The Way It Never Was (5 page)

CHAPTER 5 -
DATE NIGHT

‘Darling, why on earth are you here now? Don’t you know it’s terribly naff to be on time,’ moans Anna, offering her cheek and taking a bottle of five quid wine off me.

‘Sorry,’ I say, taking off my coat and following my friend down the corridor, thinking that Anna’s got some cheek for telling me off for being on time when her own time keeping is notorious – she just doesn’t do it full stop. When she promises a time it is always half an hour later, and even then I’m hanging around in a newsagents reading magazines for a good twenty minutes after that. Added to which, she’s always armed with excuses but rather irritatingly, never an apology, forcing me to always have a back up plan just in case she changes stuff at the last minute. ‘I’ve been hanging around a bit today. Let’s just say, it wasn’t a normal nine-to-five day.’

Just as I’m about to elaborate, she looks at me with a slightly impatient expression on her pretty face. ‘I live my life avoiding nine-to-five days actually,’ she says. ‘You know me, always buck convention.’ I automatically roll my eyes as soon as her back is turned. I hate it when Anna tells me she is programmed differently from the rest of the working world, as though it is an affliction and not something that she has any say in. Like when people tell you they’re eccentric when in truth, truly eccentric people don’t notice they are. ‘Since you’re early, you can help me cook,’ she says, as I follow her into a tiny little kitchen that is a hive of boiling activity.

‘Tell me,’ I venture, trying hard not to pull a face as I stare suspiciously into a saucepan of heavily boiling gruel. ‘What’s cooking?’

Anna takes the lid off the steaming pot and then pokes a wooden spoon into the goo, before shoving it in my face to taste. ‘Italian Three-Bean Chilli,’ she sings with an accent as though she were Antonio Carluccio.

‘Yum!’ I exclaim, not meaning it at all and get on with the task of chopping up some iceberg lettuce.

Seriously, have I really stayed on in London after the most soul-destroying day being pulled apart by recruitment consultants, for slop with twenty different pulses?

‘How many of us tonight?’ I ask, all of a sudden suspicious about the dinner party format.

‘Four,’ she replies, winking at me. And then the penny drops. Oh dear lord, she’s not organised a blind date today of all days? If there is one thing I hate doing on a Monday evening, it’s going on a blind date. It is on a par with meeting up for a Sunday afternoon walk in the park and then wondering why sparks don’t fly. Aside from Valentines Day, attempting to generate romance on a Monday is just totally unacceptable. I need a drink fast.

‘Anna, please say you’ve not set me up. I’m not in the mood. Seriously, I’ve quit my job and have been in and out of agencies all day,’ I sigh.

Anna stops and looks at me. ‘Seriously? Please say you didn’t just say that. And just when I’m about to introduce you to a nice man!’ she says, stirring her one-pot wonder. ‘Out of work! You kept that quiet over the phone. Oh well, with any luck you’ll have a new one by the time date number two arrives. Admin jobs are ten a penny.’ She sounds so confident that I’m going to like him and unless I’m being completely paranoid, she almost makes it sound compulsory that I will see him again.
Bossy
pants
. ‘Anyhow, we have five minutes before he arrives. So tell me, aside from your job debacle, what’s new?’ Anna switches into perky mode and for a brief minute, I’m feeling giddy with anticipation that she might be really going to ask me about me. ‘Seriously though, what are we going to do with you?’ she says, ruffling my hair.

‘Can I just say in my defence, you are not getting me at my best.’ I reply, smoothing my hair down and feeling ever so slightly annoyed as I’m wearing a particularly cheap looking interview suit and left my best lip-gloss at home.

Anna takes off her apron and unties her hair, shaking it as though she were in a shampoo ad. ‘Loveless! Now jobless! Sitting in cafes. You need to get your shit together soon my darling. Tick-tock tick-tock.’

I catch my breath, wanting her rant to be over with. ‘Hey, go easy. It wasn’t easy leaving that job,’ I say.

Ignoring my protests, Anna looks momentarily thoughtful. ‘You’ve given me an idea though. Not your love life – hopefully we’ll be sorting you out on that front tonight. A job. I have a friend of a friend called Victoria – Victory Flannery Veakins. She’s the person to go to when you are pretty unemployable. I’ll call her.’

Just as I’m about to say no thanks, the doorbell rings. Going to answer it, she tells me to get the indescribable looking starter out of the oven – a mound of tortilla chips, cheese, sour cream and guacamole. It looks so messy it’s the kind of food best eaten by oneself in the dark.

Just then my best friend from school – and Anna’s boyfriend of nearly a year – walks in and gives me a kiss on the cheek, looking at me for a second longer than normal as though he knows something is up. It’s been a while since I last saw Stan and I forget how handsome he is. With that short brown hair of his with its double crown, olive skin, chiselled jaw line and green eyes, he makes me catch my breath. It’s just a shame I know him too well.

‘You look tired,’ he says, studying my face, which in my experience is always code for saying I look rough. He’s right. I’ve got a spot on my face, massive bags under my eyes and I noticed in the reflection of the tube mirrors that my foundation shade doesn’t match the colour on my neck.

‘Hurry up you two, no time for PDA, I need help. God, the things I do for friends!’ she moans, sounding like a billionaire philanthropist having to organise a car boot fair. ‘Kate, for crying out loud use some of my make-up. Never seen you looking so haggard.’ She sounds so exasperated, I’m starting to wonder if I’m supposed to thank her for springing a blind date on me. Will I?
Unlikely
. I rush into Anna’s bedroom to plaster on whatever make up I can find, just as the doorbell rings. Anna squeals and shouts down the corridor. ‘Remember what I said Kate. Do not under any circumstances be yourself!’

At this point, I really should be questioning the status quo of my friendship with Anna, but despite my reservations, this feeling of excitement that comes with a potential romance is second to none. You just never know, he might be absolutely amazing and the one to iron out all my regrets and make me move forward. Deciding to let Anna off the hook again as I know she has good intentions, I smother concealer under my eyes so I look ridiculously alert. Having it all in front of you is by far the best bit of being single. I just wish they knew how to bottle this feeling of anticipation for when the going gets tough. Having been standing in the doorway watching me tart myself up, Stan wishes me luck as I walk past him as though I’m about to go for an audition. He then pauses and looks like he’s about to say something else, when in walks a jaw-droppingly handsome man who looks like he could chew me up and have me for breakfast.
Oh
hello
!

‘This is Chris,’ introduces Anna proudly. ‘Chris, this is my good friend Kate and
my
boyfriend Stan.’ We do a polite kiss on both cheeks. Stan says hello, stares at him up and down, before slightly shaking his head and disappearing into the kitchen. I know that he’s thinking the same thing as me as I know him too well.
There
has
to
be
a
catch
.

Over those greasy Tortilla chips covered in rubbery cheese, I discover that there is a catch. And unfortunately, it’s rather a big one. For, while devastatingly handsome, Chris doesn’t half like the sound of his own voice. In fact, as with someone who clearly spends a great deal of time doing dancing moobs in the gym mirror, instead of quietly getting on with the business of life, he’s been kissing his ‘guns’ and is confident – ridiculously so. No sooner do I try and interrupt with an anecdote of my own than he sits there feet tapping, clearly waiting for me to finish so he can come back with his own equivalent story. Seriously, he should just put his hand up and be done with it. It’s the Chris show and I can’t imagine he’ll actually stop long enough to find out what I think at all because you know what? He couldn’t give a toss.

‘So how do you know Anna?’ Chris leans in to me flirtatiously, making me reel in shock that he’s finally asking me a question. And now that he is, I’m attempting to hurriedly dislodge a stringy bit of mozzarella from halfway down my throat so I can splutter something before his next anecdote.

‘I met her in an Australian hostel a few years ago,’ I say, thinking at this point Chris might ask a few more questions about this time, only to find Anna then starts telling the exaggerated story about how she rescued me from being hit by a surf board on Bondi Beach (or rather, she casually assisted the lifeguards in hoisting me on a rescue boat to avoid my bikini bottoms going up my arse). But no, not even my story of being knocked unconscious by a learner surfer called Dale generates a two-way conversation with Chris. He prefers to use us as prompt cards to talk shop some more.

‘I’ve travelled a lot too you know,’ he declares. In between noisy mouthfuls, he proceeds to tell us how he doesn’t like conventional places like Australia, but prefers to step off the beaten track.

‘Not like the rest of us plebs,’ I joke, only for Anna to kick me under the table. Yes, it turns out that travel bore Chris is one of those that doesn’t so much as follow a guidebook, as chuck it out the window and write a new one, sucking on a second-hand biro in deep thought, halfway up a mountain with only a goatherd for company.

Pouring a ridiculous amount of wine into my glass, possibly to help me anaesthetise this experience, Stan interrupts Chris’s monologue. ‘Most places are fairly well trodden these days mate. Give us an example of where you’ve been.’ Stan is so right. I used to think I was really ‘out there’ travelling around Australia, only to stay in some tree top hostel and discover the guest book full of hundreds of comments about ‘discovering myself’ and ‘never wanting to leave’ – along with a loo that hadn’t been unblocked since 1984.

‘Well, the last place I went to was Afghanistan.’ Talking painfully slowly, making us wait a lifetime for him to finish his mouthful as though we are hanging onto his every word, he then tells us how it was the hardest thing he’d ever done, so hard that they had to have armed guards with them at all times. We all sit there not saying much because quite frankly, how do you follow that? My anecdote about my last minute break to Corfu is hardly going to stand up to that, nor will my time with a load of expats in Sydney.

Stan briefly widens his eyes at me by way of expressing an SOS signal, as Anna brings out the next course with a rather strained looking smile, which implies that even she too is finding this all this effort a little hard going for a Monday night.

‘This is delicious Anna,’ I lie, politely chomping my way through the bland pulses with watery rice that has a consistency not too dissimilar to baby food. What with my recent dinner date with Dan, this is officially my month for eating average fayre. The men both murmur in agreement, and I can’t help but wonder if it resembled some of the food that Chris was forced to eat on that holiday of his.

‘I like cooking,’ Anna declares which irks me a little, as it’s a blatant lie. ‘No, correct that. I love cooking!’ Stan catches my eye again and raises one eyebrow as he knows he’s the foodie round here and I’m pretty sure he’s the one that does the majority of the cooking. To date, the most I’ve ever seen Anna cook is taking a bite out of the bread in the hostel kitchen before toasting, to deter random people from wanting to steal her breakfast.

‘Stan likes his grub too – you’re the perfect pair,’ I coo, trying to mask my real thoughts, only to jump in shock as Chris’s hand does ‘Incy Wincey Spider’ up my leg.

‘Nice you get on with your friend’s boyfriend,’ he says, with his clammy hand now resting at the top of my thigh.

‘Oh I’ve known Stan for years,’ I say, standing up to clear some plates to get away from his tactile mitts.

Aware of being under Anna’s gaze I can’t help but expand on my point. ‘I actually introduced these two,’ I say and walk out to the kitchen, not before hearing Anna go into defensive mode.

‘I wouldn’t say that precisely. We just happened to be in the same place because of Kate didn’t we Stan? Almost coming up to a year aren’t we?’ she says proudly.

‘I think it’s safe to say that if Kate hadn’t had held that birthday party, we would never have met,’ Stan interrupts. ‘After all, you live in London and I live in Canterbury.’

Chris then starts telling us how nice it is to see two friends of the opposite sex, and that unfortunately he knows no girls in that platonic way as they always fall in love with him. Seriously, is he really implying that he’s some sort of magnetic force? I open the fridge and lean in to find myself faced with a chocolate and cherry trifle that looks something out of a bad seventies sit-com.

‘Anna, do you have spoons out there, this dessert is looking yummy!’ I shout, once again lying through my teeth as I look at the gunk in the cut crystal bowl. Wet desserts and me have never gotten along, nor do me and sliced banana or egg mayonnaise for that matter. The way I see it, with certain foods, you need to know that people are wearing surgical gloves when they prepare them because otherwise your imagination plays havoc.

‘I have to say, I eat most things but I try not to eat dessert.’ Chris closely studies the bowl on the table. ‘Contains far too much sugar. Ruins my stamina. Too many dips in energy,’ he explains.