Alice Brown's Lessons in the Curious Art of Dating (2 page)

Instinctively Alice stepped out from behind the Bourbon biscuits and started moving towards her. This woman was interesting. She was more than interesting: she was exactly the reason why she volunteered for nights like this. She had to speak to her, reassure her, make sure that she was one of the ones who made it into the office next week.

‘
Alice!
’ Audrey hissed violently from nowhere, making Alice jump from her path. ‘Lights!’

Reluctantly, Alice faltered. The melee moved again and the woman disappeared from view.

‘In your own time . . .’ Audrey was eyeballing her sharply.

Alice turned back towards the electronic control panel hidden discreetly behind the nibbles table and started to dim the room’s lights. The audience instantly stopped their conversations and spilled forward into the empty rows of seats. She faded up the apricot spotlight positioned over Audrey’s lectern, and her boss was illuminated, revealed to the room. Alice searched the darkness to see where the woman with the smile had sat. She’d make sure she spoke to her later. Alice was a firm believer in following her instincts, and all her instincts were telling her she could help the woman with the sharp suit and soft face.

Theatrically, Audrey cleared her throat and laid her hand to her bosom. Everyone was seated and silent; the room was emphatically hers. Alice flicked a final switch and Audrey’s microphone gently hummed into life. As if on cue, the audience leant collectively forward in edgy anticipation as they prepared to learn the elusive secrets to finding their Mr and Miss Rights.

‘It’s all the bloody
Daily Post
’s fault.’ Kate picked up her glass of wine and took an angry gulp. ‘If it didn’t keep going on about how impossible it is to conceive after the age of thirty-five, we wouldn’t even be thinking about this.’

Kate and Lou were in Luigi’s wine bar for a ‘Secret to Finding Mr Right’ post-mortem. Kate liked Luigi’s, with its battered wooden tables and soft candlelight. It had everything she wanted in a bar nowadays – booze, a seat and near-pitch-black lighting.

‘
We’re
not thinking about it.
You
are,’ replied Lou, giving the barman her best, unmistakably lascivious look. Lou didn’t believe in being ambiguous.

‘Of course you are,’ Kate contradicted her. ‘Every woman who’s in her thirties and single is thinking about it. It’s
all
we think about. If you’ve not bagged a man and got yourself pregnant by thirty-five, you might as well skip straight to the end and reserve a single room in the retirement home.’ In the half-light of the bar, Kate glowed with righteous indignation.

‘But you’re not thirty-five! And you’re talking rubbish.’

Kate shook her head. ‘Once we hit our thirties it’s over. Men don’t want us any more.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ Lou deadpanned, her eyes scanning the bar for talent before settling back on the barman. He gave her a wink and twiddled – quite suggestively, Kate thought – with the beer taps.

‘I’m just being realistic,’ Kate reasoned. ‘And the
Daily Post
’s enough to kill off anyone’s positivity. It does a “time’s running out” article every bloody week. You know what it said yesterday? There are twenty-eight million single women over the age of thirty-five in America, and only eighteen million single men. That means ten million women are going to spend the rest of their lives on the shelf just because of impossible maths.’

‘Better cancel the emigration plans then.’

‘Everyone knows that where America leads, we follow,’ Kate stressed. ‘The
Daily Post
says that in the next few years Britain’s going to have an epidemic of single women. Apparently we’ve got a bleak future of longer working hours and later retirement to look forward to with none of the good stuff like babies, families and a husband to top up our pensions with. I’m telling you, Lou,
Sex and the City
wasn’t a comedy: it was a warning!’

‘Bollocks,’ Lou scoffed. ‘And since when did you believe everything you read in the papers? And what’s with the hang-up about thirty-five? It’s not like all the men suddenly fall off the face of the planet. Besides, we’re forever hearing about those granny mums popping out kids in their sixties. When they smile you can see their dentures. You’re only
thirty-three and you’ve still got your own teeth – you’ve got bags of time.’

Kate twirled the stem of her wine glass. Lou was right about one thing: she shouldn’t believe everything she read in the papers, not least because so many of the stories she’d planted there herself. Kate worked in PR – or ‘in lies’ as Lou liked to call it. She should know how much of what was written was exaggerated for the sake of a titillating daily read, because she was part of the machine that served it up. It was what she got paid to do.

But this seemed different. Surely it was an indisputable medical fact that your fertility dropped at thirty-five? And it certainly seemed that the number of men who looked your way decreased with every year you got further away from your twenties. What if it was just nature’s way . . . the dating equivalent of survival of the fittest? Just as the old, wobbly zebra at the back of the pack always gets eaten by the leopard, maybe men
couldn’t help
getting less interested in you the less able you were to breed? Could it be that – for the survival of the species – all men aged fifteen to a hundred were naturally programmed to fancy fertile twenty-one-year-olds? Judging by the number of men who’d been interested in her recently, Kate was sure this was true. Men were divining that any moment now her gums would recede and her ovaries collapse. She was, she realized with a sickening lurch, the wobbly zebra at the back of the pack. Good for a quick snack, but nothing more nutritious.

Kate looked up, ready to share this realization with Lou,
but her friend had pulled out her make-up bag and was flipping open her compact with the speed of a fast-draw cowboy.

Kate watched with a grudging admiration. She loved Lou, even though they were opposites. Lou was lots of the things she wished she could be: confident, brave, dramatic. She was the kind of woman who could emphasize both her eyes and her lips and not give a damn about whether she looked slutty. Slutty! That was another thing that Lou was that Kate wasn’t. Kate admired Lou’s promiscuity. She wished she could be more free and easy, but it just wasn’t in her DNA. She fantasized about having reckless one-night stands in the way that Lou so regularly did. She thrilled at the idea of having sex with a stranger in an alley. But she just wasn’t that kind of girl. She was more of a TV, pyjamas and early night kind of girl. And the pyjamas had to be Egyptian cotton and ironed with a crease down the front.

Suddenly she realized Lou was talking.

‘For God’s sake, Kate, wake up!’ Lou barked as she multi-tasked drinking, applying sparkly black eyeshadow and simultaneously eyeing up the barman. ‘You need to stop fannying about and get out there. Stop worrying about everything. You’re way too young to be thinking about babies. You should be thinking about getting out of the office more. Having fun! Getting laid!’

Lou put down her make-up and looked at Kate seriously. ‘I mean, Jesus, Kate, how long is it since your last shag?’

Kate choked in embarrassment.

‘Use it or lose it!’ Lou drained her glass and started packing away her armoury of make-up.

‘You know what . . . you’re right,’ Kate agreed suddenly. ‘Which is why I wanted to go to the talk tonight.’

‘What, that pathetic excuse for dating advice?’

‘It wasn’t all bad . . .’

‘You’re joking!’ Lou gawped in shock. ‘It was the biggest pile of shit I’ve ever heard! Honestly, what was that madwoman on about? Do you think she’s ever had a date in her life? And has she not heard of conditioner? I’ve seen better-hydrated pubes.’ She poured them both another glass of wine. ‘And hey; what was with you with the orange juice and the notes? You’re such a swot!’

Kate coloured. ‘I didn’t want to forget anything.’

‘It was a crappy talk, not an exam!’ Lou was momentarily distracted by a bottom zigzagging back from the bar, its very drunk owner slopping his pint as he went. The bottom found its friends and sat down. Lou’s eyes returned to Kate. ‘And really, Kate, you’ve got to promise you won’t do any of the things she recommended. Her advice was ridiculous. If you do what she says then you’ve probably already had the last shag of your life. She was a living, breathing handbook on what
not
to do to get a man.’

‘Says the woman who hasn’t had a boyfriend in living memory,’ Kate mumbled.

Lou’s face darkened.

‘Listen.’ She leaned forward, jabbing a finger at Kate. ‘If you want to stay single and childless and let your ovaries moss over, just like the
Daily Post
says they will, then go
ahead and do what that demented woman said. It’s like taking the fast track to spinsterdom. I mean, what was that rubbish about “accidentally” dropping your groceries into a man’s shopping trolley? Please! I can’t see anyone rushing to ask you out after you’ve dropped wine and Tampax on his veg.’

‘I get my groceries delivered,’ Kate said thoughtfully. ‘The only opportunity there’s the delivery man, and he’s missing teeth.’

‘Not to worry – there was always Audrey’s brilliant suggestion of joining a club! What was it? Ah, that’s right . . . Join a toastmaster’s association. Fuck me, what a truly fantastic idea! I’m always hearing about young, attractive, thrusting man-about-town toastmasters. I bet their clubhouse is awash with sexed-up man-totty.’

‘You’re right; her advice was . . . questionable . . .’ Kate paused as Lou snorted explosively. ‘But that Alice lady was great. And the fact remains: we’re single and we’re knocking on a bit. And, as you so delicately pointed out, I’m hardly swamped with offers.’

‘Swamped by your job, more like.’

‘All I’m saying is, whether Audrey Cracknell is right or wrong, we’re single. We’re
always
single. I know you say you like it, but I don’t. I’m sick of it. I don’t want to suddenly wake up and realize it’s too late. I want a man’ – she saw Lou’s eyes mentally undressing the barman – ‘. . . a
nice
man! Someone who isn’t frightened of growing up and getting off the shagging-about merry-go-round. I want a boyfriend to take me out for dinner, to go for country walks
with. Someone who’s not going to be freaked out at the thought of meeting my mum. Someone to have kids with. But he’s not going to land in my lap and I can’t just leave it to chance. You know me; I don’t like taking risks, and I can’t risk getting any older and letting my face drop and my knees sag and my fertility dwindle and
still
being single. I’m not going to bang my head against a brick wall any more.’

There was a long pause. The two women looked each other in the eye, Lou’s painted and kohl-heavy, bristling with scorn, Kate’s more discreetly made-up in Bobbi Brown nudes, steady and determined. In the background Kate heard the owner of the bottom scrape back his chair, loudly declare he was off to ‘siphon the python’ and then fall over his briefcase, smacking face first into the wooden floor. As his mates burst into loud frat-boy laughter Lou broke eye contact.

‘Well,’ she said as she picked up her glass and drained it, ‘
you
might be fed up with banging your head against a brick wall, but I’m happy banging mine against my headboard, thanks. Or
his
headboard tonight, if he plays his cards right.’ She picked up her handbag and headed back to the bar, her eyes fixed on the barman like a hawk focused on a fluffy field mouse.

‘Same again?’ she called back to Kate as she pulled out her purse and closed in.

Kate sighed, shook her head and reached for her mobile. She scrolled through her address book for a cab. All of a sudden she yearned for her bed. She looked up. Sure enough,
Lou already had her hand on the barman’s chest and was suggestively fingering a shot glass. It was definitely time to go home. She pulled on her coat.