50 Ways to Find a Lover (8 page)

He laughs and then looks at me and says, ‘I had this break-up a while ago and I worry it’s put me off relationships for life.’

‘Oh no, what happened?’

‘I was going out with this girl for years; I thought she was the one, we were living together and then she came home one day and told me she didn’t love me any more and moved out.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Yeah.’

I look at Paul’s gorgeous sad face. I want to hug him and take his pain away. Instead I resort to inappropriately insulting his ex-girlfriend, whom I have never met.

‘Bitch.’

‘Hmm.’ He nods. His eyes are glazed as he remembers the devastatingly beautiful woman who savagely broke his heart.

‘Evil twisted daughter of Satan and, and . . . George Bush,’ I blurt.

Paul looks at me, shocked.

‘Sorry. There is a lot of inappropriate bollocks going around my head and sometimes it comes out of my mouth. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sure she’s very nice.’

Paul smiles at me and places his hand on my knee.

‘I think that summed her up rather marvellously actually, and I’m a huge fan of inappropriate bollocks.’

I look at him with eyebrows raised.

‘In a conversational manner as opposed to being a fan of that part of the male anatomy.’

I nod at him, smiling.

‘It’s good that we both speak a lot of bollocks, isn’t it?’ he says.

I keep nodding and smiling like one of those dog statues that you see in the back of car windows.

‘So what made you decide to meet someone?’ he asks me.

‘A bizarre near-miss with a reality TV show, of all things.’ I sigh and then explain the series of events that led me to speed dating. When I get to the end I jump up and say, ‘I really have to go for a pee now!’ and try to winch myself off the sofa I have sunk into.

I sit on the very clean toilet and ponder. It is imperative that I don’t get too excited. If I get too excited I shall jinx it. He is not shamelessly flirting with me at all. We have simply bumped into each other after a long time and are catching up. I reapply make-up in front of the huge mirror and emerge into the foyer. Paul is standing in front of me carrying his coat.

‘You’re looking really great, by the way,’ he says.

‘So are you.’ I smile. He blushes. I find a man blushing almost as sexy as a man vacuuming.

‘I’m still shocked you’re single,’ he says.

‘What about you? You’re gorgeous and funny and successful. What’s wrong with the women of this town?’

‘I’m quite picky, I suppose, and, oh, I don’t know, it’s quite rare I really connect with someone.’ Then we look at each other for ages. Inside my inner demons are saying, ‘Don’t be stupid, Sarah, you’re a knob, a man like this could never be interested in you, you have the biggest bottom in the world and you’ve done a staggering amount of nothing in your life.’ But at the same time I am thinking, Kiss me, please, sod my own rules, shove them up the arse of dating, please just cup my face in your perfect hands and kiss me for ever.

‘We have to make a move. I just spotted a client in there. Dreadful man! How will you get home?’

‘Night bus.’ I smile.

‘I’ll get you a cab on account. I’d worry about you on the night bus.’

On the street we stand like teenagers, him with his hands in his pockets, me applying lip gloss. He pulls out a piece of paper. It’s the speed-dating comments sheet.

‘Show me what you wrote about me!’ I squeal.

‘No, I want you to write your number and email and address on here.’

‘Oh. OK then,’ I say. I take a pen and write all my details down for him. Then I unfold the paper and spot my number on the page. Next to it he’d written,
Says ‘cunt’ a lot
.

‘Oh my God, I’m so ashamed!’ I say, hitting him. As I do bits of my hair stick in my lip gloss.

‘Don’t be,’ he says. He picks two strands of hair from my sticky lips. ‘I think you’re lovely.’ Then he puts his hand to my cheek. The tips of his fingers feel lip-gloss-sticky. I wish I had applied Superglue rather than lip gloss so he could be welded to me for eternity. He bends his head slightly towards me. I watch his slightly parted lips moving closer and closer to mine. The most handsome man in the world is going to kiss me! Thank you, God! I close my eyes just as his warm wet mouth gently meets mine.

‘Cab for Camden – is that you, mate?’

Paul takes a step away from me and puts his hands in his pockets.

‘Er, yeah,’ he says, turning to the taxi driver.

Before I know it I’m grinning in the back of a very clean taxi listening to Magic FM. Foreigner’s playing. Foreigner’s always playing on Magic FM. Normally I call it Suicide FM and switch it off. Now I get it. ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’. Blimey.

seven

I am a slothful, flabby, fetid lump of female waste. I don’t leave the house. I don’t get dressed. I have been wearing the same pair of pink Primark pyjamas for three days. (I did change my knickers yesterday.) I am tea-stained and toast-crumbed and I itch. There are three reasons for this:

The current mess in my room frightens Simon. He doesn’t understand that I have found order in chaos. Everything I own is strewn across my room so that I can see it and know exactly where it is. Simon came into my room earlier to give me my post and look in the mirror and he wasn’t armed with the knowledge that underneath my favourite T-shirt there was an opened tub of hummus. He trod on the T-shirt and the sensation of chickpeas and plastic and acrylic underfoot caused him to shout that I was a ‘dirty goat’.

There is a masculine knock on my bedroom door. I don’t answer. I count to one and Simon enters carrying my newly washed favourite T-shirt. He moves a dirty plate from the bed, sits down and carefully says:

‘Are you depressed?’

‘Not clinically so,’ I tell him. ‘Although do you think if you haven’t heard from a man after three days he’s not interested?’

‘I’d say if you haven’t heard from him after a week then he definitely thinks you’re a minger.’

‘Hmmm, well at least I’m still in with a chance. But he should have at least texted me by now. Don’t you think?’

‘Sare, I’m getting worried about you. You need to get out, or at least open the curtains. Why don’t you come for a run with me?’

‘Everyone laughs at me when I run.’

‘Only when you run in high heels, and you’d be wearing trainers and no one gives a damn about anyone else anyway.’

‘Simon, I’ve run with you before. It’s up there as one of the singularly most disturbing experiences of my life so far.’

A few months ago Simon and I went running in Regent’s Park. People who witnessed it probably still talk about the time that fit bloke sped around the park with that wheezing, pleading woman following ten yards behind him. Every so often I would stop and pant, ‘I can’t go on. It hurts. I can’t breathe,’ and Simon would run back to me and say, ‘OK, we’ll stop and do some stretching. Gotta stretch, Sare.’ Then he would lie me on my sweaty back on the cold pavement, pick a leg up and pull it about until I screamed. When we eventually got home Simon was barely clammy. I was red and wet. I looked like a glistening hog on a spit. I was just thinking how nice a bath with a gin and tonic would be when he said, ‘Now the abs,’ and made me do a billion crunches on the kitchen floor with him. We finished. I lay whimpering, unable to move. He sprang up and said, ‘Thanks for that, Sare, that was a good warm-up. I’m off to the gym now.’ I shudder at the memory.

‘Now then, Sare, the thing is, you’re nearly thirty.’

‘Ahhhh,’ I scream, putting my hands over my ears. ‘Please don’t say that! I’m in my twenties, I’ve told you!’

‘What you need to understand is that when you get to your age your metabolism slows down.’ He casts his eyes around my room and says, ‘Actually yours might have stopped already. The point is you
need
to do some cardiovascular exercise.’

‘Cardiovascular exercise’ is my worst pair of words after ‘last orders’.

‘I just don’t think that sitting in a darkened room all day on the computer is healthy.’

‘Look, Si, I love the fact you care. But I’m doing very important blogging work here.’ I click the Refresh button on my laptop and gasp at what the screen is telling me.

‘What’s the matter?’ asks Si.

‘I’ve got a comment,’ I squeak.

‘What?’

‘A comment,’ I whisper. I gape at the screen, agog.

‘What the fuck?’

‘I write my blog, but there’s a button on it that says Comment and people can click on it if they want to post a message. Someone has left a comment.’

Simon shakes his head and then bends down and reads my first comment aloud.

‘I can’t believe people actually read my blog. The only people I told about it are you and Julia and Mum and Dad but they don’t even have a computer! Oh my God, strangers are reading my blog.’

I feel overcome. I want to cry with happiness. I won’t because Simon has seen me blub far too often recently. But getting a blog comment oddly feels like a seminal moment in my life. Someone I have never even met has read about my quest and taken the time to write to me. And best of all says that I inspire her.

‘Si, I’m, like, an inspiration to women,’ I gasp.

Simon looks at me in my dirty pyjamas nearly moved to tears by a blog comment. He shakes his head and repeats the word ‘crazy’ three times. He leaves me and I close my eyes tightly and quickly whisper, ‘Please, God, let me get some more comments. Please.’

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