He replies but I don’t hear him. I’m too busy heading towards the exit. He’s the one who screwed up but I still feel like an idiot for thinking that there might have been a small glimmer of hope there.
Chapter 16
‘And then I hit myself in the face with a bat.’
Feeling utterly deflated after yet another failed attempt, and out of options, I turn to Naomi for some comfort. Perhaps some words of wisdom. Although she is food shopping at 9.30 p.m. No one who food shops at 9.30 p.m. is happy to be there.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. Are you telling me that nothing has panned out?’ She sounds rather cross that I’ve called her with yet another dating failure. This was not the response I was hoping for. ‘Online dating, a games night, tango, table tennis and not one has yielded any results? You’re good-looking and you’re funny. You earn decent money. Even broke ogres can find a date in London. What the hell is going so wrong?’
‘What’s going wrong? Um, did you not hear my bat to the face story?’
‘No phone numbers exchanged?’ she continues ranting. ‘No Instagram follows? Surely there must have been someone to swap digits with?’
‘Yes, there was. At the tango class, remember? He was engaged. I’ve already explained this. Naomi, have you listened to a word I’ve said?’
‘I have,’ she insists, ‘but I just find it very hard to believe, Sophie. It’s London, for God’s sake. The streets are paved with available, desperate men. My husband used to be one. Just avoid those who use the terms “high value” or “body count”. . . unless they’re enquiring about the corpses currently under your floorboards. That’s acceptable conversation.’
‘This isn’t making me feel better,’ I reply, now aware that even the desperate ones have chosen to give me a hard pass. Is this shit just harder for women? I bet if Alex Steward was female, he’d have written a very different article. I bet he didn’t get told he had ‘big giant man hands’ by a small, angry card shark.
‘My mum thinks I’m being too picky, like being picky is a bad thing. I wasn’t picky when I ended up with Jason fucking Turner and look how that turned out!’
‘True,’ Naomi agrees. ‘You have every right to be picky after that dickhead. Your mum’s mental, though. Always has been. Remember when she wanted to set you up with that nice man who cleaned graffiti off the side of the railway bridge?’
‘How could I forget? She was the only one in Whitby who didn’t know that Frank Baker was doing community service for robbing an ice cream van.’
Naomi laughs. ‘Who’d have thought an ice cream van would have cameras.’
‘Oh, and wait until you hear this!’ I continue. ‘Her latest announcement is that she’s going on a cruise! Her new man is paying and the destination is a surprise, it seems. She doesn’t care where it is, she’s too busy buying sun cream and flip-flops.’
‘A cruise? Ooh, maybe a cruise wouldn’t be a bad idea,’ Naomi replies. ‘Maybe you should consider it?’
‘Consider what? I’m not going on a cruise with my mother.’
I hear an announcement over the supermarket tannoy in the background. Apparently, there’s a caller at the back gate.
‘They have no reduced meat,’ she tells me. ‘What the hell? The foxes will be disappointed.’
‘Please don’t tell me you have pet foxes now?’
‘No, they’re wild foxes. Ginny and Georgia. They visit around seven p.m. I could do without seeing their pointy faces at my patio door every night, but the boys have taken a shine to them. Bloody awful racket, though, like hairy, orange banshees.’
I hear her raking through shelves. ‘Christ, they don’t even have any sourdough. I freeze it for toast.’
‘You sound busy,’ I say, as she mumbles about Tesco being useless. ‘Shall I call later?’
‘Nope, I’m here now. I won’t be this free to chat for the next fifteen years. What were you saying?’
‘That I’m not going on a cruise with my mother.’
She sighs. ‘No, stupid, I meant a singles’ cruise! They’re really popular. Just picture it, Sophie: all those unattached, handsome men, lounging by the pool in their speedos.’
I start to snigger. ‘Speedos? What in the nineteen eighties are you talking about?’
She tuts. ‘Fine, swim shorts. Trunks. Whatever. I can just picture them catching a tan before dinner, mingling with the captain, relaxing at the bar in their suits as they sip on a martini or—’
‘You’ve thought about this a lot, haven’t you?’
She sniffs. ‘I might watchThe Love Boatreruns on Paramount from time to time. Ugh, this bloody trolley has a wonky wheel. Honestly, I’m never shopping here again, I’ll stick to Aldi.’
