by Matt Dunn
I’m even more astonished to see that its from Caroline, saying how much she enjoyed meeting me, and wondering whether I’d like to meet up some time. So astonished, in fact, that I go to see Dan for advice.
Dan sighs exasperatedly. ‘Go out with her, of course.’
‘But I’m not looking to—’ I make the speech marks sign with my fingers—‘“go out” with anyone.’
‘Of course you’re not. Just think of it as a dry run for when Jane gets back. You want to be able to win her over, don’t you? Well what better way than to be able to chat her up from scratch? And this is a chance for some practice.’
‘Great idea. So how do I do that, then?’
Dan leans back in his chair, finally pleased that we’re touching on his one area of expertise.
‘Are you sitting comfortably?’
‘Should I be taking notes?’
‘That might be an idea,’ says Dan, in all seriousness. He sits there, no doubt waiting for me to produce a pen and paper.
‘Just get on with it.’
‘Okay. So what do you know about this woman?’
‘Well, not very much. In fact, I’m not sure I can remember what she looks like. But I’m sure I’ll know her when I see her.’
‘That’s encouraging. What did you write down?’
When I tell him, his face lights up. ‘Brilliant. She likes country pubs. Perfect opportunity for you to mail her back, and tell her you know this fantastic little place just outside Brighton and perhaps she’d like to meet you there for a drink one night this week.’
‘Great. What fantastic little place?’
Dan sighs. ‘You and Jane really didn’t get out much, did you?’
‘So, what next?’
‘Right. You arrange to meet her fairly early in the evening. Say seven o’clock.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because that way she probably hasn’t had time to eat anything in between work and meeting you. And,’ he adds, testing me, ‘that’s good why?’
‘Because if she hasn’t eaten…I can get her drunk quicker?’
Dan considers my answer for a moment. ‘It’s good, but it’s not right. The reason you try and get her to miss dinner is because she’ll then be hungry.’
‘You’re not being disgusting again, are you?’
‘No. Not at all. If she’s hungry, and things seem to be going well, then all you need to do is suggest that the two of you get something to eat, thus turning a casual drink into a dinner date.’
‘Brilliant. And how do I know if things are going well?’
‘In your case, if she hasn’t left.’
As usual, I ignore Dan’s insult. ‘So, after the pub, where would you take them?’
‘Me? Heaven and back, obviously. But you? I’d settle for a restaurant. Italian, probably. Shows just about the right level of sophistication.’
‘Italian?’
‘Yup. And a couple of pointers. Firstly, garlic. Good if she orders it, bad if it’s only you. And always tell them that the spaghetti is very good, even if you’ve never been there before.’
‘Spaghetti? Why?’
‘You can tell a lot about a girl from the way she eats spaghetti. Lip suction, tongue control…’
He makes a noise with his mouth that I guess is supposed to be sexy but reminds me more of Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs.
‘And then, if the meal goes well?’
He grins at me. ‘If the meal goes well? Bingo!’
‘What—on the pier?’
Dan stares at me for a second, then puts his head in his hands.
Wednesday 9th February
6.51 p.m.
The inappropriately named Ram Inn is our ‘safe’ venue—Emily advised we always met for the first time at a ‘safe’ venue—a picture-postcard thatched pub built several hundred years ago, and just off the main road between Brighton and Eastbourne.
I park the Volvo and walk nervously over towards the pub, peering in through the window just in case Caroline’s early. I can’t see her, so, mindful of Dan’s advice not to wait inside on my own and risk being stood up in full view, decide to sit in the car until she appears.
I watch the passing traffic until, a few minutes later, Caroline arrives, her silver Ford Fiesta sweeping in off the road with a crunch of gravel, although in truth I might not have recognized her but for the fact that I’d noted down what car she drove.
She parks a space away from the Volvo, possibly worried that something may fall off it and damage her car, but when I get out to meet her, instead of returning what I hope is my best welcoming smile, Caroline looks rather confused.
‘What are you doing here?’
I laugh nervously, thinking she’s making some kind of first-date joke, and decide to play along.
‘Oh, just passing. Thought the pub looked nice. How about you?’
‘I’m meeting someone, actually.’
‘Oh really?’ I say. ‘Me too.’
‘At seven o’clock,’ she adds, glancing at her watch.
‘What a coincidence. Me too.’
‘Oh,’ says Caroline.
We stand there for a few uncomfortable moments as I try to work out what to do next. Is our date not officially allowed to start until the pre-arranged time? Are we supposed to wait until seven o’clock to go into the pub? Or is she just waiting for me to take the lead? This is obviously some sort of game, but I don’t seem to know the rules.
As Caroline looks at her watch for a second time, I give up.
‘Shall we just go inside?’
‘Well,’ she says, hesitantly. ‘We’re supposed to meet outside.’
I stamp my feet against the cold. ‘Yes, but not stay outside, surely?’
Caroline glances over towards the pub, which does look rather warm and inviting. ‘You think he might be in there already?’
‘It’s me,’ I say, a little confused myself now.
‘Yes,’ says Caroline, looking anxiously around the car park. ‘From speed dating. You’re the one who was staring at that woman’s chest.’
Ah. So far this really isn’t going as well as I’d hoped. ‘Yes. Well, no, I wasn’t staring, exactly.’
‘What’s your name again?’
‘Edward,’ I reply. ‘We’ve got a date, remember?’
There’s a moment or two of stunned silence, and then a look of horror flashes across her face.
‘You’re Edward?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Oh my God.’
‘What?’
‘I must have ticked your box by mistake.’
‘Ah.’ Judging by her face, I obviously don’t tick any of her boxes.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘I thought you were someone else. I mean, that someone else was you…’
Great. And three guesses who that must have been.
Caroline still hasn’t locked her car, and I can tell she’s seriously considering getting back into it and driving straight home. I realize that, if I don’t want this evening to be a complete blow out, I have to think on my feet.
‘Well, at least stay for a drink. It’d be a shame to have come out all this way…’
Looking at her expression, I can tell immediately that Caroline wouldn’t think it was a shame at all. More likely, she’d think it’d be more of a shame to waste even an hour of her life with me. But something, maybe even compassion, clicks inside her brain, and she half-smiles.
‘Okay,’ she says, blipping her car shut and walking with me towards the pub. ‘But just the one.’
I open the door for her, and we walk inside, dodging the standard-issue horse-brasses and bunches of dried hops that hang from the low wooden beams.
‘You go and sit down,’ I tell her, ‘I’ll get the drinks.’
Caroline thinks about protesting for a moment, but then I guess reckons that at least she won’t have to waste any money on this evening.
‘Okay.’
‘What would you like?
’
‘Just a tomato juice. Please.’
‘Sensible girl.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Because you’re driving? A tomato juice?’
Caroline frowns at me. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
I shrug, and head to the bar, aware that I’ve made a rod for my own back now. If I’ve told her that she’s sensible for not drinking alcohol because she’s driven here, and I’ve obviously driven here too, then does that mean I can’t have any either? I know I’m not supposed to, given my training regime, but at the moment I need something to calm my nerves. I decide to compromise, and order a half of shandy, which gets me a funny look from the landlord, especially when I hurriedly change it to a pint of shandy, reasoning that the bigger my drink, the more time it’ll take me to drink it, and therefore the longer Caroline will have to stay.
As I pull my stomach in, draw myself up to my full height, and carry the drinks over towards where Caroline’s sitting, she looks up from where she’s been staring glumly at her watch and starts to mouth something. I lean forward and quicken my pace in an attempt to hear what she’s trying to say but instead the only thing I manage to catch is the top of my head on the low beam that straddles the ceiling.
I don’t know how long I’m lying, dazed, on the floor, but when I open my eyes I’m met with an upside-down view of the landlord, who’s leaning over me, his expression somewhere between concern and amusement.
‘People are always doing that,’ he says.
‘I’m not surprised,’ I reply, still a little woozy. ‘There should be a sign.’
Wordlessly he nods towards the beam, the centre of which is worn smooth from what can only be generations of unwary patrons smacking their heads. The word ‘duck’ is clearly inscribed on the front.
He helps me up into a sitting position, and I gingerly put my hand up to my skull, where I can already feel a bruise as large as a walnut. There’s something dripping down my face, and when I pull my hand away, it’s soaked red. My first thought is that I’ve cut myself, and it’s bad.
‘Call me an ambulance,’ I say, panicking at the bright ruby stain spreading down my white shirt.
The landlord hands me a bar towel. ‘It’s tomato juice. You’ll live.’
By now, there’s a circle of people stood around where I’m sat, in a puddle of shandy and tomato juice, their looks of concern fading when they realize what’s happened. As the landlord extends a hand to help me up, I wave him away and climb unsteadily to my feet, dabbing myself down with the towel before suddenly remembering why I’m here, or rather, who I’m here with. But when I look over in Caroline’s direction, she’s nowhere to be seen.
As the landlord pours me a conciliatory pint, I peer miserably out through the window, just in time to see a silver Ford Fiesta disappearing at speed from the pub car park.
Thursday 10th February
7.21 a.m.
‘What a bitch,’ says Sam when I recount the story in the gym the following morning, and show her the bump on my head.
‘Well,’ I wheeze, halfway through a set of sit-ups. ‘You can’t blame her really. After all, she was doing me a favour.’
Sam lets go of my feet suddenly, causing me to roll over backwards and knee myself painfully on the exact spot where I hit my head.
‘Edward, don’t talk like that. You’re hardly a charity case. What she did was downright rude, leaving you like that. You might have been seriously hurt.’
‘Well, fortunately, only my feelings were. But she didn’t find me attractive, full stop. At the moment, I just have to accept that, and be grateful for any scraps I get thrown.’
‘Edward, you’re a decent guy. That counts for a lot, you know.’
‘Yeah, maybe. But not when I go clubbing, apparently.’
‘You went clubbing?’
I nod. ‘The other weekend. Dan thought it would do me good to maybe chat up some other women.’
‘Dan?’
‘My best friend. Unfortunately. He makes Sy over there look like Mother Teresa.’
Sam laughs at the image. ‘What happened?’
‘Well, he’s so good-looking that all the girls we met just ignored me—I think the longest conversation I had was when one of them said to me “your friend’s nice”—while they gathered round him like flies on you know what.’
‘A shit? Edward, do you really think chatting up a girl in a nightclub is going to help you get Jane back? Or even going out for the evening with someone you’ve only known for three minutes?’
‘I just thought, well, Dan thought, that it might give me a bit of insight into what women want.’
Sam pulls me to my feet, leads me across to the stepper, and I climb on reluctantly.
‘Well, maybe you need to stop trying to work out what it is they want,’ she says, ‘and think a little more about what it is you want.’
‘So what about you?’ I ask, as Sam presses the ‘level up’ key. ‘Anyone special in your life?’
‘No. Not at the moment. Well, not for a while, since my brief period of mental illness when I went out with Sy. It hardly fits in with my lifestyle.’
‘But you must meet loads of people. Men, I mean.’
‘Why’s that? What are you inferring?’
‘You know, because you’re…’
‘An attractive woman?’ teases Sam.
‘I was going to say “personal trainer”. But, yes, now you mention it.’
‘Thanks, I think. And yes, I do meet a few through work, but I make it a rule never to date a man I can beat in a sprint. And besides, I could never date a client.’
‘Why ever not?’
‘Imagine if I was to get a reputation for going out with my male clients. Brighton’s a small city, and as soon as that happened? I can’t see any woman letting her husband use me as a trainer.’
‘But don’t you miss, you know, not having…’
‘Sex?’
‘I was going to say “a boyfriend”. But again, now you mention it.’
Sam smiles. ‘To tell the truth, Edward, I’m so knackered by about ten p.m. after all these early mornings that the only thing I want in bed nowadays is an extra hour. I’m trying to make it in this business, maybe I’ll even save up enough to buy my own gym one day, and sometimes you have to make sacrifices if you want something badly.’
‘I know what you mean,’ I say. It’s about now I’d be lighting up my first cigarette of the day.
‘Besides, in my experience, men don’t like it if you care about your career, and certainly not if your work means you’re out of the house so early every morning that they have to make their own breakfast. And then, when you tell them you fancy an early night, but that means you actually want to go to sleep…’
‘In your experience?’
Sam nods. ‘The guy I went out with before Sy. We’d been seeing each other for about a year before we decided to move in together. And that’s where the problems started.’
‘What happened?’
‘Let’s just say that someone who I enjoyed seeing once or twice a week wasn’t so much fun every day. He just seemed to have no ambition. No drive.’
‘And?’
‘I’ll tell you something, Edward. When someone loves you, there’s nothing they won’t do for you. When they stop loving you, there’s nothing they will. And so, eventually, I just got fed up. I got tired of clearing up after him, of always being the one who had to do everything. Trust me, once you’ve picked up the hundredth pair of dirty socks from the floor on his side of the bed, the romance soon goes out of the window. And get this—his idea of an evening’s entertainment was to watch Sky Sports with a takeaway for company. Whether I was there or not.’
Gulp. Sam’s just described my old every-Wednesday-night routine.
‘He wasn’t into exercise?’
‘Nope. The only six-pack he was interested in getting had “Budweiser” written on the side.’ Sam goes quiet for a moment. ‘But yes, in answe
r to your earlier question, in an ideal world, I’d love to have a boyfriend. And,’ she says, nodding curtly, ‘everything that goes with that. But the guys I meet nowadays are usually married and only after a bit on the side, or they’re the type that come into Sy’s gym and therefore they’re all like Sy himself, so at the moment I’ve prioritized, just like you’re doing. What is it you miss about your old lifestyle the most, for example?’
I stop climbing and let the foot pedals sink me back down towards Sam’s eye level. ‘Pizza, probably.’
Sam laughs. ‘And there’s me thinking you were going to say “companionship” or something like that. At least you’re honest.’
‘Sorry I didn’t think you were asking about me and Jane. I thought you meant…never mind. Of course I miss her. I miss talking to her; telling her about my day, and her laughing when I tell her the latest about what Natasha’s been up to. I miss the comfortable silences; the arguments about what we’d watch on TV; refereeing the arguments she’d have with Dan; the brave face she’d put on whenever I’d offer to cook her dinner. I miss holding hands with her when we’d walk along the seafront. I miss her falling asleep on me during whatever DVD we’d rented, and then having to explain the plot when she woke up just before the end. I miss her smile, the smell of her perfume, the look of her in her business suit, the look of her out of her business suit…Most of all, I miss her just being there.’
Sam looks at me strangely. ‘Blimey, Edward. You really do, don’t you?’
I stare at her for a second or two, then snap back, a little too aggressively, ‘Why the hell do you think I’m putting myself through all this. It’s not just for the pleasure of your company, you know.’
When I slump against the machine, catching my breath for a different reason, Sam walks round next to me and puts an arm round my shoulders, a task that can’t be too pleasant given the amount I’m sweating.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, when I’ve regained my composure. ‘I forgot that it was still so, you know, raw.’
‘I’m sorry too. For snapping at you. I just get a little angry sometimes when I think about how Jane just upped and left me. The…the life that she just left behind.’