no, no, no, maybe, no, no, definitely not, you’re the sort of pervert who’d have a foot fetish, no, no, YES. Hello, handsome, stubbly man who looks like a cross between a Jane Austen hero and Jack Sparrow the pirate. That was Max.
He’d asked me out a couple of days after matching, saying he didn’t believe in ‘beating around the bush’. I liked his straightforwardness. No messing about. No dick pics. Just, ‘Fancy a drink?’ I figured it was better to meet and see whether you got on with someone rather than message for several weeks and paint a madly romantic picture of them in your head, then meet up and realize you’d got it wrong and in real life they were a psychopath.
So, even though Max’s question made me want to throw up with nerves, I’d agreed. A tiny, minuscule part of me knew Jess was right, knew that I had to make an effort. Otherwise I’d never get over Jake, the one I used to think was The One before he broke my heart into seventy thousand pieces and turned me into a cynic who had bitter and self-pitying thoughts whenever I saw a couple holding hands on the Tube.
Jake and I had split six months earlier. He split up with me, I should say, if we’re being totally accurate. It was after eight years together, having met at uni. Various friends had started getting engaged and, all right, I’d very occasionally allowed myself to think about what shape diamond Jake might buy for an engagement ring. But only once or twice, tops. Maybe three times. Tragic, I know, but in the absence of a ring I was happy with Jake. I just wanted us – married or not. And I thought he did too. We used to fall asleep making sure we were touching one another every night. My arm over his chest or our feet touching. Or holding hands. And if one of us woke in the night and we’d moved apart, we’d reach out for the other one so we could feel them there again. It was real. I knew it.
Well, some clairvoyant I was. Six months ago, Jake came home from his office to our flat in Angel and told me he that he felt ‘too settled’. That he wanted more excitement. And as I sat at the kitchen table, crying, wondering whether I should offer to dress up as a sexy nun or be more enthusiastic about anal sex, he told me he was moving out to go and live with his friend Dave. It felt so sudden that I could only sit at the kitchen table weeping while Jake packed and left ten minutes later with the overnight bag I’d bought him from John Lewis for his last birthday. With hindsight, not the sexiest purchase. But he’d said he loved it. It had a separate compartment for his wash bag. Practical, no?
The Dave thing turned out to be a front for the fact that Jake had been shagging a 24-year-old called India from his office. Jess and I had devoted hours (whole days, probably), to stalking her on all forms of social media. On Instagram, she was a blonde party girl who never seemed to wear a bra; on LinkedIn, her profile picture showed a more serious India, smiling in a collared shirt, blonde hair tied back in a smooth ponytail. It was also via LinkedIn that Jess and I discovered she’d only been working at Jake’s law firm for two months before he left me.
‘Quick work,’ I’d slurred, pissed, lying belly down on the floor of Jess’s bedroom where we were stalking her on my laptop one evening.
The next day, I’d got an email from Jake.
Lil, you can see who’s been looking at your profile on LinkedIn. I’m not sure this is healthy. Please leave Indy out of it.
Indy indeed. I’d thrown my phone on the floor in a rage and smashed the screen. But my fury was helpful. Anger was more motivational than sadness. Sadness sat in my stomach like a stone and made me cry; anger made me want to get up and do something. I decided I needed to move out of the flat I’d shared with Jake and find another room somewhere. I’d start again. Optimistically, I bought a book about Buddhism and tried a meditation I found on Spotify, half-hoping to wake up cured the following day.
I didn’t wake up cured. But I knew I had to give it time. The oldest cliché there was and the most irritating, depressing thing anyone can say to you when you’re in the depths of a break-up, staring at your phone, longing to message them. Or for them to message you. But the time thing was true. Annoyingly.
Six months later, I was living in a flat in Brixton on a street just behind McDonald’s. My flatmates were an Aussie couple called Riley and Grace – he was a personal trainer, she was a yoga teacher – who made genuinely extraordinary noises when they had sex. I’d joked to Jess that Attenborough should study them (‘And now the male climbs on top of the female’), but they were lovely when they had all their clothes on, and my room was cheap. Plus, India had made her Instagram profile private which meant I couldn’t stalk her any more. Probably better for all of us that way.
So, here I was, on the bus chugging towards Vauxhall for this date with Mystery Max, sweat patches blossoming in the armpits of my new Zara shirt. I’d gone shopping earlier that day for an outfit because my wardrobe was full of sensible work dresses and it felt like the last time I went on a first date women wore bonnets and floor-length gowns. And although the shops seemed to be full of clothes designed for thin hippies – sequinned flares in a size 8, anyone? – I’d eventually found a pair of black jeans that made my legs look less like chicken drumsticks, and a silky black shirt which gave me exactly the right amount of cleavage. Not too Simon Cowell. Just a hint, so long as I was wearing my old padded bra which hoiked my small to average-sized breasts up so high I could practically lick my own nipples.
While showering, I’d had a brief moral battle with myself about whether to shave my legs or not. I didn’t want to go on this date feeling like a rugby player, but there would be no sex because the thought of sleeping with someone other than Jake still terrified me, so what was the point? Plus, I hadn’t bothered for so long my razor was rusty. Can you get tetanus from using a rusty razor? My Google search history was littered with such quandaries: ‘sharp stabbing pain under ribs cancer?’ Or ‘walk 20,000 steps a day lose weight?’
In the end, I’d used Grace’s nice new pink razor and shaved because I thought it was sloppy preparation not to. Like going into battle without armour. I felt a twinge of guilt at blunting her razor on my legs – it was like scything though a jungle with a machete – but I figured certain household items like this could be co-opted in an emergency. I’d told myself the same that morning when I stole the batteries from the flat’s Sky remote for my vibrator. This was an emergency, I decided as I’d sat on my bed, solemnly removing the triple AAAs from one device and sliding them into the other. But I’d also realized this was a new low and that I should probably go out and at least flirt with a human being again. I couldn’t rely on my vibrator all the time. What if I got so used to it that no man could ever make me come again? That happens. I read about it once in a magazine.
I felt my stomach spasm again as we pulled into Vauxhall bus station. It was mostly nerves, I hoped, but Jess’s twin brother Clem, a haphazard cook, had made us curry the night before at their place and I’d spent much of that morning on the loo, trying to ignore the grunting coming from Grace and Riley’s bedroom. I reached into my bag to check I’d brought my Imodium with me. I’d taken one just before leaving the flat but figured I should bring the packet. Just in case. Got to be prepared. The packet was there, safely zipped from sight in my bag’s side pocket. Then I looked at my phone. Missed call from Mum which could 100 pc wait. A message from Max asking what I wanted to drink.
Vodka and tonic please! I texted him back, annoyed at myself for using an exclamation mark – so perky! – but worried I sounded too demanding otherwise.
The bus doors hissed as they opened and my heart sped up at the anxiety. Jesus, come on, Lil. It’s a date, not an induction into a cult. You can do this. Literally thousands of people go on first dates every day. And they weren’t all total disasters. They couldn’t be. Otherwise the human race would die out. It was going to be fine. One or two drinks in the pub with a man, like a normal person. Or at least as much like a normal person as I could manage. I wiped my clammy palms on my jeans as I stepped down from the bus into the sticky evening air.
I continued chiding myself as I walked towards the pub. You’re going to be fine. What did that Spotify meditation say? Breathe. Smile. Imagine your higher self, whatever that was. Ignore your stomach, the Imodium will kick in soon. I pushed open the pub door and was immediately hit by noise from clusters of people ordering at the bar and others laughing at tables. For the billionth