Love @ First Site (5 page)

"Good idea." It's Richard and Lars's anniversary dinner tonight, but if Simon suggests this evening I might just mutate into the worst friend of all time and say yes. But he doesn't. "It's funny, you know," I say, looking down at the table and smiling to myself. "I was really dreading this lunch . . ."

I'm about to fess up to the mythical hair appointment, and glance up to make sure he's hanging on my every word. He isn't.

Lowering his eyelids and tucking his chin into his chest, he mumbles: "Excuse me, I have to go to the loo." Silently pushing his chair back, he scuttles to the rear of the restaurant and disappears through the door marked "Restrooms."

Maybe the chili con carne is working its magic, I think, tittering to myself at the thought. Taking another mouthful of wine, I turn in my chair to view the rest of the room. The diners who arrived when I did have mostly left, to be replaced by the next shift of Saturday afternoon shoppers who probably ate a late breakfast. One large group has clearly just arrived, as they noisily choose who sits where and remove coats.

I turn back and stare at the empty chair in front of me, deep in thought. Who would have guessed that Kara would be doing me such a favor when she placed that ad? Certainly, that wasn't her intention. I smirk with joy at the thought of her meeting the gorgeous man she has indirectly hooked me up with.

Five minutes pass and I wonder whether I should go in there and check if he's all right. But I talk myself out of it. After all, a stomach upset is undignified at the best of times, but on a first date, it must be horribly embarrassing. I'll wait a bit longer and pretend it's been no time at all when he finally emerges.

Ten minutes now. I look at my watch just to check, then glance over at the door to the loos, willing him to walk back through it. The last thing I want is for him to get the shits and have bad memories of our first date. Perhaps we'll laugh about it another time, when we've been together a month or so.

Twelve minutes. Now I really
should
go and see how he is. Otherwise, he might think me horribly uncaring. Throwing my handbag over my shoulder, I stand up and walk to the back of the room.

Through the door, three options face me: Private: Staff Only, Dames, and Guys. Standing outside the latter, I tap on it. "Simon, are you in there?"

No answer. A bit louder now. "Simon! It's me, Jess. Are you OK?"

No answer again. Suddenly, the door from the restaurant swings open and a middle-aged man in a suit walks through. He looks at me strangely.

"Sorry." I smile weakly. "But my friend went in here a while ago and hasn't come out. Would you mind checking if he's all right for me?"

His face relaxes slightly, now confident I'm not some mad stalker with a gents loo fetish. As if. The stench is making me want to throw up what little of my salade nicoise I actually ate.

"Of course. Hang on a minute." He disappears inside.

My ear pressed to the door, I can hear him knocking on cubicles and saying "Hello?"

A few seconds later, he opens the door again and I fall forwards, clutching his shoulder to break my fall. "Sorry," I gasp.

"There's no one in there." He looks at me strangely and I realize it's pity.

"My mistake," I gush. "We must have passed each other. He's probably back at the table." Mustering as much dignity as I can, I turn and walk back through to the restaurant. My eyes closed, I murmur a small prayer, then open them.

He's not there.

My Prince Charming has seemingly vanished into thin air, with not so much as a smelly dock shoe left behind. In his place, the facially challenged waiter is standing next to the table scowling at the two empty chairs.

There
has
to be some perfectly reasonable explanation. After all, we were getting on brilliantly and
he
was doing all the chasing.

I approach the table and plonk myself dejectedly into the chair. All pretense of dignity gone, I look at the waiter with an expression of puzzlement and disappointment. A swell of nausea rises from my stomach to the back of my throat and I feel close to tears. "Have you seen the man I was having lunch with?"

"Yes." He tears the bill from his pad and places it in front of me. "He went out through the kitchen a few minutes ago. He said you'd pay."

Five

H
e's married. Absolutely no doubt about it." Richard's mouth sets in a firm line, suggesting that now he has delivered his verdict, that's the end of the matter.

Doubtful, I purse my lips. "He didn't seem married."

"Darling, of
course
he didn't. He was pretending to be single because he wanted to have his cake and eat it. You know, get his leg over."

It's 8:30 p.m. and I'm at Richard and Lars's flat for a party to celebrate their first anniversary. They moved in together after just one month, both impetuous types.

There are about twenty people expected, but so far it's just them, me, Tab and her boyfriend Will, and Madeleine. They have all cornered me, chomping at the bit for news on my hot date, and I have told them everything--right down to the humiliation of being abandoned and saddled with the bill.

"He's not necessarily married," says Tab, placing a reassuring hand on my forearm. "There might be a simpler explanation."

"Like what?" scoffs Richard. "He's got X-piles?"

"Eh?" Tab looks bewildered.

"Unwanted visitors on Uranus, darling. Because that's the only other reason there could possibly be for spending so long in the bog, then disappearing into thin air."

"No," perseveres Tab. "He might have received an emergency phone call whilst he was in the loo and had to rush off."

"Through the
kitchen
?
"
says Richard scathingly. "Tabs, sweetie, you're lovely to try, but there's no point sugaring the pill. Jess has been taken in by the oldest con man in the book. He's married and he wanted a little extra-cunnilingular activity."

I scowl at him for such coarseness, but inside I feel horribly nauseous and overwhelmingly depressed. I just want to go home, curl up in a ball under the duvet, and never come out. Instead, I have to stay here and celebrate someone else's happy, rewarding relationship. Hip hip hoo-bloody-rah.

"But if, as you say, he was only after one thing, why would he suddenly leave when he was so close to getting it?" I flush at the thought of the wine-induced kiss. I don't know why I'm still flogging this dead horse, but there's a strange masochistic comfort in talking about it.

Even Richard has to give thought to my question. "Hmmm," he says slowly. "Let's see. What happened between the snog and him disappearing?"

"Nothing." And I meant it.

He looks incredulous. "Think. There must have been
something.
What about elsewhere in the restaurant?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, did anyone come in?"

I think for a moment, then shrug. "People were coming in and out all the time. I had my back to them."

"Ah, so
he
could see them?" Richard narrows his eyes and rubs his chin Columbo style. "How did he react to them?"

All eyes are glued on me and I feel like the main witness in a murder trial. I can't help myself.

"Now that you mention it . . ."

Almost imperceptibly, they all lean forward a few millimeters.

". . . he
was
in the library with the lead pipe."

It takes a couple of beats for my remark to sink in, at which point they all sigh collectively and sit back in their chairs.

"Ha fucking ha." Richard hates it when the joke's on him. "Well, if you want to be a spinster for the rest of your life, you go right ahead and laugh at our efforts to try and help you," he says huffily.

"Sorry." I look suitably sheepish, then put on my best expression of concentration. "He did get a bit distracted every time the door opened, but he mentioned it himself and he wouldn't have done that if he was trying to hide something. Would he?" I look imploringly at Tab and Madeleine and, in the true spirit of the girly code, they shake their heads reassuringly, even though they probably think it's total hogwash.

"A psychological double bluff," says Richard dismissively. "And did he get distracted by the door just before he legged it?"

"Not that I saw, no. A large group came in, but he didn't seem to notice them. We were rather engrossed in each other at that point." The nausea has returned.

"And absolutely nothing else unusual about his behavior?" Richard's clearly not convinced.

I jut out my bottom lip, deep in thought. "Only that it was a beautifully sunny day but he didn't want to sit outside."

Richard slaps both his hands on his knees in a gesture of triumph. "I rest my case, your honor."

"Sorry?" I'm scowling again.

"Well, how much proof do you need?" He pulls a "duh" expression on me. "He didn't want to sit outside because he was afraid he'd be seen with you. Now why could that be?"

He has a point. The more I thought about Simon's reluctance to eat al fresco, and the way he got so easily distracted by the door, the more it all backed up Richard's theory.

"He must have seen someone he knew among the big group of people that came in," I say morosely. "That's why he went out the back way."

My misery descends like a black cloud over the gathering, the silent gloom eventually punctuated by the doorbell.

"I'll go!" Lars leaps up a little too gratefully.

"There'll be plenty of other, more suitable dates," says Tab comfortingly. "I can see you meeting someone a little bit older and really successful . . . you know, a big gun."

"As long as he's not of small caliber and immense bore," says Richard.

I feel bad about being a manic depress-o-gram on their anniversary, but I can't help myself. I kissed my Prince Charming and he turned into a frog. Things couldn't be worse.

"Hello!" a familiar voice rings out.

Yes they could. Kara has just walked in, her beady eyes scanning our dejected faces.

"Are we contacting the dead?" She raises a quizzical eyebrow.

"Almost," says Tab. "We've just been hearing about Jess's first Internet date."

"Really?"
The delight in Kara's voice is not dissimilar to that little slurping noise Hannibal Lecter makes at the thought of a gently poached human liver with a glass of Chianti. "
Do
tell."

Tab opens her mouth and starts to speak, but I do the verbal equivalent of wrestling her to the ground. "Nothing to tell really," I babble. "He was quite nice, but there was no spark. I won't be seeing him again."

Kara looks dubious, her narrowed eyes assessing everyone's reaction to my little statement. Tab is staring at the floor, Will looks impassive, Lars has flushed bright red, and Richard's tongue is so deliberately and firmly wedged in his cheek that he looks deformed.

"And the
real
story?" Kara fixes me with her best steely glare.

"He did a bunk before the end of the date, and we think it's because he was married," I mumble.

"God, what a bummer." It's Dan, Kara's boyfriend. I hadn't even noticed him enter the room. "Do you know where to find him? We'll send the boys round." He looks at Richard and Lars for support, then clearly thinks better of it. "Well, me and Will anyway."

My arms suddenly break out in goose bumps, despite it being a fairly warm evening. "Christ, maybe none of it was true . . ."

"None of what?" Madeleine tops up my wineglass in a show of sisterly support.

"His name, his background, his job . . . maybe it was all a huge, fat lie." I replay it all in my head, trying to assess the viability of everything he said.

The doorbell rings again and, this time, Richard drags himself away to answer it. Craning his neck to try to see who's at the door, Lars turns back and looks directly at me. "Did you not zay you heff been e-mailing each other?"

I nod silently.

"So e-mail him and ask him vy he dunked you in ze big end."

"You mean dropped me in at the deep end." I smile. "In fact, left me in the lurch would be even better. No, even
I
have too much self-respect to chase him for an explanation." I stand up. "Right! Enough of this depressing bollocks, let's party!"

I put on a good show of being the life and soul with the rest of Richard and Lars's friends who are now arriving at the party, but inside I'm dying. Not from embarrassment that my friends had to hear my tale of abandonment, but from genuine disappointment and, if I'm honest, a little bit of hurt.

My brief taste of the heady mixture of alcohol-fueled lust and a warm spring day has reminded me just how much I miss intimacy. I had been coping well with celibacy, but now I feel like my insides are on spin cycle. A little bit of what you fancy leaves you wanting more, but sadly "more" doesn't seem to be an option.

Locking myself in the downstairs bathroom for a brief respite from party chitchat, I lean my forehead against the cool wall tiles and wonder whether my next date will be as bittersweet. After all, I've promised to have two more.

T
here's a team of
Till Divorce Do Us Part
dancers jumping around inside my head as I attempt to lift my face from the pillow. It flops down again almost immediately.

Basically, I drank to forget. And drank. And drank. The party had eventually whittled down to the usual suspects, and we'd all sat round the kitchen table talking bollocks and teasing Lars about his new Garth Brooks album blaring out of the CD player.

It led to Richard demanding that everyone had to come up with a spoof title for a country and western song, and Tab had kicked off with "Get your tongue outta my mouth, cos I'm kissing you good-bye."

By the time it got to Richard, who came up with "Her teeth were stained, but her heart was pure," I was in danger of wetting myself and had to sprint to the loo. The next thing I remember was Richard shaking me awake in the spare room, where I lay after apparently crashing there an hour earlier.

He said he fully intended on leaving me there until morning, but trouble was, my gaping mouth was pressed against Kara's pink suede jacket. Worse, as Richard gleefully pointed out to me, I had drooled all over it and left a stain that, rather prophetically, resembled an angry woman with her fist in the air.

Once stirred from my slumbering stupor, I became obsessed with getting home to my own bed so I could tuck up in my fleece jammies and lie in to my heart's content the following morning.

Except my hangover clearly has other ideas, and I can't fall back to sleep because of a persistent thumping between my eyes. The phone rings, the usually faint tone sounding like Big Ben going off next to my head.

"Hello?" My voice cracks with inactivity.

"Hi pumpkin. You all right?" It's Olivia. "I was just checking you haven't forgotten lunch."

I have. "Lunch?" I rub my right eye, trying to soothe the dull throbbing.

"Jess! I knew you'd forget. Don't you
dare
try and wriggle out of it."

My hand automatically slaps against my forehead, not a good idea in my current state. "Oh God, the parentals." It's our collective pet name for Mum and Dad.

"You got it. One o'clock sharp. You know how Mum hates us to be late."

I groan with a ferocity to rival a wounded warthog. "I've got such a terrible hangover I can barely form a sentence. I'll just hang out in the den with Matthew and Emily."

"No you won't." Olivia's tone is faintly apologetic. "They're not coming. Emily has a tummy bug, so Michael's gratefully staying at home with both of them. It's just you and me, I'm afraid."

Four cups of black coffee and several cold water face sluices later, and I'm on my way to Surrey, wearing the same outfit from the night before. Decision making isn't my strong point at the moment, but at least the outfit's fairly smart. You see, there's no just pitching up for Sunday lunch in comfy jeans and a sweater. Not with my mother anyway.

As children, Olivia and I were always dressed immaculately with matching frocks, highly polished patent shoes, and frilly socks. Think Minnie Mouse on acid.

Our mother was very slim and trendy, the Jackie O of Surbiton. She stood out a mile amongst the suburban crowd, quietly setting her own personal standards, oblivious to the astonished stares of those around her. "Never forget, girls," she used to intone loudly. "Life belongs to the pretty."

Consequently, at school dances, when the rest of the year was wearing the latest tight top with Hunny Monster shoulder pads and polka dot crop trousers, Olivia and I stood sullen-faced in midcalf floral dresses, our hair relentlessly brushed into a silky ponytail.

Olivia was the first to rebel, though she wasn't brave enough to let Mum in on the secret. With a hidden-under-bed stash of clothes bought from thrift stores, she would leave the house looking like Pollyanna, retrieve a carrier bag from a hedge down the road, and arrive at the disco looking like punk queen Polystyrene.

It took me another three years to pluck up courage to do the same, but neither of us ever had a hair out of place in mother's eye line. Consequently, one of our shared greatest joys in life is to slob around the house in sweats, hair unbrushed and wearing no makeup.

But I know when I show up at the parentals, Olivia will also be wearing something smart. At thirty-four and thirty-six, old habits die hard and we're still indoctrinated to be on parade.