by Lucy Diamond
A form had come up, with lots of boxes to fill in. Name, age, gender, profession, height, colour of eyes . . .
She sniffed again. Did people really care about the height and eye colour of a prospective partner, then? Did they actually specify that they wanted tall, blue-eyed women or short, green-eyed men, as if they were ordering a model from a catalogue? It seemed very shallow and unimportant. She hoped that wasn’t a sign of the sort of clientele Silver and Single attracted.
I am interested in Men__ Women__ Both__ (tick as applicable).
I am searching for Friend__ Partner__ Lover__ Soulmate__ (tick as applicable).
‘Goodness,’ Alison murmured, feeling doubtful. Surely ticking ‘Soulmate’ was wildly optimistic and against all the odds? Still, optimism was good, she reminded herself, marking the box anyway. The next few questions had her stumped, though:
What is your idea of a good first date?
Please describe the person you’d ideally like to meet through this dating site.
Alison’s fingers hung in mid-air above the keyboard, like a pianist about to launch into a concerto, but inspiration remained elusive. It had been well over forty years since she’d been on a first date, after all: fish and chips on the sea front with Rich, and then walking shyly home together hand-in-hand, wondering if he would try to kiss her outside her front door. She pictured herself in the yellow cotton dress she’d liked to wear back then, when her waist was small and the world seemed full of possibilities. It seemed now like something that had happened to another woman.
Dinner, she typed hesitantly in answer to the first question, then had second thoughts and deleted her reply. Because dinner would be full of pitfalls, she realized. And as someone who strongly disliked bad manners at the table – people chomping their food, anyone talking with their mouth full, those idiots who made such a performance of tasting their wine, like they were some kind of connoisseur – Alison was almost certainly going to find herself put off. Maybe dinner was not the best option. The cinema, then? A play? At least she wouldn’t have to talk much, and there’d be less chance of disaster striking by her saying something daft, she reasoned. Then again, what if the date was more cultured than her and opted to see something highbrow and confusing? She’d end up feeling stupid, with nothing to say for herself. And what if the date was a perv who just wanted to take advantage of the dark surroundings to start fondling her thigh – or worse?
A walk on a summer’s day, she typed instead. That sounded romantic, at least, didn’t it? But heavens, what would she wear? Shorts and hiking boots? It wasn’t exactly a sexy look, even with her hair and make-up done. Plus – more alarmingly – you got some real weirdos, didn’t you, these days, who might attack her in the middle of nowhere, who might strangle her in a sunny meadow, dismember her on a remote part of the headland. She’d be found days later by dog walkers. Imagine Robyn’s bewildered face when the police knocked on her door to tell her the news.
No. No walks. No dinner, cinema or theatre.
A drink in the pub and a good chat, she typed eventually and left it at that, before she could start worrying about how cheap and unadventurous this answer might make her look. Bugger it, she’d be here all night otherwise.
Okay, next question: the person she’d ideally like to meet. Her mind went completely blank as she tried to think. When she’d first considered the possibility of another relationship, she’d really only imagined someone sitting beside her, companionably watching telly with her (and not talking through all the dramatic bits). Someone who might say, ‘Fancy a cup of tea, love?’ every now and then or ‘Why don’t we try that new restaurant that’s opened in town?’ or ‘Let’s go for a rummage around the antiques market together’. Maybe this ideal person of hers could mow the lawn for her too, once in a while, sort the kitchen drain out. But she could hardly put that down on a dating site, could she? It wasn’t exactly the most romantic line in the world. And just imagine the conversations that might follow!
‘So, what attracted you to Alison in the first place?’
‘Oh, it was the fact she was looking for a fella to fix her plumbing for her and put the kettle on. She sounded like my dream woman. How could anyone resist?’
Dear Lord, she’d have to come back to that later, she decided. Maybe once she’d had another gin and felt more inspired. Now then, next:
Describe yourself in a few sentences. What are the best things about you?
The best things about her? Help. She was good at cutting hair . . . She had an encyclopaedic knowledge of every soap opera going . . . She . . . Oh, this was useless. Surely it wasn’t supposed to be so hard to dredge up a few positive things about yourself?
Wait – she’d missed a bit, in brackets below the last question:
If you’re not sure what to say here, ask a friend or loved one to list what’s great about you. Don’t be modest!
Alison felt her shoulders slump. She could ask Robyn, she supposed, but her daughter would seize upon the news that her stubbornly unsociable mother was daring to dip a toe in the dating pool (‘Finally!’ she imagined Robyn crying) and would never let her hear the end of it. Any replies? she’d ask, giggling like it was a big joke. Any dates? Let’s have a look at what’s on offer – ooh, he’s nice. What about him?
No. The mortification of this little scenario had quite changed her mind about Silver and Single now. She just wasn’t ready yet, after all. Mo would tease her and make chicken noises at her, but so be it. Nobody else had to know. Sometimes it was best to stay in the safety of your own comfort zone, wasn’t it? And so what if that comfort zone felt as if it was becoming a tiny bit boring occasionally? So what if other people had more exciting lives? Alison knew her place and it was right here at home, managing perfectly well all by herself, just as she had done for the last thirty-three years.
She went in, switched on the television and sat there, doing her best to ignore the tiny part of her that felt disappointed.
Robyn still wasn’t any the wiser as to what had happened to John’s job, and why he had apparently lost it in such unceremonious fashion. She had brought up the subject of the ‘redundancy’ a couple of times, giving him the opportunity to correct her, and yet for whatever reason he had chosen not to tell her the truth. If anything, she could feel him edging away from her, looking for excuses not to be on his own with her, whenever possible. He’d even started going to bed after she did, staying up to watch films or late-night current-affairs programmes with his dad and then creeping up in the early hours, once he could be sure she was asleep.
Robyn didn’t know what to do, how to start the conversation. How did you go about saying to your husband, Look, I know you’ve been lying to me. I know you were sacked, without getting tangled up in your own confessions of going behind his back with phone calls to his former secretary? Neither of them came out looking like an honest, trusting spouse in this scenario. And yet it was driving her crazy, his resistance to just being straight with her.
‘Maybe we could have a chat later tonight,’ she suggested on Friday evening when, for once, the two of them were alone in the kitchen. Harry was having a very competitive game of badminton outside in the back garden with the children – ‘You two against me, that’s fair, seeing as I’m absolutely not going to give you an easy time of it,’ he’d said – and Robyn had been bashing steaks with a rolling pin, when John walked in and began pulling open the drawers.
‘What was that?’ he asked distractedly, rifling through the contents. ‘For heaven’s sake, what do our kids do with all the chargers in this house?’ he grumbled, slamming them all shut again in defeat.
‘I said, we could have a chat tonight, just the two of us,’ Robyn repeated. ‘Maybe ask Harry to babysit, so that we could go out somewhere for a change. Because I think we need to—’
He cut her off before she could get any further. ‘Ah. I said I’d go for a drink with Stephen – sorry,’ he said, then spotted a charger plugged in by the kettle and attached h
is phone with a muttered ‘At last’. And then he was hurrying out to join Harry and the kids – safety in numbers – and that seemed to be the end of the matter.
Except that later on in the evening, a good hour after John had changed his shirt and left the house in a waft of spicy aftershave, there was a knock at the front door. Robyn opened it to see – well, to see Stephen himself, of all people. Sans John. ‘Oh!’ she exclaimed, puzzled. ‘Is John all right?’
He seemed surprised by the question. ‘Er . . . far as I know?’ he replied cagily. ‘I was just popping round to see Dad actually, if he’s around.’
‘Right,’ said Robyn, still holding on to the door, trying to make sense of this. ‘It’s just that John said he was meeting you this evening, so . . .’
There was only the tiniest twist of alarm on Stephen’s face before his expression became smooth and guileless once more. He was a solicitor, used to thinking on his feet, trained in inscrutability. ‘Um, yeah,’ he said with a little laugh, raking a hand through his dark hair. ‘He’s in the pub with a couple of others. I just thought I’d swing by, see if Dad wanted to join us, that was all. If he’s here?’
‘Right,’ said Robyn, not believing this for a second. She knew the three Mortimer brothers had all been heart-breakers in their youth, and this deft covering for one another was no doubt a reflex response, still there, deep in their blood. The stories they must have told to unsuspecting admirers, the tales they’d no doubt woven to protect each other. And now, unless she was completely mistaken, this was happening to her. Really, Stephen? she wanted to ask, eyeballing him. But how could she quiz him without sounding like a fishwife? ‘Yes, come in, he’s in the living room,’ she managed to mumble after a few moments.
Having shown her brother-in-law inside, Robyn went and skulked in the kitchen, unable to bear the indignity of eavesdropping on whatever concocted excuse Stephen was giving Harry – Don’t let on, all right? Mum’s the word – and gripped her own fists tight, tight, tighter, as she wondered where John was and what the hell was going on. Did the rest of the family know what her husband was up to? Had she become a figure of pity amidst the Mortimers, excluded from the secret while they closed ranks against her?
No. She was getting paranoid. Jumping to wild, unfounded conclusions. All the same, she could feel John pulling away from the relationship, slipping out in his own direction alone, with no backward glance, no thought of inviting her along. Just like he’d slipped out tonight with a cover story that had proved to be full of holes almost immediately.
She shivered, gazing out into the garden where the shadows were thickening below the hedges, where the swing swayed childlessly in a ghostly breeze. She had married into the Mortimers, glad to see the back of those years as an only child, happy to be caught up as part of this large, friendly family. Except . . . as it transpired, you could still feel lonely amidst a crowd. You could still end up very much on your own, stranded on the sidelines, if it turned out the others wanted to put you there.
‘Rob?’ There was Stephen again, popping his head round the door, as she stood by the sink, silent as a doll. ‘I’m off. Dad’s staying in after all, so I’d better get back to the lads. What’s the betting it’ll be my round?’ He was smiling as if nothing was wrong, but she could see embarrassment and awkwardness in his smile. Apology even, because it was obvious then that John was meeting someone else, rather than waiting at a pub table for his brother’s return.
‘Sure,’ she said, without smiling back. She felt as if her heart was splintering. Stephen had always been a great brother-in-law, full of funny gossipy stories, affectionate and teasing at all times, and a brilliant uncle to her children. But now he looked stiff and uncomfortable, as if he couldn’t wait to leave. Don’t get me involved, his body language was saying. Robyn swallowed, part of her wanting to interrogate him like one of his own cross-examinations. What did he know? What was going on? ‘Okay. Have a good evening, then,’ she said unhappily, in the end. ‘Give my love to Ed.’
He came over and gave her an impulsive hug, and she breathed in his gorgeous cologne. ‘I will, darling, thanks,’ he said. ‘Take care, yeah?’
And then he was gone, and she was closing the front door again, her mind crawling with awful thoughts. Take care, he’d said, like he was worried about her. Like she should be worried for herself. She cringed at the thought of Stephen going back to Eddie and announcing this new drama. I was mortified! she imagined him exclaiming. What was I supposed to say? And what the hell is John up to, anyway?
Canned laughter blared out into the subdued silence of the house, as Harry put the TV on in the living room. Did Harry know John was up to something? she wondered miserably. Did Paula? She hadn’t seen her sister-in-law since the anniversary party, in fact, which was odd – usually the two of them caught up fairly regularly for coffee, or a chat on the phone. Was she keeping her distance deliberately? Robyn fretted. If push came to shove, John was Paula’s brother after all, just as he was Stephen’s. She was pretty sure she knew where the family loyalties would lie.
More canned laughter came from the living room – HAHAHAHAHAHA – and the sound of Harry chuckling along, too. Robyn’s heart raced with anxiety as she wondered if there was anyone she could talk to about this, anyone at all. Her mum – no. Having always made such a thing about the Mortimers and how much she loved being part of their big family, it would require a huge, mortifying loss of face for Robyn to confess that this same family might actually be closing ranks against her now.
In terms of finding out what had happened with John’s job, the university probably wouldn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know, either; they would build a brick wall of confidentiality, if she tried poking around for any more information. Which meant that the only person who might be able to help was Beth Broadwood, the mum from school who’d let slip the news about John losing his job in the first place.
Oh God, thought Robyn miserably. It would be so humiliating, though, having to go to another woman – a woman she didn’t even really know very well – in order to beg for some squalid little titbits about her husband. She wasn’t so desperate as to stoop to that, was she?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA went the television again, and Robyn sighed heavily into the quiet hallway.
Was she?
Chapter Fourteen
Bunny had been at the absolute end of her tether, that was the thing. She just couldn’t stand it any longer. That was what she had told the police when they came to see her in the hospital, one male officer, one female, both stern-faced as they sat in the plastic chairs at her bedside and asked her question after question. ‘I just wanted him to stop,’ she had sobbed, engulfed by another wave of tears as she relived the moment all over again.
Funny word, ‘tether’. It made her think of a greying piece of rope used to tie up a farm animal to prevent it from wandering off unchecked. Which was appropriate, really, when that was exactly how her marriage to Mark Roberts had been. All under his control; her the nervous sheep who knew her place, him the master who kept her there. Oh, he’d been charming at first, of course. They always are, said the fierce-but-kind female QC who had defended her in court. When they want to be, that is.
Mark had seemed like the perfect man when she met him: charismatic and funny, handsome too, with his muscular physique and unusual grey eyes. He was a local councillor for the town and hugely popular in the area, after seeing off plans for a bypass that would have cut straight through school playing fields and woodland. Back then she’d been a size twelve, confident and happy, always laughing about something or other. ‘What a lovely couple,’ their friends had said. ‘You two are made for each other!’ And that was what she had thought too, right up until a fortnight before they got married, when Mark knocked her flying across the room.
It was the oldest story in the book. Tale as old as time, as her Disney-obsessed niece Chloe liked to sing. Because he was so desperately sorry, he had said, as she lay there winded on the floor, her head
throbbing where it had smacked against the wall on the way down. Their eyes had met in a terrible moment of silence: herself stunned, Mark aghast, the room seemingly holding its breath. It would never happen again, he had assured her, gathering her into his arms. Please, would she forgive him? Could she give him another chance?
They were due to get married in two weeks and everything had been booked, arranged, paid for. A beautiful ivory dress hung in her mum’s wardrobe, their friend Rhona was planning a meringue extravaganza for the cake, there were two boarding passes for their honeymoon flight to Sardinia already printed and in a safe place with an envelope of euros and the passports. And he was a local hero, a good person – everyone said so!
Of course none of these lines of argument validated staying with a man who had hit you, but they certainly weighed on her mind while Mark was prostrating himself before her with contrition. Whatever, she must have been an idiot because she had said yes, she would forgive him. Yes, she still wanted to marry him; and yes, she would give him another chance.
But then it happened again. And again. And within the space of a year he’d quite run out of chances, and they had both stopped being quite so shocked about his sudden violent tendencies. By then she had begun comfort-eating her way into a corner and didn’t know how to get out.
It went on and on. She became fatter and fatter. And the bigger she became, the angrier his rages and the smaller she felt inside, until she eventually felt like nothing, a speck of dirt on the floor, insignificant and pathetic and weak. The laughter stopped. It was hard to look Mark in his charming, handsome face any more. His muscular body had stopped being something to lust after, becoming instead something to fear, to cower away from whenever he moved unexpectedly.
