by Alison May
‘It’s just that circus performers and magicians are a very specific request.’
Tania nods. ‘You said it wouldn’t be a problem.’
‘Well it is quite short notice.’
Tania slumps back in the seat. ‘You promised you could arrange it.’ She sighs. ‘The party is important. Magic and folklore and midsummer – I can picture it all.’
‘Why’s it so important?’
Tania smiles without looking at either of us. ‘My grandparents were circus performers you know. I mean a long time ago before I was born. They were known as The Amazing ...’ She stops suddenly and looks at me and then at Mia. ‘Sorry. It was a long time ago.’ She turns back to Mia. ‘Circus performers and magicians. That’s what we’re paying for.’
Mia squirms. ‘Well perhaps if I had a slightly more generous budget to offer?’
Tania nods. ‘Fine.’
Of course Tania’s happy to spend more money. It’s not her money, is it? It’s Dad’s. Circus performers though. That’s unusual. I add it to my mental list of what we know about Tania. Cornish grandmother. Circus family. Worked in a cocktail bar. It’s still not a very long list.
Dominic
Dominic rang the doorbell at precisely 7.43p.m. The instruction Emily had given him was 7.30p.m. for eight, and he’d been pacing the adjacent streets since twenty past seven. Never be too early. That had been one of his father’s many number one rules for life. Apparently if you were too early they would know you were keen and have the advantage over you. Dominic was unclear about who the great never-specified they of whom his father lived in fear of might be, but was increasingly concerned that Dominic, himself, might have become one of them.
Theo’s fiancée answered the door. Dominic arranged his face into a smile and held out the bottle of wine he’d bought on the way. She took it off him and glanced at the label. Dominic wondered whether it was good wine, and whether she would know any better than him if it wasn’t. He was more of a beer man himself.
‘Lovely.’ Tania smiled at the wine and smiled at Dominic. ‘Come in.’
They negotiated the niceties of greetings and jackets being taken and squirreled away. Not being allowed to hang up one’s own jacket seemed, to Dominic, to be the middle class’s way of ensuring their guests stayed a respectable amount of time. “You can’t leave,” the gesture intimated. “We have your coat.”
He settled himself on the sofa while his hostess excused herself in the direction of the kitchen. So, here he was. All on his own. Where was Emily? Where was Theo? Was he early? Had he committed the sin of looking too keen after all? He glanced around the room. It was a room. It was what his mother would term, “a bit modern”, but that simply implied that it had been decorated in a style this side of 1983. Actually the house, he guessed, was Georgian. It was a big, generous town house, that had probably only cost Professor Midsomer a few thousand pounds back in the 1970s. Dominic tried not to think about what percentage of his academic’s salary got eaten up by the mortgage on his much smaller home every month.
A photograph on the fireplace caught his eye and he stood to take a closer look. It was a town, with what looked like a Roman amphitheatre in the background. Tania and Professor Midsomer were standing together in the centre of the frame, hands clasped, huge smiles across their faces.
‘Where we met.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Dominic dropped the photograph back onto the mantelpiece and turned.
Professor Midsomer was standing behind him. ‘That’s quite all right.’
He moved to shake the younger man’s hand. ‘They were wonderful days.’
Dominic glanced back at the shot, and remembered the story from the engagement party. ‘Verona?’
Tania’s voice cut in from the doorway. ‘On holiday.’
‘I wasn’t on holiday!’ There was a touch of indignation in her fiancé’s tone. ‘It was a conference.’
She laughed. ‘Of course. It looks like he was working hard, doesn’t it?’
They fell into silence. Dominic swallowed. He was supposed to be making a good impression on Professor Midsomer, but was without his usual artillery for impressing the boss. Bringing a copy of your most recent published work to dinner seemed wrong, and it wasn’t really the right moment to launch into a Powerpoint outlining strategies for improving student retention. What could he do that would say, ‘good enough for Daddy’s little princess’? Conversation. He probably ought to try to make some.
‘So ... Professor.’
‘Oh, call me Theo for goodness sake.’
‘So, Theo.’ Theo? Of course he knew the professor’s first name. It was just that he’d never actually heard any of his colleagues use it. Anyway ... ‘Theo, erm, wedding plans going well?’
Theo laughed. ‘Oh Tania has all that under control.’
Tania nodded. ‘Actually, we’re sending out the invitations this week.’
Theo smiled. ‘And Emily’s been helping.’ Theo gestured for Dominic to sit on the armchair before joining his fiancée on the sofa.
Tania nodded. ‘Yes. Emily’s been very involved.’
A noise came from the doorway. ‘Well, Daddy doesn’t have time for things like wedding planning, do you?’
Theo chuckled indulgently, as Tania turned slightly away and stood. ‘I’ll check on dinner.’
Emily watched her stepmother-in-waiting leave the room, before taking her place on the sofa next to her father.
Dinner, when it was served, was a Quorn mince chilli with corn bread. Emily rolled her eyes. ‘You know Daddy likes steak.’
Tania popped on a smile. ‘His arteries might not agree.’
Emily turned to Dominic. ‘It’s crazy. Yoga and Reiki and half of what we eat seems to be made of seaweed!’
‘Well this is delicious.’ It really was. He wouldn’t have known it wasn’t beef if Emily hadn’t kept going on about it.
Emily continued. ‘And what was that thing you were doing when I came in on Saturday?’
Tania’s face coloured slightly. ‘Meditating.’
‘Yeah but with all the scarves and stuff.’
‘Colour meditation. Different colours invoke different moods. That was green.’ Tania raised her gaze towards Emily. ‘It’s for serenity.’
Dessert was brought and eaten. Theo started a conversation about a research paper he’d recently reviewed, allowing Dominic to chime in on safer ground. It was a paper about the cultural significance of the image of the bowman in medieval popular culture. Dominic listened to himself arguing that the notion of the principled bowman was a Tudor construct, and had one of those out of body moments. He sounded interested, passionate even, but the Dominic listening was bored senseless by the Dominic talking. The bowmen were all several centuries dead.
He made his excuses soon after dinner. Being in the midst of someone’s family felt good, but also alien. It reminded him of visits to his aunts and uncles houses when he was younger. They always felt a few degrees warmer than his own home. He liked that feeling. If he ever had a family of his own he wanted it to feel like that. He wanted children running in and out and no stress about people being too loud or too clumsy.
Emily walked him to the porch, and paused, leaning on the door frame. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘Thank you for inviting me.’ There was something else he ought to say. ‘And sorry.’
She looked up, straight into his eyes. ‘What for?’
‘I know I’ve been a bit off since my father ...’
‘I know.’ She took his hand. ‘We’re okay though, aren’t we?’
He understood what she was asking. That was one thing he and Emily definitely had going. He understood her need for reassurance, even if neither of them ever spoke of it out loud. ‘Of course we are.’
He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘You could come back to mine, if you wanted? I can give you a lift to work tomorrow.’
She nodded. ‘Give me two minutes to get some stuff.’
He waited
on the doorstep looking out into the cold, black sky. For a second he fancied he could feel himself spinning away into the night, cut loose from his moorings, drifting beyond his own control.
‘Are you ready to go?’
Emily was back at his elbow. He nodded, and gripped her hand. It was something, at least, to hold onto.
Helen
Helen pulled her jacket tight around her as she walked, trying to keep the hint of drizzle off her clothes. It was early evening, middle of the week, and the city centre was quiet. ‘So I’ve been doing some reading about this.’
Alex groaned. ‘Of course you have.’
‘Well there’s nothing wrong with being prepared.’ She paused to wait for the road to clear before they crossed. It was speed dating night. Helen’s personal idea of hell. She tried to stop her brain dwelling on the sleaziness and hint of desperation about the whole idea. She hadn’t had a date for four years. Maybe desperation was appropriate. ‘Anyway, women are generally more selective than men at speed dating events. But that’s cancelled out by the sitting down bias.’
‘What?’
‘Well, as I understand it, normally one gender stays sitting down and the other moves around. The sitting down people generally end up being much choosier than the moving round people. So it’s better to be sitting down basically.’
‘Right.’ Alex stopped outside a bar. ‘I don’t think you get to decide that though.’
Inside, tables were set out around three sides of the room, with the bar at the far end. Alex raised an eyebrow in Helen’s direction. ‘Drink?’
She nodded. ‘Just a coke.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re not having a drink drink?’
Of course she wasn’t. She needed to keep a clear head to assess the potential candidates. She surveyed the opposition. There was quite a wide variety in terms of age and looks. Some women had gone for the full make-up and mini-dress combo. Others, like Helen, had gone for jeans and a nice top. Well it was quite a nice top. It was second-hand, but completely free of holes and obvious stains. The point was that she wasn’t horrendously underdressed. Alex returned with her drink. ‘See anyone you fancy?’
Helen looked around again, this time focusing on the male half of the gathered throng. It was a varied bunch. Some of them looked relatively clean and presentable. She shrugged.
At the bar end of the room a woman tapped her pen against a glass for attention. She welcomed everyone to the event and ran through the ground rules. You got four minutes with each person. Everyone had a sticker with their personal number on it, and everyone had a card where they had to place a tick or a cross by the matching number to make it clear whether they were interested in contacting that person again. The woman kept going. ‘So we’re going to have the men sitting down this time and the ladies moving around.’
Helen cursed under her breath. She’d been banking on having the sitting down advantage. No matter. Best foot forward and all that. She found herself numbered F15, while Alex was M4 which meant they were starting at opposite ends of the room. She raised her glass in his direction before going to find her first date. ‘Good luck.’
Alex scowled. ‘I don’t need luck.’
Helen’s first date was older than her, dressed in a dark blue blazer with gold buttons, and a hair colour that Helen suspected owed a lot to a box of Just For Men. He shook her hand vigorously. ‘I’m Doug. I’m from Tewkesbury. Now let’s get down to brass tacks. Are you one of those gold-diggers?’
‘What?’
‘You know, those girls who are all teeth and tits, looking for a sugar daddy?’
Helen was outraged at the very thought. Obviously there was a lot more to her than teeth and tits. The latter weren’t even slightly on display in her chosen outfit. ‘No!’
‘Oh.’ Doug from Tewkesbury looked disappointed. ‘Right.’ He looked around the room. ‘Do you think there’ll be girls like that here though?’
It was a long first four minutes. Followed by a clear twenty-four minutes of men who were perfectly pleasant in some ways, Helen supposed, but were quickly ruled out of consideration on the grounds of:
Having too big a head;
Weird teeth;
A tendency to say ‘like okay’ at the end of every sentence;
Wearing a horrible shirt;
Unruly facial hair; and
Looking freakishly like a young Tony Blackburn.
All of which were sensible and valid reasons for rejecting them. Helen maintained a very clear idea of what her preferred date would be like. He’d be intelligent, but not pretentious. Tall, broad across the shoulders. Dark-haired. Ideally, he’d working in a similar area to her. If she had an absolutely free choice, she thought, she did like names that started with a D.
The string of rejections brought her round to Alex. This would be like having a break in the middle of the horror.
He grinned as she sat down. ‘How are you doing?’
She shook her head. ‘I haven’t ticked anyone yet. You?’
He held up his card. He’d ticked them all.
‘You can’t choose everyone.’
‘Why not? They were all girls. They all had boobs. What’s not to like?’
Helen wasn’t sure Alex really had the right approach to finding his life partner.
‘You seriously didn’t pick anyone?’
Helen shook her head. She started to list the shortcomings of her dates so far.
Alex held up his hand. ‘Can I summarise this as “they weren’t Dominic Collins”?’
Somewhere behind Helen a whistle sounded. Time to move on.
Alex
Alex watched Helen move on to the next table and turned his attention back to his incoming date. She was a woman. She had boobs. It was all good. He flashed his biggest smile and set about asking questions about her. He was genuinely interested. That was one thing he didn’t understand about his landlady. Meeting new people was brilliant. How anyone could get stressed about meeting people was beyond him.
By the end of the evening he’d ticked everyone except Helen and one girl who’d told what turned out to be a deeply racist story about her hairdresser. Sixteen women that he’d be happy to meet again. Not bad going for one evening in a nice bar. The deal was that everyone’s responses were collated, and then you got a text or email with the contact details for all the people you’d ticked who had also ticked you.
Alex’s phone buzzed about ten minutes after they’d left the bar. He scanned the message and grinned at Helen. ‘Sixteen for sixteen.’
‘They all ticked you?’
Alex nodded.
‘How?’
He shrugged. ‘Girls like me.’ It was true. It wasn’t something he’d particularly dwelled on, but he’d never in his life struggled to pull. He just chatted to women. It seemed to work.
Helen’s phoned trilled in her pocket. She didn’t answer it.
‘So? That might be your matches.’
‘I know what it’ll say.’
‘How?’
‘It’ll say no matches.’
‘You don’t know that.’
She pulled her phone out and read the message. ‘No matches.’
‘What?’ Alex was incredulous. Helen wasn’t pin up hot, but she was smart and funny and he’d seen some of the men who’d been there. Some of them were desperate.
‘I only ticked one person.’
Alex shook his head. ‘Which one?’
She looked sheepish. ‘You.’ She shrugged. ‘I didn’t fancy any of them, but I was too embarrassed to hand my sheet in completely blank. I figured you were safe.’
So step one of Operation Get Over Dominic may not have been an unmitigated success. Well not for Helen at least. Alex had sixteen phone numbers to call. For him the getting over Dominic was going excellently. In fact, there was nothing to stop him calling one of them right now. It wasn’t that late. He could suggest a drink, and then ... whatever. An unfamiliar feeling built in Alex’s chest. He was reluctant
to make the call. Too much time with Helen must be having an effect. There wasn’t anything else it could be. It wasn’t the image of Presidential Candidate Barbie that kept popping into his head. It couldn’t be. Getting hung up on her would be insane. Not only was she very taken, but Alex knew that he knew prettier girls, and smarter girls, and much much less spoilt girls. If he was going to get hung up on someone, which he wasn’t, it wouldn’t be Her.
Helen
‘Why do we have to go?’ She held up the cream invitation card for Alex’s inspection.
‘Because they’ll notice if we don’t.’
Alex was sprawled across the sofa. Helen shoved his feet along and sat down. He was right. They would notice, but what did it matter if they did. She turned the invitation over in her hand. Thick, cream card, with a dark red ribbon. The whole thing opened out from the centre to reveal black lettering surrounding by a red and gold border. ‘It’s all weekend. How do you make a wedding last all weekend?’
‘It’s not all weekend.’ He took the invitation from her hands. ‘It’s Friday night until Sunday morning.’
‘That’s all weekend.’
‘It might be fun. A weekend in a luxury manor house.’
Helen pursed her lips. ‘It’s a pimped up hotel.’
Alex waved the printed information sheet that came with the invite. ‘Wedding guests get twenty per cent off.’
‘We’d need a hundred per cent off.’
‘It’s only money.’
Helen was sure he only said things like that to wind her up. She pointed at the red bill mountain. ‘It’s not only money. It’s the gas, and the council tax and the mortgage.’
Alex grinned. ‘My name’s not on the mortgage.’
‘Well, your rent then.’
Another grin. ‘I have an understanding landlady.’
‘Well I’m not going. I can’t afford it.’
‘Helen you have to go. Remember your motivational sayings.’
Helen glanced at the wall. ‘I’m all woman. I’m still not going.’
