The Ex-Boyfriend's Handbook (23 page)

Dan looks at me suspiciously. ‘Why?’

‘Because I’d like to finish my training first. Last thing I want is for her to desert me in my final week because she’s fallen head over heels for you.’

Dan nods slowly, as if he’s doing me a favour. ‘Fair enough. After you’ve finished.’

‘Oh yes. And one more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘You go to a
waxer
?’

‘Keep your voice down,’ says Dan. ‘And anyway, it’s more of a beauty therapy place really. Manicures, facials…’

‘And hair removal?’

‘All right,’ admits Dan. ‘Hair removal. Don’t forget, my job relies on me looking good, even in close up. These little touches are important. And while we’re on about it…’

‘What?’

‘That’s something else that
you
might want to think about.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Your eyebrows.’

‘My eyebrows?’

‘Or should I say “eyebrow”.’

‘What’s wrong with it…I mean, them?’

Dan stares at my face. ‘You, my friend, have a serious monobrow.’

I look at my reflection in the mirror on the perfume counter. He has a point.

‘What do I do about it? Shave it?’

‘Get it plucked.’

‘You’re kidding!’

‘I’m serious. A little grooming never hurt.’

I stare resignedly back at Dan’s face, and notice for the first time just how regular his eyebrows are.

‘And I suppose you know just the place?’

2.50. p.m.

I’m sitting nervously in the reception area at Wax Worx, surrounded by giggling women, and waiting for the appointment that Dan’s made for me. I flick idly through
Woman’s Weekly
until Joanna, the girl Dan’s recommended, comes out and calls me in. As with all of Dan’s therapists, she’s unusually attractive and, as usual, the first thing she does is asks me how Dan is.

‘Well, I think he’s finally managing to beat the bottle,’ I tell her.

‘Dan? Really? You’d never know.’

‘Happens a lot to these celebrities, apparently. But I can’t really say too much about it. For obvious reasons.’

‘Amazing,’ says Joanna, shaking her head in disbelief. ‘Anyway, what can I do for you?’

I sit down in the treatment chair. ‘Dan said, well, suggested, that I have a bit of work done to my eyebrow. Eyebrows.’

Joanna peers at my forehead. ‘Ah, yes. I see what he means. There is a touch of the full moon about you.’

She stares closely at me for a moment, as if she’s considering the best place to start, produces a serious-looking pair of tweezers, leans in, and proceeds to pluck.

Surprisingly, it hurts. And not just a little bit. It hurts more than anything I’ve ever done before. It makes the way I feel after a heavy session with Sam seem like a walk in the park, and it’s all I can do not to cry, though the amount my eyes are watering, you wouldn’t know that I wasn’t.

Noticing my discomfort, Joanna tries to reassure me.

‘You’ll get used to it.’

‘I don’t want to get used to it. Ow!’ I shout, as another single hair is pulled smartly out.

‘Just try and relax.’

As far as I’m concerned that’s impossible, given Joanna’s rapid-fire tweezer action. Besides, if you have to try and relax, well, that just makes you more anxious, surely?

Finally, mercifully, Joanna stops plucking, and hands me a mirror. When I look at my forehead, which is a little red, I’m amazed at the difference. The results are, I have to say, quite spectacular.

‘What do you think?’

‘Amazing. I look younger, clearer, less…’

‘Less like a werewolf?’

‘Exactly.’

I stare in horror at the tweezers. ‘I don’t know how you women manage to put up with having your legs done. Or even, you know, your other bits.’

Joanna smiles. ‘You should ask your friend Dan,’ she says. ‘He’ll tell you how it feels.’

For a moment I just stare back at her, thinking she’s joking, before I cotton on.

‘You’re kidding? Dan?’ I point to my crotch. ‘Down there?’

Joanna nods. ‘It’s very popular nowadays. I think the guys believe it makes them look, you know, bigger.’

And for the rest of the afternoon, I can’t get the phrase ‘last turkey in the shop’ out of my mind.

6.35 p.m.

I’m a few minutes late by the time I meet Dan on the corner of Preston Street. As usual, he’s dressed to impress, rather than appropriately given the somewhat nippy spring afternoon.

‘Where the bloody hell have you been? I’ve been freezing my nuts off here.’

‘I’m not surprised.’

‘What?’

Dan slowly puts two and two together, and goes bright red.

‘Bloody Joanna. I told her not to mention it.’

‘Can I just ask you something?’

‘Er…sure.’

‘Okay. It’s just…why the hell do you pay a woman to pour hot wax all over your tackle?’

Dan grins. ‘You’ve just answered your own question, haven’t you?’

‘Pervert.’

‘It’s the fashion.’

‘The fashion? Where? On nudist beaches?’

‘I’ve told you. I have to look good on TV.’

‘Well,’ I tell him, ‘if there’s ever a programme where you need that particular part to look good, I’m changing channels.’

7.53 p.m.

I’m back at the Metropole Hotel, without Dan this time, for my second, and hopefully last ever, speed-dating night. My hair is Fudged to within an inch of its life, my new smile has been given an extra polish, and I’m dressed in my new Paul Smith suit—without a tie, as per Milo’s recommendation. I feel a little awkward being here, as it’s so close to Jane’s return, but on reflection, it does seem to be the best way to see if I’m ‘ready’.

Emily looks up from her table when I walk into the foyer, her marker pen poised above a sticky label.

‘And you are?’ she asks.

That memorable, eh? ‘Ed…’ I get as far as the first syllable of my name before I stop myself, wondering whether I should be using a false one, but by the time I’ve thought of a different one to ‘Dan’, she’s written the two letters on my name tag, and is already sticking it onto my lapel.

‘Well, Ed,’ she says. ‘Have fun in there.’

As we file into the room, I’m a little alarmed to see some familiar faces sitting expectantly at the tables. Admittedly it’s been a couple of months, plenty of time for any relationships that may have sparked off at my first time here to have been through the date-split cycle, but I suddenly feel like I’m in danger of completely shattering any confidence I may have built up over the past few weeks. These women all rejected me once—what if they do it again?

But as we wait to go to our respective chairs, something definitely feels different. I may be wrong, but a few of my fellow daters seem to be regarding
me
with suspicion this time, and furthermore, I notice a couple of the girls are actually smiling from behind their clipboards. At me.

I’m just trying to process this information when I spot Melanie, the
Fatal Attraction
girl from last time, sat in the corner. Oh great—evidently she’s back for another spot of cheering up. I position myself so I’ll get to her last, take a deep breath, and wait for Emily to ring the bell.

And it goes well. The girls seem interested in me. They laugh at my jokes. ‘You obviously work out,’ someone says to me. ‘I like your suit,’ says another. I see a couple of them ‘tick’ me before my time is up, and one girl, Tina, even gives me a slip of paper with her phone number on it. In general, they all seem to be having a good time, and apart from one embarrassing incident when one of them tells me she loves gigs, and I think she means the Manchester United footballer, I have a good time too.

I’m on a high when I nervously take my seat in front of Melanie again, and wait for her to start laying into me. But this time, and to my astonishment, she starts off by smiling warmly at me.

I nearly blow it when I ask her what she likes to do with her spare time, and her answer takes me a little by surprise. I have to get her to explain.

‘I’m sorry?’ I say. ‘Sleeping with strangers?’

Melanie’s face runs through confusion, shock, and then realization, but then, fortunately, she laughs.

‘No, Ed. I love to swim. Not swing.’

And I’m so amazed by the difference in her that it’s a full minute—one third of our allotted time together—before I realize something very important, and it’s something that causes me to sit up straight with pride. It’s not that she doesn’t remember me.

It’s that she
doesn’t recognize me.

1.04 p.m.

I’m sitting at the bar, telling Dan about my evening. When I get to the part about Tina giving me her number, I have to stop him from ordering champagne.

‘So what are you going to do?’ he asks, staring in admiration at the scrap of paper on the table in front of me.

‘What do you mean, “what am I going to do”? Nothing, of course. Have you forgotten why I’m doing all this?’

Dan shrugs. ‘Nope, but I was hoping you had.’

‘Jane’s back in a week, Dan. My entire future happiness hangs on what she thinks when she sees me. I’m hardly going to want to jeopardize that, am I?’

‘Which is exactly why you should call Tina. Go out with her.’

‘You mean think of it as a dry run for when Jane gets back?’

Dan nods. ‘Yup. Because you don’t want Jane to smell the paint.’

I sniff the arm of my jacket. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘When you see Jane for the first time. You don’t want her to smell the paint.’

I’m still no clearer. ‘What?’

‘Like the Queen.’

‘Have you been drinking?’

‘The Queen thinks the world smells of paint.’

‘You have been drinking.’

Dan emits a long-suffering sigh. ‘Everywhere she visits has just been painted. You know—to look good for when she comes. And she knows it, because she can smell the paint. Same thing applies to you and Jane. You need to be comfortable in your new skin. Otherwise Jane will see straight through it.’

‘Why? Surely I’ve proved things now. I don’t repel women any more.’

‘Maybe so. And perhaps you can even attract the odd one, and I mean that in both senses of the word “odd”, but how about sustaining it past the initial attraction? If you can’t manage that for an evening, how do you think you’re going to do it for the rest of your life?’

7.44 p.m.

When I meet up with Dan in the Admiral Jim, he’s looking more than a little cheesed off. What’s more, and unusually for Dan, he’s drinking beer and eating a hot dog.

‘Careful. Those things will kill you.’

‘Hark at you, mister healthy living convert.’

I make a face. ‘Do you know what they put into them?’

‘Don’t tell me,’ orders Dan. ‘It’s like women with breast implants. I don’t want to think how they’re made—I just want to enjoy the end result.’ He holds the hot dog out towards me. ‘Like a bite?’

‘No thank you!’

‘How about a beer then?’ he says, waving his bottle in front of me. Dan rarely drinks beer, but when he does, it’s only ever that expensive, cloudy, scented stuff brewed in some obscure Belgian monastery.

‘You know I would. But not for another,’ I consult my watch, ‘four days and twelve hours, sadly.’

‘Is that all you’ve got left?’

I nod, thankfully. ‘My odyssey is nearly over.’

‘Your odd what?’

‘My journey of self-discovery. My mission to find the inner me.’

Dan takes a mouthful of beer. ‘Your quest for a shag, you mean.’

‘What’s the matter with you? Bad day at the office?’

‘You could say that.’

I catch Wendy’s eye, signalling her to come over when she’s ready. ‘Do you want to tell me about it?’

Dan sighs. ‘Well, today, after weeks of filming, where all we’ve found are crappy old toys and naff “antiques” that date from the early Formica period, we finally come across someone who’s been left something half decent.’

‘Which was?’

‘I dunno. I’m not the antiques expert, am I? Some sort of crystal decanter thing that Digby practically got a hard-on about. Two hundred years old, apparently. Worth a small fortune.’

‘Well, that’s good news, isn’t it?’

Dan grimaces. ‘It would have been.’

‘What do you mean, “would have been”?’

‘If I hadn’t dropped it. On camera.’

I have to stifle a laugh. ‘How did you manage that?’

‘Well, I was trying to be funny, you know, by pretending to drop it.’

‘But instead, you “actually” dropped it?’

‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘Ouch. So what’s happened.’

‘Well, firstly, we’ve had to recompense the couple. Secondly, of course, we can’t put the programme out, so that’s a whole two days’ filming wasted, and thirdly…’

‘Thirdly?’

‘They’ve given me a warning. One more thing and I’m out. Banished to the wasteland that is free-to-air.’

‘One
more
thing? What else have you done?’

‘You know.’ Dan blushes slightly. ‘The thing with that chap’s wife.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Dan had been caught trying to make a move on one of the bereaved couples’ wives. ‘Not the best career move, perhaps?’

‘Yes, well, she was begging for it.’

‘Dan, that’s not a very nice thing to say. I mean, I know they call it their hour of need…’

‘No, really. She was actually begging for it. Down on her knees, and everything.’

‘And that’s when her husband saw the two of you.’

‘Exactly Didn’t quite believe my “dropped contact lens” excuse.’

‘Quite.’

‘I tell you, sometimes it’s hard being “TV’s Dan Davis”. Every time I meet someone they’re expecting me to be this perfect person they’ve seen on television, with flawlessly scripted lines, whereas the reality is…’ Dan stops talking, and downs the remainder of his beer.

‘What’s the reality, mate?’

Dan sighs. ‘That sometimes I need my lines written for me. Maybe that’s why my relationships don’t last. Because they see through the gloss and realize that I’m pretty much just what it says on the tin.’

I put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. ‘And there was me thinking it was because you never call them the next morning. Anyway, look on the bright side.’

‘Don’t you bloody start.’

‘I’m serious. At least you’ve got something for
It’ll Be All Right on the Night 207
, or whatever number they’re up to now.’

Dan brightens slightly. ‘I hadn’t thought of that.’

When Wendy appears, I order my usual sparkling water, and buy Dan a refill.

‘Five pounds fifty, please,’ she says, placing the bottle down carefully on the bar. ‘Four pounds of which is for Dan’s beer, by the way.’

‘Blimey,’ I say. ‘I thought it was brewed by monks?’

‘Well, they’ve obviously got expensive habits,’ she replies.

There’s a pause, before Wendy and I collapse in a fit of childish laughter, filled only by the whooshing sound of her joke flying way over Dan’s head.