Would Like to Meet

by Polly James

  “Darken your eyebrows a bit, as well,” she says, “then brush them flat. You’ve got white hairs sticking out.”

  She’s given me so many things to do by the time she rings off that I don’t have time to think of a good enough excuse to cancel my date before I end up in the taxi, still trying to pull off the “up-do” Eva described as “idiot-proof”. (She tells lies.)

  I finally give up on my hair, which is now in some sort of “half-up, half-down do”, in order to concentrate on breathing through my nose. I overdo it a bit and let out a sudden snort, which makes both me and the driver jump.

  “You all right, love?” he says, glancing at me in his rear-view mirror.

  “Never better,” I say, as much to convince myself as him.

  There follows an awkward silence, during which I find something else to worry about: what if Mr FairandSquare and I have nothing to talk about? Esther says she always prepares topics of conversation whenever she has a date, but I thought that was so tragic I didn’t bother to do it myself. Now I’m starting to wish I had.

  I rack my brains for interesting subjects to discuss, but to no avail. My mind has gone completely blank, so then I ask the taxi driver.

  “What do you talk about when you go on a first date?” I say.

  He glances at me in his mirror again, then starts to laugh.

  “Nothing,” he says. “You don’t need to talk to each other when you’ve been married for twenty years.”

  Then he starts to indicate left, pulls over and brings the taxi to a halt. Oh, dear God, we’re here already.

  * * *

  When I get out of the taxi, that’s when the nerves really kick in, not helped by the fact that the cocktail bar has floor-to- ceiling windows all along its frontage, so anyone I know who just happens to be passing will spot me inside instantly – including Joel, if he’s one of them. Maybe the floating restaurant wasn’t such a bad idea? At least no one I know was likely to start rowing past that by accident.

  I tell myself a date with a new man is something to look forward to, not to get freaked out about. Then I tell myself the same thing again, repeatedly, until I’ve almost managed to convince myself it’s true. At that point, I sidle along past the restaurant windows, trying to see if Mr FairandSquare is inside, but there’s no sign of a lone male at any of the tables – or at the bar. It’s pretty quiet in there, anyway, so it doesn’t take me long to check, but I turn round and walk back in the opposite direction, just to be sure. The result’s the same: no sign of Mr F&S.

  I can’t go inside and sit at a table by myself, I can’t – so I phone Eva again, instead.

  “For God’s sake, Hannah, get a grip,” she says. “Just go in, walk to the bar and order a drink, then sit down at a table and compose yourself. This could be the start of something great.”

  It could, couldn’t it? I take a couple of deep breaths, rotate my shoulders forwards and back again, then raise my chin and approach the door.

  Five minutes later, I’m sitting at a table, sipping my drink and telling myself, “I am attractive and sophisticated” under my breath. My legs are artfully positioned to their best advantage, and I’ve smoothed my half-up, half-down hairdo down. I’ve even taken a surreptitious look in my handbag mirror to check I haven’t got lipstick on my teeth or in the lines around my mouth. I haven’t, so now I’m ready for the next stage of my life to begin.

  I look at my watch, so I’ll know exactly when it started – it’s 8:01pm.

  * * *

  It’s now 8:45pm, though that’s approximate. It doesn’t need to be precise for me to know that Mr F&S has stood me up. Either that, or he walked past, saw me sitting alone at my table, and then concluded that I only look good when most of my face is obscured by hat, as it is in my online profile picture. I reckon everyone else in here knows I’ve been stood up, too, as they all keep giving me sympathetic smiles whenever I look in their direction.

  I want to cry, and I also want to get out of here as fast as I can, without embarrassing myself any further, so I text Eva, and instruct her to call me asap. For once, she does exactly as she’s told.

  “What’s up?” she says.

  “What did you say?” I ask, more than loud enough for everyone else in the bar to hear. “Oh, my God, really? You’re in A&E? No, don’t apologise – I’ll be there soon.”

  I hang up, just as Eva starts to squawk, “What the hell are you talking about?”, then I don my coat and make my exit.

  I text her while I’m walking to the taxi rank.

  He stood me up. Don’t want to talk about it.

  I press send, and then it starts to rain. That’s a bit of an understatement, actually. It starts to rain torrentially – in huge drops that rapidly turn into puddles, which then join together to form one large pool of oily water that spans the road from one side to the other. It reflects the lights of the pubs and bars along the high street, which seem to glimmer and shift, as the pool grows ever larger.

  By now, most of the drivers of passing cars have slowed right down and are travelling through the flash flood as slowly as they can, but then, along comes the inevitable idiot. Instead of reducing his speed, he accelerates, while getting as close to the pavement as he can. Before I realise what’s about to happen, I’m covered in cold, oily water from head to toe, and the tosspot driver is tooting his horn.

  I’m so shocked that it takes a few seconds before I react, which means that the tirade of abuse I eventually begin to shout serves no purpose, as its target is long gone by then.

  I’ve been stood up, and almost drowned by a complete wanker, and now all the other pedestrians are looking at me as if I’m barking mad. I can’t say I blame them because I probably look insane standing there raging at no one in particular, while my clothes and my hair are dripping wet. My shoes are full of water, too, and they make a sloshing sound with each step I take as I pull myself together and make my way onward to the taxi rank.

  I’m freezing cold, but at least I’ll soon be home in the warm, so things can’t get any worse than this tonight – except they can. The first taxi waiting at the rank turns out to be the one that brought me into town.

  “That was quick,” the driver says. “Run out of conversation early, did you, love?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  * * *

  I’m telling Esther all about last night’s disastrous date while we’re standing in the car park at work, waiting for the weekly fire alarm test to finish.

  “He stood you up?” she asks, and then she starts to laugh, so loud that the Fembot looks over and glares at us. She’s marching around armed with an enormous clipboard and a walkie-talkie, while yelling at the rest of us to take this fire drill much more seriously.

  “Yes, he did stand me up,” I say, “though there’s no need to tell the world about it.”

  “Sorry,” says Esther. “It’s just the whole thing sounds so …”

  She breaks off, overwhelmed by another bout of giggling.

  “So what?” I say. “Funny? I promise you, Esther, it really wasn’t.”

  My tone is snappier than I intended, and Esther looks a bit wounded, but I don’t get a chance to apologise because then the Fembot orders us all to gather round. First she informs us that the fire drill is officially over and we completed it thirty seconds quicker than we did last week, and then she makes a surprise announcement.

  “I’ve got a treat for you all today,” she says. “We’ve got a video guy coming in a little while and guess what? He’s going to film us all dancing to Pharrell’s ‘Happy’, to show how great it is to work here at HOO. So off you go – start practising your moves.”

  She does some of her special twirls to give us the general idea, while Esther asks whether participating in the video is compulsory.

  “No,” says the Fembot, stopping in mid-twirl. “Not if you have no spirit of adventure. For those who have, we’ll be gathering in the conference room in half an hour.”

  I get separated from Est
her as we all move towards the fire exit ready to file back into the building in an orderly fashion, so I can’t tell whether she now regrets upsetting the Fembot – or me, for that matter – but I’m too busy to go and look for her in order to find out. Even if I wanted to join in with this stupid video, I couldn’t, because I’ve been given a “special project” to complete by the end of this week: creating an animated fluffy owl. According to the Fembot, he is to be HOO’s new “brand ambassador”, and will pop up when users are least expecting it, offering to help them “acquire more wisdom”. Presumably that’s why I’ve been given strict instructions to draw him wearing a mortar board.

  “Bet you’re glad I asked whether joining in was compulsory,” says Esther, appearing from nowhere, like the owl.

  She perches herself on my desk and knocks a large stack of books and papers onto the floor. I give her a quizzical look as she stoops down to pick them up.

  “Why?” I say. “Why would I be more grateful than anyone else?”

  Esther straightens up, dumps the stuff back onto my desk, then says,

  “Well, I don’t know, Hannah. I just thought you wouldn’t want to do anything else to embarrass yourself this week. Internet dating at your age must feel bad enough, especially when guys don’t turn up.”

  I take a deep breath, then ask Esther exactly what is so bad about internet dating at my age. I say the last three words very slowly, which you’d think would warn her to be careful with her answer, but she isn’t.

  “It’s undignified,” she says. “I’m not being ageist – you know I would never be that – but it just is.”

  I think for a moment or two about what Pearl or Eva would say if they were here, and then decide that I won’t say it. Instead, I look down at my watch. If I hurry, I can still make it to the conference room in time.

  Chapter 15

  God, I’m so pissed off. The Happy Halfwits video has gone viral – or at least, locally – and I’m not even in it. I gave the damn thing my all, only to be edited out and replaced by a dancing owl. Eva’s watching the video online when I go round to hers this evening.

  “That owl is really getting down,” she says, hurling a pile of junk off her designer sofa to allow me space to sit. (Eva’s house isn’t anything like as immaculate as you’d expect it to be, given how stylish she is herself.)

  “It’s called getting your rave on these days, not getting down,” I say, as if I knew that before Joel told me yesterday. “And I was really going for it when I joined in, but then they edited me out! I didn’t even realise I’d been replaced by the owl until he was mentioned in the local press.”

  Eva gives me a sympathy hug, then pauses the video and goes into the kitchen. She comes back bearing a cake tin and two chipped mugs of tea.

  “I made you a cake as consolation,” she says, “though it didn’t quite turn out as planned.”

  She opens a cake tin to reveal a brown, brick-shaped object with a gigantic hole in the middle of it. An accidental hole, apparently.

  “Ah,” I say.

  “Yep,” says Eva. “We ran the recipe in this month’s edition of Viva Vintage, so this is a bit of a worry. The cookery editor insists I did something wrong.”

  “Like I must have done,” I say, accepting a slice of mutilated cake against my better judgement. “Both in the video, and when I went on that stupid date. I probably should have worn Dan’s hat during both, so no one would have to look at my repellant face.”

  “Don’t be daft,” says Eva. “Mr FairandSquare sounded dull to start with, and Happy Halfwits is only a stupid video. I’m proud of you for joining in with it, especially when Esther said you should be more dignified at your age.”

  She didn’t exactly say that, but I was quite proud of joining in, anyway, even though I knew I looked an idiot, because it was nice to feel a proper part of the team for once. Now I just wish my dating profile would attract a small proportion of the hits Happy Halfwits has been getting over the last few days.

  “Still no go with Plenty of Sharks, then, since you stopped being ‘up for anything’?” says Eva, as she presses play again, and that bloody owl begins to dance.

  “Not unless you count octogenarians or guys trying to scam me out of life savings I haven’t got,” I say.

  Eva’s searching for the original Pharrell Happy video now, mainly because she fancies him.

  “Joel’s friend looks a bit like Pharrell, now I come to think of it,” she says, watching closely as Pharrell gets his rave on. “What’s his name, again?”

  “Marlon,” I say. “And he’s far too young for you, as I keep pointing out. He’s only three years older than Joel, don’t forget.”

  Eva doesn’t comment, and just changes the subject back to internet dating.

  “What about No-kay Cupid?” she says. “Is that going any better?”

  It is, actually, in terms of getting emails from people who are younger than eighty, and who aren’t offering to transfer millions of dollars into my account at some unspecified time in the future if I’ll advance them loads of money right this minute. The No-kay Cupid guys are all quite impressive, though that isn’t as much of a plus as you might think. They all sound so dynamic, or cultured, or well-off, or all three, they make me feel intimidated. I haven’t got a clue what to talk to them about, even in an email, and as for flirting with them, I haven’t the faintest idea where to begin. It’s even worse than when I made such a hash of things with Mr Good-Looking at the club. At least then I had the excuse of being drunk.

  Now I just sit in front of the screen, reading all the men’s profiles and trying to imagine how on earth I could hold my end of the conversation up if I ever met them – if they bothered to turn up, that is. Most live in other countries, anyway, and I seem particularly popular with Italians, French and Belgian guys. They’re so chic, even the ones much older than me, that I bet they take even longer in the bathroom than Joel does.

  Eva says I’m being silly and asks why I don’t try imagining what my life could be like if I was in a relationship with one of them.

  “Just think,” she says, “you could be spending your weekends wandering arm in arm along the Left Bank in Paris – also known as La Rive Gauche to those of us who’ve led more adventurous lives than you.”

  She continues droning on, something about visiting the Louvre, then eating at Les Deux Magots, but I’m not listening. The mention of Rive Gauche has made up my mind, as that’s the perfume Dan always bought me on our anniversaries. I’m going to delete both my dating profiles as soon as I get home, because real life is where it’s at, especially when you’re no good at being anyone other than yourself. That’s the me Dan fell in love with in the real world, so I’m just going to have to hope that someone else will, too, eventually. Probably someone blind.

  * * *

  Apparently, I am a “valued member of the Plenty of Sharks community”, and my account can’t be reactivated if I go. Despite this threat, I’m welcome back at any time – any time I’m willing to be “up for anything” again, I presume. That’s probably what it would say if I were to click on the link that promises “great tips to make your profile more desirable”, but I don’t. I choose the link that says, “To delete your profile, click here” instead.

  Now to deal with No-kay Cupid. I’ve had loads of emails from them today, and a few of the guys who’ve messaged me sound as if they’d be quite promising if only they weren’t either totally embittered by previous relationships or still hung up on their ex-partners. (I know I am too, but I’m pretending not to be.) And what does the “match percentage” mean, for goodness’ sake? I have no idea why one person’s deemed a seventy-five per cent match for me, while another’s only forty-five, so maybe I should read up on how the process works before I give up internet dating altogether. It’s not as if my last attempt at the real-life version was a resounding success, and “keeping your options open” is probably in one of Esther’s stupid self-help books, the ones she keeps offering to lend m
e since Mr F&S stood me up.

  I type, “How No-kay Cupid match percentages work” into Google, but I can’t make head nor tail of the answers that come up. Maybe Pearl will know? She’s the internet-dating expert in the family, after all, not that she’s impressed with her experience so far. Last time I saw her she said she’d given up using the Sophia Loren photo (after she got a few complaints from men who’d genuinely expected to meet Sophia), but now that she’s using a picture of herself, all the men who contact her say they just want companionship.

  She added, “I was hoping for more action than that, seeing as I’m not dead yet.”

  I’d happily settle for companionship myself, tonight. I feel so lonely, even though it’s been less than an hour since I got back from Eva’s. Joel’s out with Marlon so the house is horribly quiet, and I don’t feel any less alone when I phone Pearl, only to get her answer phone – at eleven o’clock at night!

  There’s a beep from my mobile, which nearly makes me jump out of my skin, it sounds so loud. I’ve got more mail from No-kay Cupid.

  Maybe I’ll just read the latest lot of messages before I cancel that account. You never know – one of them could be my perfect match.

  * * *

  The people at No-kay Cupid have great news for me. Their first email reads as follows:

  From: No-kay Cupid

  To: PintSizedPammy

  About you, PintSizedPammy:

  Your personality: Really great

  How bad guys want you: So bad

  Your profile, as of 8 milliseconds ago: Approved!

  Guys want me so bad? They’re having a laugh, though the Fembot obviously ought to work for a dating site. She loves this wildly-enthusiastic, less-than-honest stuff. I hate it, but I grit my teeth and carry on reading anyway, seeing as I’m still trying to be more spontaneous and fun-loving, despite the setback with Happy Halfwits.

  The next message is even more exciting. It promises “this week’s best new matches” – matches, plural – although it then turns out there’s only one. Mind you, this guy’s apparently “an exceptionally good match” and, when I scroll down, I see it’s true: he’s a ninety-eight per cent match for PintSizedPammy! That’s a twenty-five per cent improvement on everyone else so far.