A Girl Like You

‘Good date?’ he asks, not taking his eyes off the TV.

‘Yeah,’ I say, moving my foot to bring the bottle up to my hand. Good eye-foot coordination. ‘He seems really nice. A bit reserved. He’s getting up early for a conference call so we called it a night after dinner.’

‘Oh, so it was a bad date,’ Robert says decisively, throwing me the bottle opener. I catch it perfectly and smile to myself. I cannot play any sports, at all. In fact, team sports make me panic – what if I let people down? (The pressure!) Yet I can always catch anything thrown at me. If only I could market this talent in some way, I’d never have to analyse results again. I could work in a bar, like Tom Cruise in Cocktail, and just throw bottles all – wait. I focus on what Robert just said.

‘Bad? No!’ I say. ‘It was fine. I was a little, uh, nervous, but then the conversation was easy. I found out lots about him, he seems very nice.’

‘Did you ask him lots of questions?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did he ask you any questions?’

Pause. ‘No . . .’

‘Did you laugh a lot?’

Even longer pause. ‘We had a few . . . light moments.’

‘Bad date,’ he says again. ‘No kiss, right?’

I admit, that part confused me. When the hell are you meant to kiss? How can you tell if they want to? I tried to look at Paulie meaningfully, but I couldn’t catch his eye, and then he opened the cab door and kind of stood behind it, so I just got in and waved goodbye.

God. That is a disaster, now that I think about it.

‘How did you know that?’ I ask.

‘Lip gloss,’ he replies.

‘Well, aren’t you Sherlock fucking Holmes?’ I say. I feel a bit deflated. ‘I think he’ll call me, anyway.’

‘Right,’ says Robert flatly.

‘He could be my soulmate,’ I say lightly.

‘He isn’t,’ he says. ‘I promise.’

‘Oh, poo on you,’ I say, taking a sip of my beer.

‘Nice comeback,’ he says.

Luke, my sister’s fiancé mentioned that people sometimes find Robert a bit moody. He should know: Robert is one of his best friends. Robert and I haven’t spoken much until now. I’m probably out of practice at making new friends, and sometimes I think I wouldn’t know small talk if it hit me in the face. But tonight, the booze is helping.

I close one eye and gaze over at Robert. His legs are so long that he can easily reach the coffee table. I try to reach my toes out to it and fail. Robert notices and reaches forward to pull it towards my hopeful toes.

‘Thanks.’ Maybe I should say what’s on my mind. ‘It’s not my fault that I don’t know this dating stuff, you know. I’m a dating virgin. I’d never gone on a proper date before tonight.’

‘Mmm,’ says Robert, which I take as further encouragement.

‘I mean, I went to the movies and things with Peter at the start, obviously. But we’d been friends for so long that it felt natural . . . and we didn’t even go on an official first date. I mean, it was university. We were drunk at a party and snogged and voilà, instant boyfriendage. And now it’s seven years later and I’ve forgotten how to be single. What can I do about it?!’

Robert doesn’t respond.

‘I was just being polite by asking Paulie all those questions. What else could I talk about? He’s a total stranger! Better than awkward silence,’ I pause, thinking of more reasons. ‘And I was trying to be nice, and, um, and interested in his life. It’s good manners.’

‘I’m sure he appreciated your good manners,’ says Robert.

This is not the type of cosy flatmate chat I used to enjoy with Plum and Henry and everyone at university, I must say. Perhaps he’s never lived with a girl before. Luke shared a flat with him until he met Sophie and kicked Robert out, which is when he bought this place. It’s a funny little place over three stories, with bare floorboards and very masculine furniture. Leather couches and a couple of low wood tables. I described it to Plum as ‘butch chic’.

He’s obviously not keen on becoming best friends, I muse. He probably only needs a flatmate to help pay the mortgage. He must be old. Luke’s 30, but Robert looks older. He seems to permanently need a shave.

‘How old are you?’ I ask.

‘Old enough to know not to talk to a man during The Simpsons,’ he replies.

We watch The Simpsons episode till it ends, and then Robert starts flicking the TV channels. We go past an episode of Family Guy.

‘Oohh! Family Guy. Yes please,’ I say. Robert flicks back.

I’m starting to sober up.

‘After martinis, beer is like bread, I swear,’ I comment during the ads. ‘It really soaks up the alcohol.’

Robert doesn’t respond.

Family Guy starts again. My mind is racing. Was that a bad date? What a lot of effort and excitement and outfit-planning and grooming and anticipation . . . all for one hour and 45 minutes of shit conversation and good food.

Perhaps I haven’t missed out on that much after all. Perhaps this dating and being single malarkey is just a lot of fuss about nothing.

But that can’t be right. Plum loves being single and meeting men and going on dates and you know, all that shit. It’s like the entire focus of her life. And my sister Sophie loved being a single gal about town (as my dad says), that’s how she met Luke, and now they’re getting married.

And it’s the whole point of everything, isn’t it? To find someone to love and laugh with. A (whisper it) soulmate. And not settle with someone that you love like a brother and don’t ever really laugh with. Like Peter. I left him because I knew there was something wrong, something missing. But there was something missing tonight, too. I – oh, I need to pee.

‘I’m just going to the, uh, euphemism,’ I say.

‘Good to know,’ he replies.

Perhaps Robert is wrong I think, as I sit back down on the couch a few minutes later. Paulie will call and we’ll go out again and it will be better. Perhaps it will be a date we’ll laugh about for the rest of our lives (‘I was so nervous!’, ‘No, I was nervous!’). I mean, he must have liked me enough to ask me out, so wouldn’t he like me enough to ask me out again? I don’t—

‘Don’t think about it anymore,’ says Robert to the TV. Wait, is he talking to me?

‘Huh?’

‘You’re very easy to read,’ he says, without looking at me. ‘It was one night. Just learn from it and move on. Singledom is brutal. You need to be brutal too.’

‘Learn what? I don’t know what I did wrong . . .’ I say, quickly adding, ‘If I did anything wrong, if you’re even right about it being a bad date, which you might not be. I like him . . . I might like him,’ I caveat. Do I like Paulie? God, I don’t know. I was too busy keeping the conversation going to figure that out. ‘The last thing I said was “will you call me?” and he said “yes”.’

‘Never ask a guy to call you,’ says Robert, opening another beer.

‘Then I’ll call him,’ I say crossly.

‘I wouldn’t recommend it.’

‘I’m a feminist. I can call a man,’ I’m defensive now. ‘Or I’ll just text.’ Robert shakes his head slowly. Cripes, maybe I should flatshare with girls. I like a bit more compassion in my pep talks, thank you very much. ‘Or email. I have his email address. Or I’ll casually Facebook him.’

‘I’m a feminist too,’ he says, rolling his eyes. ‘But no. Not after the first date. Be elusive. And there is nothing casual about Facebook.’

‘I just don’t understand why you think it went so badly,’ I say again.

‘What gave it away was the questions thing,’ he says, more gently. ‘Too many personal questions and it becomes an interview.’

‘That’s just what it felt like!’ Maybe he does know what he’s talking about. ‘This is good. Tell me more. I need baby steps.’

He grins at me. ‘Play it cool. You need to be detached from the situation. It’s the only way.’

‘Wait!’ I take out my notebook. I’m never without it: it’s the repository of my to-do lists and the only way I can keep track of everything.

‘Give me one sec,’ I squint, close one eye, pick up my pen and start writing. What was it he just said again? Oh yeah.

Be cool

Be detached

That seems simple.

‘That doesn’t mean you should be a mute. Making him laugh is crucial.’

‘I need to be funny, too?’ I say in dismay. Robert looks amused by this. ‘What makes you the expert? Do you have a girlfriend?’

‘Not exactly. I’m just very good at being single.’

Ah, a player. On cue, his phone buzzes with a text that I can immediately tell, by the disinterested way he reads it, raises his eyebrows slightly, and then taps out a reply, is a girl.

‘Cool, detached . . .’ I muse, watching him. ‘Do I have to do this forever? Some day I’ll fall in love again, I hope, and then I won’t have to think about this . . . Right? Like, on my wedding day, do I have to think about acting cool and detached?’

His phone buzzes again. Another text. He reads it and raises an eyebrow, before looking up at me and computing my last statement.

‘Don’t think about falling in love. Don’t even say the word. Love has nothing to do with dating. And don’t think about your wedding day. Ever,’ he says, picking up his wallet and keys from the coffee table. He throws me the remote control and I catch it perfectly. Yes! Two out of two. ‘I’m off. Meeting a friend.’

‘I figured,’ I say. ‘Does that mean my how-to-date tutorial is over?’

‘Going on a date is just something to do for a few hours.’ Robert takes his coat from the hall cupboard. ‘It’s no big deal, so don’t build it up to be something more in your head.’

‘But what if I don’t feel detached? Or cool?’

Robert pauses as he reaches the door, looks over at me, and grins. ‘Fake it.’

Chapter Three

As I head in to work the next morning, I realise that Robert was right. I’m sure you’ve already come to the same conclusion: it was a bad date. I’m trying to chalk it up to experience, rather than chalking it up to my so-I-WILL-end-up-alone-and-lonely theory.

My office is just behind Blackfriars. I’m a financial analyst for an investment bank. Basically, I need to know everything about the retail industry in order to help our traders and clients make money.

When I first started working, I loved my job. I loved winkling out information that no one else had. I felt like a little truffle pig snuffling for gems. Then the recession hit, and with no gems to snuffle, it became hard to get excited, or even care, about any of it. And then I – rather belatedly, as tends to happen to me quite a lot – realised that my job wasn’t about research, it was all about helping rich people get richer. Which doesn’t exactly fry my burger. Though perhaps work isn’t meant to be enjoyable, you know?

Full disclosure: I only joined this company because its stand was next to the bar at my university careers day.

I am not kidding. I was finishing a difficult and essentially useless degree in medieval French. The university careers day was stressful and weirdly humiliating. Plum and I discovered the bar during happy hour, the two investment guys at the company stand spotted us and, after our second bottle of half-price wine, came over for a chat.

I didn’t know what else I’d do with my life, and the salary sounded pretty good, so I applied for the grad scheme, got in, got a couple of qualifications, and now, here I am, an associate analyst. Stuck halfway up a job ladder I never knew existed till I was already on it.

I sit in a quiet corner of a very large, very grey open-plan office, on the 6th floor. My boss, Suzanne, is a managing director and has her own office (glass fronted, so she can keep an eye on us). I work in a small team, specialising in luxury retail, with two other analysts, Alistair and Charlotte. Sitting around us are the other teams: pharmaceutical, automotive, banking, construction blahblahblah.

Today, at 6.40 am, I’m the first one in from my team. The workday starts very early for research analysts. Just one of the many things that I don’t like about my job.

I sit down, turn on my laptop and sigh. Oh fluorescent lighting, how I hate you. I swear the one above my head flickers and buzzes an abnormal amount. At least my team doesn’t have to present at the 7.15 am sales meeting today. Instead, all I have to do is check Bloomberg and Reuters and see what’s happening in the markets. Nothing so far. Yay. If there was, I’d need an opinion. And it’s hard to have an opinion when you don’t really care.

This is how easy it would be to improve my quality of life: let my work day start after 9 am and let me dress how I want. Today I’m wearing my uniform: a cream top with grey trousers and heels. The top is a bit silky and the trousers high-waisted, so this is haute fashion in my office, which is exceedingly conservative even for the City. Most women here wear utterly boring skirt suits with ill-fitting shirts and sensible, closed-toe low heels; anything too fashionable attracts attention. I think my job is why I don’t speak style quite as well as Plum does. You need to be trying out new looks all the time in order to develop a real instinct for what suits you.

I take out my notebook and am looking over yesterday’s list (I’m big on lists, as you’ve probably noticed), crossing off things and rewriting instructions on today’s fresh list when my phone rings.

‘Plummy plum,’ I whisper. ‘I’m—’

‘I know you’re already at work,’ she says. Plum works in PR, so her day doesn’t start till at least 9 am, and right now I can tell she’s still in bed. ‘I need 10 seconds. How the fuck was it?’

I sigh. ‘Pretty bad. I need more than 10 seconds.’

‘I thought perhaps you’d fall in fucking love and end up marrying him!’ she says, yawning. Her voice is croaky in the mornings. She smokes too much. And swears too much.

‘Dream on,’ I reply, and hang up quickly as Alistair approaches. Maybe Robert’s right. Love’s got nothing to do with dating.

‘Everybody’s got a dream!’ He’s very cheerful in the morning. ‘What’s your dream? What’s your dream? Welcome to Hollywoooooood.’

‘It takes a real man to quote Pretty Woman,’ I say, as he sits down.

‘Really? Can I rescue you right back? Remember, you shouldn’t neglect your gums.’

Alistair seemed shy and hardworking in his interviews, but quickly revealed himself to be quite the opposite, and we’ve ended up becoming almost-friends – as much as I ever make friends at work, anyway.

Charlotte, on the other hand, who I can see trudging up the hallway now, is, well, dull. Yes, I feel bitchy for saying that about a colleague who’s never done anything bad to me, but honestly, she doesn’t inspire affection. I might be a bit quiet sometimes, but she’s practically a mute. Her hair, skin and clothes are all varying shades of taupe, and she wears ponchos (ponchos!) over her suits in winter and so inevitably, because she isn’t Elle Macpherson-shaped, looks like a mushroom. I’m not the most stylish person in the world, but I know a ‘don’t’ when I see one.

‘Morning, Charlotte,’ I say cheerfully, as she sits down at her desk.

‘Morning . . .’ she says flatly. See? No effort.

A text arrives from my sister, Sophie.

Date. Details. I need to know everything.

I sigh. I wish I hadn’t talked about my first date so much. Now I have to tell them all how terrible it was. Though one bad date doesn’t mean that I’m going to be single forever, right? Or end up with Lonely Single Girl Syndrome, miserable and . . . desperate? (I’m starting to hate that word. The d-word.)

I open a new email to Plum, Henry and Sophie:

I will only discuss this once, so read carefully. It was a disaster. I had total verbal diarrhoea. Read entire menu out loud. Asked in-depth questions about everyone he knows. Told him all about my break-up with Peter. Made stupid comments constantly. He left as soon as he could. No goodnight kiss. And I was pretty hammered.

At about 11 am, the replies arrive. My sister, Sophie, is first:

Oh Abigail. Maybe you should call him to apologise.

Is she out of her fucking mind? There is no way I am ever calling him again, ever. Why line up to get rejected outright? Far better that he just doesn’t call me. Sophie is too sensitive sometimes.

I reply:

I might be a dating virgin. But I’m not an idiot.

Plum replies:

Sounds like you can chalk that one up to fucksperience, sugar-nuts. x

Ah, thank you, Plum.

Henry replies:

I can’t believe you didn’t jump him.

Another useful response.

I field emails all morning, in between phone calls to traders expressing my opinions on what’s happening in the market (very little and very little). Then finally one email, from my ever-perceptive sister Sophie, cuts through all the shit.

Abigail – do you even want to see him again? If not, stop torturing yourself.

I think for a few minutes. I don’t. I didn’t really have a good time. I just feel like, well, since he asked me out, I should really give it my best shot. Try to make it work. Surely if he’s a nice person, and I’m a nice person, there’s no reason we shouldn’t keep going?

This, it occurs to me, is the kind of thinking that kept me in a relationship with Peter for seven years.

God, that’s brutal.

Wait. That was something that Robert had said about dating. I should write it down. I take out my notebook and add ‘Act brutal’ to the list. Fine. I won’t even try to see Paulie again. He is erased from my mind forthwith. How’s that for brutal?

‘Are you up for lunch later?’ says Alistair, shooting across from his desk to mine on his chair.

I frown at him. This is the third time he’s asked me out to lunch in the past fortnight. I’m usually too busy, but today is pretty quiet.

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Charlotte?’

I don’t know why I’m asking, she never leaves the office at lunch. As expected, Charlotte declines.

‘So, why have you been dying to eat lunch with me?’ I ask, once we’re seated at the sushi bar around the corner, and I’ve done my usual wasabi-soy mixing routine.

‘Can’t a man want to break bread – sorry, raw fish – with his line manager without attracting suspicion?’ says Alistair, copying me.

I glance at him and arch an eyebrow.

‘I don’t want to be an analyst anymore,’ he says in return.

I’ve just put a huge piece of maki roll in my mouth so I chew it slowly, whilst nodding and making eye contact, trying to think of what to say next. Halfway through chewing, my tongue discovers a large gob of wasabi that I didn’t stir into the soy sauce properly, and tears immediately spurt from my eyes.

‘You don’t have to cry about it,’ says Alistair.

‘Water,’ I whisper, grabbing the shiny, utterly non-absorbent napkin in front of me and holding it to my cheeks. Darn, now I’ll have streaks through my makeup. ‘Well. That is a big decision. What do you want to do instead?’ I say eventually. I sound like my mum. Again.

‘I want to sit on a trading desk,’ he says firmly.

‘Sheesh, why?’ I exclaim. The trading floor is the Wild West of the office. They’re almost always entirely male, and pungent with the sharp smell of testosterone and competition. Alistair is far too silly and funny to be a trader. And he doesn’t have the killer instinct.

‘Don’t you ever get tired of setting up huge kills and never being part of the bloodshed?’ he replies. Perhaps he does have that instinct.

‘When you put it like that . . . no,’ I say.

‘You love research, huh?’ he says, rolling his eyes. ‘Well, I want more . . . more excitement. And more money.’

‘You can’t just decide to be a trader, you know. You’re only one year out of university.’

‘People do make the jump, though,’ he says insistently.

‘Why don’t I do some research to help you make sure it’s what you want?’

‘Anything you can do to help would be great, lovely Abigail. I’m bored.’

We both go back to dipping and mixing and chewing. I am flushed with pleasure that he called me lovely Abigail. It’s harmless flirting, but hardly anyone has flirted with me, harmlessly or not, in years.

‘You know, I get bored sometimes, too,’ I admit. ‘And I wonder if I’m in the right job. But I think that happens to everyone. I mean, work is work.’

Alistair frowns. ‘Work is life . . . Don’t you want to spend your life doing something you love? What would you do, if you could do anything at all?’

I gaze at him, speechless.

‘I mean, what do you want?’ he adds. ‘What do you want your life to be like?’

I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. My mind is empty. What do I want? What kind of a question is that?

‘I don’t . . . I don’t know . . . I don’t . . .’ I don’t seem to have any words in my head at all.

‘Until you do, I wouldn’t worry about it,’ Alistair says, grinning at me.

My sentiments exactly.

When we get back from lunch, I sit down at my desk, and stare at the screen for a second as I try to push out all the disquieting thoughts from my head. But I can’t. Alistair is 23, and knows exactly who he is and what he wants. I’m 27 and three quarters, and I haven’t got a clue.

Chapter Four

You know what bites about singledom?

No, not the lack of sex and/or cuddling. Though a little bit of sex would not go astray right now. In fact, for a month after the break-up, sex was practically all I could think about, isn’t that weird? Where was I? Oh yeah. Singledom.

I miss not having anyone to chat to about things. No one to nod when I make comments about an inane TV show, or share a new song with, or to make porridge for on a chilly morning. I’m so used to having someone around that sometimes I come out of the shower and say, ‘Can you remind me to get more razors?’ before I remember there’s no one there. Companionship, in other words.

I’m finding that social butterflying is the best way to fill the companionship void, so I try to make sure I’m almost never alone. At least once a weekend, I meet one or all of the girls to go ‘shopping’, a catch-all phrase that covers fashion, coffee, gossip, errands, people-watching, and sharing cupcakes or other baked goods as, of course, calories shared don’t count (like calories consumed standing up, drunk or on an airplane).

Today is an important day: my best friend, Plum and my sister Sophie, are helping me refresh my singledom wardrobe and teaching me to speak style.

I’m trying on a trench coat in Whistles, and Plum is telling us a story about her colleague.

‘And then Georgina is like, since the little fucknuckle hasn’t rung her, she’s going to organise a party just so she can invite him. I have to say, I admire her balls.’

‘Yeah,’ I say, exchanging a glance with Sophie. All of Plum’s non-fashion conversation so far has, as usual of late, centred on men. Men she knows, men she likes, men other women know and like.

Plum walks over. ‘Push the sleeves up,’ she instructs me, undoing the belt and tying it in a half-bow-knot instead. ‘Pop the collar. Never wear a trench the old-fashioned way. This isn’t Waterloo fucking Bridge.’

I nod obediently, exchanging a grin with Sophie. Plum has a bossy-but-charming manner that you could put down to her Yorkshire roots, five years working with posh girls in PR or growing up with four younger brothers. We met at university when she borrowed my French notes, and became best friends when she began dating one of Peter’s friends. That didn’t last, but our friendship did. She was the centre of a much wider group while I was in a relationship with Peter and didn’t really get to know many people . . . I wonder if that’s why I get so socially nervous sometimes. Hmm.

Plum has always been sunnier and more easygoing than me, though the recent months – or is it years? – of man troubles are getting her down. She’s also very pretty, with a smile so perfect, it’s almost American. I’ve had braces twice and my teeth still retain a certain kookiness.

‘Anyway,’ she continues airily, backcombing her light brown hair with her fingers and pouting in the mirror. ‘I told her that was silly. I mean, maybe he lost his phone. Or maybe he saved her number incorrectly. A hundred things could prevent him from calling her. That’s what I always tell myself when I’m in that situation.’