Sam stayed quiet for a moment. He was weighing up the pros and cons. Pros: much needed help in the cracking of the female enigma. Cons: already bossy sister getting to point out where you’ve messed up.
‘I concede. You are sort of a girl, after all. Help me. Women are more confusing to work out than a suite of Ikea furniture. And they don’t even come with Allen keys.’ Sam deflated a bit further into the sofa cushions. ‘Go on then. Enlighten me. I can tell this will make your day.’ Molly’s little brother mentally braced himself.
Molly gave him the benefit of her gender.
* * *
What some women would have shouted at Sam, had his date been shown in a slow-mo replay like the worst missed goals on Match of the Day, was that his well-intentioned actions had actually been boomerangs of date behaviour that had come back to hit him squarely in the face. What Molly explained that night on the old corduroy sofa they got from Uncle Michael was that dating was a long, hazardous journey. If you didn’t tread carefully, you might just unearth a booby trap hidden by your date.
She didn’t want to make out that all women were strung more tightly than Andy Murray’s tennis racquet, but she also knew that females were natural analysts. At certain points in a relationship they pay more attention than can be healthy to the man currently in their lives. After the first week of dating: does he mention exes, does he make the first move, does he have bad breath? After the first year: does he mention marriage, does he want to move in, does he have good genetic stock? The three-month mark was a common weighing-up-period for women in a relationship and if Sam was giving all sorts of woolly, half-committed signals, he was likely to fail quicker than a nervous learner driver at a roundabout. But Molly had analysed her fair share of males, and found a good number of them wanting. She was all too aware of the seemingly insignificant domestic details that were like a smoking gun to a woman in Poirot mood (though she’d never actually twiddled a moustache herself). Did he remember that she doesn’t like peas? Never listens. Did he ask her if she wanted the last mouthful of Chunky Monkey before he shovelled? Can’t share. Did she ever go to sleep sexually frustrated? Not a giver. Molly had lived her own drawing room finales when the guilty party was put to rights for their heinous crimes. True, some women, occasionally, took the detective inspector role a little too seriously at times, but if you were choosing a partner for the rest of your life wouldn’t you want to be sure he wasn’t a selfish pig?
Though it was beginning to feel as gratuitous and embarrassing as a Channel Five documentary, Molly knew she had to deliver the coup de gras of her post- date analysis to Sam. If she didn’t point it out, she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself. Plus, on a more practical note, if Sam kept on getting dumped she was going to have to listen to ‘Walk the Line’ on repeat and pick up a lot of empties. Her reserves of sympathy only went so far before she considered a little nagging.
‘Just one more thing,’ Molly chimed in to interrupt Sam’s scowling at the TV.
‘Hmm? What is it, Columbo?’ he asked lazily. Sam thought the torture was over. Sam thought wrong.
‘The towel thing.’ Molly nodded with gravity.
‘Towel thing? What, Abby and her towel? I suppose now that the towel is a Freudian symbol of whether I respect her mother or not. Great.’ Sam folded his arms and rolled his eyes to what he was hoping was an all-male heaven.
Molly started to prise herself from the squashy comfort of the sofa. ‘Well, if you don’t want my help and you’re happy to have your most memorable relationships with the Top Gear presenters …’
Sam reached out to wave her down. ‘Joking, joking! I’m all ears.’
Molly reverse parked her medium-sized bum back into the cushions. ‘It might seem like a little thing to you, but you told Abby to bring her own towel and shampoo, because she was here so much.’
‘Yes.’ Sam’s face was as blank as his emotional intelligence rating.
‘You didn’t offer her one of your towels as her own.’
‘No.’ Blank city.
‘Sam, brother dear, you might as well have gone onto Babelfish and typed in the female equivalent of “Stop using my stuff, it’s getting on my nerves. P.S. You stay over too much and I don’t like to share my things.”‘
‘No! No!’ Sam sat bolt upright and jabbed his finger into the air. ‘That was a genuinely good, commitment-type thing that I was doing. You can’t get me on that. She couldn’t possibly think …’
Sam’s finger drooped from its indignant jabbing position. Something like recognition passed over his face.
‘By Jove, I think he’s got it,’ Molly murmured with a cheeky smile.
Chapter Three
Molly chose a dark and forgiving bar called Liquorish, at an appropriately laid back time of 10.30 for their practice date. It was packed full of warm, young bodies, dubious haircuts and many, many pretty faces. It was the perfect testing ground.
‘It’s The Lean, every time,’ Molly said as she sat down and took a sip of her mojito. ‘Oooh, this is so nice. Really tingly and refreshing. What’s your drink like?’
Sam looked down at his Martini glass; it was filled with a dark purple liquid, edible gold crusted the rim and half a passion fruit floated at one side. There was actually a bright blue flame burning inside the fruit. How or why wasn’t obvious. ‘I may have made an unwise choice. OK, so what’s with leaning?’
Molly shook her hair out behind her shoulders and settled her hands on the table, like a concert pianist warming up for an expert recital at Carnegie Hall. ‘The Lean is all about approaching someone you like and waving a big flag that says, “I’m here if you’re interested”. That’s not to say you look desperate or obvious – the charm is in its subconscious activity. The other person doesn’t know you’re leaning, they’re just all of a sudden unable to take their eyes off you.’ Molly toyed with the dense minty foliage in her glass. ‘For obvious reasons, I won’t demonstrate it on you. That would be sick and wrong and most likely illegal.’
In unison, the two siblings shivered as if an army in stiletto heels had marched over their graves.
‘Agreed. So what do I have to do?’ Sam rubbed his hands up and down his thighs, getting peanut salt on his jeans. Molly confidently counted off each point on her fingers. ‘Lean once to get their attention, just bring yourself that tiny fraction closer than you need to be. Lean again when you have an inkling they could be interested and you’ve swapped some banter. Use an excuse of picking up your drink from the bar or something to get yourself further into their personal space. Without creeping them out. On a very deep level just being that close to someone is enough to trigger thoughts of, well, you know …’
‘Yup, really happy for you to stop right there, thanks. So, it’s like a caveman thing?’ Sam blew out his passion fruit torch.
‘Exactly, Samwise. And you’ll know pretty sharpish if you’ve got your first impressions all wrong because the other person will lean back that same tiny bit you’ve leaned forward if they’re not interested. In that case you cut your losses, the fish isn’t biting. Live to lean another day.’
‘Hmmm, interesting.’ Sam raised his Martini glass to his lips and felt slightly less than manly.
‘Good. Because now it’s your turn.’ Molly swivelled in her seat and scanned the room with her pale blue eyes. ‘Now, who looks decent? Ummm, wait – she looks nice and pretty, and well presented. Over there in the red silky top thing. That is one hundred per cent a pulling top, so I don’t think you need to worry about the grumpy boyfriend factor.’
Sam had spluttered on his drink. ‘Hang on a minute! Firstly, you sound like you’re about to give them a job as your PA or something, and B, no one said there’d be a test! I haven’t … I’m not … How do I even do that? Just bowl over and start chatting away. I’m not really good with strangers and, you know, getting close to them.’ Sam scratched the back of his head and looked over at the gorgeous girl in the red top, with an anxious wince.
‘Little br
other, you are a physio: you spend all day touching and pushing and pulling strangers in their private areas. How much closer can you get?’ Molly gave a half-laugh, half-tut and shook her head.
‘Those people definitely want me to get into their personal space, though. If I do that in here and a girl isn’t too pleased, it might be me that needs the physical therapy tomorrow.’ Sam played with his watch; Molly could see he wasn’t going to find this easy.
‘Come on now, it won’t come to that,’ Molly soothed. ‘Nerves just lead to tension and tension leads to uncomfortable silences. You can be funny and charming when you want to be. Just don’t … think too hard. Go with the flow.’
‘If you start telling me to use The Force I’m going home,’ Sam muttered, wiping his sweating palms on his new jeans. ‘Just tell me what to say.’
‘Okay. You need an “in”.’
‘In where? What?’
Molly let her gaze wander about the room. She couldn’t send him off with a chat-up line, that would like be sending a gladiator into battle with a wet toothpick. Just saying ‘hello’ to start off with would be like giving him a shield of jelly. Sam needed a relaxed, funny “in” that saw him put his best foot forward and covered his back if his sparring partner decided to be fully combative. A big Martini glass full of blueberry, passion fruit and sloe gin came into her line of vision.
‘Perfect – the drink. You can use that as your “in“ – to get talking.’
‘That?’ Sam asked, lowering one brow.
‘Yup, tell her you can’t remember what you ordered but you’re not sure you’re metrosexual enough for it. Ask her what she’s had and if she’d recommend it. Perfect – bit of humour, self-deprecation and valuing her opinion. Tick, tick, tick. You can’t fail.’
‘Wha—’
‘Go on, go on.’ Molly flapped her hands at Sam and started to raise her voice. If he didn’t go now he was more likely to be embarrassed by an obnoxious sister than he was by being shot down in one of the trendiest bars in East Dulwich. He ducked off in the direction of the girl with the red top. Molly kept one beady blue eye on him, as she pretended to check her BlackBerry.
And that was how Sam met Iris.
* * *
As Molly put her Choc Dip and purse into her handbag – she couldn’t deny herself a little treat from the corner shop for successfully launching Sam on a flirting mission – she felt her phone buzz. She had a new email from her mum.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subject: Hello
Hello, darling, how’s Project Sam going? I’m just between flight transfers so don’t have time enough to chat but thought I’d check in with you. This frisking business is ridiculous, don’t you think? They made me take my laptop out of my Mulberry. I ask you!
Anyway, what with you helping Sam with his romantic woes, how about yours? I wonder if you can practise what you preach, young lady. I haven’t heard about any new boyfriends since that boring Ashley. All his talk of offshore investments, it was enough to put a girl to sleep.
And the cacti? Are they shifting? I’d love to know how your cash flow’s working out, darling. Perhaps we should talk numbers when I’m back. Let’s make a date in the diary for a green tea and wheat grass shot.
Love, Mum x
With a badly concealed groan, Molly shoved her phone back into her bag. Cleo was the last person in the world that Molly wanted to confess her entrepreneurial shortcomings too. There was no hiding from a self-made businesswoman when it came to the balance sheets. She’d rootle them out quicker than a fat pig after truffles. But, like anyone full to the brim with confidence and infectious energy, Molly’s mum was impossible not to like and be bowled over by. After all, this was a woman who’d started her very own internationally franchised chain of pottery painting studios: Terracotta Barmy. Cleo had seen a crater-shaped hole in the market and very quickly filled it with thousands of over-priced ceramic mugs. At first it was a job that was supposed to fit around her children, but as sales soared and branches kept opening, it soon worked out to be the other way around. Even though it had meant sharing her mum with thousands of other kids and always having her birthdays in the flagship branch, Molly couldn’t help but burst with pride when she told people about her mum’s achievements. And when you saw your mum nip off to work each day in a Vivienne Westwood suit and in a vintage Bentley, you picked up some pretty high goals of your own.
Chapter Four
Molly was helping Sam out of the goodness of her big sister’s heart. But toning up his dating muscles also meant she had a big distraction from her lack of work at that very moment. What made blatant career failure so much more of a pain in the bum was never being able to blame anyone else; it was perhaps the biggest drawback of being a solo businesswoman.
Taking the plunge to leave behind her steady nine-to-five nearly two years ago had been scary all right, but Molly could handle fear. She just couldn’t handle being at a loose end. Her old job as a marketing executive had her flying from meetings to client presentations to budget consultations. But as an entrepreneur she was more used to having a ten minute slot with a bank manager and then cold calling shops and department stores that might take an interest in her wares. She was persistent to the point of annoying the receptionist at the M&S head office, but it hadn’t paid off yet. Now and then Molly would feel a smattering of longing for her old job – when she saw someone in a sharp suit, sipping a coffee and swearing into an iPhone, for example – but she’d never really intended to work for someone else, let alone for four whole years.
Heavy Pets was a pretty niche operation: they made diet foods for overweight cats and dogs. Molly didn’t think it would be going global anytime soon so figured she could breeze out the doors at 5.30 p.m. each day as the marketing assistant. However, after she suggested an alternative brand name – No More Fat Cats – sales doubled. Then quadrupled. Then got a whole new batch of zeroes on the end. The MD couldn’t thank Molly enough, promoted her to the head of her department and very quietly paid her a bonus that made her eyes water and her mouth go dry.
The bonus was so big, in fact, that it became the deposit for the flat. And the job threw another perk her way, in the tall and handsome shape of Ashley, the young head of export sales. After a rather rambunctious sales conference in an Essex convention centre, Ashley concocted some corny double entendre about checking out Molly’s private brief … ing notes. The relationship that followed seemed to fit as perfectly as a Lycra dress around JLo’s bum. Until Ashley asked Molly to move in with him.
It was all tea in bed and shared showers. Well, for the first three months. But when Molly’s career kept advancing and Ash’s stalled somewhere around selling cat food to countries that had no equivalent of ‘fat cats’ in their vernacular, the tea went cold and their shower schedules didn’t match up. Ashley had never lived without a cleaner slipping in every Sunday to pick up his socks and wash his plates and water his plants. Molly had never lived with someone who dropped his socks in the living room, left his plates to fester or who could happily walk past a dying plant without so much as a double take. Crucially, nether one thought they were in the wrong. One huge row about taking out the bins, and a year-long relationship was put out for good.
‘Lucky, isn’t it? That I didn’t find anyone to rent my room.’ Molly said with all the forced cheerfulness of a Butlin’s Redcoat as Sam helped her move her things back into the flat just four months after she’d left it. As she slotted her DVDs back into the rack in the living room, she felt a sting as each one hit the wooden shelf. Yes, she had been miserable these past months as things unravelled – not to mentioned that she’d hardly had time to brush her teeth, let alone have drawn-out domestics about hoovering – but it didn’t mean that she wasn’t sad to lose a boyfriend who seemed to understand her drive to get to the top. And who gave great back rubs.
Molly threw herself into her work with her whole being. All of a sudden, two yea
rs had gone by; she had hardly seen her friends; she hadn’t been on a date, still feeling singed from the crash and burn with Ash; and she was no closer to becoming the next Anita Roddick. Having put enough in the savings account to cover the mortgage for a while, she decided it was time to hang up her sensible heels and go it alone. The MD cried and tried to use morbidly obese cats as emotional blackmail. But Molly knew it was time.
Molly’s most recent entrepreneurial idea had come from trying to choose Cleo flowers on her birthday: they were all pink, blousy, over-priced creations trussed up in crepey ribbon. Cleo was too sharp for pink tulips, and Molly liked things to be edgy. And then it hit her.
Please let this be my Reggae Reggae Sauce, Molly thought to herself as she had laid out the pitch to her mum and asked her for a small business loan. Cleo had already leant her £4000 to begin her first business. That money had sadly gone the way of an M&S banoffee pie: it had disappeared in one go. Another £4000 would see Molly back in the business saddle. Slightly unconvinced, Cleo anyway wrote a cheque and Say It With Cacti was born. Molly would deliver gorgeous, one-off cacti – of varying size, shape and pointy-ness – with a gift card, of course, for that wittily sharp little message. Like flowers; but better. And requiring much less maintenance.
Sadly, despite a niftily designed website and local advertising, an online marketing campaign, plus the bemused observations of some horticultural bloggers, Molly’s cactus gift service just hadn’t taken root. Which left her with no orders coming in, no cash flow to speak off and her friend Dan’s greenhouse in Honour Oak filled to the brim with unwanted, rather hard to handle little specimens. Molly was still trying to bully retailers into featuring her little bristly devils on their websites or in their garden centres, determined to keep at it until it worked and sprouted into the black.
The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp Page 2