The Dating Game

by Avril Tremayne

  At last, she finished her examination and turned to him. ‘Who is she?’

  ‘Rebel.’

  ‘Rebel. The one who—’

  ‘Dumped me.’

  ‘When you were twenty-five. Nine years ago. Nine … years.’ She pursed her lips, looking from one painting to the next. ‘They’re different. From Margaret’s portrait.’

  ‘Well, of course.’ He watched her, needing to push, to taunt, to … hurt? ‘Rebel is naked.’

  She shook her head impatiently. ‘That’s not it. It’s the love that’s different. This love—’ gesturing to Rebel’s painting ‘—is more passionate.’

  ‘People do tend to be passionate when they’re twenty-five,’ he said sardonically.

  ‘Are you saying you don’t feel that passion any more?’

  ‘Sure I do. Four times a week on average.’

  He expected her to laugh but she didn’t. ‘It wasn’t just about sex, with Rebel,’ she said.

  ‘But now that’s what it’s all about. And I prefer it that way, Sarah.’

  Sarah bent to peer more closely at the paintings, focusing on the lower right corners, where he signed and dated his works. The last one was dated shortly before Rebel had left him. ‘The start of your brutal phase,’ she said.

  David just stood there, silent, letting the paintings tell their own story.

  ‘But the dates … they’re so close to Margaret’s. I would have thought if you could marry Margaret …’ She straightened and looked at him, clear-eyed and curious. ‘Why didn’t you marry Rebel?’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did marry Rebel,’ he said lightly. ‘She was my first wife.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Nine years ago, I grew up.

  The words slammed into Sarah’s head.

  Nine years ago, Rebel didn’t just dump David, she divorced him.

  Nine years ago, David had painted like his heart had been ripped out.

  What iron control he must have had to commit the wife he loved to canvas that last time. Naked in his tumbled bed. Legs open in invitation—but no longer for him. And the toll he’d paid was there in the anguished paint. It hurt, to look at it.

  ‘I can see why you don’t want to marry again,’ Sarah said.

  He threw her a lightly mocking smile. ‘And why is that, bluebell? Heartbreak?’

  ‘It’s obvious how much you loved her. I can’t even begin to understand how much it hurt to lose her. How it must feel, loving someone so much and knowing you can’t have her. So yes, heartbreak. I can see it. And I’m sorry you had to go through it.’

  ‘Sarah, Sarah, Sarah.’ Still with that awful smile. ‘Are you turning this into a Shakespearean tragedy? It doesn’t deserve it, I promise you.’ He leaned towards her, and she knew he was parodying her own tendency to lean closer when she was about to impart something important. There was something pointed about the way he did it, something derisive. ‘The shocking truth is, I can have Rebel. Any time I want her.’

  ‘But … you said she was the one who—’

  ‘Dumped me?’

  ‘I was going to say who asked for the divorce, now I know you were actually married to her.’

  ‘Dumped, divorced, whatever you call it, I could nevertheless have had her that same day. The day after. Any time in the past nine years. I can have her tomorrow, if I want.’

  ‘But you … don’t … want?’ Feeling her way.

  ‘No … I … don’t.’ Mocking her. And then he stopped smiling. ‘Her terms don’t suit me.’

  ‘Her—?’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean I’m not grateful to her for the lesson.’

  ‘What lesson?’

  ‘Rebel taught me what love really is: sex, wrapped in a layer of sentimentality. The sentimentality is expedient, though. You can discard it when it gets a little tattered, when it stops serving a useful purpose. And once you do that, what you’re left with is plain, straightforward—’

  ‘Sex,’ Sarah finished for him, her eyes reverting to that last, painful painting of Rebel. Oh God, she could see it. He’d put the ugliness out there for the world to see.

  ‘Yep. And not being of a sentimental disposition—well, not any more—I prefer my sex unwrapped. It’s more honest.’

  ‘What about Margaret and Carly and the unicorns jumping over rainbows?’

  ‘Those two have fewer … complications, shall we say? Long may their unicorns frolic.’

  ‘Frolic,’ Sarah said. ‘Frisk & Frolic is the name of the PR agency I work for.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  ‘Frolic is the … the fun angle, we thought.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘But it’s not fun when you say it.’

  ‘That’s because I was being a smart-arse.’ He shrugged an impatient shoulder. ‘And I shouldn’t, about them, because it’s not about fun for those two; they’re deadly serious about each other.’

  ‘But you don’t believe in what they have.’

  He sighed. ‘I don’t live other people’s lives—not theirs, and not yours. Only my own.’

  ‘But the fact that they’ve found love … Doesn’t that prove it exists? That it’s real?’

  David shoved a hand irritably at his hair. ‘What do you want me to say, Sarah?’

  ‘That there’s more to life than swiping left and right on a dating app, deciding on a hook-up.’

  ‘And if I say there isn’t more than that? At least not for me?’

  ‘There has to be more.’

  ‘Says the girl who tells me she can have sex any day of the week.’

  ‘Says the girl who only wants to have it with one man.’

  ‘Says the girl who’s never been in love.’

  ‘Says the girl who wants to be.’

  ‘Says the girl who’s been neither married nor divorced.’

  ‘Says the girl who’s lived through seven divorces, and still wants to be married.’ She glared at him, furious at his flippancy. ‘And if you really feel life is all about unwrapped sex, isn’t it a little sentimental to take nine whole years to get over a divorce? Mawkish, maudlin, sappy—romantic even? Unless you’re not quite the cynic you think you are.’

  ‘Sarcasm doesn’t suit you, Sarah.’

  ‘Oh! Well, it does suit you. And th-that’s worse!’

  ‘So there!’ Another taunting smile. ‘Bad David, snapping off unicorn horns!’ And then his smile slipped. ‘Now tell me about the seven divorces. Are we talking parents?’

  ‘Yes, parents.’

  ‘No aunts, uncles and cousins in there?’

  ‘Not in the seven, no. Why? What does that have to do with—?’

  ‘Because that’s a hell of a lot of true love going down the gurgler for two people.’

  ‘The salient point—’

  ‘Ah, the salient point. Relevant, significant, leading.’

  ‘—is that they don’t stop looking just because one relationship didn’t work out.’

  ‘One relationship?’ He hooted out a laugh. ‘I thought you said there were seven divorces?’

  ‘Six, strictly speaking,’ she muttered.

  ‘Well what is it exactly? Six or seven?’

  ‘The seventh is still in progress.’

  ‘Oh, that’s different then.’ Another laugh. ‘So that’s how many people all together who haven’t found true love?’

  ‘It doesn’t mean they won’t! And divorce can be a good thing, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I’m with you there. But what examples have you got for me, bluebell?’ he challenged.

  ‘Bryan, for starters.’

  ‘Bryan?’

  ‘Mum’s second husband. He liked the booze a little too much.’

  ‘Is that why your mother dumped him?’

  ‘You could say that, I guess.’

  ‘But do you?’

  ‘I’d say what the booze did was cloud his judgement—enough to make him think he cou
ld get away with groping me—and that’s what made her dump him.’

  David froze for a split-second, and then jolted as though he’d been struck by lightning. ‘What the fuck?’ he shouted—actually shouted.

  ‘Relax,’ she said, biting back an inappropriate giggle at the startling desertion of his legendary air of ennui. ‘It was fourteen years and two whole husbands ago.’

  ‘When you were …’ He seemed to be counting in his head. ‘You were ten?’ Yep, counting back. ‘As in ten, Sarah?’

  ‘I might have only been ten, but I was a vicious ten. I stabbed his roving hand with a pair of scissors.’ She nudged him with a playful shoulder, trying to jolly him along. ‘Which I promise to keep well away from that low-hanging fruit of yours.’

  ‘What the fuck, Sarah,’ he said at normal decibel level this time, and taking her completely unawares, yanked her under his arm. ‘Stop joking about it, all right?’

  He was shaking. Shaking. She looked up at him in surprise. ‘It’s ancient history, you know. I’m over it. Really.’

  ‘Yeah but I’m not. So just … just stay there for a minute. Humour me. Please?’

  Sarah stayed, too flabbergasted to move even if she’d wanted to. ‘If I’d known it would upset you so much, I wouldn’t have said anything,’ she said.

  ‘Well you did say it and now here we are. Jesus, Sarah! You’re so small, even now. Back then …? I can’t— Can’t— Jesus H Christ!’

  She put her arm around him to rub his back, feeling helpless. ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘No, I’m not. I want to kill him.’

  ‘What happened to “violence is never the answer; avoidance is the key”?’

  ‘It doesn’t fucking apply when ten-year-old children are involved.’

  ‘Well if you want to kill him, I’m afraid you need to take a ticket and get in line.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘You’ve met my brother. He was always Hulk-like, even as a teenager, and if he’d been home when it happened …’ She gave a theatrical shudder. ‘Thank God he wasn’t home! But he still hasn’t forgotten his plan for castration-by-carving-knife.’

  ‘Okay, I like that.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Okay.’ One more breath. ‘So maybe now you can tell me what did happen to the bastard.’

  ‘Mum arrived home soon after it all went down, and I told her what he’d done, and she called the cops. Anticlimactic, if you don’t count the dinner plate she Frisbeed at Bryan’s head.’ She smiled, remembering. ‘She’s a good shot. For a minute there, I thought she’d decapitate him.’

  ‘I like the castration idea better.’

  ‘Oh, you artistic types!’ she said, and was relieved to hear him laugh at last. ‘So, are you better now, Dreamboat?’

  ‘Getting there. Maybe tell me about husband number three and we’ll see. But if he touched you, I don’t know what I’ll—’

  ‘Earl. And no, this one’s a safe story. Funny, even.’

  ‘Good.’ Another deep breath. ‘So what was wrong with Earl?’

  ‘Way too young. Toy boy young. As Mum had to have known from the start, so what she was thinking is anyone’s guess.’

  ‘Yeeaah, I can probably guess.’

  ‘Oh, you!’ Giggle. ‘But yes, Earl is what you might call “built”.’

  ‘How much younger?’

  ‘Fifteen years. Which really wasn’t an issue—until he told Mum she’d given him an Oedipus complex, so she needed to pay for his therapy. At which point, she knocked out one of his teeth.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Way! I was there!’

  ‘And who came next?’

  She stiffened before she could stop herself. ‘Bertie.’

  He looked down at her; had he felt the change in her? ‘And what did Bertie do wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, past a sudden lump in her throat. ‘He just turned out not to be quite right. For Mum, I mean. Not “the one”.’

  ‘But he was the right one for you,’ David said slowly.

  Swallow—almost painful. ‘Yeah. I like him. Love him. Dad likes him, too. He … he reminds me of Dad, a little. I wish …’ But she couldn’t find the will to finish that. To expose her fragile underside to a man who thought emotions could be controlled. She pulled out from under David’s arm, covering the awkward disengagement by walking over to the easel with Margaret’s portrait.

  ‘So the other three divorces?’ David asked.

  Sarah stared at the portrait without really seeing it. ‘Dad’s. After Mum came Penelope. Or as we liked to call her, the Cinderella stepmother, who laid into Adam with a belt and was packed off fast enough to make your head spin.’ She was still unsettled. She needed to move. So she walked over to the chaise longue, making a tiny adjustment to the cushion on it. ‘And then Miranda, who would have been okay except for cornering me incessantly, trying to get me to tell her about Mum’s peccadillos so she could pass the gossip on to Dad. As if I’d ever dish any dirt, and as if Dad would ever listen to it!’

  ‘And then …?’

  ‘Jane. Who decided she liked Adam a lot more than she liked Dad.’ She swung to face him, grimacing. ‘How do you do that, David?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Get me talking. I mean, I know I talk too much, but not about that. Adam and I just don’t talk about it. It’s just so … boring, really. I mean, who cares, aside from me and Adam?’

  ‘It’s not boring and I care.’

  ‘Okay, so now you know but it really is ancient history.’

  ‘And you don’t talk too much, Sarah.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘So I walk okay and talk okay and my clothes are okay and I have a perfect head, and … and …’ She gave up, making some sound—frustration, dissatisfaction, disbelief, dismissal, all together. ‘By that reckoning, I should have a proper boyfriend by now.’

  ‘Yes, you should, if that’s what you want. The only assumption I can therefore make is that deep down, you don’t want one.’

  She watched warily as he walked towards her.

  ‘You see,’ he went on, ‘I’m thinking your curse is not really a curse.’ He stopped in front of her. ‘Or if it is a curse, it’s a product of those seven divorces.’

  ‘I don’t …’ Breathe. ‘I … don’t …’ Breathe. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s simple, Sarah. If you really wanted a guy to stick, he’d stick so hard, you’d need industrial-strength solvent to unglue him.’

  She was shaking her head before he’d finished. ‘No. That’s wrong. You know that’s wrong. They dump me.’

  ‘Because you deliberately choose the ones who will. And because you want them to.’

  Still shaking her head. Desperate, unconvincing half-laugh. ‘So you’re a psychologist now?’

  ‘I’m channelling Margaret. Who’d say it’s not surprising you have commitment problems, given what you’ve been through.’

  ‘I don’t have commitment problems—unless you view wanting to commit to someone a problem. You’re the one with the commitment problems.’

  ‘This is not about me.’

  She started backing away from him, cautious, edgy. ‘And I haven’t been “through” anything. Nothing in comparison to what other people have suffered. What you’ve suffered, if it comes to that, because my experiences are by proxy, not direct like yours.’

  He followed her step for step. ‘I just said this is not about me. It’s about a girl whose parents—parents she obviously loves—split when she was a child and then proceeded to parade a steady stream of step-parents she didn’t love in and out of her life. One of whom groped her. One who tried to turn her against her mother. One who beat her brother and another who tried to seduce him.’ He paused, raised his eyebrows at her. ‘How am I doing? Do you want me to talk about a mother who throws plates and punches in front of her daughter, while I’m at it?’

  She couldn’t answer. Couldn’t speak. Just kept backing away.


  ‘Or will I just move on to the one step-parent you loved?’ he said, soft and warm and sad. ‘Bertie, who was ripped out of your life, not because there was anything wrong with him, but just because he wasn’t quite right. Maybe because he wasn’t … what … Italian? So he didn’t fit with the flavour of the month?’

  Sarah had no idea how she’d ended up back at the chaise longue, but it was lucky, because her legs felt like they’d collapse under her. She sat abruptly.

  ‘With those role-model parents of yours, the miracle would be if you had found someone you trusted enough to hang on to.’

  She looked down at her hands, which were on her lap, clenched hard together. She recognized it as something Lane did, to keep herself together, twisting her fingers hard enough to turn white. Lane … Adam. What was going to happen there? What could happen, with Adam the way he was? If Sarah’s curse was the product of seven divorces, maybe … maybe Adam’s was too. A different manifestation, but the same root cause.

  ‘Trust,’ she said, and forced her fingers to relax. ‘That’s Adam’s thing, not mine. He’s the one with the commitment problems. And you. Short-term flings, both of you. But I … I do want someone. Someone to belong to.’ She raised her eyes. ‘I do, David!’

  ‘Do you? All those boyfriends and not one who’s stuck for more than three weeks? Sorry, it just doesn’t stack up.’

  ‘Because there’s something wrong with me,’ she said, trying valiantly to steady her voice. ‘That’s why I’m here, with you. To learn what it is.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with you, Sarah. It’s just that all those guys that come and go aren’t calling the shots—you are.’

  And she was up again, walking past him, to the portraits of Rebel, looking from one to the next, to the next, to the last. It was as though the clues she was looking for were in those paintings, but she couldn’t see them. ‘Say you’re right—and I’m not suggesting you are, but just say you are. How do I fix it?’

  ‘All you have to do is give the guys a chance.’

  She zeroed in on one of the canvases. The flirty painting. Rebel looking over her shoulder. ‘What’s it like?’ she asked.