Thank You, Next: A perfect, uplifting and funny romantic comedy

by Sophie Ranald

  ‘Ooooh, you look nice,’ Robbie said when I stuck my head round the kitchen door on my way out, just to check that he had everything under control. ‘Off on your date? Love the frock – it’s very fifties housewife.’

  ‘Oh God, is it that obvious?’ I looked down at my dress. I’d found it in a charity shop and bought it, thinking it ticked the feminine box, and besides, it was only a fiver. But now Robbie mentioned it, the sweetheart neckline, nipped-in waist and full skirt were a bit OTT. ‘Shit. I look like Betty Draper, don’t I?’

  Robbie put his head on one side. ‘A bit. But it suits you. Demure. Not your usual style at all.’

  ‘Well, hopefully it’ll work for Mr Cancer. Get this – he’s called Sheldon.’

  Robbie doubled over, almost sending a bottle of olive oil flying. ‘No way!’

  ‘Yep. It’s going to take some doing to keep a straight face. He’s from Chicago, and we’re meeting at a burger bar. Which seems like a bit of a cliché, but there you go.’

  ‘I hope they do a vegan option.’

  ‘They do, I checked. And about thirty different flavours of milkshake, which made me rethink my life choices a bit. But there’ll be a dairy-free one, I expect.’

  ‘Well, make sure you report back,’ Robbie said, and as the door closed behind me I heard him say, ‘Sheldon. Oh my word, you couldn’t make it up.’

  On the train, I checked my phone to remind myself what my date looked like, and the exact location of Dexter’s. I was feeling nervous, but nothing like as jittery as I’d been the first time I went to meet a stranger for a date. Give it a couple more goes, I told myself, and I’d be taking all this in my stride. I’d survived so far – how bad could this home-loving, family-minded man actually be?

  Dexter’s was in a chichi part of West London where I rarely ventured. The street was lined with the kind of boutique that displays just one cashmere jumper in the window, and you know that nothing in there – not even a pair of socks – will cost less than a hundred pounds. There was a florist, an artisan chocolate shop and a place that sold handmade stationery.

  Sheldon lived nearby, he’d told me, and worked in finance. Clearly he was making shedloads of cash, to be able to afford a house in an area like this. As I walked, I let myself imagine briefly what his future wife’s life would be like – my life, if he turned out to be The One.

  I’d have a massive car – one of those Chelsea tractors I disapproved of on environmental grounds – that I’d drop the children off at their private school in, even though I disapproved equally of fee-paying schools. Then I’d go to my barre exercise class in my Lululemon sportswear, before having a massage or a manicure and meeting a friend for lunch. In the afternoon I’d take the children to their activities – riding lessons, I supposed, or fencing or Japanese or something. I’d give them their tea and they’d be in bed by the time Sheldon got home from work, and I’d be freshly made up and smiling, with a chilled bottle of Chablis ready for us.

  I’d have a massive fuck-off shoe collection and a massive fuck-off Valium habit.

  Shaking my head at my own silliness, I pulled my mind back to the present. I hadn’t even met Sheldon yet, never mind married him, had his babies and developed a substance-abuse problem as a result. But I had arrived at our designated meeting spot.

  Dexter’s was a diner-lover’s diner, that was for sure. It had bright red plastic benches in the booths, metal holders stuffed with paper napkins on the tables, and stripy red-and-white straws in the chunky glasses the customers were enthusiastically slurping milkshakes from. There were 1980s-style airbrushed prints of Coke bottles, fries, hot dogs and ice-cream sundaes on the walls, complete with photo-realistic drips of sauce and condensation that made me hungry just looking at them. The waitresses I could see were wearing ra-ra skirts in neon colours and tight cropped T-shirts with the restaurant’s name on them in a 3D typeface.

  I paused outside, glancing faux-casually over my shoulder through the plate-glass windows. First prize was for spotting Sheldon before he spotted me, and not looking like a weirdo in the process. Only problem was, I couldn’t see anyone there who might be him. The restaurant wasn’t large – fifty covers, maybe – and it was full of groups of teenagers, families and one table of ultra-slim, heavily made-up women in designer clothes stuffing food into their faces in a kind of guilty frenzy.

  But anyway, I was here even if he wasn’t. If he didn’t show up, I’d just have to front it out and enjoy a trash-tastic feast on my own. I pushed open the door and stepped in, then hesitated for a second looking for a free table.

  ‘Welcome to Dexter’s.’ A waitress approached me with an iPad secured to a clipboard. Authentic, I thought. ‘Do you have a reservation?’

  ‘No, I’m meeting someone but I’m not sure if he’s…’

  I stopped, my attention caught by a waving hand across the room. That was Sheldon, I was pretty sure. The man I’d seen in his profile pictures, with crinkly brown hair, straight white teeth and bulky shoulders. I was fairly certain I even recognised the mint-green polo shirt he was wearing. But my first impression of the room had been correct: there were no single men there.

  Because sitting opposite Sheldon, craning his neck round to have a good old open-mouthed gawp at me, was a little boy in a shirt just like his dad’s with an alligator on the pocket, only coral pink.

  Shit. He’d only gone and brought his kid.

  His. Kid. On. A. Date.

  ‘Of course, what I should have done is turned right around and left.’ Dani and I were conducting a post-date post-mortem in the gym, both of us flopped against the wall, sipping water and waiting for our heart rates to drop back to normal. Across the room from us, Fabian Flatley was doing handstand push-ups against the wall, shirtless, the muscles of his back bunching and rippling as he worked, sweat dripping off him onto the floor and rhythmic grunts issuing from him with every press.

  ‘Yeah, maybe. But you can’t just do that, can you?’

  ‘I could have. I’m kicking myself for not doing it. But at the time, it just feels so awkward and you don’t want to be rude.’

  ‘And you’re all invested in the idea of it and you’ve got dressed for it and everything.’

  ‘Exactly. He hadn’t even mentioned the kid, not in his profile or our messages or anything. Who does that? But then part of me was thinking, I didn’t want the kid to think it was something he’d done that had made me bail out, and be upset.’

  ‘Which is ridiculous if you think about it for more than about a nanosecond.’

  I nodded. ‘If you don’t want your kid to be upset by how your date behaves, there’s a simple solution.’

  ‘Don’t bring your bloody kid on the date in the first place.’

  ‘Correct. But I didn’t even have a nanosecond to think about it, because I was already walking in through the door and he was waving at me and the kid was staring and it was like I lost the power of rational thought, so I just kept walking in and sat down. And it went downhill from there – fast.’

  ‘How so?’ Dani draped her towel over her neck and took a big gulp of water. Fabian had finished his press-ups and had strolled over to the weights rack where he was loading up the bar for deadlifts, making a lot more crashing sounds than were strictly necessary. Dani watched him admiringly, and I resisted the urge to ask her if he was this annoying and attention-seeking, like, all the time.

  ‘It started right when I sat down,’ I said. ‘The kid had put one of those things on my chair that make a huge farting noise when you sit on them. I was so thrown by the whole situation I didn’t notice. I just sat, and “paaarp”.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Yes. And the kid – TJ, he’s called – absolutely pissed himself laughing and so did Sheldon and so did the people at the next table and the waitress.’

  ‘And you still didn’t leave?’

  ‘How could I? The whole restaurant was staring at me, and Sheldon was looking at me like this was some kind of test. So I had to laugh to
o.’

  ‘What a bastard! So he knew it was there?’

  I nodded, my face flaming as I relived the moment. ‘He said, “My little man is quite the comedian.” And I was like, “Yes, he certainly is, haha.” And then we introduced ourselves like all this was perfectly normal.’

  ‘Oh my God. That’s just so weird. What a nutter.’

  ‘He said, “A central part of my dating journey is finding someone who can fit with me and TJ, and play a part in his life as she does in mine.” He didn’t actually say be a mum but that was so blatantly what he meant. He said how every moment of the time he spent with his boy was precious, which I guess was his way of justifying dragging him along as a kind of wing-child on a Tinder date. And the kid was sitting there the whole time with this massive grin on his face like he was having the best time ever, blowing bubbles into his milkshake.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  ‘I know, right? And then when TJ got up to go to the loo, Sheldon got right in there and started slagging off his ex.’

  ‘I bet he did.’

  ‘He was like, “Of course I cherish Wanda as the mother of my child, but…” and then he launched into this tirade about how she didn’t value family life, she was a “career girl” and although he would’ve been quite happy to support the family because he’s a high earner, she was having none of it and had insisted on going back to work after she had TJ.’

  ‘Okaaay. I think I see where this is going.’

  ‘I think you do. Poor Wanda got it from both directions. He was so cross that she didn’t want to sacrifice her career to be a mum that he refused to lift a finger in the house and then made it her fault when everything went to shit and his shirts weren’t ironed and the grouting between the kitchen tiles wasn’t getting bleached three times a day and there wasn’t a hot meal on the table when he got in from work.’

  ‘He didn’t say that, though, did he?’

  ‘He didn’t need to. It was so clear that was what he meant. He said he believes home-making is the most important job a woman can do, and that was one of the reasons he wanted to date me, because of me being a chef.’

  ‘Ha! Like you’d finish a shift at work and want nothing more than to make bangers and mash for him and his child.’

  ‘And he said that was the reason, when he and Wanda split up, that he tried to get full parental responsibility for TJ but had to settle for fifty–fifty, and now he’s trying to “reboot his intimate relationships” and “launch family life 2.0”. He asked me if I’d read The Surrendered Wife.’

  Dani cackled. ‘Okay, I feel a bit sorry for him now. He so picked the wrong woman. And I’m not talking about Wanda.’

  His workout over, Fabian strolled over to us and, blanking me completely, ruffled Dani’s hair and said he’d see her later. Seconds later, we heard the roar of his Lexus as he drove away.

  ‘We’d ordered our food by this stage,’ I carried on. ‘I really don’t know why I bothered. I couldn’t have eaten a thing sat opposite him. But he hadn’t got completely into the misogynist stuff when the waitress came round, so I still thought I could have a burger and say it had been nice to meet them both and then leave.’

  ‘But you couldn’t.’

  ‘I couldn’t. I went into a massive rant. I just couldn’t stop myself. I asked him if he was aware how many single mothers – and their children – live in poverty because they’ve back-burnered their careers to parent full-time and then the dad’s fucked off. I said there’s nothing wrong with being a stay-at-home mum, but that if he couldn’t see that women have just as much right to a rich and full life outside the home as men do, then he needed to get to Specsavers, stat. And I said that if he thought having a wife and a mother for his child was so important, maybe he should have tried a little harder to make his first marriage work, not be trying to find a younger model who was willing to be his cook, cleaner, nanny and unpaid prostitute.’

  ‘You go, sister!’

  ‘And then I did go. I put twenty quid on the table and wished him and TJ all the best, and stormed out. And you know what? It felt bloody brilliant.’

  Fifteen

  You’re not imagining it – sometimes fate does conspire to get between you and your goals. When that happens, take a little time out and refresh your spirit.

  ‘Your adventure begins in an inn,’ Adam said, just loudly enough for the six of us gathered around the table to make out his words, as the Dungeons & Dragons game began.

  It was true, of course – we were in the Ginger Cat, with candles, bottles of merlot and bowls of potato wedges, hot chipolata sausages and spicy tomato sauce in front of us, along with our notepads, players’ manuals and dice. But it wasn’t quite the inn Adam would have had in mind.

  I closed my eyes for a second, trying to transport myself into another time – another world, even. There’d be rough-sawn tables and possibly only hewn logs to sit on. There’d be a fire – here, in a London summer, there was no need for such a thing, even though we did light one on winter nights. There’d be horses tethered outside the door where Tim’s motorbike and Lana’s bicycle were. There’d be – I wasn’t sure – mead, maybe? Roast ox? Acorn soup?

  ‘You’re all relieved to have come upon this place, where weary travellers can find a bed for the night and a hot meal, exchange tales of their adventures with their fellows and perhaps put together a party to embark on the next quest. You don’t know what the future holds beyond tonight, but you’re in a refuge, a place of safety – or so it seems, for now.’

  A shiver ran down my spine and my eyes snapped open. The faces around the table were all transfixed, leaning in towards Adam. I reminded myself to stop seeing Freddie and Nat and Archie and all the rest of them, and to stop being myself, too.

  For tonight – and for every Tuesday for the foreseeable future, until we got bored and wound up the game, or my character was killed in battle and I had to choose a new one – I wasn’t Zoë Meredith, pub cook and unsuccessful serial dater. I was Galena, a skilled fighter with the strength, dexterity and toughness that had been bestowed on me by rolls of a twenty-sided dice. Freddie was Hesketh, a bearded barbarian who could swing a double-headed battle-axe as easily as if it were a toothpick. Archie was Dun, a rogue who could move as silently as a cat and pick a lock in seconds. Nat was a sorcerer called Annella, Nat’s friend Lara was a cleric called Lorien, and Freddie’s mate Tim was Torvid, a ranger.

  ‘As you drink and eat,’ Adam went on, ‘you notice a group similar to yourselves, armed and equipped as if for a journey. They, too, are huddled over earthenware bowls, devouring the food as hungrily as if it were the finest roast fowl. And they are also talking among themselves, secretively and urgently. And you notice that the meal they have been served is far superior to the thin stew on your own table. It is the finest roast fowl. There are roasted roots, too, rich gravy and a freshly baked loaf. And in their glasses is not weak small beer but vintage red wine.’

  ‘What a rip-off!’ Freddie exclaimed, then hastily got back into character. ‘I mean, does it not seem strange to you, comrades, that they should sup so finely while we make do with a meal that is barely fit for pigs?’

  ‘I’m going to totally diss this place on TripAdvisor,’ said Nat. ‘Freddie – I mean Hesketh – should we discuss this matter with our noble hostess and try to learn the reason for this shameful discrepancy?’

  ‘We could do that,’ said Archie – or rather, Dun the rogue, ‘or we could attempt to relieve them of their meal by stealth when the next course is delivered by yonder serving wench.’

  Right on cue, Kelly put a couple of fresh bottles of wine on the table, along with a plate of barbecue pork ribs and one of corn on the cob, charred from the grill. Adam watched in silence as we discussed the matter, slipping in and out of character, taking big gulps of red wine and piling into the food, unlike our poor imaginary characters with their thin stew, and decided that our characters would have a chat with the imaginary landlady.

  He glanced down at
his notes, which were hidden from our view by a cardboard screen printed with castles, dragons, warriors on horseback and a wizard gazing into a crystal ball. ‘The landlady tells you that the nearby fortress, Castle Drakeford, was recently invaded by an evil lord from lands to the east, who has installed his garrison there. Those men are his soldiers, and they descend on the village each evening, plundering and demanding crops, money and food.’

  ‘Bastards! I had them for wrong’uns right from the start,’ said Archie.

  ‘Ssshh!’ Nat elbowed him in the ribs.

  ‘But there is worse to come,’ Adam continued. ‘The landlady’s only daughter, a beautiful young maiden named Zarah, has been captured by Lord Brandrel. In just twelve days, he intends to take her as his bride. And it is well known in these parts the terrible fates that have befallen his previous wives: one driven mad and plunged to her death from the highest battlement; one given to his soldiers to use as they pleased after she refused to comply with his twisted desires; a third chained in a deep dungeon guarded by a dragon. But that last may merely be a tale told by old men after too long in the tavern.’

  I glanced around the table. Everyone was leaning forward, fascinated. It was like the noise of the pub around us had been silenced, like the bright street scene over the mantlepiece had been replaced with a medieval tapestry, as if the polished parquet floor was now covered in bulrushes.

  Adam’s face was cast into angles and planes of light and shadow by the flickering candlelight. His hands moved as he spoke, like he was drawing pictures in his own head. His shabby corduroy shirt had a sheen like velvet in the dim light. Holy shit, I thought. He’s really good at this.

  ‘Just then, you hear a commotion near the door. The landlady’s face turns as white as milk. Her son, a hot-blooded young boy named Darian, is squaring up to Lord Brandrel’s men, demanding the return of his sister. Already, the soldiers have drawn their swords and are closing in on him. What will you do?’