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Is this it? I think as I stare into the enveloping darkness. Is this it for the rest of my life? In bed at eleven with nothing but a cantankerous old cat for company?
Without wanting them to, tears squeeze out of my eyes. I’m not happy alone. No matter how much I try to convince myself that I am. I’m lonely. I want someone to love. Someone nice and normal. Is that really too much to ask?
Chapter Eleven
I stagger into work the next day, feeling punch drunk. I slept fitfully last night, waking in the wee small hours to feel sorry for myself all over again. I even had a little cry into Archie’s fur, which he wasn’t best pleased about.
Just wait until Nina hears about my disaster. I’ll have her grovelling all day. She might even donate some of her best fruit to me and normally she’s very reluctant to part with it in case she leaves herself short.
Some of the girls like to race in late in the morning, leaving skid marks on the floor of the salon, arriving in the nick of time just seconds before their first client is due. Nina and I are old school. We get here early, set out the tools of our trade on our station, start the day with a leisurely coffee and a chat. In the days when we were vaguely rebellious teenagers and used to smoke, we’d enjoy a cigarette together too. Now the cigarettes are gone (a long time ago for me, more recently for Nina) but the coffee remains. Today, however, I feel like I need a restorative brandy in it.
Sure enough, my friend is already in the staffroom when I swing in. She’s giving a bunch of grapes some grief.
‘Hello! Hello!’ she says brightly. ‘Love’s young dream.’
‘Yes, very funny.’ I throw down my bag and strip off my coat. ‘You won’t be so keen to fix me up on any more blind dates when you hear about this one.’
Nina looks puzzled. ‘I did hear about it.’
That makes me whirl around, even though whirling is never advisable at this time in the morning. ‘What?’
‘Lewis phoned Gerry first thing this morning to crow about it, then Gerry stuck me on the phone to hear it all over again. You’ve reduced the man to a gibbering wreck. He thinks you’re . . . what were the words?’ Nina strikes a thoughtful pose. ‘Adorable. Divine. Delectable.’
Lewis knows words like that? I thought he was irrevocably stuck on shag and shared bill?
‘Never,’ I say.
‘True. As God is my witness. He was raving about you.’ My friend winks knowingly at me as she pops a grape into her mouth. ‘Seems you made quite an impression, little lady.’
I purse my lips. ‘Interesting.’
‘Did you like him?’
‘Not that you’d notice.’
‘Aren’t you going to see him again? Sounds like he’s mad for you, hun.’
‘Just mad, I’d say.’
‘I’m taking it that you didn’t see this date going off in quite the same way that he did?’
‘He didn’t tell you about the part where I jumped out of the powder room window and into the arms of a waiting lesbian ballet dancer to avoid his tedious, odious company?’
‘Er . . . ,’ Nina says. ‘No. No, he didn’t mention that part.’
‘It’s true,’ I say with a sigh. ‘I couldn’t bear him for a minute longer, Nina. For my own sanity, I legged it.’
‘Let me make our coffee.’ And still looking slightly shell-shocked by my revelation, she jumps up to make our brew. ‘Sounds like you need it.’
I flop into a waiting chair. ‘He was awful, Nina,’ I confess. ‘I know you did it with the best intentions, but what were you thinking of?’
My friend has the good grace to laugh. ‘God, I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I had no idea. By the sounds of it I thought you’d been swinging on the moonbeams of love or some shit. What went wrong?’
‘What went right is a shorter list.’ I sigh then launch into recounting the tale of my dating hell. ‘He was late for a start. Half an hour, at least. When he did turn up, he was clearly intent on getting roaring drunk. There was no dinner in the offing, he made that patently clear. I learned everything I needed to know about him and more within about ten minutes, yet he still doesn’t know a thing about me. He made it obvious that he wanted me to pick up half the bill and then, once he was thoroughly pissed, trot back to his place for a quick one.’
‘Ugh,’ Nina concludes.
‘Very ugh,’ I agree.
‘Well, he’s desperate to see you again.’
‘I have no idea why. It was a disaster. An unmitigated disaster.’ I put my hands over my eyes. A touch melodramatic I know, but I feel the situation warrants it. ‘I’d be quite happy if I never laid eyes on him again in my entire life.’
