The Love Market (13 page)

I freeze. Then I laugh, disbelievingly. ‘London? This is a joke, right?’

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘I mean, no. It’s not a joke. I am going to be there. And I’m wondering if you would feel like meeting me?’

This takes a moment to sink in. ‘Would I feel like meeting you?’ I repeat, sceptical but coming around to the idea that he is being serious.

‘Yes,’ he says, sounding amused by me.

I agree to meet Mike at
Karma
, one of the newer, funkier “it” restaurants in Newcastle where I now come to do all my fake dates because it’s fun, unthreatening, serves great food, and you can actually hear your dining partner talk.

The young host, a handsome lad in his early twenties, who is often the one who seats me, is at the door when I come in. As soon as he sees me, for some odd reason, he blushes the colour of a Valentine’s Day heart. He can’t seem to meet my eyes, burbles out some incoherent words, grabs two menus and walks me to Mike’s booth, tripping over his feet, and looking out of the corner of his eye at my mine, in my skyscraper black stilettos.

Mike stands up—eyes going to my shoes too—and I am taken back to our first date. Mike still that mix of ill-at-ease and disarmed. He might even be wearing the same pair of jeans.

We’d been out together three times before the “proper date”. The first time, we were feeling out the possibility of going either the romance route or into friendship no man’s land. The second, I drank too much wine and told him all about Patrick. On our third, we were in a very noisy Quayside bar. Mike talked close to my ear, and I was so busy trying to hear him that I was oblivious to any whiff of sexual tension that might have been there. But then I started to note the way his eyes would stray from my face to my breasts, and he’d blush. As though he was trying very hard not to look at my body, and was inwardly kicking himself for failing. I stopped caring about what he was saying, and was more interested in the way that his lips moved as he spoke. A smile would sometimes be on the brink, not quite making itself available to me, but tantalizing me with its sexy potential. Then I was homing in on the satisfying sensory things about him: the cleanness of his breath, free from anything unpleasantly foody, or artificially pepperminty; his fair, soft skin, and his general overall pleasing masculine smell. A hint of aftershave? Maybe. Or it could have been nice soap. Even his unusual personal style was becoming attractive. I remember trying to engage his eyes in a way that might transmit my thoughts, but I didn’t seem to be having much luck. By the time we left the bar, I decided I probably wasn’t going to see him again; he was being too wishy-washy. But when I got home, I lay there for ages trying to rewrite the night, to make it so he’d just been a little bit more decisive; maybe he’d kissed me. And, unfairly, trying to rewrite him a bit too. If he donated those winklepickers to a charity shop, and I took him to
Toni and Guy
...

He rang the next morning and asked if I’d like to go for a quick lunch. There was something desperately unsatisfying about it as we sat in an Italian restaurant hurrying down a pizza that took an age to come out. I dropped him off at the BBC building because finally he got around to telling me that his car had broken down, and I wondered if this had been the only reason he’d rang—because he wanted a lift. But in a parking spot outside he said: ‘Would it be all right if I kissed you? I’ve spent all this time kicking myself for not doing it last night.’

I leaned in, somewhat relieved. His cold lips met mine, and it was nice. His thumb was stroking along the tops of my collarbones and it all felt very….

Like we had company.

I opened one eye to see the BBC security guard’s face on the other side of the windshield. I attempted to tell Mike to stop, but Mike somehow took my moaning as encouragement, and revved up his kissing. His hand went to swiftly unbutton my blouse. It had found its way into my bra before he must have sensed something was wrong. And that’s when he saw our intruder. Mike removed his fingers from my nipple, which was now there for anyone to have a look. The security guard smiled. Mike smiled. Mike got out of the car. And I skidded off before the car door was even shut.

After that I never heard from him for two weeks. When I could stand the suspense and the cold shoulder no longer, I decided to ring him. ‘I’m phoning to tell you that I don’t think this is going to work,’ I said.

‘Is this Celine by any chance?’ he said.

‘Yes Mike. This is Celine.’

‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I seem to cock everything up every time we go out, and you’re still in love with someone else. These two things admittedly don’t bode well for us. And maybe you always will be in love with this other person, or maybe you won’t. I don’t want to rush you. We can either pick it up in your own good time, if you think there’s anything worth picking up. Or we can still be friends, and you’ve got my word that I’ll not put pressure on you to be more.’ There was a pause where he seemed to draw breath after all that. ‘Or, of course, you can choose to never see me again. That too. Which is what I’d probably pick. If I were you.’

‘Mike, about our kiss.’

‘Celine, please, if it’s okay with you, can we forget about the car episode if you don’t mind?’

‘Forget about it?’

‘I’d rather not be reminded.’

‘But it’s over. I’m sure if the security guard told anyone you were feeling up your girlfriend in your lunch hour in the parking space no one would believe him anyway.’

‘You might be surprised,’ he said. ‘I think quite a few believed it with no trouble.’

‘Huh?’

‘The thing was, it got captured on the security cameras. Then mysteriously, in the way that these things work in certain office cultures, the entire staff of the BBC ended up with it as their screen saver. I’m never going to live it down.’

‘My breast was broadcast to the BBC?’ I sit there pulling a face in horror.

‘But at least it wasn’t broadcast
on
the BBC. So for that we should be grateful.’

‘Nice to meet you,’ he says now, looking me over the way he always did: appreciatively. I wonder if he catches the nostalgia in my face, because I am hit with it suddenly, meeting him like this. He stands up as the waiter pulls out a chair for me.

‘Nice to meet me?’ Oh yes. I forgot. Y
ou have to treat me like we were never married.
That’s what he wants and he’s clearly enforcing it.

As I look at him, a thought just blindsides me: if only this was our first date. If we could rewrite thirteen years of whatever it was we got so wrong. If only there was a magic wand they gave you on your wedding day, so you could undo every subsequent argument, every petty resentment, every tear you caused, every lashed-out, hurtful comment that you didn’t even mean. If only you could stop yourself trying hard to tell yourself that things aren’t right, and back off, and maybe let them have a chance to be.

He is analysing me, cautiously optimistic. ‘Mike… This is mad.’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘But it’s for a good cause. Please stay.’

He must think I am about to run. Which I almost am. I am aware of the heat of curiosity from other diners. Mike often attracts attention: the non-conformist look that makes him interesting to others. I sit down at our booth, and immediately bury myself in a purple, leather-backed menu.

By the servers’ station, the young host and a young male waiter are exchanging smirks, their eyes directed over here. When they catch me looking, they quickly glance away. They have me sussed. Nobody, not even a reasonably attractive, thirty-something female, goes on this many dates with different men. I’m obviously a high-class tart. ‘What are you smiling at?’ Mike asks me.

‘Nothing,’ I tell him.

Mike now pretends to study the menu but his eyes keep bobbing up to fix on me. He’s made an effort to dress nice. A new-looking white shirt, undone a few buttons and showing his grey chest hair. A grey blazer that’s the same shade as his hair. The drainpipe jeans. Tan winklepickers. Much as he changes, he stays the same.

‘You’re analysing me and wondering what you ever saw in me.’

‘No I’m not. Why would I do that? This is the first time I’ve met you, remember?’

‘Somebody once said you should never criticise your husband’s faults, because if he didn’t have any, he might have found somebody better than you.’

I launch a smile. His eyes twinkle at mine now. I go back to perusing the menu again, even though I come here so often I know it off by heart. ‘I understand you work in radio,’ I humour him.

‘Yes,’ he quietly charms me. ‘I’m the producer of the Jackie Zane show, on Blaze FM.’

‘I never listen to it.’

‘So that’s a conversation stopper right there then.’

‘No it’s not. It sounds like an interesting job. Do you like it?’

He pretends to think. ‘Put it this way, I’ve done it for twenty years, so I certainly don’t dislike it. It’s been good to me, so I’ve been loyal back.’

It’s true. Mike never cared if he got promoted, made more money, never seemed to mind that he always worked the graveyard shift. When we were happy, I’d admire his ability to be so content. Then when we were getting on each other’s nerves, I’d want to hold it up as evidence of a personal handicap or demerit on his character.

My friend the mischievous waiter arrives and reaches over to make room on the table for a basket of bread. ‘Besides, the lifestyle would be hard to give up,’ Mike says. ‘You know, exotic travel. Penthouses in five cities. The company Ferrari. The chance to eat at a fine restaurant like this, and meet a woman as beautiful as you, who would have otherwise been way out of my league.’

The waiter places the bread down and a smile has set on his face, like a little boy caught with his finger in the pie. Mike asks him for two gin and tonics. ‘Absolutely, sir,’ he says, and backs up, looking possessed by an alien.

Mike frowns. ‘What’s his problem? And why’s he calling me Sir?’

I grin, relaxing into the groove of the light piano jazz, and the wholesomeness of Mike’s company that is so familiar to me. ‘You know, Mike, we could always skip this fake date part, and just talk about Aimee or something? If you like.’

‘Is there something wrong with Aimee?’

‘No.’

‘Then we can’t skip this part.’ The waiter is back surprisingly fast with the drinks, cheeks the colour of two plums. Mike continues, ‘I’m paying for the full service, remember? That was the deal. Everything that you normally do with a Jim I want done to me. The whole works. No crack or crevice unexplored.’

Mike always called them Jims. The waiter freezes momentarily, then tactfully backs up half a dozen steps, turns, and wonders how fast he can return to his friend.

‘That’s actually a very nice dress,’ Mike’s eyes go down the front of me, as he quickly strums his fingers on the table in time to the music.

‘You don’t have to compliment me.’

‘I’m not. It is. It’s a good colour on you, with your hair. Red’s not normally a colour you wear.’

I unnecessarily look down at myself. ‘I got it in the sale.’

‘Was it marked down because it was too bright for everybody else?’

‘Ha ha.’

His eyes meander over the top half of my body, making me nervous. I snap the menu closed, cross my arms. ‘Here’s the thing Mike, about your proposition: I’m not sure I have anyone I can set you up with.’

‘Really? I’m having the liver and onions.’ Mike snaps his menu closed too. ‘So tell me about the person you’re going to set me up with.’

Isn’t he listening? ‘I’m saying, I don’t have anyone in mind.’ But even if I did, that’s not how I work. They have to trust that I’ll match them right, not just with somebody they like the sound of, or the look of. I never let them know too much in advance about their dates. That way, I’m doing what they pay me for, not just selling them a catalogue. It also forces them to break old habits. In matters of lust and love, people are usually repeat offenders, attracted to the same qualities that have failed them in the past. But there’s another more selfish reason why I don’t give too much away: I only promise them one date a month so they’ll know I take what I do very seriously. If they want a numbers game, there are plenty of online services for that. But the main reason I can’t let them pick and choose is because I don’t have a huge client bank. If they wrote off everybody the second I described them, I’d soon be out of business.

‘And another thing,’ I tell him. ‘Nobody said you’re in. I actually don’t let everybody in who wants me, you know. I’m very picky who I do this with.’

The waiter is hovering there with his pad, disbelieving his own good fortune.

‘God, he creeps up on you like baldness, doesn’t he?’ Mike says after the lad manages to take down our order. ‘He’s as red as a week on the Costa Brava. I think you might have got yourself an admirer.’

‘I think it’s you. I think he’s after your car.’

He scowls. ‘My car? Oh! My Ferrari you mean.’ He laughs.

‘You’d actually suit a Ferrari, you know.’

‘But then I’d be a case of “small bloke, big vehicle” and you know what they say that means.’

‘As I was telling you,’ I try to ignore how much I love his easy humour. ‘You have to pass this fake date first, before I can agree to take you on.’