Would Like to Meet

Esther and I look over at each other, and – although we don’t say anything – I get the impression she’s almost as tempted to make a run for it as I am. It’s scary going out when you’re not used to it, especially when everything’s changed so much. Although Dan and I used to go to our local pub every now and then, the bar Eva’s taken us to looks more like a nightclub. Most of the women inside are wearing barely any clothes, despite the heating problem, and they’re all wearing loads more make-up than me. There are a lot of those drawn-on, squared-off eyebrows, and everyone’s covered in tattoos. Some of those are spectacular, but others look as if their owners sketched them on the backs of envelopes while they were pissed.

Eva points in the direction of one girl with a shock of dyed black hair and the heaviest eye make-up I’ve ever seen in my life. It makes her look half-asleep, though in a sexy way, and I’d be quite tempted to slap on the make-up myself if I didn’t think I’d just end up looking knackered and ancient, instead of appealing. The girl must sense I’m looking at her, because she turns towards us, revealing a large tattoo beneath her collarbones. It’s a life-size (and very lifelike) portrait of her own face.

“She’s going to regret that in another twenty years,” I say, “when she looks in the mirror and spots the difference.”

“She ought to regret it now,” says Eva, “seeing as she looks as if she’s got two heads, especially from a distance. Whatever was she thinking?”

I can’t imagine, and the tattooed girl’s starting to look a bit irritated by our staring now, so I suggest we go and get another drink before we accidentally cause a fight.

There are people queuing ten deep at the bar, so getting served takes forever. Most people don’t even walk away when they’ve been served, as they’re all drinking shots, so they just chuck those down their necks and order more straight away. We’re never going to get served, and I’m beginning to feel claustrophobic. A huge group of girls has just surrounded us, most of them with the kind of voices that make your ears hurt, and they all smell strongly of vanilla.

I like vanilla in food, but not on people.

“Why do all modern perfumes smell like some sort of foodstuff?” I ask Eva, as she waves a fifty-pound note above her head in an attempt to attract the bar staff’s attention. “If it isn’t vanilla, it’s mango or chocolate.”

“It’s because the EU banned all the ingredients that used to make perfumes smell sophisticated,” she says. “That’s why there’s such a market for vintage scents.”

If only there was a market for vintage women – real ones, not the fakes. There are plenty of those in here, ranging from young women dressed like burlesque dancers to those who’ve obviously spent hours creating victory rolls with their hair. I’m starting to feel less pathetic about the half-hour I took to get dressed and made-up now, even though Dan listed “taking ages to get ready” as one of my most annoying habits.

The trouble is, the effort these young women have put into getting dressed up has (largely) paid off, whereas I’m pretty sure I’ve wasted my time. I know I have, once we walk into the club and remove our coats.

“What’s this?” says Eva, pulling a face. “Have you two come as Siamese twins?”

Esther’s wearing an identical dress to mine. She claims it was an accident, but when Eva corners me in the loos a little later, I have to admit I’m sure I showed it to Esther straight after I bought it.

“It’s all a bit Single White Female, isn’t it?” says Eva, as I try to work out if I can get away with wearing my dress back to front.

I can’t, so Eva rummages in her gigantic bag and pulls out a selection of what she calls “statement necklaces”. They all weigh a ton, but the largest one does succeed in making my outfit look marginally different to Esther’s, even if its weight pulls on my neck so much that I feel like a hunchback.

“You’ll be fine, as long as you don’t bend forward too quickly,” says Eva, as I do exactly that to check my make-up in the mirror – at which point the necklace swings into my face and almost loses me an eye. That’s still weeping by the time we rejoin Esther, who’s found us seats in a corner. The Siamese twins impression is now even more marked than it was before, seeing as Esther’s obviously allergic to the perfume I accidentally sprayed into her face. She’s covered in blotches and both her eyes are running continually, so we both sit sipping our drinks and dabbing our eyes with bits of tissue, while Eva concentrates on making eye contact with men – or boys, to be more accurate, if being Joel’s age still counts as a boy.

“I’m going to circulate,” she says after a while. “It’s never a good idea to go hunting in packs, and you two look like wounded animals.”

Apparently, we look less like wounded animals than employees of the club. As soon as Eva walks off, Esther and I are approached by five people in quick succession, who all want to know why women’s handbags are being searched when none of the men’s pockets are. Then some drunken bloke staggers backwards and falls over Esther’s extended leg, spilling his drink onto her dress.

“Watch out, you clumsy idiot,” she says, which turns out to have been the worst thing she could have said. Never insult an 18-stone man who’s drunk his own body weight in beer.

Mr Flobby glares at Esther, and then looks over at me. His vision must have cleared temporarily, because – somehow – he manages to spot our matching outfits. Then he moves closer to Esther, until he’s almost nose-to-nose with her.

“Well, love,” he says, his mouth distorted by a sneer. “I might be clumsy, but at least I’m not fucking ugly. You might dress like your friend over here, but with that horrible spotty face of yours, you sure as hell don’t look like her. You’re fatter, too.”

Then he lurches off to annoy someone else, while Esther stands silently, watching him go. She looks absolutely stricken, and I feel incredibly angry on her behalf as well as horribly guilty. I know I didn’t make that absolute git say what he did, but if I hadn’t sprayed her in the face, she wouldn’t have been blotchy. And she isn’t “fucking ugly”, either – or fat. She’s just got a bigger bosom than me, that’s all, and shift dresses were created for those of us who are flat of chest.

I tell Esther this, several times, but she just raises her eyebrows at me, and doesn’t bother to reply. The whole thing’s getting more stressful by the minute, especially as Eva’s still on the dance floor getting up close and personal with a young guy who looks familiar – and now an attractive man has come over to ask if he can sit next to me.

I have NO idea what to say in reply – and these horrible sensations are definitely not shivers. It is boiling hot in here.

* * *

Well, this is going well. Eva’s still dancing, Esther’s disappeared, I’ve drunk too much and the good-looking guy keeps trying to talk to me, even though I can barely hear a word he says. Have I suddenly developed early-onset deafness or something? There’s a weird roaring noise in my ears, so maybe it’s my blood pressure rising.

Even when I can hear Mr Good-Looking, I’ve just realised that I have absolutely no idea how to talk to men that I don’t know – or how to flirt with them, anyway. Every time Mr GL says something complimentary, I either try to laugh it off or I find myself giving him a sceptical look, as if he’s taking the piss. I even say, “Yeah, like that’s true” once, like a sulky teenager. I don’t know why he’s still bothering with me at all – or why I’m bothering with him, either, if I’m honest. I’d far rather be sitting at home in comfy clothes and watching TV, while chatting sporadically with Dan. That seems far less boring now than it did when it used to happen every evening, and being with someone without feeling you have to talk to them is like the Holy Grail, at the moment.

What if I never find anyone else I can sit comfortably in silence with? Mr GL’s fine to look at, and he could be the world’s most fascinating conversationalist for all I know, but he’s not Dan. That thought makes me feel as if I’m going to do one of those sudden sobs that keep catching me unawares, so I clamp my lips together and concentrate on breathing in through my nose, thus rendering further conversation impossible on my part, though not on Mr GL’s.

He doesn’t give up easily, I’ll give him that. In fact, he leans in closer and keeps up a continual stream of chatter about God knows what for the next few minutes, until the buzzing of my phone gives me the perfect excuse to move away from his arm, which has just started sneaking its way along the back of my seat. Too much, as well as far too soon.

“Excuse me a minute,” I say, meaning “for the rest of the evening”. Or even for the rest of my life.

Maybe it’s suddenly become obvious that’s how I feel because, as I open my messages, Mr GL stands up and says he’s going to the bar.

“I’d offer you a drink,” he says, “but … well, you know.”

“Yeah, I do,” I say. “Sorry, but thanks anyway. It was nice meeting you.”

I can’t do this stuff. I just can’t. And it seems Esther can’t either, as the text’s from her, apologising for disappearing, and saying she started to feel unwell so she walked to the taxi rank and is now on her way home. I think I’ll follow her example as soon as I find Eva … and send Dan a drunken text.

* * *

Two people complain to me about the state of the loos as I make my way across the club towards where Eva’s still dancing her arse off. Another asks why there are so few bar staff on duty tonight. They might as well just come out with it and say, “You look way too old to be here, unless you’re running the place.”

That’s not an attitude Eva seems to be contending with. As I push past a group of young guys who are standing watching while she shakes her enviable booty, I overhear them taking bets on “who’s going to shag the cougar”. I just hope it’s not the one I know: Joel’s best friend, Marlon, who I’ve always thought was such an innocent! I make a point of saying hello to him in a very disapproving voice, because I’m in loco parentis as his mum’s not here.

Eva nearly has a fit when I tell her Esther left hours ago, and then she demands to know why I didn’t come and join her, rather than sitting on my own “like a Billy-No-Mates”.

“I wasn’t on my own,” I say, “but I’ve had too much to drink and now I want to go home. You stay, and I’ll call you tomorrow. Just don’t sleep with Marlon, Eva – his mum would not approve.”

Eva promises she won’t, albeit with a certain degree of reluctance, and then she peers at me suspiciously.

“Are you all right, Hannah?” she says. “You look a bit tearful, as well as pissed. You’re not going to do anything stupid when you get home, are you? Like drunken texting, for example?”

“No,” I say.

I’ll probably do that as soon as I get into a cab.

* * *

Dan didn’t answer my texts, or his phone, when I rang that instead – which may explain why I’m now hiding behind a bush in his new back garden, watching him through a ground-floor window. I am officially going mad.

Chapter 11

I had no idea Dan’s landlady had a dog! Luckily, it’s one of the handbag kind, so although it snaps at my ankles and yaps when it’s let out into the garden, it doesn’t do any permanent damage, although it does nearly give me a heart attack. If the music Dan, Aasim (the other housemate) and the landlady are playing wasn’t so loud, they’d definitely hear the dog barking and come outside to investigate, so I suppose I should count myself lucky I don’t get caught in fully fledged ex-wife stalker mode. The trouble is, I don’t feel lucky in the slightest and I’m worried I may be losing my mind.

I can’t imagine what got into me, telling the taxi driver to take me to Dan’s on my way home from the club, but seeing my husband enjoying himself with his new housemates when my evening’s been so shitty, certainly doesn’t make me feel any better – and nor does having to fend off a stupid sausage dog with chilly blue eyes and very sharp teeth.

When it first starts trying to bite me, I’m stooping down behind a large evergreen bush, looking in through the uncurtained windows of what’s presumably the dining room. Dan’s in there, sitting at the table with a glass of wine in his hand and engaged in what must be a fascinating conversation, given that he’s paying far more attention to what Aasim is saying than he’s paid to anything I’ve said in years. He looks both animated and relaxed, if one of those adjectives doesn’t preclude the other.

After the dog incident, I probably look even more animated than Dan does, though considerably less relaxed – especially since I’ve just realised who his landlady is. It’s Alice, one of the more junior officers in Dan’s department, the one he always describes as bonkers. I’ve only met her once, briefly, at one of the Council’s Christmas work “do’s”, when she looked at me and nodded when Dan introduced us, then immediately turned her head away and carried on talking to him as if I wasn’t there. While wriggling about a lot, and pulling the wide neckline of her dress further and further off her shoulder, as I recall. She kept saying, “Oops” whenever the top of the dress threatened to fall off completely, as if it was an accident.

Dan said he hadn’t noticed, and he found it funny when I told him later that I thought Alice fancied him.

“She fancies anything in trousers,” he said. “That doesn’t mean anyone fancies her back.”

I took that claim at face value at the time, but I spend my next taxi journey – this time genuinely heading for home – stewing about whether what I’ve just witnessed involved any flirting with Alice by Dan. I’m still undecided by the time the taxi draws up outside my house, as I can’t actually remember how Dan behaves when he is flirting. Hopefully, he’s as rubbish at it as I’ve proved to be tonight. On the basis of that embarrassingly shoddy performance, I’m never going to find a new man and I’m going to be doomed to sleep alone for the rest of my life. Well done, Hannah. Fantastic achievement. Ten out of ten for gross incompetence.

I suppose the only plus is that at least I can wear whatever I like to sleep in now, seeing as no one’s ever going to notice. Joel’s not usually sober late at night, so he doesn’t count, as he’ll either see two of me, or none at all, depending on how close to being shut his eyes are when he finally staggers in after yet another night on the tiles. I’m surprised he wasn’t with Marlon at the club tonight, now I come to think of it, especially now he’s single again. He’s definitely out somewhere, though, as he’s nowhere to be seen when I let myself into the house, so I decide to go straight to bed.

The bedroom’s freezing, and so is the bed, now there’s no warm Dan to curl up against, so I put on a pair of very attractive red polka-dot flannel pyjamas. After that, I add green-and-white striped socks and a hideous leopard-print fleece Claire gave me for my birthday last year. When I glance in the mirror before I get into bed, I look like one of those oscillating paintings by Bridget Riley. One she produced on a very off day.

My name is Hannah Pinkman, and I am sex symbol of the year.

* * *

No sooner have I fallen asleep (it seems) than I wake up again. You can’t drink much during the evening when you get to my age, and certainly not enough gin and tonic to fell an ox. They say gin dries you out, but if it does, it’s only because it’s a diuretic. Now I’m dying for a wee.

I try to ignore the sensation for a minute or so, but then roll out of bed and make my way across the room with my eyes still shut. I’m working on the principle that if I keep them closed, I won’t wake up properly, so then I’ll go straight back to sleep as soon I get back into bed, instead of lying awake fretting for the next few hours. That’s what used to happen every night once Dan moved out, until I developed the “eyes-shut” technique. Now there are no more piles of his discarded clothing forming trip hazards across the bedroom floor, I can usually make it safely to the bathroom without having to open my eyes at all. Note the word “usually”.

Tonight, I open the bedroom door and step out onto the landing with my eyes still closed, and my arms stretched out in front of me. I’m using them to locate the banister rail that runs along the landing, in case I miss where landing ends and stairs begin.

“Arrrrgh!”

Now I’m screaming, because my hands have just touched something warm, squishy and unexpected.

“Ow,” says a voice I’ve never heard before.

Oh, my God, it’s a burglar, and I’ve just poked one of his manboobs.

I open my eyes, blink several times to make sure I’m seeing what I think I’m seeing, and then I close them again, out of a misplaced sense of modesty. There’s a naked girl on the landing, right in front of me. For a few seconds, I try to dodge round her without looking at her, but that just leads to more accidental physical contact, so eventually I have to half-open one eye so I can work out how to negotiate my way to the bathroom without any more squishy surprises. I’m desperate for a wee by now.

“Um, hello,” says the girl, while I stare fixedly over her left shoulder, or as fixedly as you can stare while also hopping up and down.

For one crazy moment, it looks as if she’s going to offer to shake my hand, until she realises that would involve exposure of even greater indecency.

“Who are you?” I say, as we sidle past each other, our eyes downcast.

“Ruby,” she says, as she reaches Joel’s bedroom door, turns the handle and enters the room.

“Nice to meet you,” she adds, before she shuts the door behind her.

I’m not sure I can say the same.

* * *

It’s not just Joel and the naked girl. Everyone is having more sex than me, or talking about it anyway.

I wake up early, despite the hangover, and decide I’ll go to see Pearl, rather than hanging around at home. It’s Sunday, and I’ve no desire to spend the whole morning waiting to encounter Ruby again, whenever she and Joel finally get out of bed.

“Well, you can’t deny your son a sex life, Hannah, just because you don’t have one any more,” says Pearl, as I unpack the blueberry muffins I picked up on my way to her flat.

“I bloody can,” I say, “while he’s living under my roof, and especially when he prevented me and Dan from having one most of the time. We never knew when he was going to come barging in, looking for a missing sock.”

Pearl’s fiddling about with a fancy new coffee machine I’ve never seen before, so I’m not convinced she’s giving the subject of Joel’s inappropriate sex life due consideration.

“He obviously doesn’t realise it’s just as eurgh-inducing for parents to think of their kids’ sex lives as it is the other way round,” I continue. “And my heart’s not up to coping with the stress of meeting naked strangers in the middle of the night.”

Pearl raises her eyebrows, froths some milk, then pours it onto the coffee that she’s already shared between two mugs. Then she starts farting about trying to create fancy patterns in the froth, until I lose my patience and grab my mug. I need caffeine, and I need it now.

“There’s nothing wrong with your heart, my girl,” she says. “Apart from being a bit broken, that is, and that will pass with time. Do you like the coffee maker Dan bought me, by the way?”

Dan’s been to see Pearl? My Aunt Pearl? That’s almost as rich as this fancy coffee.

“Why did he do that?” I ask, putting my mug down and pulling a face. “You’re my aunt, not his, and it’s not your birthday or anything. He shouldn’t be coming to see you now we’ve split up, anyway. What did you two talk about?”

“I’ve been Dan’s aunt-in-law for twenty-seven years,” says Pearl, “and I am fond of him, and he of me. That’s why he bought me a house-warming present, but as for your other question –”

She stops talking and taps her nose. One of her more infuriating habits, I’ve always thought.

“You’ll have to mind your own business on that front, Hannah,” she continues. “I’m following Joel’s lead when it comes to you and Dan. I’m not telling you what Dan says to me, and I’m not telling him what you say, either.”

Joel’s lead? What the hell is going on? Anyone would think that Joel’s the adult and I’m the child, especially now I’m the one having to stuff my fingers in my ears to avoid overhearing him having sex. The world is rapidly going mad.

I scowl at Pearl, then put the kettle on to make some tea. I’ve gone right off coffee now.

Pearl turns the radio on to alleviate the rather awkward silence that ensues, and picks up a magazine from the coffee table. She flicks through the pages while I sit and stew.

“Another muffin?” she says, after a while.

“No, thank you,” I say. “I’m fine as I am.”

It’s possible that I’m undermining the effectiveness of this claim by the way my feet keep jiggling, and my fists are clenched, so I lean over to the coffee table and rummage around for something to read. Amidst the magazines, I find some of those Sunday supplement-style gadget catalogues, so I choose a few of those. If Pearl can sit there ignoring me by pretending to be absorbed in reading something, then I can do the same to her. And gadgets don’t take much concentration, which is good, given how my mind’s still racing.

I open the first catalogue and flick through a few pages showing incontinence aids, massage cushions and adult bibs, when something slips out and falls to the floor.

“Holy shit!” I say.

Something called “Your Free Kinky Sex Booklet” is lying at my feet. It’s generously illustrated, and it almost makes me lose the will to live. If even elderly people are supposed to carry on like fetish models now, I’m never going to get laid again. Imagine having a hot flush while wearing latex!

Pearl tells me not to be silly when I ask if she owns anything rubberised, and then she orders me to be “more open to new experiences”.

“You and Dan got stuck in a rut,” she adds. “Not just when you were together, but in terms of who you are. You both need to be willing to try different things.”

“What – like some of these?” I say, pointing to the small ads in the back of “Free Kinky Sex”.

The men in the photos are ancient, but the girls look as if they’ve just left school.

“Of course not like those,” says Pearl, chucking the leaflet into the wastepaper basket, “but something more daring than learning to row – though that’s a start. What about internet dating? I’m going to give it a try, seeing as there aren’t any good male prospects here at Abandon Hope. There are lots of men on these websites, though, so you could easily meet someone your own age instead of hanging out with oldies like me.”

She pauses, but she can’t resist. I knew she wouldn’t be able to.

“You can’t keep up with us,” she adds.

* * *

I drive home from Pearl’s thinking about what she said about trying new things and, by the time I get there, I’ve decided I’ll join one of those singles’ supper clubs. That’ll kill two birds with one stone: it’ll get me out of the house and meeting men, and save me the bother of having to cook. Joel can go and eat at Dan’s new place on the nights I’m out if he misses Dan’s cooking as much as he says he does. I miss it, too, though not as much as I miss some of the other things Dan used to do. Like dealing with Joel, when he’s being a pain.

I pause on the front doorstep as I recall the naked girl. If she’s still in the house, I hope she’s put some clothes on now. I’ve seen enough naked people in the course of the last twelve hours to last me a lifetime – which it may have to, if I can’t even get my head around flirting with someone new, let alone seeing them naked. Or them seeing me.

When I open the door and step inside, I can tell immediately that the house is empty. You always can tell, though I don’t know why. It must be something subtle only the lizard part of your brain picks up: a lack of disturbance in the air or something like that. Joel’s probably avoiding me, to give me time to calm down about last night’s shock encounter, though it’s going to take a while for that to happen, when I’m still so cross about it.