"Well, that’s a start. Just search the name of the school on FriendsReunited, and hope that this Neil guy is listed. Then you can email him."
"That sounds like a lot of work," I say. "But thanks for the idea."
Actually, I’ve just been thinking that I should just shorten my list of requirements to two things:
- Male.
- Single.
Friday night’s date sounds pretty promising. This is the "Heart of gold male, fifty-two. I like watching DVDs, musical theatre, and long walks in the countryside. I want a lovely lady of a similar age to share these things with." That could be worse, right? And really, how bad can it be? He’d have to have six legs to beat this past week’s dates.
I’m early for once at the restaurant, sitting alone at "my" table and honestly getting a bit bored of the scenery. This is a nice place, but I’ve been here almost every night for weeks on end. Yes, I could easily get the men to take me somewhere else, but I a) don’t want to offend Dan, and b) feel relatively safe here. I mean, if some guy is going to try something, I’d rather he try it where my boyfriend is in the kitchen and the waitresses know me and are keeping an eye on my date for me anyway.
"Hello," he says, hurrying over. "Sorry I’m late. I’m Liam."
"Mackenzie." I move to stand up but he’s already sat down. "Hi."
"Nice to meet you. Traffic is a nightmare tonight."
I nod. "It took me half an hour to get here from work." And I still made it here on time, I think victoriously.
"So," I say, as he studies the menu. "You have a heart of gold, huh?"
He laughs. "Was that kind of tragic to put in my profile? Did you respond out of sympathy?"
I smile. "Nah. I thought my mum could do with meeting someone gold-hearted."
"Ha ha. You’re funny." He points his finger at me like a gun and makes a clicking sound. It makes me feel uneasy. "And I’m kind to animals, small children and homeless people, if that’s what you mean," he continues.
"Good to know."
"And you’re trying to set your mother up. Now that is strange."
"Well, I’d rather know who she’s dating. I can’t just let her meet any old Tom, Dick or Harry. I have to know he’s a nice guy first."
"That’s good," he says. "At least you know what she’s getting in to. Or what’s getting into her, eh?" He laughs.
Ugh. Inappropriate jokes? Check. Points? Decreasing rapidly.
"So, your profile says you like watching DVDs and the theatre. What do you like to watch?"
"Oh, these." He opens his coat up, slides a DVD out of his inside pocket and hands it to me.
Sluts and Trucks Volume Three.
Ugh. Porn DVDs? And he keeps one in his jacket pocket? He loves them so much he has to take them out to dinner with him? Does he have a portable DVD player in the other pocket so he can nip off to the bathroom for a quick… Yuck!
I hand the DVD back to him like it’s diseased. Ugh. Dear god, I hope he hasn’t used it already. And I really hope he washed his hands if he has.
"Well, that’s very nice," I say, getting up. "But I don’t think it’s going to work out. Enjoy your meal."
And I leave. I walk outside as fast as I can, round the corner and go in the side door to the kitchen, where I wash my hands. Twice.
When I check my email that night, I am quite surprised to find something unexpected in my inbox.
Dear Miss Atkinson.
This is Liam here. I met you earlier tonight for a meal in Belisana and a potential set up with your mother. I am very insulted by your treatment of me, and feel that I was unfairly dismissed as a potential date candidate. You did not take time to get to know me. In fact you asked me one simple question, and when I answered you left rather abruptly, and the waitress handed me a rather large bill, which was unusual because I hadn’t yet ordered anything. I am very offended by this, as I feel I wasn’t given a fair chance to compete with the other men you have met.
I would be happy if you could explain your actions and apologise for yourself. At the very least you owe me an explanation.
I was not done with you. I would like to meet your mother.
Thank you for your time.
Liam.
Who does this guy think he is? And what does he think I am, a professional business? I’m just a girl, a one woman show. I don’t need finely crafted letters of complaint.
I decide to play him at his own game and send a reply. I type out my message:
Dude, you had a porn DVD stuffed down your jacket. Neither my mother nor I are remotely interested in men who love porn so much that they bring it to dinner with them. If you would like a date with any woman, I strongly advise you to leave Sluts and Trucks at home.
Mackenzie.
And now, I hope to never hear from you again, you twerp. My, how I wish I’d added that sentence on to the end of the email. Now that would have really upset him.
CHAPTER 28
You know that good feeling I had about guy number seven? It is perfectly correct. After the week’s exploits, Saturday night is my last scheduled date for the time being, and with the guy I was most hopeful about. And after the jerks of the last seven days, I could use an easy night. And that is exactly what I get with Alan.
He presents me with a bunch of yellow roses when I arrive at the restaurant. The first guy ever to bring me flowers. I’m touched, and tempted to give him Eleanor’s number and go home for the night right there and then. But I decide that I had better go through with it as scheduled.
"Thank you," I say. "They’re beautiful."
"You’re welcome. Thank you for meeting me."
I briefly check him over. No Wellington boots. Sober. No porn DVDs stuffed inside his jacket. No obvious signs that he’s about to ask for a blowjob. Ding ding ding, I think we have winner.
"I’m Alan," he says, shaking my hand.
"Mackenzie," I introduce myself for the millionth time. I think that maybe I should just wear a name tag that says:
"Mackenzie.
Twenty-Nine.
Nail Technician.
Now tell me about you."
At least it would cut out all the mindless small talk. And I feel like I’ve been doing these dates way too often to enjoy them anymore.
As if he is reading my mind, Alan smiles at me and asks, "Have you had much success with the website?"
I shake my head. "I’ve had quite a few dates, but none successful."
"So, how did you come to be tasked with finding love for your mother?"
I think I should add, "My mother is an interfering battle-axe lonely" to that name tag. "She’s lonely," I tell him. "I just moved out, and I think it would be nice for her to have some male company. She hasn’t dated for a very long while, so what better time to start."
"Exactly."
"How did you come to be on an internet dating website?" I ask.
"My wife left me. She slept with my cousin, and then she divorced me. That was three years ago."
"Ouch."
He nods.
Seriously, what is it about wives and affairs these days? This is the second man I’ve met—that I know of—whose wife has cheated and then left. I thought men were the bad guys in a relationship. I thought men were the ones who were supposed to cheat.
"Sorry to hear that," I say. I smile in what I hope is a sympathetic way.
He shrugs.
"So," I say brightly, hoping to get off the depressing subject matter at hand. "You like animals. Four cats and five dogs is a lot of animals."
"Five cats and four dogs," he corrects me. "But yes, I love them. They are my livelihood."
I briefly wonder if he has adopted animals as a replacement for his wife. Without the sex, obviously. I hope.
> But if he has been trying to replace real family with cats and dogs, then he’s got more in common with my mother than I thought.
"Does your mother like animals?"
"Loves them. She has a little Yorkie that she treats just like a child."
"Oh yes. Well, they are our babies."
Holy shit, is this guy a match or what? If it wasn’t for the fact that Dan has the chocolate torte that I love so much on for dessert tonight, I’d give Alan her number and go home now.
"What kind of dogs do you have?" I ask, suddenly worried that he’ll say four Great Danes. IE: not a small dog person.
"Two Dachshunds, a Whippet, and a Pomeranian."
Okay then. This guy is in. I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to find such an obvious instant match. My mum is going to love him.
"He’s great," Mum says, coming in the door. "I’m seeing him again on Friday."
Even though I had a good feeling about this one, I still can’t believe what I’m hearing. My mum actually likes a guy. "That’s fantastic," I say. I hope my voice doesn’t sound too overjoyed. Success at last! "So what did you do tonight?"
"He took me ice skating. Ice skating at my age! But I’ve always wanted to do it, and he said ‘great, lets go,’ so we did. It was so much fun! And then we had a hot chocolate to warm up, and he said that next time we could do something more refined, like go for dinner in a nice restaurant. He’s going to book us a table at somewhere fancy for Friday."
"Brilliant," I say. "Absolutely brilliant."
Wouldn’t it be just fantastic if this was the end? If this was the guy. The One Number Two. I wonder, being my pessimistic self, if it is really going to be that easy. Not that it has been all that easy at all. But I see no reason why not. As far as I can see, Alan is super compatible with my mother. Now, I just have to cross my fingers and hope it works out.
Mum’s second date with Alan, at a fancy Italian restaurant that I can’t remember the name of goes just as well as the first. This is why I am completely unprepared for the phone call that comes on Saturday night after their third date.
"Mackenzie, I have such a bone to pick with you!" Mum is shrieking very angrily into the phone.
"What? Why?" I ask, holding the handset away from my ear.
"I’ve just found my date in my living room, doing… Well, doing something he shouldn’t be doing."
"What was he doing?"
"Masturbating," she whispers.
Ugh. God, no.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. You know I invited him over for dinner tonight, well, I went up to the bathroom, and I came down to find him stark bollock naked in my living room, pulling on his you-know-what."
"No way," I say, wondering whether I should laugh or cry. "That’s disgusting. And you didn’t tell him to?"
"No, I didn’t tell him to!" She yells. "Why would I tell him to do that?"
I shrug, but I know she can’t see me on the phone anyway. I have no idea why I even asked.
"So what did you do?" I ask.
"I screamed. Then I told him I was calling the police if he didn’t put his clothes back on and leave that instant."
"And?"
"He left. I told him never to call me again. That was way more Alan than I ever needed to see."
"Yuck."
"Yuck is all you have to say for yourself?"
"Yuck isn’t good enough? Besides, why do I have to say anything for myself?"
"You found him for me, Mackenzie. You set me up with him."
"How did I know he’d turn out to be a demented pervert?"
"You should have known."
"Well, you had two great dates with him, you should have known too."
"That’s not the point." She knows I’m right. I can hear it in her voice.
"I’m going now," she says. "I have to recover from the shock."
"Bye," I say.
Oh well. Another one bites the dust. Bye bye, Alan. Hello FriendsReunited.
CHAPTER 29
I’m not really sure whether FriendsReunited is a good idea or not, but it’s not long before I find myself logging on to the site and looking up classmates from Mum’s year of her comprehensive school. In fact, I feel a little insane and stalker-ish. I mean, do I really need to do this? This Neil guy—I have no idea what his surname is, and didn’t like to ask—is in no way, shape or form still going to be unmarried and available. I don’t even know what I’m doing here. I suppose, on Dan’s logic, finding out what it was like to date my mother, but do I really need to know?
I’m trying to assess where I’ve been going wrong with the dating thing. Obviously, it’s not working out. All men I think are suitable, according to my mother, are obviously not. In fact, they’re obviously very highly unsuitable. Why is it so difficult to find a man that she might be happy with? I don’t even want instant gratification. I just want to find a guy that there is even a slight possibility she might, one day in the distant future, want to settle down with. Want to grow old with. Hmm. Maybe I do need Neil after all.
Oh, there he is! I spot his name on the site. Well, I spot a man called Neil listed for the year my mum graduated, so I assume it’s him. There are no other Neils. I suppose the only way to confirm it is to email him. Or to pump Mum for information, and while she doesn’t mind me finding men for her, I don’t think she’d be too impressed at me tracking down old boyfriends. Even though the only old boyfriend I’ve ever heard of is Neil. I click on his profile and read through.
Oh. Well, he’s out then. His profile says that he married someone foreign and is now teaching English to kids in Russia. As you do. Why couldn’t Mum’s high school boyfriend have been some normal bloke who was single, unmarried, child-free and living just down the road, having never really gotten over the girl who broke his heart in high school?
I decide to email this Neil guy anyway. It’s somehow less scary now that I know he lives in a foreign country, and I don’t have to go out and meet him somewhere. Again, I have to register for the site and pay another subscription fee. This had better damn well pay off, or I’m going to be bankrupt by the end of the year, and my mother is still going to be man-less.
And the hard part of course is figuring out what the hell to put in an email to Neil. I guess I just have to jump right in there and be honest. After much editing, changing, and moving words around, I have come up with this:
Hi Neil,
This may sound like a strange request, but my name is Mackenzie Atkinson, I am the daughter of Eleanor Atkinson, who as far as I know, you dated when you were seventeen and in Forest Green Academy. I hope you remember her, but please ignore this message if you don’t.
I’m sorry to just approach you out of the blue like this, but I have a question for you. Eleanor got divorced a few years ago and has been on her own since then. I recently moved out, and she’s been very lonely lately, so I decided to find her a man. I thought that if she could find someone to love then maybe she could be happy again. However, it is not going very well. Obviously I have the wrong taste in men. So I’m emailing you with a very strange request. I need some insight in to my mother’s dating habits. I need to know: what was it like to date her? What was it she wanted in a date? What she wanted in a man? As you were one of her first boyfriends, possibly her first love, what were her dreams for the future? How did she expect her love life to turn out?
I know this is strange, and honestly, feel free to ignore this email as the weird ramblings of some psycho off the internet. I’m just looking for all the help I can get. I’m not doing a very good job of finding a decent man here, and any insight I can get in to what my mother wanted before her love life got all messed up with my father would be extremely helpful.
Thanks for your time,
Mackenzie.
[email protected]
I have absolutely no hope for him ever emailing me back. I actually do sound like some psycho off the internet. I guess no amount of editing can change the fact th
at I am the daughter of a woman he dated thirty something years ago, emailing him out of the blue to ask for tips on how to date my own mother. I really am insane. I have lost my ever-loving mind.
I am also extremely surprised to find a response in my inbox that night.
Hello Mackenzie,
Fancy hearing from you! Of course I remember Eleanor. She was my first love as well. Was I really hers? Did she say that? How old are you anyway? When I first read your email, I had a horrible feeling you were writing to tell me I was your father. Yikes. But obviously not. Great to hear from you anyway.
My, that is a strange request. Um. I have no idea what to tell you. It’s been a long time. But Eleanor was always a lot of fun. She always wanted to try new things, and she was very unpredictable. No date was ever the same twice. And she loved to talk, but she had quite a short attention span—she would get bored very easily—and would often get ticked off with me because I’d still be talking about one thing while she’d moved on to the next.
As for her love life, and what she wanted out of it, well, she always said that she was searching for a soulmate. For her other half. She was very romantic about it. I tended to disagree and think it was a load of old cobblers about there only being one person out there for each of us. But there you are. That was what she wanted to think. Nowadays I tend to agree with her. I met my wife here in Russia, and have never been happier. We have two gorgeous children—two girls, five and seven—and although I miss the UK very much, I love it here.
Anyway, it has been great to hear from you, and such a surprise. I didn’t even know that Eleanor had a daughter!
Please give her my regards next time you talk to her. Tell her to drop me a line sometime, I’d love to hear from her. Is she still as pretty as she used to be?
Thank you for the email,
Neil.
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