chandeliers; hotel rooms with four poster beds; waiting staff wearing crisp waistcoats carrying trays of drinks. The sound of a phlegmy throat being cleared suddenly pierces my daydream.
‘That doesn’t look like a medical research paper to me, Sophia,’ Ted barks, over my shoulder.
I swivel round.
‘Sorry, Ted, I just…’ I rack my brains for a reasonable excuse.
‘I was just… researching venues for the ummm… office Christmas party,’ I tell him even though it’s only September and our last Christmas party took place in dingy greasy spoon down the road called Janine’s. All the food was either brown or beige: Scotch eggs, sausage rolls, crisps and salted peanuts, washed down with flat Prosecco.
‘Just get back to work,’ Ted huffs, before stomping back to his desk.
‘Will do,’ I mutter.
I click on to Dream Dates.
Sophialj:
8 p.m. at The Cavendish Club would be perfect.
See you there. X
I quickly add my phone number and hit send. Ted shoots me a warning look and I awkwardly smile back before getting on with my work.
Come Friday night, I’m at a West End bar. Kate has just got out of the Globe and is still wearing her heavily contoured stage make-up, which always looks odd when paired with black leggings and a baggy jumper. A group of us have gathered to celebrate our friend Cassie’s twenty-ninth birthday.
‘So, this is Mike,’ Cassie says, introducing us to her new boyfriend. He looks round the group, blushing a little, before he’s swept up in a frenzy of hand-shaking and hugs. Cassie grins. Kate and I shared a flat with her briefly after university until her habits of burning sage, chanting spells and leaving handmade wands (aka tree branches) everywhere began to get a bit much. Then when our tenancy ran out, Kate made up some elaborate excuse about landlords and council tax or something so that we wouldn’t have to endure any more amateur witchcraft. Still, we both felt a bit guilty, especially when Cassie moved into a miserable basement studio in Elephant and Castle, so we’ve always made an effort to keep in touch.
‘Nice to meet you all,’ Mike says, shrinking back towards Cassie. She clutches his hand.
‘So how did you guys meet?’ Laura, another old friend, asks over the music.
Mike and Cassie smile awkwardly and I notice Cassie squeezing Mike’s hand a little tighter.
‘Online,’ Cassie admits. ‘OkCupid. I saw this little thumbnail of Mike. He looked so adorable! I sent him a message and then that was it, we started messaging 24/7. We were on the phone every day for hours. Even before I met him, I just knew,’ she insists, giddily.
‘Awww…’ Kate and everyone else gushes.
Mike smiles sheepishly.
‘So how long have you been together?’ Kate asks.
‘About three months now,’ Mike tells her, taking a sip of his pint.
‘Yep, we had our three-month anniversary on Tuesday,’ Cassie adds. ‘Mike even got me a ring for it.’ She holds out her right hand, brandishing a silver Celtic ring featuring two little hands cupping a heart.
Kate inspects it. ‘Pretty,’ she squeaks in the slightly high-pitched voice she always uses when she’s lying.
‘It’ll be an engagement ring next!’ John, one of our other university friends, adds.
Cassie and Mike laugh, brushing off the suggestion, but not without exchanging a quick, meaningful look as if they might have already discussed it. They seem so close. They even look similar with their dark choppy hair, thick-framed nerdy glasses and big green eyes. I smile awkwardly. All of my university friends are now either married or on track towards getting married. John got hitched to Rose, his girlfriend of four years, recently. Laura married Simon last year. Rich got engaged to Jack a few months ago. Lucy’s still going strong with her childhood sweetheart, Ahmed, and, of course, Kate’s got Max. Thankfully, he’s still on stage tonight, because then I’d well and truly be the thirteenth wheel.
‘What about you, Sophia?’ Rich pipes up and in one horrible swoop, everyone looks round.
‘Yeah, how’s the love life?’ Jack adds.
‘It’s all right,’ I grumble. I’m half-tempted to tell them all about Daniel, but I haven’t confessed to Kate that I didn’t delete my Dream Dates profile, let alone admit that I arranged a date.
‘There just don’t seem to be any decent guys out there,’ I sigh.
‘That’s not true.’ Rich shakes his head defiantly. ‘There are plenty.’
Jack shoots him a look, but Rich carries on, oblivious.
‘Your problem is you’re too fussy.’
‘I’m not, there just aren’t—’ I start to protest but Rich cuts me off.
‘Remember when I set you up with James from work? Then when you and me met up the next day, you said you wouldn’t go on a second date with him because he didn’t pronounce his Ts properly?’
‘I think you mean, “when you and I met up the next day”,’ I say.
Rich slowly shakes his head.
‘Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with fancying well-spoken people!’
‘Or the time you turned down that guy after he told you his entire outfit cost ten pounds,’ Cassie adds, grinning naughtily.
‘He was a cheapskate! Anyway, disposable clothes, disposable man.’ I take a swig of my G and T.
‘Oh yeah,’ John pipes up. ‘And then there was that Jim Morrison guy you thought was the dog’s bollocks, then when you went on a date, you ran a mile.’
‘I sobered up. Beer goggles. I didn’t expect him to actually look like dog’s bollocks!’
Lucy joins in. ‘What about when you broke up with that really hot guy, Corey, after two weeks because you didn’t like his feet,’ she reminds me.
‘They were Hobbit feet,’ I insist. ‘Anyway, guys, can you stop giving me a hard time!’
‘Oh!’ Kate slaps the bar, recalling something. ‘Remember last week you refused to message that really nice guy on Match.com because he wrote that he was looking for his “partner in crime” and you said you couldn’t stand that.’ She grins wickedly.
‘I can’t! I’d honestly rather die alone than match with yet another guy looking for their “partner in crime”.’
They all tut and shake their heads, but they just don’t get it. They’re coupled up – oblivious to the daily struggles of the dating scene. Thankfully, ‘I Bet You Look Good On the Dance Floor’ by Arctic Monkeys comes on, a classic song from our university days, and everyone forgets about my shambles of a love life and runs off to dance. Arctic Monkeys blends into ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast and everyone’s dancing and happy. Rich twerks against Jack, who keeps pretending to spank him. Cassie’s twirling around in her dreamy ethereal way as if she’s not at a busy London bar at all but seeing in the morning sun at a summer solstice party, while Mike cuts shapes around her like a malfunctioning robot. Lucy’s smiling to herself as Ahmed plants a kiss on her neck. John’s dancing close to Rose and Laura’s got her arms around Simon’s neck. Thank God for Kate, who’s singing along and grooving with me like the old days.
The DJ puts on a slower song, one that Kate and I don’t know the words to, and as we dance, my mind begins to wander to the hard time my friends always give me about my pickiness with guys. I get that they