The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp

by The Bad Boyfriends Bootcamp (retail) (epub)

  Kurt put up his hand.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Can we take notes?’

  Molly’s heart swelled with pride. Handing out the A4 sheets to each bootcamper, she replied. ‘Of course, though I will be emailing you all with the main points we cover today and your individual SWOT analysis report. These forms have an information sheet for you to fill in with your email address and other necessary details, plus a Direct Debit instruction to your bank to start your membership payments.

  ‘What’s SWOT analysis?’ John asked, blinking down at his form. ‘Are we doing actual army stuff, with guns?’

  Simon immediately perked up.

  ‘Um, no, I’d never take an analogy so far as to actually pick up a firearm. SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats. The questionnaire on the third sheet there will give me some information on your relationship history and personality type so I can assess what are your best selling points, where you might have gone wrong in the past, and how we move on and find the right girl for you. No balaclavas are involved anywhere in this training programme, I promise.’

  ‘So that’s why there’s a box to fill in for how many girlfriends we’ve had?’ John asked.

  ‘When you say girlfriends,’ Simon ventured,’ do you mean actual girlfriends, or girls we’ve just—’

  ‘Actual girlfriends, thanks,’ Molly broke in, with a good idea of where that had been going. ‘If you bought them a birthday present, if you ever met parents or siblings, or had pet names for each other – that sort of thing. Sharing a pillow once is not enough to qualify as a girlfriend, I’m afraid.’

  Molly made a mental note. Simon: potential commitment issues.

  The men all got busy with their pens and paper, sharing both their bank details and the ups and downs of their romantic pasts. Molly had figured, when planning for this joint session, that doing both was going to be a lot easier for these guys if it was on paper and not face-to-face. Nearly everyone had a tendency to lie about who-dumped-whom, and though Molly could easily see through ‘It was a mutual decision’ it would save her a lot of time and mental energy if she just got the cold, hard facts.

  Molly would get her diary out when the surveys were done. All three guys needed a one-to-one with Rachel where she’d tactfully pile up the clothes that Oxfam could at least do something with and sketch out four essential outfits for them: first date; casual date; Friday night date; the ‘all the way’ date. It might just happen that lots of the components of these outfits could be found at Taupe. Rachel couldn’t wait to get her hands on life-sized Ken dolls of her very own and get lots of brownie points from Martin in the process.

  The second step for the bootcamp troops would be to take their life in their hands and endure three hours a weekend with Josie, huffing and puffing on Peckham Rye Common. The three bootcamp founders had had a rather enjoyable afternoon just after New Year, watching a few movies featuring their favourite pin-ups and pin-pointing those very vital physical attributes that women went for. Considering that Rach liked them lean and trendy-looking and Josie went for the big, burly quarterback sort, it made for a diverse list. It soon became easier to focus in on what they didn’t like to see: beer bellies, double chins and that grey-skinned, greasy look that came from too many take-aways and beer bongs.

  ‘Right, pens down!’ Molly tried to force some more humour into the occasion as she collected up the forms. ‘I thought we’d start at the beginning: first dates. They are, after all, the make-or-break moment – you won’t get a chance to get to be a boyfriend, let alone a good one, if the first date doesn’t go to plan.’

  Her three pupils nodded sagely.

  ‘I can’t give you a script of what exactly to say and do,’ – at this Kurt looked a bit crestfallen – ‘but I’m going to give you three heat-seeking tips. If you can manage to drop these bombs of dating expertise in the course of the date, you’ll be giving yourself the best chance of date number two. Are you ready?’

  Molly got one shrug and a wincing smile in reply.

  ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t hear you.’ Molly raised her voice and pulled back her shoulders as she shouted, ‘Are you READY?’

  ‘Yes, sir!’ called three now-eager voices.

  To: Simon; Kurt; John

  From: The Colonel

  Subject: Bootcamp Basics 1: The First Date

  At ease, cadets. To recap on today’s session, here are the three golden rules of first date behaviour. Use them on your next opportunity, but please refrain from taking reminder cards on a date (yes, I mean you, Kurt).

  1) Make it personal

  Asking questions is always a great way to get to know someone and make a connection, but no woman likes to feel like she’s on Mastermind while at Pizza Express. Ask questions by all means, but tell her some small personal details about yourself as the date goes on. Did your childhood pet die in a semi-funny, semi-sad way? What was the naughtiest thing you ever did at school? Has your mum ever really embarrassed you? By the way, the anecdote I told you about my mum and the pig pyjamas must stay just between us.

  Sharing sweet little anecdotes will not only give your date a good few laughs but it’ll show you’re not afraid to be honest and take the mickey out of yourself. Always an attractive quality, trust me. Don’t get too dark or heavy – and keep relationship stories way off the menu for now – but share those weird, silly stories from your past. Everyone loves a kidder.

  2) Get physical(ish)

  You don’t want to leave your date in any doubt that you like her but you don’t want to force that down her throat by, well, trying to force your tongue down her throat at the end of the night. Instead, give her lots of subtle physical clues that you are definitely interested – a hand on her back as you walk through a doorway, a playful punch on the arm if she teases you, taking her hand as you stroll back to the tube. Stay close when you’re at the bar or at a table, but if she pulls away you might be barking up the wrong one. If you think things are going really well then by all means go for the snog but don’t ruin the atmosphere by stressing about it. Date two is just as plum an opportunity for saliva-swapping. And no one likes to kiss a man who’s wobbling with nerves and has sweat on his upper lip.

  3) Listen and learn

  Your date will drop into conversation the names of those closest to her and other little details: what her brother’s called, what her best friend does for a living, how she feels about her boss. Make a mental note of these details and use them further down the conversational line. It will show her that you’re paying attention to every single thing about her and that you’re definitely interested. You’ll own massive bonus points on the next date or when you call for a spontaneous chat if you can ask her about her day and then say, ‘Oh, yeah, you said Gina can be a bit grumpy on Monday mornings. Did she ask you to do her invoices again? She’s so cheeky.’ You’ll show your date that you want to be part of her life and that, in fact, you’re already fitting in nicely.

  Next time: Meeting and impressing the best friend. Limber up, gentlemen, this one is particularly tough! Talking of limber, enjoy your session with Private Kick-ass this week. Just a tip: her bite is very much just as bad as her bark. She’s evil; I know first-hand. But think of the abs!

  I did say it would be painful …

  The Colonel x

  Chapter Twenty

  ‘New year: new us; new them!’ Molly stood back and admired her handiwork – an entire wall covered in yellow sticky notes, each one with a word or phrase scrawled hastily on it. They represented her thoughts on the things men often get wrong and how she could direct her willing bootcampers along a more female-friendly path. Words like ‘Listen!’ ‘Text appeal’ and ‘Toenails’ leapt out at her in thick purple pen. She flopped back on the sofa, content and mentally spent.

  Josie digged her in the ribs from her position on the adjacent sofa cushion. ‘That was like watching a master at work, you know. You went into kind of a trance. It was almost spooky.’

&n
bsp; ‘Hmm,’ murmured Rachel, as she slurped down some piping hot mocha chino. ‘Like an idiot savant.’

  ‘I would throw a cushion at you, Rach, but I value that coffee. And my Habitat cushion. Shush now, or I reduce your fashion advice sessions with the bootcampers to just socks and hats.’

  Rach rolled her expertly lined eyes. Molly was always jealous of how artlessly Rachel achieved ‘smoky’, never veering into ‘trampy’ as her own attempts so frequently did. Mostly, Molly just stuck to plain old mascara and lip gloss.

  ‘Easy, girls! Let’s not fight amongst ourselves,’ Josie teased in her smooth Californian tone. ‘The enemy is out there.’ She cocked a thumb at the white wall now mosaic-ed with Post-its. ‘Where does all this come from, Molly? If this is all the result of one bad boyfriend, I want to know where you hid his body because I have a few old bones of my own to throw in. Did I ever tell you about Carl, the guy with the Ultimate Fighting obsession and hair plugs?’

  Molly laughed. ‘Nope, but if he inspires you, get writing.’ She handed over the notes and pen to her energetic new friend. ‘I had my own taste of an unpalatable male when I lived with Ash.’

  ‘Oh Ashley, Ashley!’ Rachel hammed in her best Gone With the Wind impression, clutching her hands together at her bosom and mock-swooning. ‘I do declare, Miss Molly, that he was the most skanky man I ever did see.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Molly agreed, ‘just thinking about the things he left in the fridge makes the hairs on the back of my neck stick up. In fact, I think the mouldy things grew their own hair. But some of Ash’s stuff pales in comparison to the stories I heard at No More Fat Cats. There was quite a little support group during tea breaks for those afflicted with no-hope boyfriends. You know, I should give those girls a ring – they might want to sign up their scruffy other halves to our programme! I doubt their men have got any less weird over the years.’

  ‘Um, we are three grown women staring at a wall covered in sticky notes,’ Rachel pointed out with a sage tilt of her head. ‘We are the picture of weird right now.’

  ‘Women are never weird, they’re just “kooky”, don’t forget. It’s the rule of thumb that saves Lady Gaga from being sectioned every day,’ Molly countered confidently.

  ‘Fair dos. Hey, hand me a Post-it. I need to write “cheating, selfish scumbag”. Good old Rick,’ Rach spat out as she slapped the note on the wall. ‘If it wasn’t bad enough that he was running around looking for loose women, he wore horribly old, loose grey pants. Eurgh, the stains. But he wouldn’t throw them away. Even when I bought him new ones! He was such a stubborn arse. A stubborn love rat arse.’

  Molly nipped over to her gorgeous friend to provide a calming hair-stroke. ‘Shhh, shhh now, Donatella. The nasty man is gone now, taking his philandering, poorly underweared ways with him. We won’t see him again. He’s gone to the same place as the guy I dated who burped after every mouthful when we went to the nice French restaurant that time.’

  ‘Phew. OK. You’re right.’ Rachel took a deep breath and composed herself.

  ‘The same place as Carl and all his protein shakes and his need to be in control of everything. I ditched him when he suggested I could do with a butt implant. Can you imagine!’

  Two pairs of eyes immediately sneaked to Josie’s perfectly pert behind. They could not imagine.

  ‘But it’s not just about our pet peeves, ladies.’ Josie’s brow knitted as she turned a little bit serious. ‘We need to do our research, out in the field. We’re not just polishing up boyfriends for ourselves, are we? This is an act of humanity, a peacekeeping global mission to improve relationships everywhere. We need to know what all those other women want too.’

  Molly chewed her lip and twiddled a strand of her poker-straight hair. ‘Good point. I’ll put that on my list.’ Molly whipped her BlackBerry out from her back pocket. She was still eternally grateful that her old boss had never remembered to ask for it back when she left No More Fat Cats. Besides, she’d bought her own shiny purple case for it, so felt it was now at home with her and would only be traumatised to be re-homed. Molly tapped out In-the-field market research needed with both thumbs and poked the phone back into her jeans pocket.

  ‘What if,’ Rachel started, fluffing her hair into a careful bed-head style after Molly had flattened it with her well-meaning strokes, ‘we make a man so lovely and perfect that we suddenly fancy him? Can we keep him?’

  ‘Nope.’ Molly shook her head once, but very sharply. ‘It’s like a doctor-patient privilege. Morally wrong. It would be like Robin Williams dating Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting. Granted, we’re not that hairy, but still.’

  ‘Hmmm. That’s a shame,’ Rach’s bottom lip stuck out just a fraction, ‘I quite fancied the idea of a perfect man.’

  ‘Hey, we’ll find our guys somewhere else, there’s no big rush. If we get our own feelings mixed up in this I predict it getting all rather messy. Deal?’

  ‘Deal!’ Josie shot her arm up into the air for a high five, quick as a flash. Two South Londoners blinked back in response. ‘Not the right moment? No? OK, I’ll get it one of these times.’ Josie shrugged her shoulders and smiled sweetly.

  ‘Sure you will.’ Molly nudged Josie’s shoulder with her own. ‘Now what about this market research?’

  * * *

  ‘Darling! How are you? Why don’t you ever call your mother?’ Cleo Cooper, as ever, liked to multi-task – and conversations were no exception. ‘I haven’t heard from you properly in ages. And what is all that in the background?’

  Molly wedged the phone between her chin and shoulder blade, hefted her heavy basket onto the end of the conveyor belt and lifted an apologetic smile to the cashier, who looked like she’d use Molly’s Club Card as a ninja star if she held up this long queue for one more minute than was necessary.

  ‘I’m at the supermarket, Mum. I’m fine, thanks, just been very busy with …’ Molly unloaded a box of Crunchy Nut onto the conveyor and puzzled on just how much to share with her perfectionist mother, as the delicious nutty flakes were carried smoothly away. Yes, there was some money coming in now – a healthy batch of sign-up fees, as well as lots of one-off sums for training sessions – but Molly knew she’d gotten carried away with business ideas in the past. What if the shelf life of The Boyfriend Bootcamp was only as long as this bag of Caesar salad? What if things crumbled as easily as, well, this apple crumble? After sinking so low in her mother’s financial expectations, Molly didn’t want to risk making things worse until she was sure the business was solid. As solid as this … Molly scanned her basket. She only had some yoghurt and a flake left in there. Well, the bootcamp would be solid eventually and Molly would know to tell her mum just when that tipping point came. Then – and only then – would she confess all to the super-achieving, UK Business Woman of the Year 1995, Cleo Cooper.

  ‘… busy with all sorts,’ Molly finished, after exhausting her store of food analogies and coming up with an economical truth policy.

  ‘Good, good. Sam and Iris sound like they’re having a fabulous time, by all accounts. And I’ve met her mother and sister – just as gorgeous and petite as dear Iris, the lucky things – we had a lovely big brunch the other week to begin the wedding plan proper. I did drop you an email but there was no response …’

  Molly remained tactically quiet. Last week had been full of planning meetings with Josie and Rach, and running fitness training tests with John, Simon and Kurt (John hadn’t spoken to her for a few days after that. Either he was angry at the generally pain and misery caused, or he’d dislocated his voice box with all the marching and chanting). Plus she’d started to break down the theory side of dating into themes and topics, for the easiest possible digestion. There was a lot to talk about – she had five sides of A4 just on why it’s annoying to keep a pile of loose change on the bedside table, and the dresser. And every other bloody useless place.

  Molly decided not to say anything at all, and hoped Cleo would move impatiently on.

  ‘Hmm, well, what we
decided was to split the responsibilities into equal shares and accept that this will be a patchwork quilt sort of wedding, rather than a factory-sewn one. We’ll do as much as we can ourselves, so we know it’s done right and on time. To tell you the truth, Mollypops, I can’t wait!’ Cleo’s voice had the shrill of exhilaration that only a mother can express when put almost entirely in charge of her child’s wedding. ‘Now, I’ve found an ethical wedding fair in Greenwich that I think may group together the sort of suppliers we want. I can’t even face the idea of being crammed into Earl’s Court with all those other poor women – like blow-dried lambs to the credit card slaughter. I refuse to go there. I want ethical, and if possible organic, produce in everything. I will only agree to a four-tier chocolate fountain if I can be assured that the coco beans were picked by fairly-paid Guatemalans over the age of fifteen.’

  Molly squinted at the Flake being bleeped through the till in front of her. She vowed to check the label carefully before demolishing it with a cup of tea.

  ‘A fair, right. When is it? I’m tied up with … things … in the evenings, mostly, and weekends.’

  ‘As I am just being Mum and not Bank of Mum, I won’t ask any questions, Molly. I’m just happy you’re busy. The fair is in a few weeks, I’ll send through the details. Wear sensible shoes and get plenty of sleep the night before – we won’t rest until I have a completely crossed-off list. And somehow we have to find organic cotton chair covers in antique rose-cream with scalloped lace edging. Anyway, Pops, what plans do you have for next week?’

  Molly mentally ran through her diary as she tapped in her PIN number in front of the weary cashier. ‘Um, the usual – working, bit of housework, trying to get to the gym a bit more at the mome—’

  ‘No, darling! Next week: Valentine’s Day. Any plans? A date in the pipeline? Something romantic with a significant other? I may be your mother and a workaholic, but I do have a calendar. Plus, we do special heart-shaped and candlelit evening sessions in store during February.’