and tried not to think about the harm she was doing every day.
He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter what I think, Helen. I’m just some random computer genius and, as you pointed out, I’m participating in the evil by fixing the site. So don’t worry so much. OK?’
‘OK,’ she muttered, tying her dressing gown tighter.
‘Are you all right?’ He looked at her keenly. ‘You seem somewhat suboptimal.’
‘Yes, I’m just—I was up late, and this is a bit of a shock.’
‘It’s all fine now. Computer wizard. Expelliarmus.’ He made a bizarre air-wand gesture. ‘You’re still upset though?’ She shrugged. Of course she was. ‘Do you mind if I…’ He reached out one large finger and touched her on the forehead, between her eyebrows, pressing hard.
Helen felt an instant relief of tension. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Pressure points. Helps with the anxiety. Well, bye then. I’d say it was nice to meet you but in all honesty I think it just made you intensely uncomfortable.’
As he left she realised it was the first time a man had been in her flat in two years. Well, a human man, anyway.
‘YRRROOOWWL!’
Helen felt an affectionate blood-drawing scratch on her bare leg and bent down to pick up Mr Fluffypants, her sociopathic Persian cat. Green eyes, fluffy white fur, weighing the same as a small Rottweiler. She was very well aware that she was a living stereotype, but when everything kicked off two years ago it had seemed inevitable she’d become a tragic spinster, so she gave in and got a damn cat. And some cushions. And learned to crochet. She had her eye on a foot spa next.
She kissed the cat’s fluffy head. ‘Who’s a good kitty? You’re the only man I need, aren’t you? You’ll never leave me?’
‘YROOOOWWWL!’ Mr Fluffypants, spotting a bird in the garden, shot from Helen’s arms and right out the cat flap. She sighed. Story of her life.
* * *
Ani.
Ani read Marnie’s email on her work computer, squinting at the weird fonts and emojis, and immediately dashed off a message to Rosa asking if she’d seen it too. There was no way she was doing it. No. Way. Anyway, she had other fish to fry. Didn’t she?
She took a deep breath, flexed her fingers over the keyboard, and called up a different email address. Hi! Hope you had a good Christmas?
Was it too late for that, in January? She changed it to: Hi! Happy New Year!
Too many exclamation marks? She deleted the first one. Still on for tonight then? Where shall we go?
Maybe she should wait for the response before asking where to go—it might seem too forward. But then, maybe it was dangerous to leave the suggestion open that it wouldn’t go ahead. She needed this to go ahead.
‘Are you OK, Ani?’
She looked across at her colleague, Catherine, who was spooning up quinoa salad from Tupperware and Googling yoga retreats. ‘Fine, why?’
‘You were sort of…muttering to yourself.’
‘Oh. Just…thinking of strategies for the Leyton divorce.’
‘The one where she stole all his limited-edition tiepins and had them melted down?’
‘Yes. He’s suing her for five grand. Who even spends five grand on tiepins?’ Ani shook her head. There it was, every single day—the end of love, the terrible things people did to each other when it had all burned away. Sod it. Tonight couldn’t go as badly wrong as that—there just wasn’t time. She pressed send with a firm click, and then she pushed back her work chair and lifted her Radley bag. Everyone in the office looked up in surprise—Ani was an inveterate desk-luncher. ‘Going out,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ll be an hour or so. Or, you know. An hour exactly.’
What Ani had not told any of her friends, largely because she was doing her best not to think about it herself, was that she already had a date that night. Date number forty-eight in the space of a year. Though it was a new year now, so perhaps she could start again from zero. Perhaps this would be the one, and it would all work out, and she wouldn’t have to go on any more internet dates, wouldn’t have to swipe right and left until her thumb went numb, and definitely wouldn’t have to take part in Marnie’s ridiculous dating pact idea.
She’d met Will at a birthday party before Christmas—the kind of thing she’d usually avoid, a lot of lawyers, drinks in a chain bar with watered-down cocktails, desultory chats about house prices. One of the couples in the group, Phil and Jemmy—him red cords and coffee breath, her ski tan and tight rictus smile—had got engaged recently and planned to hire a ‘lovely little barn’ in the Cotswolds for a mere twenty grand. Ani had watched her friend Louise, whose birthday it was, exclaim over the ring, while Jake, her boyfriend, stared uncomfortably into his Peroni.
‘Yay! Another wedding.’
She’d looked up at the unexpected sardonic tone—wondering if for a second her thoughts had developed a voice of their own—and saw a man scowling beside her. He was pleasant-looking, with a square-ish face, corduroy jacket, and pink cocktail in his hand, which he was sucking at determinedly through a straw.
She gave him a sideways look. ‘It’ll be lovely I’m sure. Very original. Dove release, probably.’
‘Wishing tree. Pictures of the couple holding up thank-you signs. Japes when the first-dance music starts out romantic then goes into “Smack My Bitch Up”.’
Ani looked at him properly. ‘Not a wedding fan?’ She was already thinking, But what if he’s single and we hit it off and he doesn’t want to get married what will I tell my parents maybe it wouldn’t work maybe I shouldn’t date him. The part of her brain that could pinpoint potential areas for defence in a heartbeat could also have her married to and divorced from a man in 0.3 seconds.
The man’s face fell, but he kept drinking, talking around the glittery straw. ‘My fiancée just left me. Sort of put me off.’
Was it a bad idea, dating such a recent dumpee? It was times like this that Ani missed Marnie, despite her flakiness. There was no point in asking long-married Rosa about dating: ‘Just be open and tell him how you feel, what could possibly go wrong?’ Or Helen, who never dated at all: ‘What’s the point? Bet the fiancée dumped him for good reason, like he picks his nose or wears her pants.’ But Marnie would listen to every last detail, then say he sounded lovely and she was sure it would all work out. Even if he didn’t, and it definitely a hundred per cent wouldn’t.
As Ani walked aimlessly towards the shops, her phone dinged. Was it him? What if he cancelled, or if his vague suggestion of meeting up hadn’t been serious? She’d messaged him after they met, carefully non-committal, so that if he replied ‘OMG of course I don’t want to date you, YOU HEARTLESS CRONE’ she could claim she was just being polite. Plausible deniability, that was the key in dating. And also in defending people who’d made some pretty serious errors of judgement in life (same thing really). And he’d replied, We should meet up again sometime, but was that just something people said? What if he’d changed his mind over Christmas? Got back with the fiancée?
It was him. Her fingers shook slightly as she scrolled. Hi! Happy New Year. How about a curry maybe—Brick Lane or something? It was an odd choice for a first date—too formal, too pressured—but she let him off, as he was out of practice. She replied Sure OK x, taking care not to be too enthusiastic. She didn’t want him to think it was anything better than a solid uninspired choice. Game on.
Nervy and tense, Ani wandered up and down the aisles in Boots, with a vague uneasy sense that she ought to be doing things to herself. Buffing. Moisturising. Plumping up some of her hairs and removing some of the others. She bought a limp prawn sandwich and some Ribena, then found herself staring at the rack of condoms by the till. Uh-uh. Rule number one of dates—you