by Matt Dunn
I stare in horror at the heavy machinery lining the walls.
‘What are we doing here? I mean, now. So soon.’
‘Well, I’d normally start a new client off with some bodyweight exercises, but by the looks of you, that might be a little tough. And seeing as we don’t have a lot of time…’
We head over to what appears to be some torture equipment in the corner, labelled ‘chest press’. On it there’s a little picture of a man who seems to be made purely out of muscle, with arrows helpfully pointing to where his chest actually is.
Sam gets on first, selects a weight from the stack, and demonstrates the exercise a few times. When it’s my turn, I’m surprised to find that I can’t even shift the weight she’s been using once.
‘I think it’s stuck,’ I say, my face an attractive shade of purple.
Sam leans across and removes the pin completely from the stack, so all I’m lifting is the mechanism itself. It’s still a struggle, but I’m pleased when I manage the twenty rep target she’s set me.
We move on to the ‘leg extension’, where I’m just about to ask whether it will make me taller until the burning in my thigh muscles makes speech impossible. Then it’s a jelly-legged walk across to the ‘pec deck’; a machine whose sole purpose seems to be to dislocate my arms from their sockets.
We spend the next half an hour doing a circuit of the gym, Sam encouraging and helping where necessary. The high point is when I manage two sets on the ‘abdominal crunch’—which strikes me as a great name for a low-fat breakfast cereal—without too much discomfort. The low point comes soon after, when I’m straining at a particularly heavy weight on the leg press and I fart loudly, provoking barely disguised sniggers from some of the other gym users. Sam, to her credit, pretends not to notice.
By the time I feel like I’ve worked muscles in places where I didn’t even know I had muscles, we retire to the exercise mats, where Sam takes me through some further stretches. I’m pleased when I can at least touch my shin, although touching my toes seems like the North Face of Everest at the moment.
Eventually, and after what seems like an eternity, we’re finished.
‘Well done,’ says Sam, as she leads me towards the exit.
I’m almost too knackered to reply, just managing to get out a wheezy, ‘And I’m paying you for this?’
As we walk out past Sy, he looks up from his copy of Steroid Monthly.
‘Call me,’ he says to Sam.
‘There are a number of things I could call him,’ she whispers, as we head down the stairs, before jogging slowly back down to the seafront.
‘Is it okay if I leave you to get home on your own, Edward?’ she asks, looking anxiously at her watch. ‘I’m meeting another client shortly, and we’ve overrun a bit.’
‘Sure.’ I nod, relieved that the session is over. ‘No problem.’
‘So, a light jog back to your flat, and you’re finished for the day.’
She’s not kidding. ‘Great.’
‘You did well. So I’ll see you Monday?’
‘Not tomorrow?’
Sam smiles. ‘No. I’ve already got a regular Saturday morning, and I don’t do Sundays. Besides,’ she adds, ominously, ‘you might need to recover a little.’
I watch Sam’s departing figure as she jogs off towards her next appointment, then, when she’s safely out of sight, I limp back up to the main road and lean against the bus stop until the number 7 arrives. It’s only two stops to the end of my street, and I don’t dare sit down in case I can’t get up again.
Once I’m home, I take the phone with me into the bathroom, just in case I have to call the cardiac team, and stand in the shower for a long, long time, until my heart rate eventually returns to normal. And yet, despite my exertions, I feel strangely elated. Whether it’s the fact that I’ve started on my journey to get Jane back, or the exercise releasing some endorphins into my bloodstream, I can’t tell. But I feel good. Or, rather, I feel bad.
But in a good way.
Saturday 22nd January
9.30 a.m.
When I wake up this morning, for the first time since Jane left I can’t feel the pain in my heart. That’s because I hurt everywhere else. Everywhere. It takes me five minutes to get out of bed, my stomach muscles screaming at me when I try to sit up, and then my leg muscles joining in as soon as I try to stand. When I eventually manage to shuffle into the bathroom to use the toilet, even my peeing muscles hurt.
I consider putting in a call to Sam to complain, but that would mean having to pick up the phone, so instead I go back to bed, but even there I can’t find a position that’s comfortable to lie in. I’m so sore that when I hobble painfully into the kitchen to find a couple of aspirin, I decide that the effort of reaching up to the top shelf in the cupboard to get them is potentially more painful than the relief I might get from taking the tablets in the first place, so I give it a miss.
By midday, I’ve managed to shower and dress, a task made even longer because I’ve had to wait for my hair to drip dry—I haven’t been able to raise my hands above my head to dry it with a towel. As I get ready for my lunchtime rendezvous with Dan at the pub, I have to leave my shoes undone, because I can’t bend down to tie my laces. Even blinking hurts.
Cursing both Sam and Jane for putting me through this, I inch my way down the steps, seriously considering taking a taxi the four hundred yards to the Admiral Jim. By the time I make my way painfully in through the doorway, I’m half an hour late, and Dan’s waiting impatiently at the bar, flicking through a copy of Heat.
‘Incredible!’ he exclaims, throwing the magazine down in disgust. ‘It says here that that Darren Day has got himself a stalker. Darren Day! What’s wrong with these people?’
‘I know.’
‘Yeah,’ continues Dan. ‘Stalking the likes of him when they could be after me. Unbelievable!’
‘Oh. Right.’
I think about heaving myself onto a bar stool but decide that it’s probably less uncomfortable to stand.
‘Look at the state of you,’ Dan says, noticing my pained expression. ‘Heavy night?’
‘Heavy morning, actually.’
Dan raises one eyebrow. ‘Oh yes?’
I don’t dare shake my head. ‘It was my new trainer.’
He looks down at my feet. ‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘No. My new personal trainer.’
Dan rolls his eyes. ‘Jesus. I leave you to do something on your own and you go and pick the wrong one.’
‘But…’
‘Some sergeant-major type yelling at you to drop and give him twenty, I bet. No wonder you’re in such a state. These people usually just want to show off how fit they are, which means you injure yourself attempting to keep up.’
‘Yes, well, Sam’s not like that. She’s actually very…’
Dan’s jaw drops. ‘A girl? A girl did this to you?’
‘No. Well, yes.’
‘Ha! Now I’ve heard everything.’ He puts on a stupid sing-song voice. ‘Edward’s trainer’s a girl.’
‘Dan, can we just drop it, please. You’re the one who suggested I needed to start exercising.’
‘Yeah, but…A girl!’
‘Dan!’
Dan holds his hands up. ‘Fine. Drink?’
I gaze longingly at the bottles of beer in the fridge behind the bar. ‘Mineral water please. Sparkling.’
Dan waves Wendy over. ‘Another glass of wine please, Wenders. And a mineral water for my fragile friend here.’
‘Sparkling,’ I add.
‘Ooh,’ says Wendy, ‘sparkling! Are you celebrating something?’
Dan smirks. ‘Edward’s got himself a personal trainer.’
‘Good for you, Edward,’ she says, pouring me a glass of Perrier and placing it on the bar in front of me. Given how sore my arms are, I’m reluctant to pick it up, and seriously consider asking Wendy for a straw to minimize the need for physical movement.
‘Okay,’ says Dan.
‘Joking aside. That’s phase one. Exercise. Now, onto phase two, and my particular area of expertise: women.’
‘Women?’
‘Yes. You need to meet more.’
‘How on earth will that help me?’
Dan sighs. ‘What’s the best and fastest way to learn a new language, do you think?’
‘Er…one of those tapes?’
‘No, you idiot. If you want to learn French, move to France. You’ll be speaking it in no time.’
‘So…I should move into a house full of girls?’
Dan savours the idea for a moment. ‘In an ideal world, that would be an option. However, you just need to speak to more women. Immerse yourself in their worlds. Familiarize yourself with their routines. Maybe even sleep with a couple of them.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
Dan makes a face. ‘You’re never going to get a new girlfriend if you think like that.’
‘I don’t want a new girlfriend. I want my old one back.’
‘Which is why you’ve got to start engaging with other women. Learn how they tick. Try a little harmless flirting. That way you’ll be better prepared for Jane’s return.’
Strangely, for an idea that’s come out of Dan’s mouth, this actually seems to make sense. ‘Okay. Point taken.’
‘So. How many women do you encounter on a regular basis?’
I stare thirstily at my glass of water, which is gradually going flat on the bar in front of me. ‘Well, there’s Wendy. And Mrs Barraclough. And Natasha, of course.’
‘Well, for a start, Wendy doesn’t count.’
‘Why not?’ says Wendy suspiciously, expecting some insult to come flying her way.
‘Because she’s too involved in this process. And Mrs B is about, what, a hundred? Mind you, she’s probably had sex more recently than you.’
‘Dan, please! What about Natasha?’
‘Hmm. From what you’ve told me about her, she makes me look like a monk. So I’m afraid you need to go out and meet some new ones.’
‘Do I really have to?’
Dan sighs. ‘Yes. Because looking at the situation with you and Jane, you’ve obviously lost the ability to relate to them.’
‘Rubbish. I speak to women all the time at work.’
‘Really?’ Dan thinks for a moment. ‘So what do you do when you’re interviewing a candidate and they’re attractive?’
‘Dan, I work in the IT industry. I don’t get attractive candidates.’
‘Sandra Bullock was good-looking in that film about computers.’
‘Let me explain something to you. That’s because she’s what’s known as an “actress”. She’s not a real computer person.’
‘Surely there must be some attractive ones?’
‘Dan, picture a girl who, between the ages of sixteen and eighteen, has decided that she’s more interested in computers than boys or going out, so then dedicates three years of her life to studying the things so she can spend the rest of her life staring at a screen and typing nonsense into the keyboard.’
‘You mean they’re all geeks?’ says Wendy, before heading off to collect some glasses.
‘No. Not exactly.’
‘There must be the odd geek goddess?’ says Dan, smiling at his own joke.
‘Dan, in—’ I look at my watch, and I don’t know why; it must be automatic—‘nearly ten years of working for an IT recruitment consultancy, I can probably think of half a dozen women who you’d charitably describe as good-looking.’
‘Okay,’ says Dan, still not convinced. ‘So what did you do when you interviewed them?’
‘I asked them some work-related questions, they answered, I wrote their answers down.’
‘And none of them ever tried it on with you to get the job?’
‘Dan, you don’t get it, do you? I don’t decide who gets the jobs we head-hunt for. I interview candidates, decide on their suitability, and then recommend to the client whether they see them or not. If they like them, and then take them on, we get paid. If not, we have to try and find someone else. So sleeping with me would be like’—I think of an example—‘you sleeping with the tea girl on Richard and Judy to try and get a presenter’s job.’
Dan blushes. ‘We all learn by our mistakes. She was attractive though. And made a great cuppa.’
I finally pluck up the courage to pick up my glass. ‘Anyway, what’s your point?’
‘Well, fundamentally you spend most of your working week stuck in an office, right? So the only real contact you get with women is on the telephone, and on the odd occasion you do actually meet a woman in the flesh, from what you say, chances are she’s not that attractive.’
‘Not that that means anything.’
Dan makes the ‘yeah, right’ face. ‘Of course not.’
‘So your conclusion is?’
‘My conclusion is, firstly, that whenever you meet a woman professionally, you need to start probing them. Getting a bit more personal. Trying to find out a bit more about how they work, rather than where they work.’
‘Fine. And secondly?’
‘Secondly, that you need to get out more. Much more. And where’s the best place to go to meet girls?’
‘Er…’
Dan smiles, as if he’s letting me into a trade secret. ‘Hen nights.’
‘Hen nights?’
Dan nods. ‘We live in Brighton. The hen-night capital of the western world. Go out on any Saturday night around here and the pubs and clubs are full of them.’
‘And how does that help me, exactly?’
‘Because where there’s a bride-to-be?’
I sip my water gingerly. ‘Are you really expecting me to get any of these questions right?’
‘Try.’
‘There’s a fiancé?’
Dan leers back at me. ‘Nope. Bridesmaids.’
‘Dan, I haven’t been to a nightclub since, I don’t know, college? And besides, at the moment, I can hardly walk, let alone dance.’
‘We won’t be doing any dancing, dummy.’
‘But isn’t that what you do at a club? Dance?’
‘Oh no,’ says Dan, ominously. ‘Wait and see.’
11.30 p.m.
‘I don’t know why I let you talk me into coming.’
Dan puts an arm around my shoulders. ‘Think of it as an experiment. Why do you think women and men go out to nightclubs?’
I shrug him off painfully. ‘Like I said earlier. To dance?’
‘To pull, stupid. So all you’re doing is putting yourself in a situation where there are lots of women out to meet guys. And you’re a guy…’
‘But, there’ll be lots of other men there.’
‘Yes, but as the saying goes, worry about the customer, not the competition. What’s your biggest strength?’
‘I’m a good listener.’
‘Exactly. And women love a good listener. You’ll be fine. You just need to loosen up a little.’
‘That’s a little hard when I’m so stiff from this bloody training.’
‘Relax. You never know—you may just enjoy yourself. We might even turn it into an all-nighter.’
‘Dan, as far as I’m concerned, at my age an all-nighter means not having to wake up at three a.m. to go to the toilet.’
Dan looks at me in disgust. ‘I sometimes wonder how Jane could have torn herself away from the whirlwind of excitement that was your relationship. Now shut up and follow me.’
We head down West Street and past a long queue of people, who give us evil looks as we pass. Dan walks straight to the front of the line and nods to the bouncers on the door, who give him that strange secret handshake thingy and show him in. As I try to follow, still limping a little from yesterday’s exercise, one of them puts a hand the size of a shovel on my chest.
‘Where do you think you’re going, sonny?’
Sonny? I’m just about to reply ‘home’ when Dan intervenes, and although I fear it pains him to say ‘he’s with me’, we’re both let ins
ide. As we push our way through the two sets of swing doors, the wall of sound nearly knocks me off my feet.
The inside of the club is one massive, strobe-lit, cavernous space, with a ridiculously busy bar at one end, and a few private booths at the other. In the middle there’s a huge dance floor where at least a thousand people seem to be crammed together, and unless I’m very much mistaken, they seem to be dancing.
Dan leans over and shouts in my ear, telling me to get the drinks in, while he heads off to ‘scout the area’. I push my way through to the bar as instructed, and I’m still standing there ten minutes later when he comes back to join me.
‘What are you playing at?’
‘I can’t seem to get served,’ I shout, still trying to catch the eye of the barman, who’s much more interested in staring down the tops of any girls pressed close to the bar than noticing me.
Dan shakes his head. ‘Give me some money.’
Obediently, I take out my wallet. When I produce a five pound note, Dan looks at me in disbelief.
‘It has been a while since you’ve been out clubbing, hasn’t it?’
He helps himself to a twenty, folds it in half lengthways, then holds it up over the bar. Almost immediately, the barman heads across to where we’re standing, and Dan orders a couple of drinks—a bottle of beer for him, and my now usual sparkling water—waving the change away when they arrive.
‘That was generous of you. With my money.’
Dan shrugs. ‘Ensures we get served first next time. Otherwise picture the scenario—you’re chatting up a girl, you offer to buy her a drink, then head off to the bar…If you’re not back in two minutes tops, chances are someone else is already in there.’
‘I bow to your superior knowledge. So what next? Do we, you know, hit the dance floor?’
‘What, you and me together? Yeah, right. Mate, unless you’re John Travolta, trying to pull a girl through your dancing skills is a big mistake. What happens at nightclubs is this: girls dance, men watch.’
Sure enough, as I look at the dance floor, it does seem to be mainly women, dancing in twos, threes, and in several cases, in large fancy-dressed groups. There’s the odd brave or drunk guy up there with them, but in general, all the other men in the club seem to be looking on from around the outside.