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She knew this wasn’t what you were supposed to do. She also knew that whilst immediately after checking something she momentarily felt relief, like the heavy dread in her gut lifted, she soon felt dirty, as if her mum had walked in on her hiding a wine bottle behind her bed.
(Which for the record she hadn’t done for at least fifteen years).
Anxiety was a bird that flew around Helen’s mind looking for somewhere to roost: in worrying about a guy, an obscure medical condition, a tax return … Feeling a familiar icky feeling after her internet adventure, she slid her phone into airplane mode and left it facedown on the kitchen counter. She had to distract herself. Instinctively she started pulling out cream cheese, butter and eggs from the cupboard.
Helen loved baking, the rhythm of the kitchen, the smells, the feeling of creating something with care. Cooking was not the same, it was stressful; meat could be undercooked, it could kill you. It was hard to seriously mess up a brownie.
Helen had loved baking since she was a child. One of her earliest memories was licking the big wooden spoon after her mother had helped her dollop cake batter into multi-coloured muffin cups.Should children eat raw cake mix?Helen wondered, diligently scrubbing the mixing bowl clean in the sink.
She had got into the whole baking blogger gig circuitously. Academically, she had been okay at uni: she’d studied Anthropology (what arts students choose to study when they don’t know what to pick) and despite knowing quite a few facts about teeth in Neanderthal man, had scraped a 2:1. Maybe she could have done better if she’d had cared more, but she had gotten the feeling before the end of her first year at Nottingham that not everyone was supposed to go to university. When she was doing her A Levels, anyone who had half decent grades went to university to while away a few years before having to figure out what they actually wanted to do. Ironically, at the end of her three years at uni, Helen was none the wiser, thousands of pounds poorer, and also found that most of the fancy firms she applied to for an interview weren’t too interested in a B grade arts student.
So, whilst Sophie, who had studied Economics, and spoke near fluent Mandarin had sailed into a city job and a studio apartment in Wapping, Helen had drifted around for a year working odd jobs in cafés, museums, and flyering. Her home life in London had consisted of dingy studio apartments, boilers breaking in December and extreme flat shares of seven occupants to one bathroom.
Throughout all of these lows, medium lows, and relationships that she threw herself into in search of an exit route, baking had become her Northern Star, a grounding force to unwind, and reclaim some sense of order.
Her creations were often made of the scant ingredients that were available on a student budget. She also developed an ability to repurpose old ingredients into something new: an early attempt at a coffee cake that had come out undercooked was repurposed into a sticky pudding with maple syrup the next day.
The joke was that Helen’s leftovers always metamorphosed themselves into strange new dishes. In her spare time Helen would write blogs about her bakes and, to her wild surprise, one day her Cheap Skate Carrot Cake recipe started to be shared again and again. Eventually it was retweeted by a famous baking blogger and Helen’s blogging business was born. She now made her income through endorsements, adverts and writing baking blogs for digital magazines; hopefully one day she would also get the holy grail of a book or TV deal … if she could just get her presenting skills a little less clunky, and her blog traffic a little more buoyant.
Today she decided to make a New York cheesecake which had a lot of fussy processes – blind bake the base, cook the main cake, leave the cake in a cooling oven for twenty minutes with the door open, place in fridge to cool etc – which she hoped would distract her from her phone for at least a couple of hours.
Yet her mobile phone seemed to sing out to her from the counter, like a pop up on a website that refused to close, saying, ‘Has Brody messaged yet?!’ Helen sighed, seeing only forty-five minutes had managed to wander by since she last looked at her phone. ‘Damn it,’ Helen thought as she glanced at her homescreen.
Nothing.
She felt a sinking feeling in her stomach. Why hadn’t he messaged? Had she seriously overestimated how much he liked her? It wouldn’t be the first time. Helen remembered in September last year having a date with a guy called Raphael: they’d met for G&Ts in Exmouth market one Friday night, he’d told her that her love of cooking reminded him of his home town in Sicily, he’d said they should go to his favourite Italian restaurant next week, then … poof!! Nothing!
She’d even sent an, in retrospect,highlyawkward, ‘Would you still like to meet up this weekend?’ message with a monkey emoji on it that had never been read. The two grey ticks stared back at her, strongly suggesting that Raph hadn’t been mugged on the way home, he just couldn’t be bothered to reply to her. A week or so later his WhatsApp picture changed to some artistic shot of him sitting cross-legged on a canal boat. Then finally on the 23rd December at 11 p.m. she got the single word message, ‘Hi’. So much for the spaghetti.
Her friends and memes reliably informed her that this was far from a unique experience; this was just what modern dating was like: stuffed full of zombies, ghosting, orbiting, and a lot of people who couldn’t make their mind up.
But last night did feel different. Everything Brody had said rang true, and it’s not like they lived at opposite ends of the country; they shared a favourite coffee shop and a home county! She probably just needed to try and be patient and give it more time. Perhaps Brody was playing it cool? Or maybe he was a feminist who was waiting for her to make the first move?
Do you think I played it too cool and now he thinks I don’t like him?
Helen was panic texting Queens xoxo at 9pm: twenty-one hours and six minutes after their date had ended, and still no word. She’d also checked the surf report which disappointingly said the waves were two feet with an onshore wind (which roughly translated as ‘stay at home and wax your board’). Rain had started to smatter on her bedroom window and she’d shoved her old electric storage radiator up to full power which had left the room with the smell of singed dust.
Elle:No babe! You kissed right? I’m sorry, how much more encouragement does a guy need?! If he wants you, he’ll find you, trust me.
Helen:So you don’t think I should message him first?
Elle:Never! Give it time xx
Helen:But what if I say something casual like, ‘Nice to meet you yesterday’ or ‘Hope you’re not surfing in this weather!’
Elle:Could look a bit desperate my love xx
Sophie:I think he’ll message if you just give it time.
If it’s meant to be …
But if you do decide you want to message him that’s OK too. If he’s the guy you think he is he’ll probably be happy to hear your surf report ;-)
Helen managed to deliberate for another ten minutes before caving in and opening the Connex app. She went into her messages, reflexively clenching her stomach muscles, like she was bracing herself for … but there was nothing there?! Her message chain with Brody had vanished and there were no notifications of other matches.
‘OMG he’s unmatched me …’ Helen felt a surge of embarrassment. Brody had clearly wanted one thing after all and after not getting the right signs from her had dropped her like a rock!! But then where were her other ‘likes’? She hit the ‘start swiping!’ button and instead of showing her a profile of a guy she fancied far less than Brody there was just a white screen.
Her heart rate slowed: it’s a Wi-Fi problem! That probably meant Brody had messaged her hours ago and she just hadn’t received it! Oh well, at least she’d appear coolly disinterested when she eventually answered. Helen strode out of her bedroom and crossed the corridor with renewed vigour.
