How to Get a (Love) Life (3 page)

Caroline giggled. ‘I dare you to leave it till half past one,’ she said, pointing at the mini roll.

I laughed casually, in an attempt to pretend that I was unbothered. But I would not be leaving it until half past one. I liked to eat my mini roll at
quarter
past one. There was nothing weird about that.

‘Go on, Nicola,’ she teased, ‘leave it till half past, I double dare you.’

Caroline often dared me to do things. She often double dared me. Sometimes she even double dared me with no returns. Of course, I never took her up on them.

‘Go away,’ I said, chomping decisively down on a carrot stick and eyeing my mini roll with concern. Would she take my mini roll to prove a point? Would she ruin my one pleasurable lunchtime treat? I bit my lip.

I nibbled at the lettuce, enjoying the taste of the avocado and wishing for a moment that I’d added some dressing. But the moment passed and the voice of my super thin mother echoed around the office space, ‘Little pickers wear bigger knickers.’

I took another look at the mini roll.

Caroline sighed mournfully as she watched me delicately picking through my first course. ‘I wish I could limit myself to salad,’ she said, polishing off an enormous baguette that contained so much cheese and meat the sight was almost indecent. She grabbed what she could; always far more concerned with her kids or her husband David’s eating habits. As she carefully wiped a crumb from her top lip, I realised she’d managed to finish the thing in less than four minutes.

‘I’m impressed,’ I laughed.

‘I’m going for the world record,’ she said solemnly. ‘You just wait, Nicola, one day when there is a universal food crisis, all the people with lots of flesh are going to last a lot longer than you skinny belinkies. Right, I’m popping next door for a Snickers, do you …’ The question died on her lips and she sighed again. ‘I’ll bring you back some Tic Tacs.’

The rain outside was persistent and the heavy drops on the window next to me made their unpredictable routes downwards. I looked out and onto the street below; a woman battled with an umbrella and a child, scolding one and then the other as they both refused to do her bidding. I was pleased to be inside, in the comfort of our office, heating always turned up to near tropical, prints on the walls depicting calming oceans and rolling sand dunes.

Caroline, having returned from her Snickers run, was sitting quietly at her desk, systematically binning junk mail and opening the day’s post. It was calm, easy, comfortable. And yet, as ever, I had a nagging feeling, something forgotten, a hole. As I glanced back out at the grey skies, a face swum into my mind’s eye. Thick blonde hair, cheeks red from the cold. He was tenderly wrapping a black scarf around my neck and the look in his eyes made me shiver. He held out one gloved hand to me, inviting me onto the ice. I took it, feeling a surge of love for him.

I shook the thought away, looked down and mentally scolded myself for failing to pay attention to my work. I’d almost put all the ‘W’ contacts into the ‘P’ column.

Focus, Nicola.

I heard a low whistle and glanced up. Caroline was looking at the CV of another aspiring young thesp seeking an agent. She inhaled sharply and followed it up with a ‘Oooooh. He’s lurvely!’ She held up a black and white headshot of a brooding hunk. ‘Nicola, look at him!’

‘Thanks, Caroline, but I’m still digesting my lunch.’

‘Isn’t he wonderful? A face that could get lots of ships to sail.’

‘
Divine
. But I think that prize goes to Helen.’

‘He’s wonderful, but’ she paused, ‘he’s still not quite up to Patrick’s standard, is he?’

‘Hmmm.’ I replied non-committally.

Please don’t bring out Patrick’s picture again, please don’t, please don’t, please
… But Caroline was already carefully taking Patrick out of her desk drawer. She sat in a familiar pose; eyes glassy, face focused on the piece of card she was now holding carefully in both hands, lest she bend it.

‘Look at him,’ she sighed.

‘Oh God,’ I giggled, leaning back in my chair. ‘Let him
go
, Caroline.’

‘Just …
look
at him,’ she repeated, standing up abruptly and clutching his face to her substantial bosom.

‘
Caroline
,’ I laughed as she walked towards me with the picture of Patrick: her favourite on the agency’s books, her Number One, her 10/10.

‘It’s like he’s looking right at you, isn’t it?’ she crooned, thrusting the photo of the brooding young actor – all toothy smiles, deep pools of loveliness for eyes and lustrous dark hair – under my nose.

‘Yes, yes, he’s very nice,’ I nodded. I knew what would come next.

‘Nice?’ she spluttered. ‘Is that the best you can do, girl? Look at those eyes, look at those cheekbones, look at the sculpted face and hair you could rake your fingers through of an evening. Look at those long eyelashes and the haunted expression that says
lie with me, come hither, I want you
…’ She sighed dreamily and stroked the photograph.

‘Hmm, I agree he’s very attractive,’ I nodded, trying not to giggle. Caroline could get quite cross if I wasn’t suitably appreciative of the sculpted face of Patrick.

‘God, Nicola, say it like you mean it. Would you even care if he walked into this office right now?’ She gestured dramatically to the empty doorway.

‘Er.’ I followed the direction of her arm uncertainly, almost expecting to see Patrick standing there. ‘Sure, yes,’ I said, trying to bury this conversation quickly.

Caroline continued, ‘If he swept in and said—’ she held his photo in front of her face so it looked like he was talking to me, ‘—Nicola, Nicola
Beautiful
Brown, come away with me to Paris tonight, for dinner, you and me. Come away with me under the stars and let me
woo
you.’ Then she made kissy noises and waggled his photo at me. I started to giggle as this weird puppet with a pretty boy’s head and Caroline’s enormous flowered breasts bobbed up and down in front of me.

‘Stop it, Caroline,’ I squeaked.

She carried on with the kissy noises, making them even more amorous.

‘Stop it,’ I insisted more firmly.

She pulled the picture away from her face. ‘And what are you doing tonight anyway? What if someone
did
ask you to Paris?’

‘I’ve got a nice quiet night in planned.’

‘No hot date lined up?’

‘No.’

‘No boyfriend cooking you a meal?’

‘No, you know I don’t have a boyfriend.’

She put the photo onto her desk and looked at me seriously. ‘I know that, but it’s madness, Nic. You’re beautiful and lovely, you could get anyone.’

‘Don’t start that rubbish.’

‘It’s not rubbish. You’re rubbish!’

We both stared at each other a little stonily, and then I started to laugh. James put his head around the door. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Nothing. Nothing’s funny,’ I said quickly, before Caroline could say anything to embarrass me.

Caroline looked directly at me and, mouth downturned into a sad smile, said, ‘No, it really isn’t.’

Chapter Four

I lived alone. In many ways I would make an excellent room-mate: I am meticulously tidy due to an obsession with cleaning that borders on OCD, I like to catalogue my DVDs and label all foodstuffs neatly and clearly. After seven years of living like this – three in London, four in Bristol – it had become a welcome habit. Just me, in my house, with my things. No hassles, no fighting over the remote, no petty things to fall out over, no seemingly innocuous comment that plunges you straight into a hideous row you never wanted.

Nobody to break your heart.

Considering my preference for living alone, when I returned to my flat that evening I should have been surprised to find the lights already on. I should have been surprised to smell the pleasant aroma of a dinner in the air, to hear the television blaring out. I should have been doubly surprised to see my older brother Mark lounging casually on my leather cream corner sofa. But I wasn’t.

‘How the hell did you get in …
again
?’ Tiredness made my voice grumpy.

‘Ah, sister, what a greeting,’ Mark said, jumping up and pressing mute. ‘Your loopy Spanish landlord waved me in and kindly lent me the spare key.’ He dangled said key from his finger.

‘He’s Portuguese,’ I corrected.

My brother shrugged. ‘Still loopy though.’

I made a mental note to tackle the landlord again but knew in my heart I wouldn’t summon the guts required. I’d always nodded politely at him when I’d first moved in, thanked him quietly when he picked up the previous occupant’s post. Then he’d gotten a bit more personal, asking me questions about myself. He’d started calling me ‘Neecola’ and leaving me presents at my door (biscuits, cards, flowers, a porcelain rabbit). I hadn’t the nerve to ask him to stop and assumed he’d thought my silence signified his passion was not so requited. The final crunch had been when I’d come home to discover two towels on my bed rolled into the image of two swans kissing. I’d got my brother round to have some strong words with him and the two of them had hit it off. Bloody typical. The landlord had promised Mark that he would never enter my flat without my permission again, sculpt any of my linen into any shape of any kind of animal and the matter had been dropped without the need to pursue a restraining order. Sadly, this meant the landlord and my brother were now so bonded he clearly thought nothing of letting him into my flat at the drop of a hat.

Mark was what people described as
a real character
which, roughly translated, meant that at times he bordered on the socially unacceptable. He had a wild mop of dark brown hair, lived in a battered leather jacket and drove a moped which he treated like a motorbike (and therefore considered an acceptable mode of transportation). He worked at the planetarium – a sort of enormous silver football right in the centre of town – spending his days pointing out the various constellations of stars to eager youths, and sending his science show reel to various production companies in the hope of becoming a hugely successful science presenter. He resented the fact that I had been unable to secure him a presenting job and thought that I was deliberately keeping my science-producer/BBC-documentary-makers-contacts firmly to myself. Mark loved all things science and was absolutely obsessed with bats. Bats were Mark’s one true love. ‘
Wouldn’t you be obsessed if you knew there are over eleven hundred species of bat and that they make up twenty per cent of the world’s mammal population?
’ Quite.

He rarely took an interest in the opposite sex, preferring the safety of a lab and a bunch of coloured test tubes for company. I once asked him where he would go on a honeymoon and he’d answered, in a perfectly serious voice, that he would spend seven days in a cave photographing and studying the nocturnal habits of the Townsend’s long-eared bat. When I’d pointed out that his beloved might not be so keen on the idea of resting her head on an inflatable pillow, curled up in a sleeping bag as small rodents dive-bombed overhead, my brother had looked at me blankly. ‘We would never be able to carry all that equipment. Inflatable pillows are an enormous waste of backpack space.’

Recently, however, he’d been taking more of an active interest in females. He was approaching his thirty-fifth birthday and had decided that this was an appropriate age for him to ‘settle down’. He had made the misguided assumption that, as his little sister, I was surely a great way to meet women of a similar age. So every now and again he would descend on me for the night just in case I was suddenly spending my Wednesday evenings surrounded by a team of supple, yet intelligent, female netballers or a book club of sexy, bespectacled young ladies.

‘Tell me. To what do I owe this wonderful pleasure?’ I asked, gesturing at him lounging all over the furniture. ‘No plans tonight, brother dear? No spectacular date lined up? Or have you just come over specifically to damage my coffee table with your ugly boots.’ I stared deliberately at them (does anyone else wear Doc Martin’s in the twenty-first century?).

‘You need tea, sis,’ Mark said, removing the boots and ambling into the kitchen. ‘Or wine,’ he called. ‘Where’s the wine?’

‘In the fridge,’ I called back as I frantically wiped at the table where his boots had been. I had some glass polisher under the sink …
Should I wait until he’s gone to work at the smears? Oh, what does it matter? I’ll get the polish now, otherwise I won’t relax at all.

Mark didn’t look in the least surprised as I pushed past him while he waited for the kettle and returned to the living room with a cloth and a spray can to hand. By the time he emerged, the coffee table looked brand new. I thanked him for my glass of wine and fetched two coasters.

‘Just wanted to see you, sister dearest. I went on a date last night.’ He perched on the arm of the sofa.

‘Oh really,’ I said with interest. ‘How did it go?’

‘Go?’ He looked up in surprise. ‘I suppose it went well … Yes, as dates go it could be rated positively.’

‘What was she like?’

‘Oh, hopeless,’ he said, with a dismissive wave of his hand.

‘But you just said it went well?’

‘The date did. She, however, was all wrong.’

‘Oh. Well what was wrong with her?’ I asked. ‘Boring?’

‘No.’

‘Ugly?’ I ventured.

‘No.’

‘Crazy?’

‘No.’

‘Too loud?’

‘No.’

‘Too quiet?’ I asked, tiring of this game rapidly.

‘No.’

‘Too … uninterested in bats?’

‘No. Too old,’ Mark said matter-of-factly.

‘Charming. How old is she?’

‘Thirty-three.’

‘Thirty-three isn’t old.’

‘Doesn’t matter anyway,’ he said brightly. ‘I’ve got another date tomorrow night.’

‘Fast work, brother dear.’ I nodded. ‘So, how’s life at the planetarium?’

‘Fine …’ he said.

Oh God. I was going to have to ask. ‘And, er, how’s the search for a bat TV show?’ I tried to sound breezy and light-hearted.

He exhaled dramatically, the wine glass wobbling precariously in his hand. ‘I’m brilliant, but I’m undiscovered and I’m running out of time.’