but technology played a part in his deceit. So, we’d been going out about a year, which is positively decades in teenage terms. He was my first proper boyfriend. The boy I gifted my virginity to, though I suppose I was a little less passive in the whole gifting thing. You could say I was besotted and head over heels in love. And devastated when I found out he’d been sliding into other girls dm’s.’

  ‘He’d been what?’ Daisy asks, perplexed. Technology and Dais are not best of friends. In fact, I’m pretty sure she’d still be using a flip phone if the ancient artefact hadn’t died a year ago.

  ‘He’d been messaging other girls on Facebook,’ I say, looking at Vee for con
firmation. ‘Sliding into their dm’s is what it’s called these days.’

  ‘Do they? Sounds like a dick move, whatever you want to call it.’

  ‘Yes, my roommate at the time seemed to think so, too. So between us, once the crying was all over, and after I swore I would not let any man turn me into my mother, we made a fake Facebook profile, complete with sexy profile pictures, and set to sending friend requests to people in his social circle. His friends, mainly.’

  ‘Devious,’ I say agreeably. I get it. I really do.

  ‘Young men are so gullible. It was probably a little petty on my part, but I maintain it was no less than he deserved.’

  ‘That’s more like the Vee I know and love. What was next?’

  ‘We sent him a friend request and persuaded him we, she, had met him at a party a little while before. That they’d flirted, made out, but that it hadn’t gone any farther because she had a boyfriend. And now she hadn’t . . . because she couldn’t get my boyfriend out of her head.’

  I notice she refuses to speak of him by name.

  ‘And he fell for it?’

  ‘Oh, he fell for it. Fell for the flattery hook, line, and sinking bloody sinker.’

  I find myself wiggling to the end of the chair cushion, leaning forward almost eagerly. And not to better reach the veggie chips. ‘Then what happened?’

  ‘Phone calls. Phone calls where my roommate pretended to be Kirsty, the lovely Scots lass who was desperate to see him again. My roommate, Jayne, was heavily into amateur dramatics, even if I thought her Scottish accent was a bit dodgy, not that he appeared to notice.’

  ‘He was probably too swept up in the flattery of it all.’

  ‘And the dirty talk.’

  ‘Oh, the details.’

  ‘Yes, the devil is in the details. Or maybe the underwear of a cheating boyfriend. You just can’t mess around with people’s feelings. It’s wrong.’ Why does this fill like a warning directed me? ‘I’m nobody’s doormat.’

  ‘This we already know,’ Daisy says, ‘but I didn’t think you were the type who went in for revenge.’

  ‘I didn’t want revenge. Not really. He pretended to be something he wasn’t—single—while pledging his heart to me. I wanted to teach him a lesson. In exchange for the one he taught me. One I’ve been hanging onto since. And that lesson is I’m not made for relationships. I opened my heart to him, and he chucked it on the floor, then trampled on it in his haste to get into another girl’s knickers. All while stringing me along, acting like everything was normal. Pretending to still be the person I thought he was. He was the first man I ever got close to, emotionally and physically, and I hadn’t had a whole lot of positive role models up until that point. I held him up as an example of what a man could be. And I was a fool. He hurt me. I wasn’t going to let him get away with that.’

  The three of us fall quiet for a moment, perhaps processing her words.

  ‘So, what happened in the end?’ Daisy eventually asks.

  ‘The lovely Kirsty suggested he get the train to Edinburgh to meet her. She had the house to herself as her parents were away for the weekend.’

  ‘She promised him the sexy times?’

  ‘She may have promised him multiple sexy times. And he told me he was seeing an old mate in Edinburgh for the weekend, so like a dutiful girlfriend, I went to Kings Cross station with him, where he held me in his arms and gave me longest kiss. He told me he’d miss me, and that he couldn’t wait until he was back. Then he hopped on the train and blew me kisses through the window as the train pulled out of the station. And the devil was in those details.’

  ‘What a devious shit. What a total bastard!’

  ‘He was an unhappy bastard when I called him once the train was about an hour out of Edinburgh. I told him that Kirsty was a creation of mine, and that he hadn’t much chance of finding anywhere to stay at ten o’clock at night on the weekend of Edinburgh Fringe. Then I hung up and laughed my bloody head off. It was the kind of overly bright, manic kind of laughter. The kind that inevitably turns to tears. But they were also cathartic. And a vow, if you like. And I’ve never let a man hurt me since.’

  That’s . . .’ a little sad, I want to say, but I don’t. And for the life of me, I can’t find anything else to add.

  ‘That’s life.’ Vee stands suddenly, holding her hand out of my phone. ‘Let me see this wanker banker from DeHoare, then. See if he makes my serial killer senses tingle.’

  I dutifully pick up my phone and open the app before handing it to her.

  ‘Jeremy. He’s not bad looking. And he doesn’t look at all germy.’

  ‘He looks perfectly boring,’ I suggest, because after Archer’s dramatic looks and Barney’s resemblance to a good-looking hound, I thought I’d better go with unremarkable.

  ‘You’re set on this?’

  ‘As a course of action? Yes. Stuck on him?’ I look down at my phone to how I’ve somehow swiped my way unconsciously to Archer’s text. ‘No. I’m not stuck on him.’

  Because how can I be?

  23

  Heather

  What if the person who turns up isn’t the person whose profile it is, and I get catfished?

  Or what if he isn’t five years older and five inches shorter, but ten?

  Or even, what if he’s five years younger than me? Some kid who’s gotten a hold of his philandering father’s phone, and he’s on his way to punish me for his progenitor’s misdeeds?

  I’m so caught up in my stupid panicking that I almost birth kittens from sheer shock as my phone buzzes with a text, my body immediately releasing relief endorphins as I convince myself he isn’t coming.

  Stop letting your mind run away with you, Vivi’s text reads, proving how well she knows me. Remember, I’m going to call in thirty minutes.

  This call was prearranged and mainly agreed to as a way of making Vee feel a little better about my choices. But thank bloody fuck I gave in, I decide as another wave of relief washes over me. The plan is, she’ll ask how it’s going and if I need blue lighting out of there, I’m to say, “No, not Auntie Nelly!” And she’ll order me a cab to be there straight away.

  Neither of us have an Aunt Nelly, so I don’t mind us faking her death.

  Got it, I text back, my phone immediately binging with another text.

  We love and support whatever you do.

  This from Daisy and followed by a dozen kisses. I guess this is friend speak for: you’re an arsehole, but we’re going to let this one play out. And the kisses? Please report back; we have popcorn.

  I place my phone on the table and pick up my drink; a wine and soda spritzer. It’s not exactly hip or chic but more like the kind of alcoholic beverage that wouldn’t get a twelve-year-old drunk.

  Good God, why did I think I could do this again?

  Suck it up. You’re a grown-up who wants a real grown-up relationship, that’s why.

  Well, I am a grown-up. One with sticky palms and prickle of dread and perspiration dancing down her spine. I hope my blouse doesn’t have damp patches, I unhelpfully think as I surreptitiously glance down at my pits. It’s not even warm in this pub, but I’m sweating while also wishing I’d brought my armour-plated cardigan rather than the pale boat necked sweater I’m wearing paired with cigarette pants.

  I cast my eyes over the room again. A north London pub with pretentions and an ironic name. The Spit and Sawdust. Thankfully, there’s not a fleck of either in sight. Micro brewed beers on tap, top shelf liquors behind a gleaming bar, and pub grub that’s a little street food yet a little gourmet.

  I’ve chosen a table near the door, just in case I need to bolt, but not so near that I get cold every time the thing opens.

  What happens if he doesn’t turn up?

  What happens if he does?

  Do I stand to greet him? Hold out my hand? Proffer my cheek for a little peck.

  ‘Heather, right?’

  ‘Um, what?’ I blink up at the man who definitely doesn’t need to work a
camera angle because he’s already pretty good looking—and as tall as his bio made out. Just shy of six foot, if you’re wondering. ‘Oh, Jeremy. Hello!’ I jump to my feet at the same time as he leans in for a kiss, effectively smashing the top of my skull into his nose. ‘Oh, my God, I’m so, so sorry!’ I whisper, awestruck, because only I could make this kind of lasting impression.

  With a groan, he more like slumps than sits onto the chair opposite, both hands covering his nose as though the thing is gushing blood. It isn’t, by the way.

  ‘Fucking hell.’ Holy annunciation, posh boy. ‘I’m so pleased tonight is my last date.’

  What the what-what?

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘My last date,’ he says, pulling away his hands and prodding the bridge of his nose gently. ‘No need to look so worried,’ he says when it becomes clear to his roaming fingers that all is well. ‘She wasn’t nearly as pretty as you. Good kisser, though.’ And then he winks.

  Ew. Just ew. And his bio made him sound so genuinely lovely.

  Likes: Dogs. Long walks in country parks. Foreign cinema. And his eighty-year-old granny.

  Auntie Nelly, I’m so sorry you’re about to be killed off before the end of the first episode.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ I shoot out of my chair, blurting the first thing that comes to my head.

  ‘This place has table service,’ he says with a smirk, like I’m such a dolt.

  ‘Yes, but I have to get my steps in!’ I shove my arm behind my back as I add, ‘Oh, would you look at that. I appear to have forgotten to put on my FitBit.’

  I don’t have a FitBit. I have a Chinese rip-off I ordered from Amazon that my brother Dan, or Orion, depending on how much he’s annoying me, dubbed a ShitBit. And it turns out, he was right. It lasted only a week.

  ‘A sort like you doesn’t need to keep count of her steps. But I’ll tell you what. I have a better way you can get in some of those all-important steps. My place. I’ll even let you go on top.’

  Ewie-ewie-ewie. The horrible man winked at me again!

 

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