Calamity in Camberwell

by Alice Castle

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Janice in tones which belied her words. It was hard for her to imagine a time when she wasn’t going to be the cynosure of all eyes. ‘Just thought I’d stop by and see how you’re getting on with everything. I can’t seem to settle today; I’m just drifting around picking at things.’

  Beth, who’d reluctantly come to realise in the past few months that she was the world’s greatest prevaricator, certainly recognised that pattern. She shut her laptop with a snap and abandoned any pretence at proper work. ‘Jan, can I ask you something rather… well, personal?’

  Janice folded her hands demurely across her cashmere bump, almost as though she were covering the baby’s ears. ‘Of course.’

  Beth leaned forward, glancing from side to side to make sure they weren’t being overheard, which was ridiculous in the confines of her own office. She lowered her voice and Janice leaned forward to hear. ‘Have you ever done any… online dating?’

  Janice sat back and giggled. ‘Honestly, I thought you were going to ask if I’d ever been dogging or something,’ she said. ‘And the answer to that is no,’ she added quickly, as Beth looked at her in astonishment. Even Beth knew that wasn’t to do with cockapoos in Dulwich Park. Although…

  But Janice was continuing. ‘Of course I’ve done some online dating. Who hasn’t?’

  ‘Well, me. People keep telling me it’s time. But I honestly have no idea what I’m doing.’

  Instantly, Janice was all business. It was as though they were discussing Lower School budgets, or planning the Upper Sixth Christmas party. There was nothing the woman loved better than a clear-cut project. ‘First, you’ll need to download Tinder. But let’s think for a second about what you’re putting in your profile. What kind of men are you hoping to get?’

  ‘To get? Lord, you’re making it sound like organising an Ocado delivery. Can I really be that specific, just order what I want?’

  ‘Well, of course you can. But with most of these things, it’s how you present yourself that will determine the sort of men you’ll get a response from. You’ll have to nail that down first.’

  Beth, increasingly anxious behind her fringe, started to fiddle with the stapler on her desk. ‘Hm,’ she said doubtfully.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, Beth. And definitely don’t chicken out at the first hurdle.’

  Beth put down the stapler and wondered how Janice had known exactly what she was thinking. ‘Maybe this is all too much hassle and I should just wait until I bump into someone the natural way.’

  ‘And you’ve been on your own now for, what? Nearly a decade? And how many great men have you actually bumped into during that time?’

  Beth’s eyes flicked off to the right and, unbidden, a large policeman appeared foursquare in her thoughts. Ruffled dark blond hair; a direct blue gaze – usually through cross and rather narrowed eyes; a big, navy blue pea coat; and, for some reason, whenever she thought of him he was carrying a takeaway cup of coffee. But could she describe him as a great man, as Janice put it? A potential date, a possible stepfather for Ben, for heaven’s sake? When he was always so annoying? And usually very cross with her? She couldn’t remember their last exchange, but it was something on the lines of her being a total idiot, with a death wish, who wasn’t safe out alone. Hardly hearts and flowers. No, whatever form of dating she ended up doing, he was one person who was never, ever going to answer her ad, or click on her profile, or swipe her – or whatever the terminology even was.

  ‘Beth? Still with me? What exactly are you looking for?’

  Beth dragged herself back to the present. ‘Well, two legs, I suppose, the normal number of ahem, other things… I’ve basically no idea. I don’t think I’ve given this enough thought, have I?’

  Janice looked at Beth fondly. She was on the nursery slopes of dating, that was for sure, whereas Janice had been a black run girl for a few years, before pulling off the master stroke that had taken her off piste once and for all.

  ‘Come on, Beth. Let’s get some lunch – and I’ll talk you through a few things.’

  ***

  By the time Beth was tidying her desk that afternoon, she had the virtuous glow of one who has done a good day’s work. True, her inbox was a lot emptier than when she’d started this morning, and she also had a sketchy outline of the Christmas exhibitions she’d be putting before the Bursar and the Head in the next few days – tasks she was pretty proud of. But the real reason for her satisfaction was that, having talked things through with Janice, she felt she was a lot closer to making a proper decision about dating and the sort of partner she might be interested in.

  In many ways, the whole process of online dating seemed completely antithetical to love, as she understood it. It really was a little like shopping. Janice had briefly resuscitated a few of her own dusty online profiles to show Beth exactly how the systems worked. And, being Janice, she’d managed to make the whole thing seem eminently sensible, easy, and an excellent idea to boot.

  Beth was now willing to give the whole thing a try. But she hadn’t lost sight of the fact that Janice, despite her skills on Tinder, had actually met her new husband in the flesh at work, and not via any old app at all.

  Surely there was more hope for a relationship that was forged in real life, and real time, not something that only existed in a theoretical ether and might never make its way out into daylight? But then, where were the suitors for her hand? The only men she met on a regular basis were the deeply married staff at the school, or the extremely wedded daddies of her various mummy friends. Her brother, Josh, was probably the only unattached man she knew, and there was absolutely no chance of him waltzing up the aisle any time soon.

  A little voice continued to whisper that Harry York was single, too. But then, where was he? Probably busy shouting at someone else or, even more likely, dealing with some awful crime in another part of south London. Their paths weren’t likely to cross again.

  And that was the whole point with online dating. As both Katie and Janice had pointed out, you increased your chances of meeting the right person exponentially just by putting yourself out there. The pool of eligible men she’d meet by sheer chance was tiny. But the selection of men online was almost infinite, and it was up to her to set her own parameters, specify exactly what she wanted from her Prince Charming.

  But even a convert like Janice didn’t pretend all the men out there were saints. She’d warned that sometimes she would seem to have clicked beautifully with one of these online chaps, they would have a lengthy and increasingly romantic and/or amorous spate of messaging or emailing, and then suddenly the man would just drop the contact, for no apparent reason. And there would never be an explanation.

  The person would just vanish back into the ether, perhaps because they’d entered another lengthy and intense cyber-relationship with someone else. Or maybe even because they enjoyed dumping a woman without giving a reason, knowing she was likely to spend far too long trying to work out what on earth had gone wrong. It was a brave new world, but a very strange one, too, with some definite odd-bods in it.

  This disappearing act, called ghosting, was something Beth had to be braced for, Janice had said. She also had to be ready to weed out players and chancers, but luckily Janice had promised to help her with this undoubtedly onerous task.

  Beth felt as though she were standing on the edge of a precipice, about to taking a flying leap. It was terrifying, but exhilarating, too. She just hoped there’d be a nice bouncy safety net to catch her at the bottom.

  Chapter Four

  ‘Of course, Belinda. Yes, yes, no problem, see you tomorrow, bye,’ said Beth, holding her phone a little way from her ear. She wasn’t sure if it was because Belinda MacKenzie didn’t trust her to understand instructions unless they were screamed at her, or whether it was part of the woman’s posh, outdoorsy, countrywoman persona, but she was incapable of having a telephone conversation without yelling as though she were at one end of the grouse moor and Beth wa
s right at the other.

  Beth sighed and dropped her mobile back onto the sofa, where Magpie promptly draped herself over it.

  Ben was upstairs asleep, last week’s restlessness thankfully turning out to be a one-off. Beth had been settled in front of the fire, proofreading a freelance project one last time before sending it off, when Belinda had rung to micro-manage the arrangements for the Camberwell tutoring tomorrow, even though they were precisely identical to the arrangements last week and the week before.

  She looked at her laptop, considering doing a bit more of her freelance work, then smiled to herself and fished her phone back out from underneath Magpie’s fluffy tum, and opened up the Tinder app. She was still only at the lurking stage, not yet having the confidence to contact anyone or do anything with all the profiles she was peering through, but she had to admit she was getting a little addicted to flicking through all the images of men, apparently dying to meet her, night after night. Some of the profiles just made her giggle; some gave her pause for a second or two. None seemed quite right.

  It was a very odd thought that some of them actually appeared to be round the corner from her right now. They could stay where they were, for sure. But if she were ever really, really desperate for companionship, it was mildly comforting to think that Stephen, 42, was only a mile away and gagging for it – or so he (not very alluringly) said.

  But wait a minute. Suddenly her restless flicking to the left stopped, and she paused, electrified. Here was someone she knew. She leaned into the little window of her phone, turning it this way and that, trying to make the picture bigger, almost willing herself to have made a mistake.

  It couldn’t be, could it? But yes, there, smiling out of her phone, was a big bear of a man with rumpled dark hair and look of rueful amusement, all cuddly in a gorgeous sweater.

  It was Jen’s new husband, Jeff.

  What? Wait a minute. This didn’t make any sense at all. They’d just got married, for heaven’s sake. She’d seen them only, how long ago? A week, barely, and they’d seemed so happy.

  Yet here he was. And that lovely sweater he was wearing? If she wasn’t mistaken, that was the special jumper that Jen had bought him from the ludicrously expensive boutique in Dulwich Village as a present, in their whirlwind courting days only a few months ago. Beth had actually been with Jen when she’d decided to splurge all her money on the gorgeous silver-grey, 2-ply cashmere. She’d thought at the time that she’d have to love someone an awful lot before she bought them a jumper costing as much as two or three weeks’ groceries, including wine and even cat food.

  Somehow that was the bit that Beth was finding hardest to get over. If you were going to attempt cheating, some part of her mind was telling her it was more acceptable if you were wearing clothes you’d chosen yourself, not a sweater that was a love token from your new wife.

  Wait a minute, thought Beth, pulling herself back from an abyss of worry. Maybe this was just an old profile, and a jumper that was oddly similar to Jen’s splurge purchase. It was impossible to tell whether it was one hundred per cent cashmere or totally acrylic on a phone screen.

  How had Jen met Jeff, after all? Maybe they’d hooked up on Tinder in the first place? She couldn’t even remember now what Jen had told her about it all. One minute, she’d been her reliable single friend in the playground, always ready with a wink when all the couple-talk about where ‘we’ were going at the weekend and what ‘we’ liked on telly got too nauseating. Next it was Brides magazine, a simple yet stunning knee-length white satin shift dress, a bouquet of syringa and roses, and an exchange of vows that had seemed so heartfelt and sincere that Beth hadn’t been the only person at the ceremony reaching for her tissues to mop moist eyes. Jeff had seemed to blow in from nowhere, sweep Jen off her feet, and whisk her to Camberwell before anyone could turn round.

  Yes, the more Beth thought about it, the more she decided that had to be it. It was just a Tinder throwback. She was already finding out that once she’d signed up to these dating sites, they mimicked the clingiest of needy partners and would not let you go. She’d decided against eHarmony and Match.com but they were still bombarding her with pleading emails, asking her why they couldn’t just be friends. Tinder was bound to be the same – easy enough to get into a relationship with, but nigh on impossible to wriggle your way out of.

  And the little line of type under Jeff’s name, saying ‘active fourteen minutes ago’? Hmm. Well, maybe he was just looking at his profile for auld lang syne, reminding himself of faraway bachelor days.

  Beth got up rather crossly. All she needed was another thing to worry about. It was bedtime, though, and she was determined to push this whole business as far to the back of her mind as she could. First thing tomorrow, she was going to find out what on earth was going on.

  ***

  As usual, Beth’s best-laid plans were destined to go awry. She had been slow to abandon her very old-fashioned digital alarm clock, something she’d bought with James at John Lewis way back in the mists of time. It had been cheap and functional all those years ago, but like everything that had distinct happy memories attached to it – James had rather hopefully teased her that he needed the insistent siren to fight off her sexual demands in the morning – she hadn’t been able to part with it. It seemed so long since she had had even the vaguest frisson of a sensual feeling, let alone felt insatiable desire. She refused to acknowledge the spark she’d felt when Inspector York’s hand had brushed hers accidentally, all those months ago.

  The battered plastic clock was a symbol of a different life, a relic. But even they eventually let you down. After the dissolution of the monasteries, enough pieces of the one true cross were burned in Britain to make up a forest, while there had been sufficient saints’ foreskins knocking around in the churches to reupholster every Jewish man in the world. The alarm clock proved just as unreliable. One morning, its red numbers beamed out proudly to the world; the next, its display had gone forever blank. Though Beth would have liked to have got it repaired, there was no-one in Dulwich who did anything nearly that useful. It had to go in the bin. Since then, she’d fallen back on her phone alarm.

  Somehow, maybe due to all her swiping last night, her phone had died in the night and now they were hideously late up. It was only the sound of her neighbour crashing around with his wheelie bins outside that finally roused her from a restless tangle of dreams involving sweaters, looming faces, a laughing circle of mummies, and a sense of pervading unease.

  Having started the morning on the back foot, it wasn’t until they were just about to rush out of the door that Beth realised Ben’s hectic flush wasn’t all due to the hurry of cramming down two Weetabix and finding his football kit in forty seconds flat. He had a fever. She put a worried hand to his forehead as they hovered in the hall, bags in hand. Mm. Hot. But how hot? She didn’t have time to get what they called the ‘earometer’, the device she always rammed in his little lughole to get a quick temperature reading. The trouble was, she had a busy day on at work. She couldn’t leave Ben sick at home all day. She couldn’t get her mum to come over at such short notice – she needed a run-up of about six weeks for all major excursions – and Katie had a full programme in the yoga studio. Oblivious to Ben’s protests, she stuck her hand back on his forehead and willed him to be well.

  ‘Get off, Mum, I’m fine,’ he protested.

  ‘Don’t call me Mum,’ she said automatically, picking up her bag and keys in relief. If he was well enough to be obstreperous, he was well enough for school, she told herself.

  She didn’t love being this sort of mother, the type who fudged things when they were inconvenient and landed the school with a potentially sick child who would be as generous with his germs as he was with everything else. She knew a lot of people would condemn her roundly for her actions. But what choice did she really have? Her usual babysitter from down the road, Zoe Bentinck, was at school herself during the day. Of the mummies who were around all day, she supposed the closest
– geographically at least – was Belinda MacKenzie, though her way of being a stay-at-home-mum was as exhausting as running a major company. Belinda had to boss her extensive staff of gofers around all day, supervising, fault-finding, and upbraiding, and also continue with her mentoring programme for her hapless acolytes, not to mention co-ordinating a timetable of extracurricular activities for her three children that made the average NASA moon landing look like a walk in Belair Park. Beth was pretty sure that leaving Ben at Belinda’s all day could potentially traumatise him a lot more than a few hours feeling a little bit rubbish at school.

  Leaving Ben at the school gates, Beth was relieved to see that he’d been pretty much restored to normal by the short walk in the chill autumnal air. He gave her a happy wave and scampered off, and she turned away with a smile. Nevertheless, her first task was going to be sorting herself out so that tomorrow she could work from home if she had to.

  ***

  Looking up from her laptop a few hours later, Beth realised she’d had a thoroughly productive morning. Tasks that had been looming for weeks had been crunched into neat little folders, and Gordian knots of correspondence that she’d been frankly swerving had been cut through with a few decisive and carefully constructed emails. She raised her hands above her head, linking the fingers and pushing upwards in a semi-yoga-ish manner that she felt sure Katie would thoroughly approve of, loosening up shoulders that had been hunched over her screen. Best of all, she’d sorted everything out so that tomorrow she could take the day off – oops, she meant work from home – just in case Ben wasn’t able to get over whatever had ailed him this morning.

  She definitely deserved a nice, long lunch break now, and what’s more, she was certain this was going to be productive, too.

  She was in luck, though at first it really didn’t seem that way. Strolling into Reception to check whether Janice would be up for a sandwich from the canteen, she found her nattering furiously with Lily Winter, her new replacement as School Secretary, and Sam Moore, who’d just joined the Bursar’s staff. Both women were straight out of the Wyatt’s mould: attractive; polished; and to Beth, who still hoped to grow out of her shyness one fine day in the distant future, highly intimidating.