Chapter Twenty-One
In the meantime, work was fairly relaxed as the big firms wound down over the summer, resting before the onslaught of Christmas campaigns. Lucy found regular entertainment over her lunch breaks with Simon and Lettie as Lettie shared yet more trials and tribulations from the internet dating scene. The more she heard, the more Lucy was put off the idea of ever bothering to date again. Who would go to the trouble of putting themselves through this seemingly humiliating and soul-destroying process? Though, to her credit, Lettie seemed to be taking it all on the chin with a remarkable sense of humour.
‘You can’t just sit at home moping,’ she laughed, as Lucy vowed out loud she would never go on an internet dating site.
Simon agreed, ‘It’s high time you got back out on the dating scene, Luce.’
‘Well there’s no hope in hell I am joining match.com!’ she said, shaking her head vehemently at the thought.
‘What about Tinder?’ suggested Lettie. ‘It’s free and you can see if you’ve got Facebook friends in common.’
‘I suppose that is slightly better,’ said Lucy. ‘At least then you know you are not going to get a cheese-eating-fat-fetishist!’ They all laughed and Lettie visibly paled once again at the thought.
‘Exactly!’ groaned Lettie.
Simon had already swiped Lucy’s phone out of her hand and was busy tapping away on it, ignoring Lucy’s cries of ‘Oy, give it back!’ She admitted defeat, knowing that protesting was futile. Within mere moments, Lucy’s Tinder account had been set up. Despite her initial reluctance, when they showed her how it worked Lucy found herself somewhat intrigued. It seemed like a fairly easy method of filtering out the total mingers: swipe right to like and left to pass. Even she could manage that. She promised Lettie and Simon that she would give it a try and she meant it. It would do her no harm to give dating one last attempt. If she was brutally honest with herself she knew that despite having resolved to go it alone, she would never give up hope on a last minute intervention from the fates. The thought that there was a man out there waiting for her could never be eliminated from her mind completely.
Lucy couldn’t believe how addictive Tinder proved to be. When she was bored at work she would surreptitiously swipe all sorts of eligible-looking men, determined to get at least one date under her belt. She pinged messages to a few of the guys who she liked the look of, doing some background investigation by texting the mutual friends they had in common to find out if they were normal.
Eventually she set up a date with a guy called Ted. His profile picture revealed him to be a nice-looking ginger-haired man with a rather juvenile-looking quiff, and they had exchanged a series of pleasant messages before agreeing to meet for a drink. Simon and Lettie were extremely chuffed with her and took her out for a pre-date drink to ‘warm her up’.
They were to blame for the fact that she found herself turning up a good twenty minutes late at the pre-arranged meeting place, a bar in the city. She crossed her fingers as she entered, hoping that he wouldn’t be too deranged. Lucy hadn’t got much info out of the random Facebook friend she had got in touch with to do her background check. Apparently he was a vague acquaintance rather than a good friend, but there were no skeletons in the closet as far as her friend knew. She felt the familiar kick of nervous anticipation low in the pit of her stomach and acknowledged that it was quite fun even having the prospect of a new love interest. It had been a while. A pang of sadness flashed through her as she thought of Alex, and everything that a future with him had offered her. But there was no point in dwelling on what might have been. Tearing her thoughts back to the present, she forced a smile as she thought of Lettie, also on her way out to meet a date, if nothing else it would be fun to compare notes with her and swap stories the next day.
She scanned her eyes across the dimly lit bar, hoping to recognize her date from the photo. With a sigh of relief she spotted him sitting at a table in the corner. It had to be said, in the flesh he was nothing much to write home about.Oh well, thought Lucy,looks aren’t everything…
‘Ted?’ she asked as she approached the table.
‘Oh, hi. Lucy is it?’ he asked, looking up at her with mild interest as she came to sit down. He didn’t stand up to greet her, so she awkwardly stuck out her hand, which he shook somewhat unenthusiastically.
She sat down and placed her bag on the floor, filling the awkward silence that hovered between them with a stream of chatter about her tube journey.
Obviously unimpressed by her thus far, judging from the lack of response, Ted said, ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘Oh yes please!’ said Lucy, a little over-excitedly.
‘What?’ asked Ted rather curtly.
‘A glass of white wine would be absolutely lovely!’ said Lucy.
As she watched him make his way to the bar she wondered why he appeared to be moving at the speed of a snail. Maybe he was not in a rush to get back to her verbal diarrhoea. She mentally reprimanded herself for being incapable of letting awkward silences pass. Why should she always be the one making people feel comfortable? He should be polite enough to put her at ease, not the other way around! She decided that when he came back she would sit back and wait for him to begin a conversation. She wanted to regain a balance of power where she didn’t look like a gibbering idiot. This time, she was determined to appear aloof.
After what felt like an age, she spotted Ted weaving his way through the office workers, carrying a bottle of sparkling water and the tiniest glass of wine she had ever seen.
‘I got you a small,’ he said as he put it down in front of her, before adding, ‘We don’t know how this is going to go.’
How charming!thought Lucy, grabbing the wine and purposefully knocking at least half of it back in one.
The rest of the date went from bad to worse. They had nothing in common, or at least they never had the opportunity to find out, thanks to Ted’s complete lack of communication. Lucy almost wanted to ask him why he had agreed to come on the date if he was clearly so uninterested in getting to know a single thing about her. Despite having resolved to let him take the lead she tried to ask him questions and salvage what was rapidly becoming one of the worst dates of her life, but was met with monosyllabic answers. She found herself wondering what a socially acceptable amount of time to make an exit might be. When she could bear it no longer she looked at her phone, ignoring the excited message from Simon asking her how it was going and checking the time. It was 8.35, precisely forty-five minutes since she had set foot in the building and the longest forty- five minutes of her life. She couldn’t stand it a second longer. Wincing as the chair legs scraped across the floor, she stood up to make her excuses and say goodbye, apologizing that she had forgotten she had made plans for dinner with a friend. He didn’t even bat an eyelid, in fact he couldn’t have looked less bothered.
As she sat on the tube on the way home, she tried to compose a text to Lettie and Simon that suitably portrayed the awfulness of the date. She started with his opening line of ‘I got you a small’ (he was right about that one!) and ended with her falling asleep on the table. Only a minor exaggeration. What a disaster! She couldn’t help but laugh to herself as she thought of his expressionless face as she had left him. Oh to be such a vacant and emotionless soul; she almost felt sorry for him! That was it; she had done what she set out to do. She had proved to herself that meeting someone through a virtual medium was no indicator whatsoever of chemistry, let alone personality, and she knew that she would not be dating anyone else unless she had physically set eyes on them.
That Friday she found herself leaving the office at the same time as Jack. ‘What are you up to?’ he asked, holding the door open for her as she stepped out onto the busy street.
‘Nothing much. You?’ she asked.
‘Home to an empty house.’ He clearly hadn’t moved back into the marital home.
‘Aren’t we cool!’ she said. ‘Friday night and no plans.’
