Mr. Maybe

by Jane Green

  “Is this going to cost anything?”

  “Nah. Don’t be daft. They’re virtual, aren’t they? That means they’re not real.”

  She clicks on a picture of a basket stuffed with crisps, cakes and biscuits, then over her shoulder says to me, “What do you want to say?”

  “How about, Dear Ed, thank you for your beautiful flowers. I thought you might be hungry but save the Oreos for me. They’re my favorite. . . . Looking forward to seeing you on Tuesday. Libby.”

  “Love, Libby?” Jo asks, typing in my message.

  “Oh, all right then. Love, Libby. So what happens now?”

  “You just send it, and they get a message on their e-mail saying they’ve had a virtual delivery and it gives instructions on where to go to pick up the present.”

  “That’s amazing. Can I have a go?”

  “What? More admirers?”

  “Hmm.” Jo stands up and I sit in her place as she wanders back to reception, and ten minutes later I’ve sent virtual food baskets to Jules, Jamie, Olly and Sal.

  Unsurprisingly, Jules calls half an hour later, and she’s laughing so hard I can hardly hear her. “That is fantastic!” she splutters. “How in the hell did you do that?”

  “More to the point, Jules, what are you doing checking your e-mail in the middle of the day? Shouldn’t you be interior designing or something?”

  “Should be,” she says. “I was just getting on the Internet to try and find some suppliers of this Spanish furniture I’m looking for. Someone said they had a site on the Web, and my e-mail told me I had a delivery. It’s bloody inspired, Libby! I love it!”

  I tell her about the flowers and about sending the same basket to Ed, and I can hear her squealing and clapping her hands on the other end of the phone.

  “Jesus, Libby!” she says. “He’s going to fall head over heels in love with you! I bet he’s never met anyone like you before!”

  I bet he hasn’t either.

  At the end of the day, just before I leave, I check my e-mail, just in case, and sure enough there’s a message from EMcMann@compuserve.com.

  “Dearest Libby,” it says. “I’m now absolutely stuffed! What a delightful surprise, and I’m so pleased you received the flowers. I must say, no one’s ever done anything like that for me before. . . . Can hardly wait to see you again. Much love, Ed.”

  “Cor,” says Jo, who’s standing behind me, reading this over my shoulder. “Now. He. Is. Keen.”

  And I go home with a smile on my face.

  I sneaked off early today, to have enough time to get ready, because I want to look good tonight and not necessarily for Ed, more for me, but I could really get used to these flowers and this general feeling of having met someone who could, possibly, adore me.

  So it’s face pack time, and deep conditioning hair stuff time, and new MAC lipstick time, and anyway, there’s nothing wrong in trying to look the best you can possibly look, is there? Plus, Nick never appreciated the designer Libby, and it’s bloody nice to dress up again, even though I’m still thinking about Nick, just not quite as often.

  And again, tonight, I don’t bother with the old razors, because, like Ed as I do, I can’t get my head round anything physical happening between us, and even if it were to happen, there’s no way it would happen tonight, so that’s why, underneath my trousers (yup, trousers; my mother can go to hell), my legs are again as hairy as, well, as someone who hasn’t shaved them for a week or so.

  I’d like to run with this one, as it were. Not jump into bed, or jump into a relationship, but keep seeing him and see what happens. Whether I might grow to like him, whether he might turn out to be someone special, whether I could actually persuade him to shave off that bloody mustache.

  And I’m pretty damned pleased with how I look tonight. A pale gray trouser suit with little pearl earrings that are really not my style at all, but they were a present from my mum a couple of birthdays ago, and flat cream suede shoes.

  God. If my mother could see me now! I look like the epitome of a sophisticated young woman. Apart from the trousers, that is. I almost laugh at the sight of myself because I look more like a Sloane Ranger than Princess Diana in her early days, but this look fits with Ed, and it’s quite good fun, dressing up. I sort of feel a bit like a child playing a big game. Let’s pretend to be sophisticated, smart and mature. What fun! Hey ho! Jesus.

  The phone rings just as I’ve finished applying a final coat of clear nail polish. Couldn’t have gone for my beloved blues or greens—far too trendy for Ed.

  “What have you eaten today?” Naturally, it’s Jules.

  “Nothing for breakfast. A milk chocolate Hobnob at about eleven o’clock, d’you know how many calories they are?”

  “I think they’re about seventy-eight.”

  “Oh shit. Anyway. A Caesar salad for lunch, and an apple halfway through the afternoon.”

  “That’s good. You’ve been really good. The biscuit wasn’t bad, not if you compare it to what I’ve had today.”

  “Go on.”

  “Okay. For breakfast I had a huge bowl of cornflakes. Huge. Really. Disgusting. Then at about ten o’clock I was hungry again, so I had three chocolate Bourbons. At lunch I went out with a client and had grilled vegetables swimming in olive oil to start with, then a huge plate of pasta in a creamy sauce, and then we shared a crème brÛlée but she hardly ate anything, I had practically the whole thing.”

  Jules is such a bloody liar. I know exactly what she’s like. She probably had a tiny bowl of cornflakes. No Bourbons. Plain vegetables. A couple of mouthfuls of pasta and a taste of the crème brÛlée. There’s no way Jules would be as slim as she is if she really ate what she says she does. I know there are times when she’s telling the truth, but I also know that most of the time she’s so bloody fat-conscious she only picks at food, doesn’t really eat anything. She’s more than a little obsessed, which is why we have so many food phone calls a day. I don’t mind, really I don’t, but I wish she’d stop thinking about it quite as much as she does.

  Although I suppose I’m not that much better.

  But she encourages me.

  Not that I wouldn’t think about it at all if we didn’t talk about it.

  But I wouldn’t think about it as much . . .

  “I’m not going to have any dinner,” she says firmly. “That’s it for today. And tomorrow I’m going on a diet.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, Jules!”

  “What? What?”

  “Never mind.” There’s no point in telling her she doesn’t need to lose weight, if anything she needs to put it on, because she won’t believe me. The number of times we’ve gone out and the first thing she says to me is, “Do I look fat?” and I look at her skinny, waiflike frame and say, “No! Don’t be ridiculous,” and she says, “Can’t you see it on my face? There? Look.” And she taps a nonexistent double chin and spends the rest of the day, or evening, smoothing this invisible double chin away.

  God. What it is to be a woman.

  “So what are you wearing?”

  I tell her.

  “Mmm. Very sophis.”

  “I know. It’s not really me, but I couldn’t turn up in something dead trendy or he’d faint.”

  “You know what you are?”

  “What?”

  “You’re a chameleon girlfriend.”

  “A what?”

  “I was reading an article about it. It’s about women who change their image, their hobbies, pretty much everything, depending on the man they’re with.”

  I wish I didn’t have to say this, but as usual Jules is absolutely right, and I’ve always done it. I’ve tried to change myself depending on the man of the moment, and I know it’s wrong, even as I’m doing it I know it’s wrong, but I can’t seem to help it.

  Jules has never done it, she’s never had to, and once we sat down and tried to figure out why I do it although we didn’t have a name for it at the time—and the only reason we could come up with was low self
-esteem.

  Jules has decided that because Olly was the one who had all the glory, I never think that anyone’s going to like me for myself, and that’s why I always try and become someone else. If you’re confused, trust me, no one’s more confused about it than me.

  “So tell me something else I didn’t know,” I say bitterly, because, much as I love Jules, I suppose I’m slightly envious of her confidence.

  “Don’t take it like that,” she says, sounding wounded. “It’s fine. I’m quite jealous of it, in fact. You can wake up in the morning and think, hmm, who am I going to be today?”

  I can’t help it. I laugh.

  “I wish I could be more like you sometimes,” she says, and I nearly fall off my chair.

  “Jules! You’re nuts! You’d like to be single with no self-esteem and a radar that warns off all decent men and only attracts the bastards?”

  “Ed’s not a bastard.”

  “Not yet. Anyway, he’s not good-looking enough to be a bastard.”

  “And Jon was good-looking?”

  “Okay, okay, so he wasn’t your type. But I thought he was good-looking.”

  “Listen, Jamie’s back, I gotta go. Have a fantastic evening, and call me first thing.”

  “Thanks, sweetie. Bye.”

  “Oh, Libby?”

  I put the receiver back to my ear.

  “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” And, cackling, she puts down the phone.

  Now this is getting ridiculous. The doorbell rings, I open the door, and once again Ed’s standing on the doorstep holding a huge bouquet of roses.

  “Ed,” I say, loving this attention but not wanting to get too used to it, to take it for granted. “You must stop buying me flowers. It’s beginning to look like a florist’s in here. I’m running out of vases!”

  “Oh. Er. Sorry, Libby.” He looks crestfallen and I feel like a bitch.

  “No, no, don’t be silly. It’s just that you’re spoiling me, but they’re beautiful. Thank you.”

  He comes in and stands in the living room, as I open lots of cabinet doors, hoping that there’s a vase I’ve forgotten about. In the end I pull a milk bottle out of the fridge and empty the milk down the sink.

  And although I have to cut down the stems by about a foot, the roses actually look pretty damn nice in a milk bottle. It must be the mix of the luxury and the everyday.

  A bit like me and Ed, really.

  We go to the Ivy, and Ed seems to know an awful lot of people in there, and I’m really beginning to enjoy being with this man who’s so sophisticated and yet so naive at the same time. Because he is naive. He’s somehow slightly gauche, awkward, and it’s probably his most endearing quality.

  He orders champagne, and as we raise our glasses, I hear a familiar swooping voice.

  “Libby! Darling!” And I turn around and there, resplendent in a tiny black dress, is Amanda. I give her the obligatory air-kisses, and then she just stands there, looking at me, then at Ed, and I introduce them.

  And it’s quite extraordinary, because Ed stands up to shake her hand, and Amanda starts simpering like an idiot, fluttering her eyelashes and being all coy, and I’m really quite embarrassed for her, and I breathe a sigh of relief when she finally leaves.

  “Who was that?”

  “Amanda Baker. She’s a television presenter.”

  “I see. Is she famous?”

  “Not as famous as she’d like to be.”

  “Ha ha! That’s very good, Libby. How do you know her?”

  “I do her PR.”

  “So you could make her famous, then?”

  “It’s sort of catch-22. You can’t be famous without being written about, and nobody wants to write about someone who isn’t famous. But I’m trying.”

  “I don’t watch much television, that’s probably why I didn’t recognize her. I only ever seem to watch the news.”

  “What do you do if you’re at home at night?”

  “Work usually. Listen to music.”

  “So if I told you I was in love with Dr. Doug Ross it wouldn’t mean anything to you?”

  His face falls. “Who’s Dr. Doug Ross?”

  “Never mind,” I laugh. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  The food’s delicious, the champagne’s delicious, and I’m loving sitting here star-spotting, although every time I whisper that another celebrity has just walked in, Ed stares at them in confusion, and it’s quite amazing that he really doesn’t have a clue who these people are. I mean, for God’s sake, some of the people that have walked in here tonight are the biggest stars of stage and screen, and Ed’s never seen them before in his life!

  “Libby,” he says, when we’re waiting for our coffees. “I think you’re extraordinary. I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  “Thank you. Really? How?” I know you’re not supposed to fish for compliments, but I can’t help it, and after Nick I deserve to have my ego inflated a little bit.

  “You’re just so bright, and sparky, and full of life. I really enjoy being with you. And . . .” He pauses.

  “And?” I prompt.

  “Well, I’m not sure whether I should say this yet, and it probably sounds ridiculous, but I really like you.”

  “That doesn’t sound ridiculous.”

  “No. I mean I really like you.”

  “I like you too.”

  “Good. And I think we might have something special here.”

  I smile. I mean, what could I say? The guy hardly knows me.

  “I thought you might like to see my house,” he says, on the way back.

  “I’d love to!” Which is true, I want to know more about him, more about where he lives, how he lives. I want to nose around his home and look for clues about who he is, whether I could be happy with him.

  Please don’t think I’m sounding ridiculous. It’s not that I’ve decided he’s The One or anything, but I do have a worrying tendency to, how shall I put it, plan ahead. The number of times I’ve sat in bed dreaming of my marriage to someone I’ve had one date with. And although I don’t fancy Ed, it’s quite good fun dreaming about it anyway. To be honest, he wouldn’t figure that strongly in this particular daydream. Nah, when I daydream about getting married I’m far more concerned about the dress, the location, the bridesmaids. The groom tends to be a faceless person, he’s really not that important.

  So while I’m not planning the wedding just yet, I’d still like to see his home.

  We pull up outside a sweeping terrace, and the thing I find most strange about where he lives is not the size or the grandeur, but the fact that someone his age lives there at all. I know he said he bought it as a family home, but it seems crazy to live somewhere that feels so middle-aged when you’re still relatively young. And anyway, if I got married I’d want to buy a new home together, start afresh; I wouldn’t want to move into the place he already lived in.

  The hallway floor is one of those black-and-white marble numbers, and I can see that Ed’s incredibly proud of his house as he flings open the doors to the most spectacular drawing room I’ve ever seen. Huge, airy, with stunning original moldings on the walls and ceiling, it’s completely empty.

  “Umm, have you recently moved in?” I ask.

  “No. I’ve lived here for two years!” he says.

  “What about furniture?”

  “I’ve never got around to buying any,” he says, shrugging. “I suppose I’m waiting for my wife to come in and redecorate.”

  “But you could have got an interior designer to do it.”

  “I did!” he says indignantly, pointing at the swagged, pelmeted curtains.

  “Oh. Right,” I say.

  He leads me upstairs to his bedroom. Immaculate and huge, it leads into an enormous dressing room, lined wall to wall with cabinets, and then through to an en suite bathroom.

  Next door is his study, and upstairs there’s a gym, a sauna and more empty bedrooms. And more. And more. They seem to stretch on forever, and I honestly feel as
if I’ve stumbled into a ghost house, because it’s quite clear that none of these rooms is ever used. There’s no warmth in this house, it’s a museum, a showpiece, and I start to feel increasingly uncomfortable here.

  We go downstairs to the basement. A country-style kitchen, and I breathe a sigh of relief because next to the kitchen there are sofas, and french doors leading on to a garden. Judging by the amount of books and papers piled around the room, this is the place he lives in.

  And it really is quite cozy. Not perhaps exactly as I’d do it. I’d get rid of those dried flowers hanging from the ceiling for starters, but it’s not at all bad.

  Ed goes into the kitchen to make some coffee, and I sit and look around the room, deciding what I’d change if I lived here. I’d have the sofas re-covered in a bright blue-and-yellow checkered fabric, I’d get rid of that revolting limed kitchen table and put in an old scrubbed pine one, I’d . . .

  “Do you like it?” Ed interrupts my thoughts.

  “Your house?”

  He nods.

  “I think it’s spectacular,” I say, because it undoubtedly is, but I decide against telling him it’s a bit like a morgue. “But don’t you get a bit lonely rattling around in this huge place by yourself?”

  “Yes,” he says, suddenly looking like a little boy lost. “At times I do.”

  And he looks so sweet I want to hug him.

  He comes to sit next to me on the sofa, and the air suddenly feels a lot more oppressive, and I know he’s going to kiss me, but I’m not sure I want him to. I try to avoid looking at him, keeping my eyes fixed firmly on my coffee, because I can feel he’s staring at me, and I’m praying, Jesus how I’m praying, that he doesn’t put his coffee cup down.

  He puts his coffee cup down.

  And he sneaks an arm around the back of the sofa, not yet touching me, and I want to run out of there screaming because at this moment I know as an absolute certainty that I don’t want to kiss him.

  This, it has to be said, is a bit of a new feeling for me. If I bother going out with someone again after a first date, then it’s because I fancy them, and I spend the rest of the second date praying they’ll kiss me and wondering how they’ll do it.