by Neal Doran
In my new mindset of playing hard to get with Delphine, I opened the one from Hannah first. It was just a brief message saying she’d enjoyed Sunday too — and how much she still loved her dress — and also complaining that the people who employed her as a knowledge manager were making unreasonable demands upon her to manage a bit of knowledge so early in the week. In a strange PS, she did ask my favourite biscuit; if I had to have a football team, what would it be, and checked that I hadn’t lived outside north-west London when I was a kid. I was told I couldn’t ask why I was being asked, but even I could work out that there could be a date coming at the end of it.
I thought, perhaps for too long, about the interpretations that could be placed on my choice of favourite biscuit, worrying that something with too much chocolate might make me seem a bit flamboyant or decadent, while completely plain might seem dull and austere. After giving due consideration to the potential of fig rolls to conjure up images of exotic fruit and physical stamina, I ultimately decided that crumbly, oaty biscuits might seem a bit effeminate and went for chocolate digestives, actually, dark chocolate digestives, as the perfect combo of maturity, a bit of fun, and sophistication. In case it was relevant, I also told Hannah I couldn’t date anyone whose favourite biscuit involved dried fruit and shortbread; I might be desperate, but at some point you had to draw a line. I expressed pride in barely having left London for my first eighteen years, and, grabbing names out of thin air, I decided that Queens Park Rangers sounded like a team that wouldn’t lead to me being stabbed — rarely a sign that a date was going well.
There was also a command in the email to make sure that I keep Thursday free, which sent a rumble of nervy disquiet through my stomach — although that could’ve been the blue-cheese coleslaw I found in my chicken and stuffing sandwich at lunchtime. Apparently I needed to bring my new ‘party clothes’ to the office and be ready for seven. More details were promised nearer the time. After I hit send on my reply, I figured she’d already be on the way home, and I needed to know what she was up to right now, so I sent her a text saying ‘Thursday?’ but all I got back was a two-word response, ‘Yes, Thursday!’
The deliberate mysteriousness did nothing for my digestion.
Delphine’s mail was a little longer. Over a dozen paragraphs, she poured her heart out about how unhappy she was. This had been made worse by feeling down because of her hangover, and also the trauma of having watched a lot of daytime TV, which she’d described as tragic. I think she meant in terms of the soul and the human condition, although it could have been about the dress sense of the various male presenters too.
But from reading about the stuff that was really bothering her, I couldn’t believe the hold that Alex had over her. I could see how he did it though: the put-downs about her appearance, the undermining of her confidence in her English, his need to know where she was all the time, while he appeared and disappeared when he liked, with no indication of where he’d been. All this interspersed with just enough compliments and occasional grand gestures to make her believe he cared. He was a classic case of a narcissistic alpha male with control issues exploiting vulnerability in a trophy partner. A man whose underlying misogyny permeated every aspect of his relationships with women and who became focused on relentless mental bullying of anyone who professed to love him.
I’d seen it on Loose Women, so I was pretty sure I’d got my analysis right.
I also knew it wasn’t the kind of thing you could say to someone pissed off with her boyfriend and expect them to believe or thank you. I wondered how much it would cost to have someone else make an assassination attempt on her behalf instead.
While sitting there raging at how a guy like that always got the girl, I had to confess to also feeling a little pleased to see Jamie spoken of in not exactly glowing terms after he spent all afternoon talking sport with Alex.
Reading between the email’s two pages of lines, I was able to find some cause for hope, too. There was a point, when complaining about Alex, and also the blokes she’d been seeing when she was in Paris, that she said she wished she could find someone nice. Then, just seven paragraphs down, she mentioned how nice I was to listen to her ranting. My plan to be the nice guy hovering next to the bastard might be working.
I spent a while imagining a time when, after I’d said something insightful but tough to hear about her relationship with her mother, Delphine would go to slap me, but instead I’d kiss her and we’d throw ourselves down on the dining table, scattering dinner plates everywhere.
If things worked out the way I planned we were going to spend a lot of time and money in the Ikea chinaware section.
Finally, Rob’s email was a little easier to digest and dissect, containing, as it did, just the one word.
Pub?
The Rising Sun pub in Covent Garden was a proper old-fashioned English boozer with lots of Victorian characteristics, including a fondness for Tattooed Ladies. It was busier than I expected for a January Monday, and at first I couldn’t find Rob as I scanned the room, but a booming ‘HA!’ from a cubbyhole in the corner alerted me to his presence amongst a group of achingly trendy-looking young people who looked as if they made wholesale changes to their wardrobes on a weekly basis, depending on what was in The Guardian fashion pages. I sidled over to them, catching Rob’s eye as I hovered by the table.
‘Hey, sport!’ he declared loudly upon seeing me. ‘Everybody, this is my old buddy Dan. Dan, this is everybody. We’re celebrating all being geniuses. Now let me scooch out to the bar. Who needs anything?’
Rob squeezed his way out from his seat past a couple of guys engrossed in an intense discussion over their mobile phones, shuffling between the table and their legs, which were even skinnier than the ties they were wearing. He gave me a big bear hug and a slap on the back as we headed to the bar.
‘Thank Christ you made it, buddy. I thought I was going to be trapped in there all night. Young people today… I swear at one point I saw two of them sitting next to each other Tweeting amongst themselves. Now what can my expense account get you?’
We ordered a couple of obscurely European lagers and, after sending some crisps over to the kids’ table, settled in at the bar.
‘So how come the drinking on a school night?’ I asked.
‘Big account landed today. Nobody really up for it but it’s virtually compulsory when that happens, everybody swaggering about the office like they’re from Mad Men. Having said that, after a couple of mid-afternoon sharpeners I’ve been getting in the mood, but, God, not for a works drink. Then I figured it’d be a perfect opportunity to get you some last-minute coaching.’
‘Last-minute coaching?’
‘For Thursday.’
‘For Thursday?’
‘For Thursday,’ confirmed Rob. ‘That gets tricky to say after a couple of cocktails — it’s the fuh and the thuh in close proximity…’
‘So what is it that’s happening on Fursd… Thursday?
‘What’s Hannah told you?’
‘I have to be ready for seven p.m. in my new outfit, and it’s going to be exciting.’
‘Well, she’s absolutely right as usual. Thursday is going to be exciting. We’re jump-starting this dating project after last Friday’s stall. You remember, when I saved your life?’
‘Of course I remember. It was three bloody days ago. And you didn’t save my life! I just, needed a cough. So what’s this Thursd—?’
‘Ah, how soon they forget. But we heroes don’t do it for the recognition. Now drink up, and have a stretch. The exercise is about to begin.’
‘But what’s the exercise for?’
‘For Thursday.’
‘What. Is. Happening. ON THURSDAY?’
‘Jeez, sport, keep calm. You don’t want to be getting all aggravated like that. Especially not on Thursday.’
‘ARRGH!’
‘All right, all right, take it easy,’ said Rob, holding his hands up. ‘My goodness, you’d think you were the first person eve
r to be sent on a blind date after your best pal has pretended to be you on the phone to arrange a drink out with a stranger who his wife had chatted up on an online dating website. On a Thursday.’
I stood there for a second, going over what Rob had just said to try and get it clear in my head — and to calm myself down before I hit him over the head with a frying pan for getting me stuck in the middle of an Abbott and Costello routine.
‘Hannah’s been chatting women up on a website?’
‘I know. Pretty cool in a pervy way if you don’t think about it too much.’
‘Pretending to be me.’
‘Yeah, that’s when I found thinking about it got a bit icky.’
‘I knew you were setting up a profile but shouldn’t I be the one speaking to people?’
‘We thought about that, but once the ad went up the lines got red-hot, and you had loads of emails, so we needed to keep the momentum going.’
‘I could’ve done that,’ I protested.
‘We’ve seen how long it takes you to send a text message if you’re trying to be cool. We couldn’t risk these hotties getting menopausal while they waited for you to complete twelve hundred drafts of a three-line email.’
‘But there were a lot of responses?’
‘Oh, yeah, yeah, loads. Of course, most of them were for offers of mail-order brides but we think there’s still a bit of time before we go down that route. How is your grasp of Russian, by the way?’
‘But there was somebody not just looking for an EU passport?’
‘Oh, we made you sound quite the catch. Well, Hannah did. I was mainly looking at videos of The Muppets on YouTube. But there was somebody online at the same time as us, you, whatever, and yesterday evening we were messaging back and forth. She’s cute, and doesn’t use too many exclamation marks. Y’know, for a girl.’
Despite my reservations about this whole set-up, hearing there was someone cute interested in me sent a tingle down my spine. I know, I sound like a teenager getting an anonymous love note, but, let’s face it, who’s ever really moved on that much from that?
‘So we were chatting about all sorts of things, biscuits and football and whatever.’
‘That’s why Hannah was asking…’
‘Yeah, we had to wing it a bit. What were your answers?’
‘Always lived in London, dark chocolate digestives, and Queens Park Rangers.’
‘Right, well on Thursday you’re switching your allegiance to West Bromwich Albion — it was a question out of the blue; we panicked — and you love Jaffa Cakes. You might also need to do a bit of research into spending summers in Somerset in the mid-eighties. I told Hannah she was getting your life mixed up with Cider with Rosie.’
‘You do know a Jaffa Cake isn’t even a…’
‘Isn’t a biscuit, yes, we know. Everyone knows. It can be a topic of conversation if things get desperate on the night.’
‘And you’ve spoken to her?’
‘Yeah, bit of a sexy voice too, a little husky.’
‘So now she’s going to be expecting me to sound like you! Your voice is about an octave lower than mine, and you’re about four inches taller than me.’
‘Yeah, well, don’t worry, sport, I was crouching down while I was on the phone. And I pretended I had a cold and did a great impression of you — “Ooh, I’m Dan, let me sympathise with all your self-obsessed problems and troubles with men and maybe, one day, if you’re not busy and it isn’t a violation of your sensitivities, I could slip you one around the back of your local.”‘
‘This is ludicrous! What if she’s great? What if it works out? When am I supposed to tell her everything she knows about me is built on a foundation of lies and deceit?’
‘I think the wedding night is the traditional time for that.’
‘I can’t go. I won’t go. It’s demeaning.’
Rob said nothing; he stood there and played with his mobile before turning the touch screen so I could see the personals ad photo he’d been looking up.
‘So I reckon West Brom have got a chance of a good cup run this year,’ I said to him in my best West Midlands accent. ‘Drinks at seven on Thursday, you say?’
Chapter Eight
7.01p.m. on Thursday and I was sitting in the bar at a restaurant/nightclub just off Haymarket sipping, very slowly, a Brazilian lager and nervously nibbling the complimentary peanuts that apparently made it all right for them to charge six quid for a half-pint in a bottle. The bar PA was playing tunes to try and capture that atmosphere of being out for an exciting night of drinking, dancing, and hey maybe even romancing, but was struggling to overcome the fact that in the lounge it was just a couple of gift-shop-bag-laden tourists and me, suppressing the urge to do a runner.
As I sat and waited I was trying my best not to dip into my coat pocket to do one last bit of revision on my index cards. I’d written down all the information I’d got from Rob and Hannah on what ‘I’d’ already told the twenty-eight-year-old healthcare professional I was meeting, and what she had told ‘me’ about herself. I ran over a few essential facts in my head: Rachel — with one a — would be sporting what Hannah had informed me was a classic blonde pixie-cut hairdo, and, if her pictures were anything to go by, something very this season. However I was advised to not act as if I knew too much about this area, as it might suggest that there was more than some particularly ‘on-trend’ clothes in my closet — a simple ‘you look great’ would suffice.
I was reminded to try and make my job sound more interesting and important than I usually do. Apparently I’d already told her that I’m helping new, environmentally sustainable alternatives to mainstream non-alcoholic beverages get off the ground. This had been well-received. I thought it made me sound like an arsehole, but was trying not to be negative. It was time, I had been reminded, for SuperDan after all.
I reassured myself I’d found the best place to wait for Rachel’s arrival. From the stool I’d picked I could see the door in my peripheral vision, and also more clearly by looking in the mirror behind the shelves of spirits. I’d have a ten-second warning for when I’d need my best spontaneous smile. I also knew my way to the Gents from this spot, so I didn’t have to risk getting lost later, making awkward passes back and forth past Rachel while trying to find the bloody things. All of this had been part of my meticulous research. After leaving the pub on Monday night, Rob and I had come here to scope out the joint and sort out all these fine details that were so important, but so often overlooked in the dating world. At least that was what I’d told him after four pints and he, being several drinks ahead, had agreed with me.
My foot jiggled nervously and my mouth kept getting dry. This was going to be an official date. Not just a boy and girl hanging out together as mates prior to nervy declarations of feelings more than friendship. Not an awkward drink and movie that was the only polite thing to do after copping off with someone at a party. Not a clumsy throwing together of two single folk at a dinner party for a gang of mutual friends. A Proper Date. Two people who didn’t know each other, but were willing to consider that they might be romantically compatible and who were getting together in the belief that, if it all went well, they could be — they could possibly be — the loves of each other’s lives.
I might have been over-thinking this a bit, but it was my first Proper Date since…well, actually, it was my first.
Was that lack of experience unusual these days? Had a dating culture transferred from the US to UK via their TV shows? The only people I’d really had to ask were the Harrisons, and they’d got together the old-fashioned way. Rob seemed to think the young women in his office were open to taking more chances with strangers, but would share all the details with everyone they knew on Facebook the next day. Hannah filled me in on the etiquette she’d learned from watching the sitcom How I Met Your Mother. Neither of them was much help, to be honest.
I looked at the clock on my phone again and saw it was now precisely five minutes since the text came in say
ing she would be arriving in five minutes. I thought about sending a text back saying ‘it’s too late the deal’s off, you’ve just missed the night of your life sweetcheeks’, and then scarpering, but settled for checking if she’d tried to get in touch again from her gridlocked bus.
‘Hello, are you Dan?’
The one flaw in my plan to covertly spot Rachel coming in using tricks with mirrors was that it did involve me remembering not to take my eyes off them to gawp at my phone for minutes at a stretch.
‘Hi,’ I said enthusiastically as I jumped to my feet and she introduced herself. I paused for a moment, held out my hand for hers and leant in for the accompanying peck on one cheek. I was wary of any physical contact with strangers after my last attempt with Niamh, so Rob had had to assure me that I wasn’t living in Saudi Arabia, and in a dating situation this would be a perfectly normal greeting. I just had to remember not to accompany it with a desperate lunge, or tongues, and make sure the recipient was not physically incapacitated by a half-removed winter coat.
‘You look great,’ I said, following the opening script prepared for me.
‘Really?’ she said, smiling and smoothing down her skirt. ‘Thank you.’
It was at this point that I actually thought to have a look at what she was wearing, rather than just say nice things about it. I was relieved to see I’d been right: Rachel looked gorgeous. The photos from her profile had, if anything, undersold her looks. Above a delicate nose, just lightly sprinkled with a hint of freckles, the sparkle of her huge blue eyes was showcased by the blackest of eyelashes. I felt a small surge of rat-pack swagger as I realised my date reminded me of Mia Farrow when she’d been stepping out with Sinatra.
‘Just figuring out how your phone works?’ she asked as she pulled up a seat.