Turning Forty (22 page)

‘You’re allergic to oysters?’

‘Actually, no, but that’s not really the point.’

Rosa laughs. ‘All night I’ve been thinking about what you remind me of and I’ve just realised that it’s a passage in
The Velveteen Rabbit
. Have you read it?’

‘Never heard of it.’

‘I used to have it years ago but I lost it somewhere along the way. I’d love to read it again.’

‘I’ll look out for a copy in the shop if you like.’

‘You’d do that for me?’

‘I like to look after my customers. What does it say?’

‘There’s no point in my half remembering it and spoiling the effect. When you find it, I’ll read the passage to you and you’ll see how right I was.’

Rosa leans in and kisses me. It’s a good few minutes before either of us comes up for air and even then I’m less bothered about breathing than I am about wanting to kiss her again.

‘Look,’ I say, trying to come to my senses, ‘I’d better be going.’

‘Before you do something you’ll regret?’

‘Yeah, something like that.’

‘I’m like forbidden fruit to you, aren’t I? You have no idea how fantastic that makes me feel. I feel positively goddess-like. Is this some kind of reverse psychology trick that you learned from your twenty years in the dating world? Because if it is, it’s working.’

‘Sadly, it’s not a trick,’ I reply. ‘I really ought to go.’ As I stand up I catch a glimpse of Trilby Boy and his hard stare. ‘He’s still looking.’

‘That’s because he’s still jealous.’ She pats my jacket pocket, pulls out my phone and adds her number to my address book. ‘You know the Cross in Moseley? Well, I’ll be there next Friday with some mates, you should come along – you know, just as friends if that’s all you can handle right now.’

‘Friends?’

She crosses her heart with the index finger of her right hand. ‘Why? Is that illegal too?’

‘You’re not making this easy.’

‘It’s not my job to. Having semi-seduced you once I sort of want to do it again. It was fun.’

This is killing me. ‘And on that note. I’ll take my leave.’

We head back inside, past Trilby Boy and his daggers, and she doesn’t let up with the flirting even for a second. I wonder briefly if her behaviour tonight hadn’t been about putting Trilby Boy in his place but decide against it. Even from the little that I know of her I can tell she’s not like that. Whether I want to believe it or not, there’s a good chance that she actually likes me and this knowledge alone makes me feel a million feet tall.

I look around for Gerry while Rosa waits in the hallway but he’s nowhere to be seen. I think about calling him but all I want to do is go.

‘So,’ says Rosa putting her arms round me. ‘This is it then?’

‘Looks like it.’

‘We would’ve made a great-looking couple.’

‘Absolutely. We would’ve been the best.’

‘And I would have been an amazing girlfriend.’

She leans in and we kiss briefly. If there ever was a kiss that had the power to change a mind, this is it. I can feel my resolve crumbling and if I’m not careful then anything I have even close to a conscience will be crushed.

‘So about next weekend . . .’ she says as we part.

‘Somehow I don’t think that’s going to happen.’

‘I can’t say anything to change your mind?’

‘I’d prefer not to take the chance.’

Rosa smiles. ‘You should never say never, Matt. Who knows what you might miss out on in life with an attitude like that?’

30

Gerry greets me the following Monday morning with a round of applause as he opens the door to let me into the shop. ‘And here he is – the man of the hour – the one, the only, Matthew Beckford!’

The other volunteers all stop what they’re doing and look perplexed.

‘Is it his birthday?’ asks Odd Owen.

‘I think he must have pulled over the weekend,’ says Steve the Student.

‘Gerry’s just having his little joke,’ I reply, keen to keep news of my love life away from the other volunteers. ‘Morning all!’

I dump my bag in the office and return as Gerry calls a morning meeting.

‘First order of business—’

‘We’re out of milk,’ says Odd Owen.

‘No we’re not,’ says Gerry. ‘I looked in the fridge just this morning. There’s at least two-thirds of one of those big bottles in there.’

‘It’s gone off,’ says Odd Owen. ‘I smelt it.’

Gerry looks confused. ‘But you don’t drink tea, do you Owen?’

Owen shakes his head. ‘Just Pepsi for me, thanks.’

‘So why are you smelling the milk?’

Owen looks down at the floor and Gerry’s momentarily lost for words.

‘Right, well . . . I’ll definitely look into the milk situation.’

Gerry soldiers on with the morning meeting. There’s a new notification about being on the lookout for dodgy twenty-pound notes, a warning that the card machine has been playing up again but the man won’t be out to fix it until next Monday, a memo from head office praising the shop for hitting its targets in the last quarter and the announcement that a new work rota has been pinned to the board in the stockroom.

‘Are you quite finished?’ asks Anne, in her usual no-nonsense manner, just as Gerry is about to wrap things up. ‘Only some of us have got quite a lot of stock to get through.’

With that the meeting falls apart as Anne marches back to the stockroom, Steve opens the door to a large bearded man banging on the window and holding up several bags of donations and Odd Owen wanders over to the shelves, picks up a Stephen King novel, positions himself behind the till and begins reading.

Gerry looks at me. ‘It’s going to be one of those days isn’t it?’

‘I think you may be right. Coffee break?’

‘I thought you’d never ask.’

We leave the shop and head to Annabel’s. I can see Gerry wants to ask about the weekend and much to my surprise he restrains himself until after we’ve been served and are sitting down at a table.

‘So come on then. How was it?’

‘How was what?’

‘Friday night! With that girl!’

‘Nothing happened.’

‘What do you mean, nothing happened? She was all over you!’

‘And she was twenty-three!’

‘So what?’

‘What do you mean, “So what?” She would’ve been two years old the year
Newhall Lovers
came out. Doesn’t that freak you out?’

‘Of course it doesn’t! Kara’s only twenty-six and you don’t hear me making a big deal about it. Age doesn’t matter. It’s people that count. I’ve met women my age that aren’t even half as mature as Kara. The thing you should be asking yourself is, did you like her?’

‘I thought she was amazing. We didn’t stop talking the entire time we were together. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s like the biggest cliché in the book, does it?’

‘So you don’t want to see her because you’re afraid of being a cliché? I had no idea you were so fragile.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with being fragile and everything to do with not wanting to be the bloke that tries to hang on to his youth by dressing like a teenager and hanging out with girls half his–,’ I stop myself quickly. ‘Not like you, of course, you’re different. You can work it somehow and not make it look sleazy or desperate because it’s not a pose. I think what I’m trying to say is this whole being young when you’re not actually young is a bit like being able to pull off wearing a hat without looking like an idiot. Some people can do it, others can’t and I am definitely not a hat man.’

‘You’re a mug if you believe that.’

‘And if I don’t I’ll be a creepy bloke dating a girl seventeen years my junior. I’ve done the calculations! I am technically old enough to be her dad! Which is why I’ve decided to give things a go with Abi instead.’

Gerry looks confused. ‘Abi? Who’s Abi?’

‘Keep up, will you? She’s the woman from the dating site I was texting all last week. We had about half a dozen conversations about her. I was meeting up with her on Saturday afternoon.’

‘And how did that go?’

‘It was perfect. Could not have been better. And she is definitely the girl for me.’

In reality my date with Abi was easily one of the worst I have ever been on. To begin with she was an hour late (something to do with her cat going missing) and when she did finally turn up for the first five minutes her sole topic of conversation was how far away she’d had to park her car. Over the course of our date it became clear that despite the obvious chemistry of our text messages, in person we couldn’t have been less in tune with each other. Everything I loathed she liked and everything I liked she hated. More off-putting than that, however, was her odd habit of attempting to finish my sentences and also the realisation that she was still clearly working her way through a number of unresolved issues to do with her ex. But for the fact that she was as attractive as her online profile picture had led me to believe, her near-constant reassurances that this was the best date she had been on in months and the fact that like me she too was turning forty this year I probably would’ve given up on the date altogether. And, because of this, when she texted me the following morning to thank me for the date and ask if I was free on Friday night, instead of going with my gut and declining I went with my head and said yes because of late my gut decisions had been letting me down badly.

Leaving my parents’ house on the night of my date with Abi, smelling of freshly sprayed deodorant I decide to walk to Moseley rather than catch the bus because it will give me time to conjure up a plan of action for the evening ahead. I want this thing with Abi to work. Not just because Lauren’s moved on, or to exorcise the ghost of Ginny or even because being with her might make turning forty easier. I need it to work because by choosing to pursue things with Abi rather than Rosa I feel like I’m giving up someone I felt a real connection with in order to make a point that no one seems to believe in apart from me.

I reach the Bull’s Head, a former boozer of the old-men-in-flat-caps variety now transformed into a cool pre-club hangout for a much younger crowd. I order a beer at the bar and wonder how Abi and I can conduct any kind of conversation when there’s a DJ in the corner right next to where I’m standing. Maybe we’ll just have the one drink here and move on or maybe this will be the excuse I’ll need to lean over and talk into her ear and establish some sort of intimacy.

The barmaid brings my drink. I take a sip and my phone buzzes. It’s a message from Abi:
Sorrrrrrrry!!! Running half an hour late. Promise I’ll be worth the wait!!! xxx
. This leaves me feeling uneasy. Was I making a hideous mistake here? Rosa was fun, and feisty and being in her company made me feel really alive. OK, so I didn’t want to be the guy who thinks having a young girlfriend is the answer to everything and so what if she didn’t get my references to
Tiswas
or
Moonlighting
but did I really want to be the guy stuck in a dead-end relationship because he was too short-sighted to see a good thing when it came his way? Pushing aside my drink, I run out of the bar, cross the road (only narrowly avoiding being run over by a minicab) and head into the Cross in search of Rosa.

My heart racing like I’ve run a marathon, I scan the faces, groups of girls, drinks held aloft, laughing, joking, preening and posing. Had this always been my plan? Was it just a coincidence that I had chosen a venue to meet Abi that was less than a hundred metres away from where I knew Rosa would be on the same night? But now I can see Rosa it doesn’t matter because she’s exactly as gorgeous as I remember her. She spots me straight away and her expression seems to freeze. I wonder if she has met someone else. Someone her own age. Someone more suitable. But after a moment she walks over to meet me, buries her face in my chest, then looks up and we kiss.

‘A week ago you seemed pretty insistent that this was a bad idea,’ she says. ‘What changed your mind?’

‘You did,’ I reply. ‘Just when I least expected it. Speaking of which I’ve got something I need to do and it just might take me a while.’

Rosa smiles. ‘Take as long as you like,’ she says. ‘I’m not going anywhere.’

After one last kiss I head back over to the Bull’s Head to do one of the hardest things I’ve ever done: break up with a woman who I’m not even properly going out with and whose only crime it appears was setting our first date twenty-four hours too late.

Days left until I turn forty: 64

31

‘You’re going to be late.’

‘I know.’

‘But you were late yesterday too.’

‘I know, but I heard on the radio that it’s the wettest February since records began and you’re all nice and warm. Maybe I’ll call in sick. Will you do it for me?’

‘Like I did last Wednesday? Don’t you think they’ll see a pattern forming? Rosa’s got herself a new bloke and now all of a sudden she’s got a cold every other day.’

Rosa sighs. ‘This is torture. The only way I’m going to make it through a whole day of not seeing you is if you give me something to look forward to tonight.’