The Dating Detox (17 page)

I head out to the living room, grab a fag and a lighter from my bag on the table, walk back to the kitchen to lean out the kitchen window and light my cigarette. Thank fuck I am sticking to the Dating Sabbatical. Without it, I would be like Anna. Well, perhaps not as insane. But possibly not far off. A few more years of bad dates and Ricks and…

Oh God, the Sabbatical, and Rick. Rick, Rick in…I look at my watch…one hour and 20 minutes.

Leaning out the kitchen window, I can see right into the living room of a guy watching some kind of reality show on a massive flatscreen TV. It’s one of those
Pop Idol
shows. I’m not that devoted to them, mostly as I have never been organised enough to remember when they are on, and I think it might be Saturday night and that’s always been devoted to dating or drinking. But whenever I do find myself watching them, I’m almost guaranteed to cry at least once, usually twice. Seeing people hope for the best, and lose is, of course, a bit sad. But seeing people hope for the best, and then win—oh God, dude, it just destroys me. Even thinking about it makes me a bit teary.

I finish my cigarette, pour myself another three fingers of vodka and light another fag. Why did I go out with Rick for so long when he was being such a bastardo? Why did I keep trying to make him as crazy about me as he had seemed in the first few weeks? Will he explain why he shagged a Pink Lady in front of me? Does he want me back? It’s too late. I don’t love him anymore. If I ever did, if that was love, whatever that was. Urgh.

Why am I navel-gazing this much when I’m meant to be just breezing through life on my Dating Sabbatical?

I take out my phone and consider calling Bloomie and Kate. Shit, I can’t. They don’t know I’m about to see Rick. I feel duplicitous not telling them. But then again, what am I meant to do, report every thought and plan that I have, every second that I have them?

I look at my watch. 6.45 pm. Argh. Ages to go. I take out my
phone and call Mum. She’ll be at home now thinking about what to have for dinner and whether she and Dad should just go out instead.

‘Hello?’ she says, after the phone has rung about ten times and I’m about to hang up.

‘MummAY!’ I say, using the pet name I have for her, which is basically just a baby way of saying Mummy. When I am home I sometimes lie in bed and shout it till she comes in to kiss me goodnight. This is, I know, immature of me. I wonder if I stopped doing it, would I start thinking about growing up and getting married?

‘Oh, little darling, hello!’

‘Ça va, Maman? What are you up to?’

‘I was just thinking about dinner and whether Dad and I should just go out instead.’

‘Definitely go out. Life is too short to stuff a mushroom, girlfriend,’ I say, taking a slug of vodka. One university holiday, Mum and I started reading her old feminist literature to each other. It is damn funny stuff. (Important. Important and funny.) ‘How was bridge today?’

‘Ah…it was good,’ she says. I can hear her settling into the couch and cradling the phone in her ear. ‘I was doing very well for the first hour, and then I was playing with Frances, you know, from yoga, and she and I always enjoy playing together, but the other two were taking it terribly seriously, and then Frances forgot what she was playing, and then I couldn’t remember either, and we laughed till Frances almost fell off her chair. It didn’t go down very well at all…They’re so uptight there.’

I laugh at the idea of Mum and Frances in hysterics in a bridge game. They recently outlawed alcohol at her bridge games—I think Mum and Frances may have had something to do with it.

‘What’s news with you, my little darling?’ she says.

‘Oh…Mummay,’ I sigh, leaning my head against the kitchen
window and gazing at the mews. ‘Well, work is ace. Really ace.

And, um. I’m about to go and see this guy Rick for a drink.’

‘Rick? The one who cheated on you?’

Damn, I forgot I’d told her about it. ‘Uh…yes.’

‘Oh, darling, why? Why on earth. Would you do that.’ My mother likes to cut her sentences up sometimes for dramatic emphasis.

‘Um…because he asked me?’

‘He doesn’t deserve it! He is not. Good enough. For you.’

‘Well…I’ve agreed to it now…’

‘Move on! Kick him to the curb, honey! Kick him. To. The. Curb.’ Sigh. She also watched too much of Ricki Lake’s TV programme years ago and now uses the phrases she picked up with joy and abandon.

‘But…Shouldn’t I even see what he wants?’

‘No. Absolutely. Not.’

‘But…it’s rude to cancel now.’

‘For someone so smart, my little darling, you are very silly…I mean with your love Sabbatical, and before that it was your no bastardos thing, and now you’re seeing Rick who is the worst of the whole lot…’

God, when she puts it like that, I really sound like a mess. I make a pathetic mewing sound into the phone to make her laugh.

‘What do you want? Do you want him to turn around and say that he’s sorry and he’s in love with you?’

Yes. ‘No.’

‘Then why did you agree to see him?’

‘He was quite…persuasive.’

‘Don’t allow yourself to be dominated by a stronger personality. And don’t just go out with someone you can dominate, either.’

Ouch. That would mean Rick and then Posh Mark. Now I sound like a fucking basket case.

‘I remember when you were a little girl, you were such a happy
little thing, but if someone at school didn’t like you, you thought it was your job to try even harder to win them over.’

‘I’m not like that anymore,’ I say stoutly, realising that actually, perhaps I am. ‘Well, anyway, it’s a female trait. We’re pleasers. Society teaches to be pretty and pliant. The feminine mystique.’ The vodka seems to be kicking in.

‘Rubbish. The feminine mystique is about women only finding identity and meaning through their husband and children. Betty Friedan! And I certainly did not bring you up to be pretty and pliant! I subverted the gender assumption! I even gave you trucks to play with.’

‘And I called them Ursula and Grace and put dresses on them and had a tea party.’

‘Yes, you did,’ she laughs at the memory.

‘Um…OK…well what should I do?’

‘You’re 28 years old!’ she says briskly. ‘You decide! You’re perfectly. Capable. Of making your own decisions.’

‘I don’t feel like I am,’ I say. Right now I feel rather pathetic, actually. I want to lie on the couch with my head on her shoulder and watch
Calamity Jane
, our favourite family holiday film.

‘You can’t keep on like this forever, you know. Just clothes and going out and having fun. We’re still in a recession, you know. I hope you’re saving money…’

‘Oh, Mum…’ I don’t want to lie on the couch with my head on her shoulder if she’s going to lecture me, obviously.

‘I’m serious. Bloomie and Kate seem to have themselves sorted.’

Now wait a minute.

‘That’s not true, Mum. I’m doing so well at work, and on the Sabbatical, and Bloomie has to work a million hours a week, and her boyfriend doesn’t know where she even is half the time, and Kate’s company is going under, and she left Tray. None of us are sorted.’

‘Well…’ she says, grudgingly. ‘Well, it does sound like you’re
enjoying life more, anyway. Now…back to this “Rick”. Why are you seeing him tonight?’

I don’t say anything.

‘If you didn’t have this “Sabbatical”, what kind of boyfriend would you want? Would it really be him?’

‘Umm…’ I think hard. Deep down, I know what I want, really, and I know it’s not Rick. ‘I just want someone I feel a…I don’t know…a click with. Someone who’s funny and quick, someone who makes me laugh and who I make laugh…And who underneath all the banter is kind and surprising and interesting…’ It feels a bit ridiculous to be making a shopping list like this. And impossible. Underneath, any man who fulfils all these criteria would be a bastardo. ‘The problem is, Mum, that I always, always choose the wrong guy. No matter what.’

‘Well, since you’re seeing this “Rick” tonight, that’s clearly true,’ she says tartly. ‘Tell me, does “Rick” make you laugh?’ She pronounces his name exaggeratedly, as though it’s actually a pseudonym.

‘I don’t remember.’ I really can’t think about it right now. I was focused entirely on making him like me. Because when he did, it felt really good, and no one had ever made me feel like that before.

‘Can’t you just go out and meet someone new who makes you laugh and you find attractive and so on?’

Suddenly, I think about Jake. Lovely, funny, warm, sexy-as-fuck Jake.

‘It’s not that easy, Mutti…and I just feel like everything always goes bad anyway.’

‘Oh, God. Don’t be so defeatist, darling. Change the paradigm!’ This is something else she says sometimes, though I don’t know for the life of me where it came from. Or what it means. ‘Just…be yourself! And be positive! Everything happens for a reason!’

‘Thanks, Maman,’ I sigh. ‘OK. I’ll do some thinking.’

‘Oh, Dad’s just come in. I love you. Are you going to be OK?’

‘Of course I will! I’ll call you tomorrow. I love you too. Thanks, Mum. Can I have a chat to Daddy?’

There’s a long pause and some talking in the background, and I’m thinking they’ve forgotten about me when Dad holds the phone up to his ear.

‘Well, we can just eat there. Darling?’

‘Hi, Daddy!’

‘Hello, darling. You sound chirpy. How are you?’

‘Good.’ I tell him about dinner last night at Nobu. Dad’s a bit of a foodie.

‘Sounds very good,’ he says. ‘Now, tell me the latest with your game plan.’

‘Um, I think I’m on half-time, actually, Daddy. I’m not sure how it’s working, though it’s been pretty straightforward so far, the opposition hasn’t been up to much.’

‘Right, right,’ he says. I can tell he’s grinning. ‘Well, they’ll have considered which moves worked in the first half and which didn’t. So just be on your toes. Remember, it’s a game of two halves.’

‘OK, Papa,’ I say, taking another slug of vodka. ‘I’ll keep you posted on the results.’

‘Well, consider this your chance to take a time-out, too…and think about what you want to achieve next. And remember that the best indicator of future performance is past performance.’

‘OK.’ I feel overwhelmed with parental advice and feminist sayings and sporting metaphors now.

‘Well, it’s whisky time here. Give us a call on Sunday? Love you, darling.’

‘Love you, too, Daddy.’

‘Call. Him. And. Cancel!’ I can hear Mum shouting from the other side of the room as Dad hangs up.

I pour myself another three fingers of vodka and light another fag.

I know they’re right. For a minute I feel very sorry for myself, then annoyed at myself for being so pathetically self-pitying, then mildly amused that I’m going through all of this angst at all as I feel like Bridget fucking Jones (though I do, obviously, love her), then sorry for myself again. Vodka is so easy to drink.

I finish my drink, pour another, smoke two more cigarettes, and give myself a quick peptalk that centres on: it’s not breaking the Sabbatical, I don’t want him back anyway so it’s not a date, I am in control, be positive, everything happens for a reason, maybe he’ll apologise and somehow I’ll feel better about that horrible, horrible night at the Pink Lady party. It’s not the most imaginative of peptalks, but it works. Kind of.

Then it’s 20 to eight, and time to head to the Botanist.

When I walk into the Botanist, I can’t see Rick anywhere. He’s late. That’s just great. It’s packed, as usual, but I eventually squeeze myself to the bar, order two gin and tonics, because it would be a waste of time to get him to go to the bar and line up all over again when he gets here, and head outside for a fag.

After one fag and my gin and tonic, he still hasn’t turned up. I look at my phone. It’s quarter past eight. I don’t even like gin and tonic that much, I think. Why did I order it? Because Rick always drinks it, came the answer right back. You stupid woman.

I start drinking Rick’s gin and tonic and light another fag. I love looking at the posh types that hang out at the Botanist. I wonder where they used to go when this place was a shitty little pub. It was refurbished a few years ago and is now a busy, buzzy bar and restaurant. It’s the only place worth going around Sloane Square, really. The Oriel is Eurotrashtic, and the Chelsea Brasserie has amazing food but suffers from the taint of being a hotel restaurant, and up towards Belgravia is the cosy, mildly shabby Antelope pub, which comes into its own in dark freezing winter, when all anyone wants in life is to drink red wine in front of a crackling fire.

I entertain myself by gazing at the crowds of 30-something, terribly successful-looking people who are all standing around outside the Botanist smoking and basking in each other’s glossy perfection. The huge, knee-to-ceiling open windows along the
length of the bar mean people are very happy to stand outside for hours, passing drinks back and forth with friends inside. I’m standing at the eastern side of the crowd, so as to have a better vantage point for when fuckfeatures, I mean Rick, arrives.

I’m just admiring one girl talking very loudly and proudly about her friends Fenella and Tarquin’s plans for Cowes Week when I see, out of the corner of my eye, Annabel Pashmina Face getting out of a black cab. I immediately spin around and face the other way, even though there’s nothing much to look at behind me. Posh Mark’s agenda-loaded best friend is the last person I want to see. Then, overcome by curiosity, I peek over my left shoulder, using my hair as a veil. She’s got her raspberry pash on today, which must mean she’s in a good mood, and then—

Holy shit, there’s Posh Mark, running across the road from the Square, shouting ‘Belly!’ Is that some kind of secret nickname? I don’t have time to wonder, as I realise that Pashmina Face has stopped still and is waving joyfully at him. They’re going to be hugging hello in that long-lost-dancey-way they always do, about three yards from me!

I quickly crabwalk four steps, until I hit the wall of the Botanist and shift to the left slightly. I’m now cowering behind a couple of stick-thin Botoxed lovelies in Temperley and Issa who look at me—fag and gin in hand, yellow clutch shoved under my armpit—like I’m wearing H&M. Which I am.

Posh Mark and Pashmina Face dancey-hug for a minute or so, and then link arms and start walking up Cliveden Place towards Belgravia. They’re heading for the Antelope, I think furiously. I showed him that pub way back in January.

Then, in a split second, as they reach the far pavement, Posh Mark grabs her hand and stops her, and they stop for a tender little snog.

I gasp. I knew she liked him! Fucking brilliant! I smile broadly. He deserves someone to adore him. They’ll get married and have lots of thick, posh babies and live happily ever after.

There’s a tap on my shoulder.

It’s Rick. Twenty-five minutes late. Fuck, I’d forgotten about him.

‘Afraid I started on your drink,’ I say, instead of saying hello. Oh dear. I’m tipsy. He leans in to kiss me on the cheek. His breath is sour, barely masked with a recently-discarded Spearmint Extra. I’m towering over him in my heels, I notice. Hah.

‘No problem,’ he says. ‘Sorry I’m late. I had a drink with Morse and McKinley and we ran over.’

Who the sweet hell are Morse and McKinley? Why does he assume everyone knows everyone he’s talking about?

‘Glad you could meet me,’ he says, as a group gets up to leave the little table behind us. ‘Grab this table and I’ll get us a bottle of wine.’

It seems a bit odd to say I only intended to stay for half a drink when I’m already one and a half down (and three—or was it four?—pretty stiff vodkas at home), so I nod and sit down, almost knocking over the table with my knees in the process. Shit, I shouldn’t have made those gins doubles. Tipsywoo. I slump back in the chair and light a fag. Posh Mark and Pashmina Face! I start giggling to myself, then stop as the Temperley woman whispers something to the Issa woman, and they both turn to glare at me. Bitches.

I curl my upper lip and make a snarly bear face at them, just as Rick returns with a bottle of white wine and two glasses. I’ve resolved to sip my next drink slowly. This much alcohol tends to make me loquacious and exuberant. I must remember that I am not here to charm and flirt and sparkle. I am here to hear what he has to say.

And it’s a lot. Yet nothing at all.

Over the next 15 minutes, he regales me with stories about how incredible his flat is, how well his cases are going, how he thought of brilliant law-genius solutions that no one else could think of, how amazing his new car is, and how wild his trip to Ibiza will be next weekend.

And you know what else? Whilst he’s spouting all this rubbish, he’s not even looking at me. He’s looking at the wall behind me, the women standing around us, the cars going past, and then the women standing around us some more.

In short, he’s the worst date-not-that-this-is-a-date I think I’ve ever had. He hasn’t even asked me one question about myself. He’s simply monologuing.

Was he always this self-involved? Did he ever make me laugh? Why did I like being with him so much? Didn’t he say he wanted to say something in particular to me? Should I ask? I really can’t be arsed. I take another sip—OK, it’s a slug, oops—of my wine, sit back in my chair and gaze at him through slightly narrowed eyes.

What an absolute prat.

I start observing him in a detached way, taking long sips of wine. (Oops again.) His hair looks a bit dirty at the roots and, like at Sophie’s Steakhouse the other night, I notice his eyelashes are pale and droopy. That one single long eyebrow hair is still curling right around. I wonder how long the eyebrow hair would be if I pulled it straight and if he’d squeal like a little girl if I pulled it out right here, right now.

After a bit more gazing and slurping, I can just remember what I found attractive/enticing about him before—the unswerving self-confidence, the arrogant humour. But now I can finally see that he really is an idiot. Not even an idiot bastardo, mind you, but just a rude, self-involved, superficial idiot. What a waste of time. Dating him, thinking about him, crying over him, and most of all, what a waste of a good Friday night being here with him.

I never loved him. How could I have ever, ever thought I did?

By now I don’t care why he asked me here. I just want to leave. My mother is right. He is not good enough for me. I am sitting forward in my chair and pouring myself another glass of wine, trying to figure out how to interrupt him, when he finishes
a story about how his crowd knows all the best dealers in Monaco—‘and I don’t mean blackjack’—puts his hand on my knee and says: ‘Thanks for taking all that party stuff so well, by the way.’

I snap to attention. ‘Sorry?’

‘You know, the party, and all that…thanks. I needed some time off. It was getting too intense. But you know, seeing you the other night…you look great. I miss you. Now, I was thinking we could just…pick up where we left off…’ He leans in to me, as if to kiss me, at the same second that I move my leg so his hand falls off my knee and lean back sharply.

‘I beg your fucking pardon?’

‘What?’

‘Why?’ I say.

‘“Why?”’ he repeats incredulously.

‘Yes. Why should I?…No, actually, why
would
I ever go out with you again, Rick?’

He doesn’t say anything, just looks at me with his stupid long curly eyebrow hair brushing his stupid droopy pale eyelashes. My drunken detachment is completely gone; in fact, I am bursting with self-righteous rage. What did he expect, to come here and we would go back to the way things were—which was pretty damn horrible anyway? After I told him I loved him and he responded by cheating on me,
in front of me
?

I sit up straight in my chair, trying hard to get every thought in my head in the right order to come out without stammering or garbling. It’s going to be difficult with the vodka and gin and wine sloshing around. I take a deep breath.

‘N-n-no. Rick. No way…You’ve never, you’ve never even apologised for t-treating me like that, you never said sorry I shagged a Pink Lady in front of you, sorry I was a selfish, horrible boyfriend and chased and chased you until I got you and then only called you on Sunday nights for sex and, and, and then discarded you without a thought…’

He’s staring at me in open-mouthed shock. ‘What? Sass, I—’

I am inflamed with anger. My face is burning and my voice is shouty, yet shaking.

‘You never called me after that party, you never tried to do anything to make me feel better like s-s-say sorry or, even ad-admit that you behaved badly. And you did, you did behave badly…’

Rick rolls his eyes and backs his chair away from the table as if to get up, so I stand up, right in front of him.

‘I thought you might apologise for everything tonight, but you know what? I don’t care. I DON’T CARE. I don’t want you, I don’t even like you. At all. You’re…’ My heart is hammering in my chest, and all the insults I have been hurling around my head have left my booze-befuddled brain, and all I’m left with is to hiss at him, like a cross between my mother and Marlena: ‘…You are. Not a good person. You are just. Not. A good person.’

‘Whatever, sweetheart,’ he shrugs, and stands up, picking up his blazer from the chair behind him. ‘What the fuck did you think you were coming here for?’

‘I have no idea,’ I say, knowing as I say it that it’s not true, and I was secretly hoping he’d crawl back, and I’d get to reject him, and feel great about myself. Instead of the debonair, killingly charismatic man I was hoping for, however, there’s this shallow, horrible, black hole of a man who assumed I’d do exactly as he expected, probably because I did before.

Not this time.

I take a deep breath. ‘You know what, Rick? You can just…you can go to hell.’

He glances at me as he straightens his collar out, and makes a brushing-away motion with his hand at me. ‘Whatever. Screw you, too.’

I can’t help it.

In one smooth move, I reach down to the table, pick up my full glass of wine, and throw it in his face. Then I pick up his glass of wine and throw it in his face too.

All the glamorous people standing around us gasp and back away. Temperley and Issa clutch each other’s arms in alarm. Rick wipes the excess wine off his face and looks at me through his fingers. I see real fury in his eyes and, for a second, I am actually scared.

So I sprint three steps to the road, hail a black cab that’s fortuitously going past right that second, get in and slam the door.

‘Westbourne Grove, please,’ I say, my voice still shaking slightly. Time to see Bloomie and Kate and get far away from this horrible situation.

As we drive around Sloane Square in the fading early summer light, I peek over the back of the cab and see Rick striding off in the direction of Belgravia, with a few of the people outside the Botanist staring after him. The rest have just gone back to their conversations, as any crowd in any bar in the world will do after witnessing a girl throw a drink in a guy’s face.

Then, as we wait at the lights and I look back over Sloane Street at the crowd outside the bar again, I see one tall figure staring over at my cab.

The figure is standing outside the Botanist, at the very other side to where we were sitting, with two men who are laughing uproariously at something. He seems completely transfixed by the progression of my black cab around the Square. He’s close enough that I think I know who it is, but I can’t be completely sure, partly as my vision is slightly doubled.

As we swing back around towards the Botanist and then up Sloane Avenue towards Knightsbridge, I get a better look at him. He’s tall, brown-haired, wearing a dark grey suit, and still staring straight at my cab. At me.

It’s him. It’s Jake.