Confessions of a Serial Dater (10 page)

Harry’s called me a few times since Christmas, but I haven’t told Carmen or Jess. I haven’t told anyone.

“I’m calling to see what you’re,” he pauses, “wearing. I’m imagining something black, and tiny, and silky, and that I’m sliding my hand down your body,” he adds, and I shiver some
more. “Anyway, just wanted to see if you’re free for dinner tomorrow night,” he says, completely changing the tone of his voice from sexy to amused.

I think he thinks that all this blowing hot and cold is sexy and tempting.

I cannot imagine why he’s bothering, because I’m always mean to him, but although I have absolutely no interest in meeting up with him—well, maybe only a very little—it’s stress-relieving and refreshing to have someone to be mean to. But I can’t be mean to a voice-mail message.

Granny Elsie’s theory about being mean to keep them keen certainly seems to be working where Harry’s concerned. Not that I want to keep him keen, of course, but despite the fact that I keep saying, “No, go away and never call me again,” he keeps coming back for more.

Thinking of Granny Elsie makes me sigh.

Eight more garden gnomes have gone missing since Christmas. And although the police are upset about it and are taking it seriously, the current theory is that they have either been (a) kidnapped by one of Hampstead’s snootier, gnome-hating residents, or (b) kidnapped by the French.

I kid you not.

The first theory—that a posh neighbor kidnapped them—is the copycat theory. It’s happened before. In Brattleby, Lincolnshire, residents in the posh half of the village woke one morning to find that their gardens had been invaded by fourteen garden gnomes, as some kind of retaliation for their garden-gnome snobbery, or so the locals suspect. The case is still open.

The second theory—that they were kidnapped by the French—is also not a joke. The Liberation Front for Garden Gnomes is actually quite serious in France. Their aim: to deridiculize the gnomes by rehousing them in their natural environment.

Apparently, gnomes have been popping up all over French woodland groves, and, on one occasion, seventy-four of them appeared one morning lined up in front of the cathedral in Saint-Die. Imagine popping to church for a quick confession and finding that sight before you?

This is both disturbing and upsetting, especially as I have to keep ordering and replacing them before Granny Elsie notices, but today, the mystery was solved when Mum called me at six this morning. This is what happened.

“Darling, you’ve
got
to tell
Gran
that she’s making the
biggest mistake of her life,
” is her opening gambit, and I wonder why she isn’t asleep at six in the morning like normal people.

“What’s happening?” I mumble, because I’m still not completely awake.

“Rosie, I want you to come over right now and tell her that she’s being too rash. She can’t do this just because of Sid’s romantic flight of fancy.”

I’d no idea Gran was seeing a Sid. I thought she was still seeing an Alf. So, of course, I’m thoroughly confused. Especially as I only saw Gran when I popped round before my riding lesson on Thursday, and she didn’t mention any forthcoming nuptials.

“Mum, slow down a minute and start over, will you?” I yawn, and rub my eyes with the back of my free hand.

“It was the garden gnomes that caused this mess,” she wails. “We should never have bothered replacing them. We should just have left them to their fate.”

“We” didn’t replace them. “I” did. But before I can say anything, Mum’s up and panicking again.

“After all I’ve done for her since Granddad died. I took her in, I put a roof over her head, put food on the table, and now she repays me by—by—casually marrying Sid and moving out.”

“My God. Granny Elsie got married and moved out? When did this happen?”

“No, not yet. But if she thinks I’m going to the service, she’s got another think coming, I can tell you.”

How strange, yet wonderful, to find true love again at her age. But then again, Broadway actress Carol Channing got married again when she was eighty-two, which was a shock, because everyone thought she was dead.

The childhood sweetheart she married thought she was dead, too, so it must have been a surprise when he picked up the telephone one day and it was Carol on the other end, especially as they hadn’t seen each other since high school…

“You must come over and
do
something.” Mum’s building up to an ear-splitting crescendo, and I have to hold the phone slightly away from my ear. “We can’t allow this to happen.”

“Mum,” I try to reason with her. “Gran’s old enough to decide for herself, don’t you think?” Although I do wonder sometimes if Granny Elsie’s reverted to a second childhood. “But at least it’s not as if he’s marrying her for her money, because she hasn’t got much.”

“But. But I’ll be left
all on my own.
”

And that, my friends, is the real crux of the problem.

My head starts to throb as I realize that this will, of course, set Mum off on a whole new Why I Should Move Home crusade.

Mum’s been doing quite well since Christmas. Once I went through her finances and got her back on track, and hired some of the cleaners from Odd Jobs to give the house a good once-over, and had a serious chat with her about how she was only in her fifties and had to get out and about more, she took my advice and joined the Women’s Institute to get out and about more. I thought she was doing really well.

“Please come now,” she says, bursting into tears.

When I arrive at Mum’s shortly after seven this morning, I see, immediately, what she means about the garden gnomes.

They are all, including the old, previously stolen ones, arranged in a huge heart on the front lawn.

In the middle of the huge gnome heart is a huge, padded silk heart, emblazoned with the words
My darling Elsie, will you marry me? Yours, forever, Sid XXX.

How romantic is that?

“Who’s Sid?” I ask Granny Elsie thirty seconds later when she opens the front door to me.

“Howdy, stranger,” she greets me. She is wearing a red-and-white-checked shirt, blue jeans, cowboy boots and a Stetson. “My new toy boy. I thought Sandra might have called you.” An interesting fashion statement for an eighty-six-year-old with a blue rinse.

Blue, it would seem, is the new pink.

Then, before I can ask about her toy boy or her new image, she cunningly changes the subject. “Is it me imagination, or do I have two Gertrudes, two Munchkins, and two Gladyses?” Granny asks me, peering at her gnome heart with a very satisfied expression on her face.

“Maybe they had babies?” I say, and don’t mention the fact that if she looks very closely, she’ll find two Pucks, two Freds, two Delilahs, two Frodos, and two Annes, too. Although I’ve always thought that Anne was an unusual name for a gnome…

“Don’t you start,” she says. “It’s bad enough your mother losing her grip on reality without you muscling in on the action.”

And this from the woman with the toy boy and the blue rinse.

I follow her through to the kitchen, and she switches on the kettle.

“Where
is
Mum?” I ask, because this is the simplest and
least outrageous question I could ask when faced with a whole host of aging gunslinger and toy boy questions.

“She’s gone for a lie down to steady her nerves,” Gran says, shaking her blue-rinsed, Stetsoned head.

I
need a lie down to steady
my
nerves, I think.

“Honestly, I think she’s getting worse, not better. She’s not been right since your poor dad passed, has she?”

“No,” I say, instantly guilty. I should have been better at spotting the signs.

“And don’t go suffering pangs of guilt,” Gran tells me. “I know you, Rosie. You’re a good girl, but you think you have to look after us all. Well, I’m taking over. She just needs to get out and about more, and I’m going to sort her.”

This, from the woman who thinks she’s Annie Oakley reincarnated?

“I mean, I haven’t even said yes to Sid yet and she’s in a right state. Just because Sid wants us to fly to Las Vegas and get married by John Wayne. Not the real John Wayne, obviously, because he’s dead.”

“Well, I’m glad we got that sorted out,” I say, just a bit sarcastically. “So, back to Sid.”

“He’s loved me from afar since I joined the line dancing circle before Christmas,” Gran tells me. “He just didn’t have the courage to, you know, ask me out. Especially as Alf got in there first.”

“Well, he obviously managed to overcome his difficulties if he’s asking you to marry him.”

“It was
me
who overcame
his
difficulties,” Gran cackles. “I asked him if he fancied a pickled onion at the cheese and wine party last month,” she says, grinning. “And then I asked him if he fancied me, along with the pickled onion. But I ain’t marrying him. I likes me independence.”

I wonder if I should tell her that Sid is a kleptomaniac with a gnome fetish?

“Also, I’m not sure about a man who steals my garden gnomes,” she adds, and winks.

I know how she feels about the independence thing,
I think later that night at the engagement party. I’m so glad that I’ve decided to give up on men for good, because they cause nothing but trouble. Take Jess’s man trouble, for example…

“I’m a bit worried about Aster,” Jess, who has had her hair cropped and bleached to a spiky, peroxide blond because Aster prefers blond, confides to me as we sit at our designated table.

I’m a bit worried about Aster, too, because apart from all his other faults, he’s barely spent any time with Jess since they arrived, and is currently chatting to an attractive peroxide blond at the drinks station. But I don’t say any of this to Jess.

“In what way?” I ask her, careful to keep my voice neutral.

“Oh, it’s nothing, it’s nothing. I’m probably being a bit silly,” she says, giving me a rueful smile. “A bit overreactive and silly, that’s all.”

“But it might help to, um, get it off your chest,” I tell her. “You know that old saying—a problem shared is a problem halved.”

“Well, I wouldn’t call it an actual problem. Not a problem. More of a…a concern.”

This is the first time she’s ever voiced anything remotely negative about Aster, so I must be careful what I say to her.

“Darling, Jess,” I say to her, placing my hand on her arm. “It’s perfectly normal, and not at all silly, to have concerns about a relationship. Look at me and Jonathan—I was always voicing my concerns about my relationship with him, and you didn’t think I was silly, did you?”

“No, of course not. Okay. Okay,” she says, then takes a
deep breath and closes her eyes. “Do you think that Aster is an arrogant jerk who’s ruthlessly using me for money?” is not exactly how I expected her to phrase it, and wonder if Carmen has said something to her.

“Well.” What the hell do I say? If I say no, that wouldn’t be right because I think he
is
using her for money. But if I say yes, then it might cause a rift in our friendship.

“Only, I sometimes think that he’s only interested in my trust fund,” Jess says, and the words come tumbling out in a rush. “Like that suit he’s wearing. It cost a thousand pounds. We bought it today, because the other suit I bought him wasn’t quite right for a posh engagement party, and he said he didn’t want to let me down in front of my friends.”

“Well—” And I’m trying desperately for a bit of Amélie channeling, here…

“And whenever we go out, he has to borrow money from me so that he can pay his way, but he never gives it back. Plus he lives with me free of charge, and I pay for all the food, and everything, and sometimes I worry that he’s not really interested in me as a person at all. And all he got me for Valentine’s Day was a Snickers bar, because he said what can you get for the girl who has a trust fund, therefore has the money to buy anything she fancies, so expensive Valentine’s Day gifts were just a waste—especially if you happened to be a penniless musician.”

“I think,” I say slowly, because I’m groping for words here. What would Amélie say? “I think that it’s good to help someone out, but it’s also good to—to encourage them to stand on their own two feet—” But before I can find more right words, Jess is off again.

“And he’s also gone off sex. And I think he hated that sweater I made him for Christmas, because I found it stuffed under the bed all screwed up in a ball.”

I don’t think I’ve ever heard Jess string so many sentences together without doing that little word repetition thing she does, and I want to scrumple up Aster into a little ball and throw him out with the trash.

“There,” she says, giving me a huge smile. “You were right. I do feel so much better now. So much better.”

“You do?”

“And I’m going to sleep on it. Philip,” she calls across the table, “would you like to dance?”

“I’d be delighted, dear girl,” he beams back at her, getting to his feet. “Gorgeous new hairstyle. Lovely color.”

Charlie and his latest man is another good example of why independence is a good thing.

“I definitely thought he would have called by now,” Charlie frets, sliding into the seat next to me.

“Charlie, you only met him last night,” I say, exasperated. I absolutely love Charlie. And I’m absolutely delighted that he’s finally met someone else whom he feels worthy of more than a few dates, but he’s done nothing but obsess about Lewis since the moment he arrived at Ned and Flora’s party.

“Maybe I didn’t seem keen enough,” Charlie frets some more. “Maybe I should have, you know, called him—it
is
Valentine’s Day, after all. Do you think I should call him?”

“Well, you don’t want to appear too eager,” I say carefully. Because I don’t want to put Charlie off. But after a year of complete indifference, this all-or-nothing situation is a bit, well, worrying. It’s almost like he’s a love alcoholic taking his first swig of love gin and tonic after a year, and now he’s back in headfirst.

“I’m just going to check for messages,” Charlie tells me. “Back in a sec.”

As Charlie heads toward the hotel foyer, I worry that he’ll get burned again…