Authors: Louise Voss
Chapter Three
Day 1
I
was on an internet date with someone else when I first bumped into Claudio. Must have been a couple of months ago. I’d been quite looking forward to this one, with a guy called Gerald (that in itself should have rung an alarm bell—I don’t know any
Geralds
who don’t call themselves the far more acceptable Gerry). He said he was five foot ten but was clearly at least six inches shorter
than tha
t.
It’s not that I have anything against small men, as such. My ex-husband, Richard, is quite short—exactly the same height as me, when I don’t have heels on. I’m five foot six and a half—although Richard always gave his height as five foot eight. It’s just that if you’re going to put a profile on a dating website, it makes sense to be honest about your height. I mean, it’s not something you can get away with lying about. What if I’d been six foot tall? It would have been even more ridiculous. I suppose that Gerald did say that he was looking for a ‘petite’ woman, so I could have guessed he was never going to be a basketball player. Or perhaps he felt that I’d misled him, by being taller than he’d specified. Still—“five foot ten”? I don’t think so!
In the event it wasn’t so much Gerald’s height, or lack of it, or his appearance. It was more his general demeanour. ‘A face like a slapped arse,’ as my ex-mother-in-law used to say. I felt sorry for him—no wonder he couldn’t get a girlfriend.
As I waited in Pizza Express ten minutes before the appointed time, I felt the same thrill of anticipation that had become so addictive over the past few months. Would I really be lucky enough to find the one to spend the rest of my life with—the one to be step-father to my daughter—online? The odds were a lot higher than those of winning the lottery, and people
did
win the lottery. Some people, anyway.
I’d sipped my fizzy Evian, and then wished I’d ordered still water, in case the bubbles made me burp. Would we have chemistry? We’d got along fine on the phone. He looked OK in his photo. Anyway, I wasn’t one of those shallow types who judged people solely on their looks. I’d spent most of my life fretting about my own appearance, so I was in no position. Inner beauty, that was my goal.
What if he thought I was a moose?
I’m
not
a moose, I told myself crossly. In fact, there was a man staring at me across the restaurant. It couldn’t be Gerald, because he was with an old lady, but he definitely kept shooting glances at me and he wasn’t at all bad-looking. Not gorgeous, but not hideous.
‘Would you like to order some nuts or olives while you wait?’ A waitress loomed up next to me with an electronic order pad, making me jump. ‘Sorry, I should have asked you that when you ordered your water, but I forgot. I’m new, you see.’
‘That’s fine, don’t worry,’ I said, smiling at her. ‘Olives would be great, thanks.’
The waitress, who was tiny and pretty and slightly breathless, turned too fast and banged right into someone. Her order pad went flying, skidding underneath my chair. I bent down to pick it up and when I emerged, the blood having rushed to my head, a very, very short man was standing there rubbing his nose. I think the waitress’s head had collided with it, since she was rubbing her forehead too. Either that or she’d head-butted him, with uncanny prescience as to the emotional injury he was about to inflict on me.
I’d just handed her the pad and opened my mouth to ask if she was OK, when I was interrupted.
‘Can’t you bloody watch where you’re going? You could have broken my nose!’
The poor waitress mumbled an apology and staggered off, close to tears. The restaurant was almost full, and all the other diners turned and stared, aghast.
I can’t stand people who are rude to waiting staff. I was about to give him my dirtiest of dirty looks, when I realised with considerable alarm that this obnoxious little troll was my date.
‘Oh!’ I said. ‘
Gerald
?’ Even under the circumstances, I did try to keep the disappointment out of my voice, I really did.
‘Jo. Well, that’s a good start, isn’t it?’ he said in a brittle voice, smiling uncertainly to reveal—dear God—sticky-out teeth the colour of rancid custard. His skin, so glowing and tanned in the photograph, was the pallid grey more commonly associated with coma patients. His shoulders sloped dejectedly and, like I said, he was extremely vertically challenged—about five foot four, I’d guess. With a red nose—although he couldn’t exactly have helped that. His hair was almost colourless, as fine and wispy as a toddler’s.
‘Is it bleeding?’ he asked anxiously, swiping beneath his nostrils with a stubby forefinger. I noticed he hadn’t even bothered to check how the waitress was.
‘No,’ I said brusquely.
Gerald sat down opposite me and we shook hands over the table. There was a long, awkward silence, during which all the people at the other tables smirked knowingly and sympathetically at me. The man on the other side of the restaurant was still glancing over. I wondered if I knew him from somewhere, but I was too embarrassed to make eye contact with him. Gerald and I may as well have had a big neon sign flashing over our heads saying ‘Losers on Blind Date’.
‘You’re very attractive,’ he said eventually, sounding surprised.
‘Thanks.’
‘I love women with messy dark hair.’
Messy? It was meant to look curly, not messy. Still, did I care what he thought of me or my hair?
Yes, I did. Sadly. Even him.
‘Is it natural?’
‘All my very own,’ I said brightly.
‘So, you’re divorced, are you? Do you want to get married again?’
I winced at his directness.
Not to you. Not if you were the last man alive, mate,
I thought. I opened my mouth to answer, and the answer would have been,
Yes, yes I do, more than anything. I want to recapture what I so recklessly threw away. I want to stop feeling so adrift, so lonely. I want to share my life with someone I love deeply, learn from my mistakes, move forward . . .
‘That’s quite a personal question, considering we’ve just met,’ I said instead. ‘Shall we order? I’m not very hungry, so I think I’ll just have some doughballs and a side salad.’ I’d already been there ten minutes longer than I wanted to be.
‘I’m allergic to dairy, yeast, and wheat,’ he announced,
scrutinising
the menu, seemingly uninterested in the answer to his
original
question.
‘Oh dear. Why did you choose Pizza Express then?’
He glanced suspiciously at me, as if this was an accusation. ‘I don’t eat out much. I’ve heard good things about this place. I thought it would be nice!’
‘It
is
nice,’ I said reassuringly. Who on this planet has never been to a Pizza Express before?
‘Don’t they have any steak?’ He was markedly peeved now.
I realised that I had to do something dramatic. I had to leave, and very, very soon. My instincts were screaming at me to stay, to be the polite girl my parents brought up; it would only be for an hour or so—but what would be the point? I was never, ever going to see him again. Nothing he could do would ever make me fancy him. Surely he must have discerned the total absence of any chemistry between us? I would be doing us both a favour, saving us an hour of our lives—an hour that we’d never get back again—and about twenty pounds each.
I reached down and lifted up my bag from the floor, delving into it to retrieve my purse, just as the waitress returned with
my olives.
‘Can I get you a drink,
sir
?’ she asked, scowling at him.
‘I’ll have a beer,’ he said, shortly. Excuse the pun.
I couldn’t be bothered to point out that beer is full of yeast. ‘
Listen
, Gerald,’ I said instead, blushing horribly. ‘It’s been interesting to meet you, but, really, I don’t think this would work out.’
He gaped at me, as if he didn’t understand. A wash of purple swept up from his neck to the roots of his wispy hair, which at first I thought was embarrassment.
I handed him a ten-pound note. ‘This will more than cover the water, and the olives,’ I said, but he didn’t take it, so I left it under my side plate. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t want to waste your time, or mine. Um . . . bye, then.’
He was still glaring at me, his fists in two tight rolls. Then he shoved back his chair and stood up—at least, I think he did. It was hard to tell, his legs were so short.
I tentatively stuck out my hand to shake his for a second time, but when I saw the rage bubbling to the surface in his pale features, I realised that my best ploy would probably be to leave immediately. I turned to go, but I was too late. To my utter and abject horror, he suddenly screamed, literally at the top of his voice:
‘What, you can’t even spend an hour of your precious time with me? WELL, JUST FUCK OFF, YOU STUCK-UP WHORE OF BABYLON!’
And he marched out, catching the hem of his jacket on the back of a chair as he went, sending it clattering to the floor. I sat back down again and buried my burning cheeks in my hands. I could see through my fingers that every last person in the room was staring open-mouthed in my direction, and for a moment I could not think what to do: run to the Ladies? Cry? Look around and shrug resignedly? Charge out after him and punch him in the mouth, or, more maturely, suggest he seek therapy for his issues with anger?
In fact, I did nothing at all, until I felt a gentle tap on my shoulder.
‘Hi, it’s Jo Singer, isn’t it?’
I looked up to see the man who’d been staring at me from across the restaurant. He was tall, dark, and quite beefy, but his eyes were a little too small and his ears much too big. He looked familiar, but I couldn’t think how I might know him.
‘Well—it was. It’s Jo Atkins now.’
‘You’re married? Then who . . . ?’ The man looked pointedly towards the door, which was still closing slowly behind Gerald. It must have been very obvious that we’d been on a date,
then. I was
torn between relief that the man didn’t for a moment think
that Gera
ld had been my husband, and panic that he might think I was some two-timing tart to whom the epithet ‘whore of Babylon’
was entir
ely applicable.
‘I’m divorced, but I kept my married name,’ I said hastily. ‘That guy was a sort of blind date. I’d never met him before. I can’t believe he yelled at me like that; I’m mortified.’
It could have been my imagination, but it seemed that the man’s face actually lit up at the news that I was divorced.
‘
Really
. . . ? You married Richard Atkins, then? I remember you two becoming an item. Don’t you remember me? I’m Claudio Cavelli. We were in the swimming club at the same time. And I was a friend of John Barrington-Brown’s.’
It all clicked into place. I noticed that he hadn’t said ‘sorry’ on hearing about my divorce, as might have been the polite thing to do. But then Claudio Cavelli, in my limited knowledge of him, had never been a particularly polite person. I wondered how he could have remembered Richard and me getting together, since that h
ad b
een several years after we had all left school.
‘Claudio! Of course. Sorry, I didn’t recognise you. You used to be much thinner. Not that you’re fat now, or anything, and it must be twenty years since I last saw you . . . twenty-five, maybe.’
I was gabbling. I did not feel at all emotionally equipped for meeting someone from my past, especially not someone associated with John. Someone who, it had to be said, I’d never really warmed to anyway. But I was so relieved to have a distraction from the awfulness of Gerald’s outburst that I invited Claudio to sit down.
‘I’ll join you for a minute, but my mum’s over there, so I won’t stay long. She wanted to come out for some pasta. She can’t eat pizza, you see: it dislodges her dentures.’
I glanced over to see a very thin old lady chewing very slowly, looking down at her plate with unwavering concentration.
‘So, do you still live in Brockhurst, then?’ I asked.
Claudio smiled again. It had to be said, though, he had a surprisingly nice smile. ‘No, I’m in London, but I’m down here a lot visiting Mum. She has not been well recently. She lives in a nursing home.’ The smile vanished, and the corners of his mouth drooped.
‘I’m really sorry,’ I said. We both looked at Claudio’s mum again. She did not look at all well, now that he mentioned it. Her head was beginning to loll slightly as though she was about to
fall asleep.
‘What can you do, huh?’ he asked, composing himself. ‘Life’s a bitch. Anyway, we’re going to have some dessert and coffee in a moment—Mum loves the dark chocolate
bombe
they do here. Would you like to join us?’
I was surprised and, for a very brief moment, tempted. ‘Thanks, Claudio, but I’ll pass. I’ve got a babysitter at home, and I said I wouldn’t be late. After the humiliation of just now, I think I’d rather just get home.’
Claudio seemed illogically disappointed, as if we’d been planning this dessert and coffee with his poorly mother for weeks and I’d let him down at the last minute. ‘That’s a shame,’ he said, almost sulkily. ‘It is so amazing to see you again.’
That’s a bit over the top, I thought. Amazing? I didn’t recall ever speaking more than a few words to him in passing when we were at school, or at swimming club. He’d always kind of given me the creeps, so I’d tended to avoid him when I could. But perhaps he was one of those people who looked back on their schooldays through such rose-coloured glasses that any connection with that era, however tenuous, was worth a detailed reminiscing session. I wasn’t in the mood for one of those conversations about school discos and who’d snogged whom and when.
‘Yes, you too,’ I said, trying not to sound too discouraging. ‘
Perhaps
bump into you some other time you’re down here?’
‘Well, why don’t I take your phone number? We must go out for a drink sometime and talk about the good old days!’ Claudio, enthusiastic again, had whipped out a ballpoint pen and had it poised over a red paper napkin. His expressions were changing like a weather vane in a high wind, and I found it confusing. I couldn’t read him at all.