Over the course of three years they had bitched and schemed a shoulder-padded path through the wobbly sets that depicted the headquarters of the Devereux Corporation. They struggled with their
grief after the death of the family patriarch, Daddy Devereux, and fought for the approval of their cold, wheelchair-bound mother, Ma. They stole each other’s husbands and swapped toyboys;
they battled corporate takeovers and illegally altered wills; they delivered lines like ‘You won’t find Ma’s love in the bottom of a wine glass’ and ‘I can’t
believe he survived the crematorium’. But it was the legendarily mud-spattered cat-fight on Daddy Devereux’s grave in the show’s final season, with its somewhat incestuous-lesbian
subtext, that had won both Lydia and Linda a particular sort of affection in the hearts of the nation. Apart from the odd commercial, Auntie Lyd hadn’t acted since, but you have only to
mention the name ‘Lydia Bell’ to men of a certain generation to see their eyes mist over in fond memory.
In her more romantic moments Mum would speculate that Lydia’s house must have been bought for her by an admirer – perhaps a wealthy, married one who had to express his devotion
discreetly. It seemed to me discreet to the point of downright offensive that a man would buy his television-star lover a house comprising seven dirty bedsits and a basement flat in a neighbourhood
that taxi drivers refused to visit. But we would never know, as Auntie Lyd enjoyed cultivating an air of mystery about the whole business and refused to discuss it.
Once the drug dealers had been moved out of Elgin Square and its surroundings, Auntie Lyd’s neighbourhood had been colonized instead by small boutiques in which the local residents were
relieved of their disposable income in exchange for patchwork cushions, scented candles, Welsh blankets and seashore pebbles painted with expressive words such as love, peace or more money than
sense. Okay, I made that last one up. No longer having a home of my own in which to display such items, I found that there was little temptation to spend as I wandered around the boutiques that
morning; instead I treated the shops like a series of small museums in which you could pick up the exhibits. I flicked through several books on cupcakes and whoopie pies, I tried on expensive
cashmere gloves and scarves, I noted the number of bored boyfriends loitering in doorways and told myself how lucky I was to be free of having to indulge someone else’s interests on a
Saturday afternoon.
When I had exhausted the shops of the High Street and Old Town, and been followed twice round Oliver Bonas by a suspicious security guard, I took myself to the tiny French patisserie that
overlooked the Common, grabbing a seat at the high wooden bar that faced the street. The warmth of the cafe had misted up the window, so I rubbed it with my sleeve to see outside, where the light
was just beginning to fade. Shoppers walked past the window briskly, rushing to get home before dark, and a few small children played on the muddy strip of grass across the road, next to the
shallow paddling pool that had been emptied for winter. The cafe was nearly empty, except for two waitresses speaking in French to the chef. I waved one of them over and ordered a hot chocolate; it
wasn’t exactly a sophisticated treat but I felt the need for a bit of indulgence.
When it arrived, I was surprised to find that the sight of the tiny pink and white marshmallows bobbing on its surface made my heart sink. I had thought it would remind me of my childhood, and
it had, but not in the comforting way I had hoped. Instead I was taken back to the desolate weekend afternoons of my teens, sitting alone in cafes feeling lonely and misunderstood while Mum was off
with her latest boyfriend. Of course I should have been off with friends and boyfriends of my own, but the constant moving, as Mum tired of locations as quickly as relationships, had left me
drained and insecure. Every new school had a different set of rules: not the ones set by teachers – those were easy to follow – but the far stricter ones agreed upon by the students.
The friendship bracelets that were my passport to cool at one school marked me out as a hopeless loser at the next. My skirt was too long at one school, too short at another, and at a third school
all the girls spurned the official uniform that Mum had bought me in favour of subtly different trousers and aertex shirts from Pilot.
Is it any wonder that I took refuge in History of Art, where everything not only remained reassuringly the same (a reproduction of Canaletto’s ‘A Regatta on the Grand Canal’ in
York was still a reproduction of the same regatta when viewed in Dorset, after all), but also had a clearly delineated context? History was so much safer than the present, so fixed and certain.
However, as you can imagine, the ginger-haired new girl with her passion for the Pre-Raphaelites did not find herself at the centre of the popular students, nor even at the centre of the unpopular
ones. Before I met Martin I had become used to spending time by myself; I’d even come to believe I didn’t mind it. Now, sitting alone again while everyone else rushed past in pairs or
groups, I felt it all come rushing back.
I felt a pang for that poor lonely teenager, and wished I could go back in time to tell her that it would be okay. That she’d get to university and make friends there, friends who
didn’t think it was weird to discuss
chiaroscuro
or egg tempera; that she’d meet people who spoke about church altarpieces with an enthusiasm equal to her own; that there would
be lecturers who’d think she was clever, talented even. There would be parties and gigs and a boy who would think she was amazing; she’d fall in love. But then I realized that I’d
also have to tell her that several years later the boy would end up cheating on her, she’d be stuck in a menial job with only the most tenuous connection to art history, and she’d find
herself facing thirty, single, dating pensioners and living with her chain-smoking aunt and two ancient actors. Probably best to let that poor lonely girl dream of something better, I decided,
cruelly mashing a marshmallow against the side of my cup with a spoon.
If Ticky was right, and dating the unsuitables was meant to be a kind of education, what was I supposed to take away from last night? Apart from a bit of a hangover and the memory of
Teddy’s shiny red face looming over mine. I hadn’t really needed to go out with a sixty-eight-year-old man to learn that I was hoping to end up with a younger one. Perhaps, though, the
evening pointed to another bit of Rory Carmichael cluelessness – shouldn’t I have been able to pick up on the signals before Teddy tried to kiss me? Now that I looked back, his attitude
towards me had slightly changed once he realized we were on a ‘date’. He hadn’t tried anything on in the restaurant – I wasn’t so clueless I wouldn’t have
noticed an attempt at under-the-table footsie – but he had ordered a lot more wine all of a sudden. And maybe there had been a new twinkle in his eye, although my own eyes had been
practically looking in two separate directions by then, so it was hard to tell. And yet I’d continued to play the pert niece, failing to respond to any of the clues that Teddy’s
intentions had changed. Was I really so used to being attached that I’d lost the ability to notice when someone was interested in me?
While I’d been staring out of the window ruing my life, I’d vaguely noticed the same tall guy walk past a few times, glancing into the cafe. He had a guitar case on his back, and a
head full of dark curls that almost rivalled my own, and there was a small dog following him, carrying its lead in its mouth. I wondered if he was looking for somebody. He came past again and as he
caught my eye he winked and mimed going down a flight of stairs until his head totally disappeared from sight. Then he leapt up against the window, laughing; it was impossible not to laugh back. He
mimed ‘Shall I come in?’ and before I had a chance to answer, he had poked his head around the cafe door.
‘Awright?’ he said, his disembodied head grinning. ‘Do you reckon I can bring my dog in?’
I opened my mouth to answer but instead found myself staring into his astonishingly green eyes, as if hypnotized. I’m not sure you would have called him good-looking – his face had
too much character for that – but the contrast between his dark hair and his sea-glass eyes took your breath away. Mine, anyway.
‘No!’ said the waitress, crossly bustling over from behind the till. ‘No dogs allowed. And we’re closing in ten minutes.’
‘Wait there then, mate,’ the curly-haired man said, bending down to speak to the dog. ‘It won’t take me more than ten minutes to get this lovely young lady’s phone
number, I’m sure.’
Well. Perhaps I hadn’t lost the ability to spot someone’s interest in me after all.
The man smiled over at the waitress with an expression that said he was used to charming the reluctant with his deep green gaze. ‘Might I get a cup of tea in your remaining ten
minutes?’ he asked, leaning forward hopefully with his hands clasped.
‘Okay, but you’ll have to drink it quickly,’ she sighed, smiling despite herself, and he settled confidently on the stool next to me, resting his guitar against the window.
‘And might I get your phone number in ten minutes, Girl in the window? Only I’ve gone and told my dog that I will, and Gordon just never lets it lie if I don’t actually follow
through on these things.’ He pointed out of the window to where his dog sat patiently on the pavement, wagging his tail at passers-by.
‘Your dog’s name is Gordon?’ I asked.
‘I know,’ the man laughed, nudging my shoulder to share the joke. ‘They called him that at Battersea because he’s brown. I’ve tried to change it but he won’t
answer to anything else. Very temperamental. It’s a terrier thing – once they’ve latched on to something they won’t let it go, you see.’
The waitress brought over his tea and he leapt up to pay her that instant, for both his tea and, despite my protests, my hot chocolate. He pulled handfuls of loose coins out of his jeans pockets
and pressed them on her, insisting she kept the change. It was a sweet gesture, slightly marred only when she returned only a few seconds later to say he hadn’t given her enough.
‘Here, here, have more,’ he said, digging out more coins until the bill was settled and the waitress generously tipped. ‘So where were we? I think you were just about to give
me your number?’
There was something contagiously confident about his attitude; it didn’t seem to occur to him that I might not want to give him my number, and so, oddly, it didn’t really occur to me
not to let him have it. There was something about the way he looked at me that made my brain stop working properly. I just wanted to stare and stare, as if I could solve the puzzle of his face if I
looked at it for long enough. Before I really knew what I was doing he’d punched the digits into his phone, swigged back his tea, promised to call me tomorrow, and left with Gordon.
When he left I realized that not only had I not managed to get either his name or his number, but that this marked a small but significant dating milestone for me. I had never before given my
phone number to a stranger, nor actually been asked for it, since men didn’t tend to approach you when you were holding hands with your boyfriend. Here was a man – a young and
attractive man – who seemed to be interested in me and, look! I had noticed. I had noticed and agreed to an actual date straight away. Mostly because I was too stunned by his eyes to be able
to speak in complete sentences, but still. Instead of feeling like a lonely loser drinking cocoa by herself, in an instant I felt like a proper single girl. One who got asked out on dates, and met
interesting men at random. One with options; and maybe not all of them unsuitable ones.
I’d read enough women’s magazines not to expect a call from the man from the cafe; men were mysterious creatures, apparently, who rarely rang when they said they
would, or meant what they said. I knew that single women, like me, should be prepared for disappointment; it was enough that I had been asked out. But he did call me, exactly when he said he would:
the very next day. And he asked me to meet him for a drink that same evening. And, because I wasn’t distracted by his looks on the phone, I managed to agree in words of more than one
syllable. My heart leapt with the knowledge that I would be returning to work on Monday ripe with news of two dates in one weekend. At this rate I’d have the column written for the entire
year before I knew it. I didn’t exactly know that this man was unsuitable – he looked more than suitable, to be honest – but something about the guitar on his back told me he
might be.
The curly haired man, whose name I had discovered to be Malky, suggested we met at a pub just a few minutes’ walk from Auntie Lyd’s house. Amongst the vodka bars and crowded pizza
restaurants of Clapham, the Duke of Wellington on a corner of the Old Town Triangle was a small oasis of old-school pubbiness. They didn’t serve cocktails, or tapas, or Thai food, or indeed
any food except for crisps in their most basic form (no poncy parmesan-and-rosemary flavour permitted here). It was dark enough that regulars could be distinguished from visitors simply by whether
or not they made it through the bar without hitting their heads on the low beams, or the horse brasses which hung from them. There was no music, except for the faint sound of a busker outside. Two
men stood at the bar talking in low voices, and the only other people in here were a couple, sat next to each other on a bench and staring out into the room without speaking. I ordered a glass of
wine and went to sit down at a table near the door to wait for Malky.
Twenty minutes later I’d finished my wine, been through all the messages on my phone, sent several fake texts in order to look busy, and checked the time on approximately forty-eight
separate occasions. So. This was what being stood up felt like. I tried to look as if I was just a casual, cool sort of girl who often popped into pubs by herself for a quiet glass of wine on a
Sunday evening. Of course I hadn’t been waiting for anyone, oh no. The faces of the couple opposite me were as impassive as Easter Island statues; it didn’t look like they were silently
mocking me, but I still felt mortified. And worse was the knowledge that I would have to go back to Auntie Lyd’s, where she and the actors would no doubt press me for an update on my latest
date, since they had all taken an unhealthy interest in the unsuitable-men mission. I decided facing their questions would be better than continuing to sit in the pub by myself.