Alice Brown's Lessons in the Curious Art of Dating (4 page)

Lou made a strange noise, somewhere between a laugh, a yawn and a snort.

‘You
are
joking, right?’

‘Nope, I’m deadly serious. Their one-to-one personal service.’

‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Of course not; it’s five to nine!’

Lou rubbed her eyes again. Some of last night’s make-up smeared across her face.

‘So let me get this straight. You took a bang to the head after leaving the bar last night, and you’ve woken up thinking that handing over God knows how many of your hard-earned pounds to that ginger-haired matron with knockers down to her knees is going to make all the difference and you’re suddenly going to find a man and live happily ever after?’

‘I’m not going to sign up with Audrey; I’m not completely mad!’ Kate laughed. ‘If she picks up the phone I’m going to hang up. No, I’m going to ring that nice Alice.’

‘The frumpy librarian in the woolly socks? Smart move!’

‘It doesn’t matter what she looks like. It’s about how she’s going to open me up to new people; widen my horizons.’

Lou sat up.

‘You mean lower your standards and get you dating retards! Jesus, Kate. Remember how strange the men were last night? They were so far beneath your league, they’re . . . they’re . . .’ Lou threw back her duvet in disgust and got out of bed. ‘This isn’t funny. You’ve got to be winding me up. What’s wrong with going to the pub or using the internet like everyone else?’

‘The internet’s for shoe-shopping, not man-shopping.’

‘Sounds like an excuse to me.’

‘It’s not,’ Kate replied tartly. ‘I just don’t want to do internet dating. It’s too public, putting your profile up for everyone to see; I don’t trust people’s motives; they don’t tell the truth. And as for going to pubs . . . hey, what happened with that barman last night?’

‘What? Oh. Not my kind.’

‘Since when was any man not your kind?’

Lou arched an eyebrow. ‘At least I have a kind. Anyway, I still don’t see why you have to join a dating agency. It’s a bit bloody old-school.’

‘I don’t want to do it fashionably, I want to do it
right
. I’m sick and tired of
working
at finding a boyfriend. I work hard all day at the office. Finding a boyfriend shouldn’t feel like yet another job to be done. So I’m going to outsource. I want to pay my money, sit back and let the experts deliver some quality candidates to wine and dine me. I don’t want some internet shark who’s just after sex. I want someone who’s serious about settling down and having a family.’

Lou chewed her lip.

‘Well, you certainly seem determined.’

‘I am,’ said Kate in her most determined tones.

There was a long silence. Lou heard Kate fend off a colleague.

‘Well, go for it then,’ she said lightly. ‘Good luck.’

‘Do you really mean that?’ Kate asked, her voice immediately vulnerable.

‘Yes,’ Lou replied as she groped for the bathroom light.
‘If you’re daft enough to shell out cash to meet balding, slopey-shouldered rejects who’ve probably never had a girlfriend in their lives, let alone a shag, then you’re going to need all the luck you can get. They’re all the same men, you know . . . on the internet or from a dating agency. They’re just the leftovers because the good ones our age have already been taken. You’re better off just going to a bar and pulling a twenty-four-year-old.’

Lou was suddenly struck by a flashback. What was it the barman had said last night?
Thanks, but no offence, I don’t do older chicks
. No offence? Immature little scumbag. Cheeky little fucker. She looked at herself in the mirror. Older chick my arse, she thought as she checked out her panda mascara eyes and shades-of-grey complexion. She could still swing it. She just needed a pair of straighteners and a layer of slap. It was all in the presentation and the lighting. Besides, nobody looks good in the morning.

‘So, come on . . . How much is this privilege going to cost you, then?’ she asked aggressively.

‘Three hundred, and then a hundred a month.’

‘Bloody hell, Kate! What if it takes you a year to find someone?’

‘It won’t!’ Kate replied confidently. ‘I’ll have professionals helping me; it’ll probably all be sorted in a couple of weeks. Besides, it
can’t
take that long; I haven’t got the time. I’m already behind schedule.’

‘Behind schedule?’

Kate lowered her voice so she couldn’t be overheard.

‘Well, I want to have two children, and I’ve always wanted
them before I’m thirty-five. Ideally there should be two years between them so they’re not too close together at school, so that takes me back to at least thirty-two. Obviously I should be married first; and I’ve always thought my husband and I should have at least a year together to just enjoy being a couple and to have some nice upmarket holidays before the kids come along and we have to go to theme parks . . .
So that’s thirty-one
. And we should have been together eighteen months before getting engaged – any longer and it looks like he’s keeping his options open in case someone better comes along . . .
twenty-nine and a half
. And everyone knows you need at least another eighteen months to organize a decent wedding . . .’

‘Christ almighty, am I dreaming this? Am I still asleep?’

‘. . . so you can see how far behind I am!’ Kate’s voice was getting louder and just a little bit shrill. ‘I should have met Mr Right when I was twenty-eight; I should be giving birth to baby number one now! I’m already five years late as it is, so it can’t take me another year to find the right man; it just
can’t
!’

The line suddenly went silent.

Lou exhaled in bewildered shock.

‘Kate, how come I never knew you were mental?’

‘There’s nothing mental about having a life plan,’ Kate replied obstinately.

For a rare, brief moment Lou was at a complete loss as to what to say.

‘Lou, come on, please!’ Kate implored. ‘I need you to be positive about this. I’m doing a very brave thing.’

There was a pause.

‘Don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d join with me?’

‘Fuck, no!’

‘Not even for a laugh?’

‘If I want a laugh I’ll look at myself naked. And if I want a man I’ll go to a cheap bar, like any other sane woman. I, for one, haven’t hit rock bottom.’

‘Well, I have!’ said Kate chirpily. ‘And I’m going to call Table For Two right now, get them to find me a fantastic man and live happily ever after,’ and she hung up before Lou could retaliate.

Lou put the phone down on the side of the bath and gave herself a long, hard look in the mirror.

‘Unfuckingbelievable,’ she deadpanned to the empty bathroom.

Alice was having trouble concentrating on her paperwork. No matter how hard she tried, her mind kept wandering.

She
loved
fifty per cent of her job. When it came to interviewing new clients and discovering their dreams, she was in her element. Each client felt like a brand-new adventure, a voyage with her as captain of the ship. It was her mission to navigate them through the choppy waters of dating and into the calm of a tropical paradise where their perfect partner was waiting, probably stretched out in a hula outfit on a sun-drenched rock. The morning after taking on a new client, Alice would rush into work early to scour the files and find their romantic match. She’d lose herself for hours, weighing up each prospective partner, imagining their conversations and chewing the top of her biro as she thought through all possible pairings.

The post-date follow-up calls and the counselling for patience Alice also loved. It was all about keeping her clients positive. Positive people were attractive people, and so she saw it as her duty to keep everyone’s spirits up. She phoned her clients often, meeting for impromptu coffees if their
morale was flagging. When they were crushed over a false start, she was crushed too. The match, after all, had been born in her imagination. Making successful matches was the stuff that filled her dreams at night. And the whiff of romance was what made her days magical.

The paperwork, on the other hand, Alice hated. She’d never been great at knuckling down. All her life people had called her a dreamer. Alice agreed. Things were more exciting with the technicolour of a little daydreaming. It was real life, but airbrushed better.

But today was Tuesday, which was paperwork day at Table For Two. Everyone was sitting at their desks, heads bent over their screens. It was the only time the office was quiet. Even Audrey wasn’t immune from paperwork Tuesdays. Alice could see her in her glass-walled office, frowning heavily at her computer.

Alice stared blankly at the figures on her own computer, willing them to make sense. It was no good. Try as she might to focus on the numbers, she couldn’t help but start picturing the face of a man. Not just any man.
The
man. The one for her. She hadn’t met him yet, but he was out there, she was sure of it. You had to believe that, in this line of work, she reasoned. You had to believe in Prince Charmings.

Alice’s own Prince Charming was forever popping into her head. She’d met him a thousand times – sometimes in the supermarket, sometimes the swimming pool, the library, the bus stop, the pub. Other women wanted Prince Charmings with big muscles, fat bank balances and a
wardrobe full of the right kind of clothes. But Alice’s Prince Charming was more likely to be brandishing a charity bucket than a bulging wallet. Today her Prince Charming was a florist, delivering flowers to women all over the city. Alice imagined women sighing as they accepted his bouquets, disappointed that they were from their husbands and not Prince Charming. He’d almost run Alice over in his delivery van and would rush to check she was OK. She’d be fine, just attractively flushed and a little shaken. He wouldn’t hear of her cycling home when she could be in shock. He’d stow her bike amongst the tulips and azaleas in the back of his van and give her a lift home. Thanks to his perfect mental recall and uncanny ability to predict her favourite flower, the next day she’d find a huge bunch of gerberas on her doorstep and a note asking her to dinner.

Alice sighed. That was the trouble with this job. You were paid to think about ideal partnerships all day long, so how could you not think about your own perfect date? It was like putting an alcoholic behind the bar and telling him to sit on his hands. Was she a romanceaholic, Alice wondered? Did such people exist?

She gave up on her paperwork.

‘Anyone want a coffee?’ She broke the silence.

‘Just what the doctor ordered!’ said Hilary, relieved by the distraction. ‘Wanna hand?’ She started to pull herself up from her seat.

‘No, you stay where you are,’ Alice said with a smile. Hilary beamed gratefully over her pregnant belly.

‘Bianca?’ Alice prompted.

‘Please,’ Bianca murmured without removing her eyes from her computer. Alice eyed the top of Bianca’s head. The January sunshine was catching her neat rows of honeyed highlights, making her hair look like spun gold. Bianca always looked together and classy in a way that Alice simply couldn’t. Even if she actually bothered ironing a shirt for work, an hour later Alice still looked like she’d slept in her clothes.

‘Were you dragged through a hedge backwards this morning?’ Audrey once asked her loudly across the office. ‘Twice?’

Bianca, on the other hand, looked like she woke up in full, artfully understated make-up every morning, photo-shoot-ready from the pillow. With her ever-fresh hair and pearly oval fingernails, she was the kind of woman who, just by looking at her, made you feel you were somehow failing your sex.

‘Did someone say cappuccino?’ chirped Cassandra loudly. ‘I’ll have mine extra skinny.’

‘I wasn’t going to . . .’

‘And one of those big cookies. Bugger the diet.’

‘Er, right.’

Cappuccinos meant a trip to the coffee shop round the corner. Alice hadn’t intended to leave the office – a Nescafé courtesy of the office kettle would have done. But at least a trip outside meant ten minutes away from the paperwork.

She pulled on her coat. On the mat the post lay ignored.
Alice scooped up the envelopes and caught her breath. There were two handwritten envelopes. She felt a thrill of excitement. Gingerly she pushed open the door to Audrey’s office.