Swipe Right

by Stephie Chapman

  ‘So this was unexpected and rather nice,’ I say, as we approach Dad’s front door. The rain’s heavier now, coming down in cold, sharp needles.

  ‘I’ll see you inside,’ he says, hands in pockets again. He’s bouncing on his feet. The walk back to Eastcote is longer than I think he realises.

  ‘Come on in. We’ll get you a cab,’ I say.

  ‘It’s fine,’ he says.

  ‘No one needs an hour’s walk in this,’ I say, nodding up at the sky. I can be persuasive, too. ‘This isn’t optional. You can have a mince pie whilst you wait. Dad’s neighbour brought some round.’

  ‘Alright, thanks,’ he says. The light from the TV illuminates the living room, and Ollie follows me inside. Dad’s still up, still sitting in his recliner. The plate I put his roast turkey sandwich on is on the floor by his feet. The blanket I’d tucked around myself before I went out is still discarded in a heap on the sofa. Both the tree lights and the fire are still on and flickering.

  ‘Nice evening, petal?’ he calls out as I close the front door.

  ‘Sure was,’ I say, taking off my coat and hanging it over the newel post. ‘Hey, Dad, this is Ollie from work.’

  He goes to stand but Ollie tells him not to get up, and sits down on the sofa instead. He pulls off his hat and ruffles up his hair, and I grab the Tupperware of mince pies from the kitchen and pass them around.

  ‘Ollie’s mum lives over in Eastcote,’ I say. ‘Bit far to walk in the squalls, eh? He’s cabbing it back.’

  ‘Oh very good,’ Dad says. ‘Just as long as you don’t get one of those bloody dreadful Ubers.’

  ‘I’d never let him,’ I say, winking at Ollie. Instead, I find the cab number from the shelf in the hallway and pass it over, and he dials from his mobile.

  ‘Twenty-five minutes,’ Ollie announces after he gets off the phone.

  ‘Just time for a tea then,’ Dad says, hauling himself up. He busies himself in the kitchen, flicking on the kettle, unloading the dishwasher whilst it boils, and comes back in holding a tray with three mugs and the teapot, and the three of us chat whilst we drink and idly watch the muted television.

  Soon, a car pulls up outside and Ollie makes a move to leave. He thanks my dad for the drink and the two of us stand in the porch.

  ‘This was really nice, Fran,’ he says. ‘Proper serendipity. I’m glad you texted me.’

  ‘I’m glad you replied,’ I say. ‘I guess I’ll see you at work.’

  ‘I guess you will,’ he says.

  ‘Have a lovely time in Wales.’

  ‘I will. I was going to say Happy New Year, but we’ll talk before then.’

  ‘For sure,’ I say. ‘You’d better be going. Not sure how keen the driver is on waiting.’

  ‘Ah, another thirty seconds won’t kill him,’ Ollie says, and he pulls me into a hug, much less awkward than the one we shared at the beginning of the evening, and once again, I think about what happened at the Christmas party. Once again, my heart rate gallops a little. His jacket is still damp from the rain, but he’s warm inside it, just as he was outside our office. We pull away, and he gets in the car and waves as it drives off. I watch it, my arms wrapped around myself, until the indicator blinks and it turns off towards Eastcote.

  ‘So he’s your mate from work,’ Dad says, after I’ve shut both the front door and the porch door and kicked the draft excluder in front of it.

  ‘Yup,’ I say, folding up the blanket and hanging it over the armrest.

  ‘Who just happens to live nearby.’

  ‘Wrong. He lives in London. His mum lives nearby.’

  ‘I see. Well, that was good of him to walk you home.’

  ‘Yes, he’s nice like that.’

  ‘Good of you to let him.’

  ‘Maybe I’m nice like that, too,’ I say, and Dad delivers a very specific look. It’s a look I’ve seen heaps of times before, and one I spent my teenage years avoiding because it always, without fail, meant he knew there was something I wasn’t telling him, but he’d sussed me out anyway. The man is omniscient. I don’t meet his gaze.

  ‘Well,’ I say, cheerfully. ‘I’m bushed. So I’m heading up to bed.’

  ‘Right, okay,’ Dad says. He switches off the TV and I unplug the Christmas lights. ‘Oh, Fran, before you go up, Mrs Demir called round earlier.’

  ‘Baklava?’ I ask, hopefully.

  ‘In the fridge,’ he says.

  ‘And Fran?’

  ‘Yes, Dad?’

  ‘Your mate. He seems a nice lad.’

  ‘Night, Dad.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  I spend New Year’s Eve, like I have done for the past eight years, with Lydia. Over the years our celebrations have gone from huddling by the side of the River Thames, waiting for fireworks with squash bottles filled with alcohol, to grabbing the closest boy for a snog at midnight at a house party, to beige party food and Hootenanny.

  Actually that only happened once when Lydia had a post-Christmas lurgy, and despite her runny nose and mild fever we both felt we did not give ringing in the new year the justice it deserved. She religiously washes echinacea and elderberry extract down with Berocca from mid November onwards these days, and now she hosts her own New Year’s party at her flat. It’s grown up and quite fancy. They serve champagne instead of Babycham or Asti, carefully mixed cocktails instead of pouring whatever we could find in the drinks cupboard in with low sugar cranberry juice or own brand Coke, plates of pretty canapés instead of slices of frozen pizza and mozzarella sticks. Hootenanny is on very low in her living room.

  This year Lydia’s theme is a masquerade ball, and I spruced up a cat mask I had for a Halloween past with some giant feathers attached to the ears, sticky gems and sequins and enormous false lashes. It looked better in my imagination, but I’ve had limited time and funds and no capacity to source decorations from anywhere other than the haberdashery at John Lewis, so it will have to do. I straighten it up on my face and peer into the reflection of a parked car, before I ring the doorbell, and she answers and throws her arms around my neck.

  ‘Happy last three hours of the year,’ she squeals.

  ‘However did you recognise me?’ I ask.

  ‘Your hair, obviously. Plus, that’s the cat mask from that Halloween party.’ She looks over my shoulder and I know, I just know, she’s looking up and down the street for Lucas.

  ‘You come alone?’ she asks.

  ‘Story of my life these days,’ I sigh. I’d asked Carlina, and at first she was up for it, because in her words, ‘Lydia’s posh and her flat is Pinteresty’. Lydia isn’t posh, she just has money, but Carlina won’t admit that the two don’t always come hand in hand. That money affords her a garden flat in zone two that I will admit is quite Pinteresty, with a sun trap terrace and a pizza oven, and houndstooth tiles on the floor in the toilet. But this morning, Carlina had bailed over text, saying she’s sick. I’m not sure I believe her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll tell you over a drink and a smoke,’ I say, walking into her hallway and closing the front door. I hang up my coat in the hallway cupboard and follow her into the kitchen. She moves gracefully to her fridge, handing out drinks, topping up glasses, nudging a plate of salmon blinis towards someone reaching for it. She’s the perfect host, tending to her guests before they have to ask for anything. She pours prosecco into a champagne flute and passes it to me.

  ‘Cassis?’ she asks. ‘A raspberry?’

  ‘You fancy cow,’ I say, but I drop a fat raspberry into the drink all the same.

  ‘Give me ten minutes to circulate, then we’ll talk,’ she says. She breezes into the living room, still holding the prosecco bottle and I follow and make small talk with Talia, a friend of hers I know well enough to be Facebook friends with, but not well enough to really have kept up with her life. She strokes her hand over a growing baby bump, and I have to pretend I knew she was pregnant while she nurses a soft drink and only eats the canapés that are made of ingredients on a midw
ife-approved list. She passes on the smoked salmon blinis, for instance, and the blue cheese dip, and the prawns, but happily fills up her napkin with olives and mini tomato bruschetta.

  We’re not talking for long when Lydia’s back, holding out my coat and nodding towards the direction of the front door.

  ‘If we go out the back,’ she says, ‘we’ll be disturbed. This way, if anyone arrives I’ll just open the door and see them in.’

  I lean against her front wall and light a cigarette, and she doesn’t say anything while I take a drag.

  ‘So, Lucas and I broke up.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says, and looks down at a few sad little blades of grass poking up through the gap in her paving stones. ‘Why didn’t you tell me sooner?’

  ‘Because you were on holiday when it happened and then it was Christmas, and then it wasn’t long until I saw you and I figured some things are better said in person. Don’t be sorry, though. I’m not. He turned out to be an arsehole,’ I shrug.

  ‘Really?’ She seems surprised.

  ‘Very much so. A gaslighting, lying, horrible son of a bitch.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  So I tell her about the shambolic disaster that was his Christmas party, and she wraps her arms around herself as if wounded and her eyes grow larger and larger and her brow furrows. Unlike Suze, though, she doesn’t seem relieved, and unlike Ollie, she doesn’t tell me she didn’t like him all along.

  ‘I’m just shocked. It’s shocking,’ she says.

  ‘Are you? Is it?’ I ask. ‘Because looking back, having had time to analyse it, Lyds, there were heaps of shitty little things that he did and that I did. Loads of tiny signs that things weren’t great. If I’m really honest, I can’t even say it was all down to him.’

  ‘But, he came to surprise you at your flat!’

  ‘Yeah, well I think that was probably not quite as well intended as I first thought.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘It was mooted that that could have been a little bit manipulative. Because we’d argued beforehand and I’d stood my ground. It was almost as if he was guilt-tripping me by being there.’

  ‘Really? Don’t you think you might have read a little bit too much into that?’ Lydia wrinkles up her nose, and suddenly I’m unsure again.

  I’ve felt conflicted like this since Lucas and I broke up. Suze has worked loads, and I haven’t, which means I’ve had long evenings alone, and long evenings alone equal uninterrupted thinking time – time I’ve mainly used to start to plan out how I want my dating blog to be, but which invariably turns into a mope fest as the self-doubt creeps in. And it’s been on these evenings that I’ve picked apart every aspect of my entire relationship with Lucas and all the little things I didn’t like, and magnified them. Suddenly, the time he’d thought he’d ended a call but hadn’t, and I’d heard a muffled female voice, and hadn’t thought anything of it because it could have been anyone, had me questioning if it was Annoushka. And the way I’d always called her Babooshka. Had I known, deep down? Or was I just being snarky? Did he talk about her more than any other female colleagues? Or purposely less? I’m absolutely sure I didn’t overreact the night of his Christmas party. I’m convinced I didn’t take anything too personally, but the entire debacle feels almost like a set-up. Like he was testing how far I’d let him go. But was he?

  The problem with having all this time to dwell is that I haven’t had anyone to question the narrative I’ve constructed. Or pull me up on anything. You fall quite easily into the trap of assuming that you’re right. But perhaps I wasn’t, and besides, I did have something to feel guilty about the night I found Lucas in my bed. So was he guilt-tripping me after the words we tersely snapped at each other, or was I consumed by the fact I’d behaved in a way I shouldn’t have done? And did Ollie suggest that Lucas coming over was to guilt-trip me because he was justifying it to himself as well? It becomes a confusing, tangled web. I don’t know if I’ve read too much into it. I don’t know what to think. Lydia’s brow is still furrowed and I think she’s waiting for me to respond.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘But what I do know is that Lucas and I stopped working when I got my job, and he fucked off with his bimbo colleague that night anyway, so it was clearly not meant to be.’

  ‘He did what?’ Her eyes narrow.

  ‘Yeah. There were pictures online. I don’t know if it was a rebound or if he’d been banging her on the side. Actually, I no longer care.’

  ‘Well, I’m pleased you’re not sad about it,’ she says.

  ‘I was for a bit. Felt like a right mug to be honest, but a pep talk from my dad helped a lot,’ I say, and shrug again. I’m almost at the end of my cigarette now and I consider lighting another one, but decide against it. ‘And I’m using it as fuel for an exciting new project at work.’

  ‘Go on?’ Lydia urges.

  ‘Okay, it’s a secret so please don’t even tell Jeff, but I’m going to start a dating blog. It’ll be hosted on the Viral Hive UK website. It’s quite a big deal.’

  ‘Err, is that wise? Wouldn’t you have to get permission to write about people?’

  ‘It’s fine. It’ll be redacted and changed.’

  ‘I mean, it’s not something I’d do,’ Lydia says, and I think, well no, because you’re all set with your nice flat and your high earning husband. ‘But whatever floats your boat. I can’t wait to read it.’ She touches my hand and her fingers are cold.

  ‘I’ll send you the link,’ I say, and then, keen to move on, ‘Anyway, how was your holiday?’

  She perches on the front wall and scoots into a cross-legged position.

  ‘Well, the skiing part was fine. Lovely snow. And we stayed in a mountain condo, which we hadn’t done before, but it was perfect, really. Mum loved Aspen. Think Dad prefers the Alps but it’s good to try something new, right?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I agree, as if I have any clue at all. ‘Aspen. Kerching.’

  ‘And I wanted you to know, Jeff and I made a really big decision whilst we were out there.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Yeah. We’re going to try for a baby.’

  ‘Oh fucking hell, Lydia, that’s so exciting!’

  ‘Like, right away.’ She bounces on her bum a little and I toss my cigarette butt down and squeeze her.

  ‘Are you ready to give up your DINK lifestyle then?’

  ‘Ha! I mean, how different can it possibly be, right?’

  ‘I mean, I’m an only child, and further away than ever to spawning, so I can’t tell for sure, but I think probably pretty different,’ I say.

  ‘Nooo,’ she laughs. ‘It’ll be fine. I’ll get pregnant in the next month or so, have the baby by autumn. A year off work, then into a nursery and things will be back to normal.’

  If you say so, I think. ‘Is Jeff excited?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course. For obvious reasons.’ She waggles her eyebrow and does an exaggerated wink. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t you dare,’ I say. ‘Stop it. I want to hear about your lovely news.’

  ‘I bought onesies already,’ Lydia says, and her eyes are lit up and she grabs my hands and shakes them. Her excitement is palpable, if not massively previous.

  ‘Steady on,’ I laugh. ‘What are they like?’

  ‘Adorable,’ she says, flicking back her hair. ‘A pink one that says “Princess of Aspen” on it, and a blue one which says—’

  ‘“Prince of Aspen”? Covering all bases?’

  ‘You guessed it. So tiny!’

  ‘So cute,’ I say. ‘I call dibs on taking your kid for their first drink.’

  ‘I would only ever bestow that honour upon you,’ she says.

  ‘Speaking of, shall we go back inside? I’m thirsty, and it’s nippy.’

  ‘Mask back on,’ she says, at the door. She’s not joking either.

  Lydia mingles again, and this time I join her. More people show up, some of whom I know and some of whom I don’t. I’d forgotten what it�
��s like going to a party on your own when the only people you really know well are the hosts, because the last couple of times Lydia and Jeff have hosted get-togethers Lucas has been with me. I hadn’t factored in how tiring it is having the same superficial conversations with people over and over, especially, weirdly, when you can’t even really see who you’re talking to. You end up fixating on other details so that you can recognise them again later on. Something notable about a piece of clothing, for instance, or shoes, or their hair. After a while, I take myself off to the kitchen for a while, telling Lydia it’s so I can top up the Kilner drinks dispenser with more New Year’s Eve punch, and restock her fridge with wine and beer, but really it’s for a few moments on my own. I’m halfway through busying myself with adding more songs to the party playlist when Jeff comes in and we both push our masks up on to our foreheads. His is as daft as mine. He quietly tells me Lydia’s mentioned ‘the Lucas thing’ and I shrug it off and knock back a shot of vodka.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘He was a dick.’ But tonight I wish he hadn’t been. Tonight I wish I hadn’t been. Tonight I wish I wasn’t here on my own.

  ‘Did you have a good Christmas, that aside?’ he asks, sincerely, and I tell him about visiting my dad and going for a drink with Ollie, and ask how he liked his annual Christmas skiing trip and about the differences between skiing in Aspen and skiing in the Alps before he’s called away again. Back in Lydia and Jeff’s living room, I perch on the edge of their sofa and look around. Their flat is like a real life Pinterest board. Grey chenille sofas with teal throws and mauve cushions and a pouffe in the same grey, but in giant knit. Framed photos are hung artfully on the walls – of their wedding and Jeff’s nephews, and posed pictures on some of the holidays they’ve taken together. Lydia beaming at the camera in front of an azure sea on the Amalfi Coast. Jeff raising a glass of wine somewhere in France. Both of them by the edge of the Grand Canyon. Lydia’s a fan of figurines. There’s a china fairy perched on the edge of an alcove shelf that she’s had as long as we’ve been friends, and a plump, carved wooden duck standing on the corner of their two-tone, chunky wooden TV unit, which is new. Talia parks herself next to me with more olives and bruschetta and a glass of cranberry juice.