‘Just wondered how it’s been going this week,’ I tell Jenny, who offers me tea in a gilt-edged china cup.
‘Really well,’ she says, ‘especially the tiny ones – the meringue kisses.’
‘People seem to prefer them with coffee,’ I tell her.
‘We’ll take more next week,’ she adds. ‘What d’you think, Max?’
Her boyfriend turns from the coffee machine and grins. ‘Oh, sure. If Alice can handle it.’
Jenny laughs. ‘We were just saying we don’t know how you manage to fit it all in. With your job and family, I mean …’
‘Oh, it keeps me sane, actually,’ I reply truthfully.
‘Well, you’re obviously doing something right,’ Jenny says with a broad smile. ‘They’re the new cupcakes, right?’
Max nods. ‘Far superior in my opinion. All that thick, cloying icing …’ I leave the cafe filled with optimism and pride. While meringues have always been a personal favourite of mine, maybe I’ve hit on a gap in the market here.
My mobile rings; it’s Ingrid. ‘So what happened?’ she asks eagerly, referring to her party on Saturday night.
‘We’re meant to be going for dinner next Friday,’ I tell her.
‘I knew it! I saw you two, huddled together in the kitchen …’
I laugh. ‘We weren’t huddled, we were
talking
.’
‘Talking intently,’ she remarks.
‘Well … it was just chit-chat really, but he seemed interesting …’ It’s true: while I don’t think either of us was bowled over, I could see no reason not to see him again. After all, my dating activity is roughly on a par with a solar eclipse these days.
‘Well, he seemed hugely keen,’ Ingrid goes on as I march up the hill at a brisk pace. ‘Every time you wandered off to talk to someone else, he was prowling about looking for you. I hope you’re going to give him a chance.’
I inhale deeply. ‘I don’t know, Ing. It’s just been a hell of a long time, you know?’
‘All the more reason then.’
‘And there’s the boys,’ I add. ‘You know what it’s like.’ She doesn’t really; happily married to Sean for a decade now, and with a charming daughter who plays no less than
three
musical instruments, Ingrid is more sorted than anyone else I know. There’s the matter of being unable, inexplicably, to conceive another baby after Saskia, but following a failed IVF cycle they are trying again, and Ingrid is always keen to stress that another child would merely be the icing on the cake.
‘That doesn’t mean you can’t date,’ she says firmly. ‘It’s not as if they have to meet every person you have a drink with. You’re hardly going to haul him home after dinner, going, “Hey boys, meet your new Uncle Anthony …”’
‘Christ, no,’ I exclaim.
‘And it’s been, what – over a year since that finance guy? The one who wanted to inspect your bank statements?’
‘And told me off for not having an ISA,’ I add with a grin. ‘Yeah, more like eighteen months actually.’
‘Well, they’re not all like that. I’ve only met Anthony a couple of times but he seems lovely. Handsome, didn’t you think? In that groomed, takes-care-of-himself sort of way. Not gone to seed. Has a personal trainer, Sean reckons, and he’s brilliant at golf …’
Golf! Checked trousers, diamond-patterned sweaters … no, no, I mustn’t think that way. I replay last Saturday night, when I was leaving Ingrid’s party:
It’s been lovely talking to you
, Anthony had said, fixing me with intense grey eyes, like wet slate.
I don’t suppose you’d like to come to dinner sometime? There’s a friendly little local place I know
…
how are you fixed on Friday night?
A proper date-night, then. All we’d talked about was who we knew at the party, how long we’d been living in Edinburgh and a few sketchy background details about our lives. I hadn’t exactly experienced an urge to kiss him, or to glimpse that nicely honed body naked – but maybe ISA-man killed my ability to fancy anyone at all. And surely, any normally functioning woman would find a tall, smiley, smartly dressed man like Anthony attractive? Which is why I agreed to meet him for dinner – because I was bloody flattered to be asked.
‘I have a good feeling about this,’ Ingrid adds, ‘and I know you’re excited really.’
‘Am I?’ I say, laughing.
‘Yes, you’re
panting
.’
‘Ingrid, I’m marching up a hill …’
‘Well,’ she sniggers, ‘I can’t wait to hear about it. I mean, eighteen months. Christ. It’s time you were back out there.’
‘Back out there? Sounds like a sign in an NCP car park …’
‘Oh, stop it,’ she says, mock-scolding. ‘Promise you’ll go and not make up some crappy excuse about the boys being ill or whatever. I know what you’re like, Alice Sweet.’
She does, too, in the way that a friend of twenty years – since our second year at college – is aware of the difference between a mere reluctance to date, and full-blown terror at the very prospect. Which is, admittedly, the situation right now. Plus, with a track record like mine, I have to ask myself, is it worth it, really? Getting ‘out there’, I mean? It’s not just ISA-Man, and his perpetual nagging about share acquisition. It’s the whole, sorry dating debacle since I split with Tom, the boys’ father. A handful of encounters scattered over six years of single parenthood – each one making me question why I was in some gloomy, sticky tabled bar, or having sex with someone who might well have been simultaneously calculating the net profit on his investments. Frankly, I’d rather have been cosied up on the sofa with Logan and Fergus, munching crisps and sniggering over something daft on TV.
‘So you
promise
not to back out,’ Ingrid says firmly.
‘Promise,’ I say.
A small pause. ‘It’ll be great. I’m not sure what he does exactly but he seems like a really driven, thrusting guy.’ We both bark with laughter as I finish the call, trying to convince myself that Ingrid is absolutely right.
*
On Friday, as I pull on my new dress – sapphire-blue linen, grabbed from some sale rail one lunchtime – my thoughts fast-forward to tomorrow when the date will be over and I’ll be happily regaling Ingrid, plus our other college friends Kirsty and Viv, with the details. It’s a pleasant spring evening, the kind that coaxes dog-walkers and couples out to our gently sloping park, with its wide open sky and a glimmer of the Firth of Forth beyond. Hell, is it really eighteen months since I last slept with someone, let alone had a date? In contrast, Tom had found himself a wife less than a year after we split (he and I had never got around to tying the knot). He is married to the fragrant Patsy, founder of a children’s sleepwear company called Dandelion. They live in a vicarage in Cumbria surrounded by rolling fields and cattle, and have an adorable golden-haired daughter, Jessica, who regularly models for the Dandelion catalogue. We’re not talking Hello Kitty nighties or SpongeBob pyjamas; the only embellishment allowed on Patsy’s top-quality garments is a tiny embroidered dandelion clock.
Tom’s contact with our sons is sporadic and largely dependent on his ‘work commitments’. We’re talking a weekend down at the vicarage now and again, although he is whisking the boys away to the Highlands during the Easter holidays, which they seem to be regarding as a rare treat (no complaints about it ‘not being abroad’ where their dad’s concerned). ‘Patsy said I can model the teen boys’ range,’ Fergus told me recently, startling me with his enthusiasm. So, while he’s reluctant to be seen walking down the street with me these days, he’d be perfectly happy to risk being spotted by his friends in a checked seersucker ensemble in a bloody catalogue. Of course, Logan and Fergus have no idea that, for much of our relationship, Daddy modelled the same three pairs of limp, not exactly box-fresh underpants in rotation, until they literally shredded in the washing machine. Nor are they aware that he spent virtually all of our thirteen-year relationship in a fug of Southern Comfort and beer. (Granted, Tom was never a horrible or, God forbid, violent drunk. He’d just go all floppy and canine, pawing at me and trying to lick my face.)
All that limpid puppy stuff had been okay-ish pre-kids, when we’d been students in a house share together. It was still bearable – just – when I gave birth to Logan, perhaps because, as a twenty-three-year-old new mum, I was so freaked out that I couldn’t fully register anything else that was going on around me. We muddled on for years because I still loved Tom, despite his unsavoury pants and habit of penning poems along the lines of:
Lovely Alice/I don’t need a palace/with you at my side …
Until the day arrived when the boys were seven and ten and I realised that, unless we split, I’d spend the rest of my life coming home from work to have Tom glance up from the sofa and ask, ‘Do we have any milk?’
You see, back then, Tom didn’t go out to work. He wasn’t a partner in Dandelion, giving talks on the virtues of organic brushed cotton and formaldehyde-free dyes. In his early thirties, and with both Fergus and Logan at school full-time, he was still trying to figure out ‘what it is I really want to do’.
As I am, an hour later, as I pause outside the restaurant which Anthony has booked for our date tonight. It is housed in a creamy sandstone crescent, sandwiched between solicitors’ offices, a small, white sign the size of a postcard offering the only hint of its existence. It is called, simply, ‘chard’ (lower case ‘c’), which I know vaguely to be some kind of leafy vegetable, although I can’t say I’ve eaten it. However, it’s clear that Anthony wasn’t being completely honest when he described the restaurant as a ‘friendly little local place’. Unless this is the kind of establishment he frequents all the time; a possibility which causes my hands to become instantly tacky with sweat.
I inhale deeply, wondering if the boys are okay at home, and reminding myself that of course they are – Logan is old enough to leave school, have-sex-God-forbid, get married and even buy a scratch card without parental consent. And I’ve left them with a stack of cash, takeaway pizza menus and permission to order whatever they like.
Christ, I could murder a Four Seasons right now …
I push open the heavy glass door and step in. There he is, smiling broadly at a table in the centre of the sparsely populated room. I fix on a smile and am greeted with a kiss on the cheek.
‘Hope you like this place,’ Anthony says, sweeping out an arm in appreciation of the grandeur of the building. ‘It’s a favourite of mine.’
Or maybe the thin crust with pine nuts and spinach, which never fails to disgust Logan: ‘Like, why would anyone want a pizza with
salad
all over it?’
‘It’s lovely,’ I say, taking a seat.
‘I thought we’d have the tasting menu,’ he announces. ‘It’s the only way to fully appreciate what they do here.’
Those slate eyes sparkle. I swallow hard and glance down at my menu.
‘That sounds great.’
Be positive
, I remind myself as the waiter appears and Anthony orders. Ingrid was right, I absolutely should be here, because this is what grown-up single women do. And it’s time to move on, to be proactive and seize the moment, after six years of crap dates and sex which has been at best, a mild diversion and, at worst, made me seriously consider celibacy as a more satisfying option.
‘So you mentioned you’re a teacher,’ Anthony says, his confident tone snapping me back to the present.
‘I’m actually a school secretary,’ I remind him, having imparted this fascinating information at the party.
‘Oh, I see.’ His eyes fix on mine.
‘It fits in with the boys’ school hours,’ I continue, tugging down the hem of my shift dress, ‘which I really needed when they were younger and their dad and I had broken up.’
He nods, and I notice that his teeth aren’t just white – they are verging on
blue-
white, and quite disconcerting. The lighting in Ingrid’s kitchen clearly hadn’t illuminated them to full effect.
‘And I’ve set up a business from home,’ I go on, sensing his gaze flickering across the restaurant, ‘making meringues for local cafes, delis and special events …’
Anthony tastes the wine that’s being offered and nods approvingly. ‘That sounds like a fun little sideline.’ Why this riles me, I’m not sure. He’s right, it
is
a little sideline. While I love it, and it’s boosted our finances, I am hardly heading for global domination of the meringue market.
‘You mentioned at the party that you have your own business,’ I remark, ‘but I’m not quite sure what it is.’
‘Ah, well,’ he says grandly, ‘we’re all about offering a complete bespoke service and taking care of the whole client. It’s about complete personal attention every step of the way.’
I study him, assessing the angular jaw, the intense little eyes and neatly cropped dark hair. While he is certainly handsome, and more than likely employs a personal trainer, there’s something disconcertingly plasticky about him. He looks sort of
moulded
, as if there could be a secret join up the back of his head, like Barbie’s boyfriend Ken.
‘Erm, okay,’ I say, ‘but I still don’t know what you do.’
‘Oh,’ he wrinkles his pore-free nose, ‘we’re a clinic.’
‘Are you a doctor?’ I ask, taking a big swig of wine.
‘No, we deal in aesthetic procedures.’
Ah – that explains the glowing teeth. ‘You mean Botox and all that?’
He emits a patronising laugh. ‘Yes, but there’s a
bit
more to it than that. Our ethos is to assess every client individually so, with the very latest techniques, we can work in synergy with her own, unique beauty and the natural contours of her face …’
To stop myself from choking, I take another gulp from my glass. Hell, I’ll be smashed at this rate. Better slow down and have some water, the way the magazines always tell you to. At long last our first course arrives; at least I think it counts as a course. It’s an ‘amuse-bouche’, consisting of a sticky beige blob served on a ceramic spoon with a dribble of green liquid around it, like bile.
‘This looks delicious,’ I fib, wondering what possessed Anthony to ask me out in the first place when he is clearly not remotely interested in anything about my life – and also why he played down the restaurant’s poshness when it’s turned out to have a bloody Michelin star. Is he showing off, trying to impress me by dropping in words like ‘bespoke’? And what’s with the six courses? I told the boys I wouldn’t be too long, but troughing our way through this lot will take
weeks
. I’m more annoyed with myself, really, for allowing Anthony to decide what I must eat. Tonight may call for an emergency measure, like feigning illness or a faint …