Alice Brown's Lessons in the Curious Art of Dating (14 page)

Suddenly the snooty woman stopped.

‘Your table, madam.’

The woman melted away and Kate was confronted with the in-the-flesh reality of Sebastian Lincoln.

‘Katy.’ Sebastian nodded at her briefly but didn’t get up. He was studying the wine list. Kate paused, debating whether to point out he’d got her name wrong (too aggressive, she decided; not cool). She hastily dropped into the empty seat and pretended to look at the menu. She tried to control her breathing. Sebastian was a vision of physical perfection.

‘Bring us the ’68 Chateauneuf-du-Pape,’ Sebastian commanded a hovering waiter.

The waiter nodded and withdrew before Kate could say anything. She could have kicked herself for missing her chance. What with the power-walk to the restaurant and a mouth parched dry with nerves, she was dying for a glass of water.

‘The lobster here is divine,’ said Sebastian, looking up and surveying Kate as though deciding whether to make a purchase. She blushed as his eyes moved blatantly around her body. ‘Of course, the venison’s delicious too, but I always find it a little . . .
heavy
.’

Kate ignored his emphasis on the word
heavy
– she was probably being paranoid – and tried to smile. Her lips stretched dryly over her teeth. ‘Lobster it is, then!’ She’d always wanted to try lobster, and being at The Privet with the world’s most handsome man seemed as good a place as any to do it. Besides, the menu said it came with chips.

The waiter reappeared and filled their wine glasses. Kate looked at hers dolefully. Red wouldn’t have been her colour of choice. It always left a black ring around her lips, staining her teeth grey and making her mouth look rotten. It was hardly conducive to an end-of-date kiss (she blushed at the thought that she might be kissing Sebastian in a few hours!). But she daren’t ask for white now he’d already bought a bottle. She’d just have to nip to the Ladies after each glass and scrape her lips with her fingernail.

‘You’re a lot bigger than in your photo,’ Sebastian remarked suddenly. ‘More weathered.’

Kate gasped. She mumbled something about it being an old photo.

‘Yes, there seems to be a lot of that,’ Sebastian drawled. ‘Every woman I’ve met through Table For Two is at least five years older and ten pounds heavier than her photo.’

Kate’s cheeks stung as though slapped.

‘We all like to think we’re still twenty-one,’ she joked weakly.

‘Mmmm.’ Sebastian managed to sound both sceptical and bored at the same time. Thankfully, he changed the subject. ‘So you’re the PR girl, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Kate, taking a sip of wine to steady her nerves
and deciding to overlook the patronizing use of the word ‘girl’. ‘I’m an account director at Julian Marquis PR.’

Sebastian raised his eyebrow. ‘Julian Marquis? Jules and I go way back. We were at Oxford together.’

Kate froze.

‘We go skiing every Christmas. We always stay at a fabulous lodge with twenty or so close friends and hole in for the holidays. The piste was perfect this year . . .’

But Kate wasn’t listening. Beneath the fixed smile she was smarting. Tonight was fast turning into a disaster. First of all, she couldn’t believe he’d mentioned her size. Was she really so big? She knew she wasn’t skinny but was she really so fat that it was the first thing someone noticed about her? And then, could Sebastian have made his disappointment in her any more obvious? And finally, to top it all, Sebastian knew Julian. They might talk. She’d never live it down if Julian found out she’d joined a dating agency.

She took a large gulp of wine, and then followed it with several more. The more Sebastian talked, the more she gulped. By the time the waiter brought them their lobster – just as Sebastian’s story was building to its climax of how he’d heroically tackled a black run in only his second-best pair of skis – she realized she was overdue a trip to the Ladies to scratch the black ring from her lips.

‘Excuse me.’ She hastily bundled towards the toilets, leaving a mid-flow Sebastian alone with his crustacean.

In the dimly lit sanctuary of the Ladies Kate eyed herself in the mirror. Sure enough, she looked like she’d been eating dirt. Her gaze fell lower and she surveyed her dress miserably.
She knew she’d been in a rush, but why on earth had she decided to wear this one? No wonder Sebastian was disappointed. She looked enormous, like a sack of spuds in heels. Miserably she took a deep breath and headed back into the restaurant.

Back at the table, Sebastian was attacking his lobster with the precision of a ravenous surgeon. Between his hands a set of silver utensils flashed ominously. Kate looked down at her plate. Next to her lobster lay a fork, some kind of nutcracker and a long pointy prong. There was no knife. She looked at her lobster. It was still in its shell, all eyes, claws and tentacles. With a heavy heart Kate realized there must be an art to eating lobster, some secret posh way to break open the shell. She began to sweat.

She munched a few chips to buy time. She sneaked a look at Sebastian to see what he was doing, but whatever it was, he was doing it too fast for her brain to process.

As Sebastian cracked and speared and chomped on his dinner, he kept up an endless one-way conversation about the state of the stock market and the importance of his job. No conversational effort seemed to be required from Kate, so she concentrated on working out how to tackle her dinner. She noticed Sebastian’s eyes were locked on his dissection; he wasn’t looking up.

The coast was clear.

Swiftly Kate picked up her nutcracker in one hand, lifted the lobster with the other and awkwardly tried to jam it into the jaws of the cracker. But where to crack? Not the head; too brutal. And the belly was too big. She decided on
a leg. She balanced it in the nutcracker, clenched and pressed down as hard as she could. There was a loud crack and a shard of lobster shell shot off her plate and onto the carpet beneath the next table. Kate held her breath and looked at Sebastian. He was busy recounting how much money he’d made that day and was mercifully oblivious. With relief Kate picked up her skewer, hoping to spear a piece of meat. But her crack had peppered her lobster with shell shrapnel. Warily she skewered a small section, put it in her mouth and crunched. It was like eating a fish-flavoured pincushion. One of the shards cracked noisily between her teeth. Awkwardly – she couldn’t spit it out, not at The Privet – she took a big gulp of wine and swallowed, feeling the shell scratch her throat on its way down. She forlornly tried to bury her ruined feast under her chips.

‘Did madam not like the lobster?’ the waiter asked as he cleared away their plates. Kate blushed.

‘It was delicious. I’m just . . . full.’ She quickly rubbed her stomach, hoping it wouldn’t betray her by rumbling.

‘Would you like to see the dessert menu?’

Kate straightened in her seat in anticipation. The Privet’s puddings were legendary. She’d always fancied trying their legendary ‘Death by Chocolate’ cake served with black fig ice cream. But Sebastian waved the waiter away.

Kate’s heart sank. Tonight had been a total disaster. She picked up her wine glass and drained it. Sod the black lines, she thought recklessly. The chances of Sebastian wanting a goodnight snog were zero.

Eventually the bill came. Hurrah for old-fashioned
convention, Kate thought, as the waiter delivered it to Sebastian. There was no way she was shelling out £80 for four chips. Sebastian made a great show of dropping a platinum credit card on the table. He didn’t leave a tip.

Moments later they were standing in the cold air outside.

‘Well, it was very . . . interesting . . . to see you in the flesh,’ Sebastian said stiffly. The word ‘flesh’ hung between them. Kate winced. So much for her goodnight kiss. A taxi magically appeared beside them.

‘I’ll call Table For Two with my feedback,’ he muttered as he swiftly bundled in. ‘Isn’t your name Biggs?’ he called from the safety of the back seat. Kate heard him emphasize
Big
gs. She nodded miserably.

Sebastian smiled, as if confirming something to himself. ‘Drive on,’ he instructed the driver. And in a cough of exhaust he was gone and Kate was alone on the pavement.

Audrey always looked forward to the bimonthly meeting of the Dating Practitioners’ Society. It was a chance for the agency heads and staff from not just the city, but the whole county, to network. The meetings were held on the last Thursday of every other month, and all the agencies switched off their phones, shut down their offices and made their way to Society headquarters. No matchmaking took place for a hundred miles. It was as though Cupid had gone on a mini-break.

On the stroke of 2.15 p.m. Audrey shut up shop and led her girls on the short walk across the city centre to Society HQ for the 3 p.m. start. She liked to arrive promptly; it sent out the right signal. And besides, it gave her the opportunity to chat with President Ernie, matchmaking professional to matchmaking professional. But today she was irked to see that Sheryl Toogood and the Love Birds team were already there. Sheryl had bagged the seat next to Ernie and was sitting with her shoes off and her legs curled cat-like beneath her.

‘Aud!’ Sheryl tore herself away from her tête-à-tête with Ernie. ‘So glaaaad you could make it.’

Audrey bristled. Since when was it Sheryl’s job to welcome her to the meeting? And when in her eleven years of Society membership had Audrey ever not ‘made it’?

‘Good afternoon, Miss Toogood, Mr President,’ she replied coolly. Someone had to keep up standards.

Like giggling schoolgirls, Bianca, Cassandra, Hilary and Alice surged ahead, dumping their coats on seats and nattering with the Love Birds staff as they swarmed around the tea urn, selecting their biscuits. Audrey noticed all the seats nearest Ernie were now taken. She pursed her lips and pretended to busy herself reading the Society notice-board.

There was a noise at the door and Barry Chambers and his team from A Fine Romance entered the room, shortly followed by David Bennett from Perfect Partners and Wendy Arthur from Loving Liaisons. The noise level rose as people greeted each other and helped themselves to tea.

‘Audrey!’ Wendy broke away from the hubbub and made a beeline for the noticeboard. ‘You look well. It’s lovely to see you. How are you?’

‘Fine,’ Audrey muttered. Wendy always monopolized her attention at Society meetings. She only had a tiny agency. It irritated Audrey that she considered herself in the same league.

Wendy stirred her tea excitedly. ‘And how’s that nice husband of yours?’

Audrey studied Wendy closely for an edge to her enquiry.

‘Fine.’

‘And how’s business?’

‘Booming.’ Audrey gave her standard answer. The Society was friendly on the outside, but she wasn’t fooled. Beneath the veneer everyone was out to expand their client lists . . . even small fry like Wendy.

Wendy inched a little closer.

‘Have you heard about Nigel?’ she whispered conspiratorially, and dunked her Hob Nob in her tea.

Audrey was thrown, torn between her promise of secrecy to Ernie and her dread of looking like the last to know. She wrestled with herself for a moment.

‘But of course!’ she burst out knowingly. ‘What carelessness to take his eye off the ball like that. Such an amateur mistake! But his loss is our gain. We’ve been inundated with disaffected Cupid’s Cabiners.’

‘Ooooh, us too.’ Wendy nodded eagerly, sounding less than convincing.

Audrey raised an eyebrow in what she hoped was her most witheringly sceptical manner.

‘Are you all right, Audrey?’ Wendy looked frightened. ‘Gosh, for a minute there I thought you were having a stroke.’

Fortunately they were distracted by a small movement at the door as Nigel crept in looking pale and worried. Audrey saw Alice walk over and give him a cup of tea, her hand touching his arm as she said something supportive. Audrey frowned. How did Alice know about Cupid’s Cabin? It couldn’t possibly have been from Bianca; she’d expressly told her that the news was secret. But it seemed as though the whole matchmaking world was in the know. Did
nobody know the meaning of the word ‘discretion’ any more?

‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ Ernie called. ‘Can everyone take a seat, please? Let’s get started.’