Wilde Like Me

by Louise Pentland

  Forty-five minutes and a small glass of rosé later, and I am certain it’s not. Charles isn’t The One. Our conversation is drier than my brow after a half-arsed attempt at the gym and I’m running out of general topics of conversation.

  ‘Soooo, you’re a data analyst, then. What’s that like?’ I venture.

  ‘Well, I’m not a data analyst in the traditional sense. I tend to focus more on making the database infrastructure that the analysts themselves use day to day,’ is Charles’s monotone reply. He seems to be having trouble keeping his eyes off my boobs. I am not impressed.

  ‘Oh wow, that must be … fulfilling?’

  ‘Yes, can be.’ The chemistry is on fire. By the fifty-five-minute mark we’ve had a conversation about the pub decor, the relative merits of his car over my Micra, how Charles didn’t realise make-up artists had assistants and we’ve also discussed how many other dates we’ve had off MatchMe. (Charles has been on the app for eight months and this is his second date.). I’ve also filled the time up by wondering aloud how strong the current in the river is. Because I want to jump in it and swim away.

  Charles is talking about erosion levels, and I can’t handle it. If I don’t leave now I will actually have to bludgeon myself to death with the trendy wooden wine menu. I need to get out, but ‘sorry, you’re so dull I’m considering one of our deaths’ seems a bit much. So I’m going to do the most mature thing I can think of – lie.

  ‘Oh my God, Charles! I’ve just remembered, I need to be at home for a delivery! Oh, shit! I need to go! Shit, shit!’ OK, so maybe not a good lie.

  ‘A delivery at nine p.m.?’ he says, looking genuinely surprised. Dammit, Charles, let me leave you with some dignity.

  ‘Yeah, it’s quite … specialist.’ Where am I going with this?

  ‘What is it?’ Charles, please. He still seems very believing, which I’m not sure is a good thing.

  ‘I’d rather not say. It’s … medical.’ Medical? Why have I said that?

  Now I sound diseased, or like an addict. Probably more like an addict. I sound like a classy drug addict that has drugs delivered at nine on a Friday night, and I should have just said I had a headache. What’s wrong with me? But it’s too late; I have to carry this lie through to get out of here. I stand and grab my bag. Charles doesn’t try to kiss me, but he’s insisting on walking me to my car.

  I scramble about in my bag to find my keys in order to distract him from any potential goodbye affections. I grab the fob and press the button before pulling the whole bunch out (he doesn’t need to see the ‘hilarious’ key ring of a man’s nether regions that I got at Lacey’s hen do years ago) and WEEEWAAAHHWEEEEWAAAAHHHWEEEEWAAAHHH.

  Jolly good, it isn’t my key fob, it’s the fucking rape alarm.

  Every single person in the car park and smoking area is looking at me. Charles looks horrified and confused as I continue to scramble in my bag to silence it, but of course I can’t. People are approaching now – probably thinking Charles is some kind of attacker – and it’s still wailing. If I go any redder my face will literally melt off my skull.

  Finally I manage to turn it off and mutter something about it being better to be safe than sorry. Charles looks aghast (I sort of did just accuse him of being a potential rapist, though). He wishes me well with my ‘medical delivery’, and I thank him for the lovely evening. Nobody kisses. We’re all still in shock.

  On the way home, I feel mortified and rubbish. What a massive fail. I’m never, ever going on MatchMe again. Never.

  ‘SO, HOW WAS HOT Jacob?’ Lacey asks over a cup of coffee at my house.

  ‘Mmmm, not the best, not the best at all, Lace.’

  It’s a rainy Saturday afternoon in late March, after the disaster date with spunky Charles, Lacey encouraged me back onto the dating app. and she’s come over to hear the latest on my most recent date. Finola’s rousing words still in my head I’d matched with Jacob Greener and he seemed cute so I was optimistic. Blond, swished-up hair, you know, the type that defies gravity thanks to clay or putty or general ego; gorgeous blue eyes with lashes I could only dream of having with extensions and a lot of arty black and white shots in his profile. A photographer by profession (that’d explain the high standard of profile pictures), and local. ‘Into good gin, vegan food and good company. Love learning new things, photography and seeing the world’, seemed like a great profile, and the messaging had been exciting.

  Rather confidently, again it had been me who’d suggested a date – go Robin! – and so we met in the trendy new gin parlour on the high street for a drink. I’d had high hopes. Very slowly, though, they’d been dashed.

  ‘What happened, then?’ Lacey pushes, holding her cup to her mouth but not drinking any coffee, that desperate to find out the gossip.

  ‘Well, he’s a man-child,’ I reply, matter-of-factly.

  ‘A man-child?’ Lacey seems confused by the concept.

  ‘Yeah, you know, old enough to be an adult. He was twenty-six, so younger than me, but come on, that’s old enough to have most of your shit together. But still living like a teenage boy. He walked in wearing jeans, all frayed at the bottom, with grubby black converse and a Star Wars T-shirt under a zippy-up hoody.

  ‘Oh. Wow. OK,’ Lacey says.

  We’re interupted by Lyla:

  ‘Mummy, I’m bored,’ she says, flopping her arms by her sides for extra emphasis.

  ‘How can you be bored with a bedroom full of toys? Why don’t you make something with your crafts or play with the dollies?’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ she whines, leaning her upper body onto me. I knew letting her stay up an hour late last night to finish off Pocahontas was a bad idea. She’s seen it fifty-five million times but still loves it. When she’s tired, even the tiniest bit, there’s a meltdown looming round the corner. I can’t deal with it right now. I want to talk about the dates; I want to ask Lacey how things are going with the babymaking (I can tell she’s a bit down about it all; they’ve been trying for a while now. I think IVF might be their next option), and I want to have twenty minutes of adult conversation. As Natalie says, you’ve got to pick your battles.

  I know I’m on a losing streak so I pull out the big guns, my very last trump card.

  ‘Do you want to play on my phone?’

  Her eyes light up and I know she thinks she’s struck gold. Usually such a treat is reserved for epic train journeys or at the hairdresser’s, but today I’m desperate.

  ‘YES!’

  ‘OK,’ I say, handing it over. ‘Stay on your games, and if it rings or buzzes, bring it back to Mummy.’

  ‘Thank you, Mummy,’ she says, beaming. She hops off my lap with her prize and I turn back to Lacey.

  ‘I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and not judge a book by its cover. But he’s not technically a photographer. He’s “working on it”. He works two days a week for his mum on her mobile dog-grooming van and takes pictures at the weekend for his Instagram.’

  ‘Well, at least if you dated him your feed would look good!’

  I give her a look. ‘He spends the rest of his time playing Call of Duty, and he lives in his mum’s loft conversion.’

  ‘Oh, sleepovers would be fun for you, then! Maybe his mum could bring you up a cup of tea in the morning and pop your knickers in the laundry,’ laughs Lacey.

  ‘Don’t joke!’ I mockingly fight back. ‘I’m never going to find a decent grown-up man to be in our lives!’

  ‘So how did it end?’ I can tell Lacey is loving living the dating life through me.

  ‘Terribly! When it came to settle the bill – which we were supposed to split – he said he’d left his bank card at home and could I lend him some cash.’

  Lacey just laughs.

  ‘I paid and said I ought to call a cab. He asked to borrow my phone to call his mum for a lift because his was out of credit! I despair, Lacey. I can’t have a long-term relationship with a man on a pay-as-you-go phone tariff and his mum on speed dial. That’s not t
he woman I am!’

  Lacey is laughing so much that I start laughing at the ridiculousness of it all. Another dire date to add to the slowly growing list, but at least I’ve cheered my friend up a bit.

  ‘One step closer to Mr Right, though, Robsie,’ she encourages, sipping her coffee and suppressing the giggles.

  ‘Yep, he’s out there somewh—’

  ‘MUMMY!’

  Lyla walks in with a panicked look on her face. ‘Mummy, your phone won’t stop buzzing!’

  Surely I’m not getting that many messages and calls.

  As I look at the phone, tens and tens of MatchMe notifications are popping up, one after the other. So much so that I can’t even type in my passcode to get into the app and see what on earth is going on.

  ‘What have you done, sweetheart?’ I say, frantically swiping away the notifications and trying to get my passcode in.

  ‘I was bored, Mummy! I went into your man game and moved them all off till more came on.’

  ‘Oh my God, Robin, I think she’s got into your apps!’ says Lacey, half-shocked, half-amused.

  ‘Fuck. Fuck, fuck,’ I say, getting up so quickly I knock my chair back and let it crash to the floor, startling Lyla even more.

  ‘Mummy, those are bad words!’ she says, looking from me to the toppled-over chair.

  ‘OK, I’m in! Yes, I know. Sorry.’ Once in my app, I can see I have over two hundred matches and fifty-eight pending messages. ‘Fuck! Shit. Fuck.’

  ‘Mummy! The bad words!’ Lyla says again, standing on the lino anxiously. Right now I’m too consumed by the crisis at hand to worry about my language.

  ‘Lyla, is this the game you went on?’ I say frantically, holding the phone up to her with my dating app open.

  ‘Yes, and I swished my finger like this and a new man came into the game.’ I can see she’s looking worried based on my reaction, but right now I’m freaking out.

  ‘Lacey, she’s swiped yes to hundreds of men!’ I say in horror, to which Lacey just cackles in response.

  ‘It’s not funny!’ I snap a bit more aggressively than I mean to.

  With all the intensity and my choice language, Lyla is clearly confused and begins to cry. Instant mummy-guilt washes over me and dissolves any anger.

  ‘Nooo, it’s OK, sweet pea, it’s all right, you didn’t know,’ I soothe. Scooping her up onto my lap and picking up my chair at the same time, I look down at my phone as it continues to freak out on the table with Hey babes and Nice profile pics, how’s your day messages.

  ‘I was just playing the game, Mummy,’ she manages between sobs.

  ‘I know, I know, but this is a grown-up game, not a game for little girls. You know where all your games on the phone are kept, don’t you?’

  ‘I just wanted to play on your games, Mummy, and be like you,’ she wails.

  ‘Ooohh, sweet pea, I know. But I think we need to make sure we stay on Lyla-friendly games, so that you can have the most fun and we don’t have problems like this, OK?’

  As I say ‘like this’, I lift up my phone to demonstrate the incessant buzzing and a new message pings through, this time with a picture. The thumbnail is tiny and hard to see, but suddenly I realise what it is I’m looking at.

  ‘Mummy, what is that?’ Lyla asks, completely puzzled. ‘What’s in that man’s hand? Is he holding a little snake?’

  ‘No! Oh my God! I mean, yes. Yes. He’s just holding a little pink snake! He’s sending me a silly little picture of his pet! Let’s put this away! We don’t want to see snakes, do we? Ha ha ha,’ I force out in a sing-song fashion, knowing that my sweet baby girl has just been exposed to her first (and hopefully last) dick pic.

  Lacey grabs the phone and her eyes widen. ‘Wow, that’s a big pet snake he’s got there!’ Clearly all this is hilarious to her. She’s not worried about the permanent mental damage we may have just done to my child.

  ‘Mummy, can we get a little pink pet snake?’

  ‘Umm, no. Maybe a dog or a cat. Or a hamster. Not a snake. Let’s forget about the snake,’ I gabble in panic, but starting to laugh. ‘How about I give you some Smarties and I’ll put the telly on and you can watch whatever you like for as long as you want?’

  Right now I’d rather pump her full of e-numbers and let her eyes turn square in front of the TV than dwell on this stranger’s erection situation for a moment longer.

  Thrilled with this offer, she jumps off me, gladly takes the tube of emergency Smarties and settles herself down in front of the flat screen. I breathe a sigh of relief and head back to Lacey, who’s entertaining herself reading through all the introductions from men I would never normally have swiped.

  ‘Well, at least you’re not going to have any trouble setting your next date up!’ she says as I sit down.

  ‘Now it feels like Jacob and Charles are the least of my worries!’

  We both burst out laughing. Dating is turning out to be quite the adventure.

  FOURTEEN

  I HAVE TAKEN THE PLUNGE. I have asked Natalie for extra work to fill my days, boost my funds and, above all, give me something to do that I truly enjoy. I’ve told her I’m happy to do solo jobs or full-time hours while Lyla’s with her dad. Natalie has emailed that she’s thrilled to have me so on board, and straightaway gave me a community centre pamper party and an assisting job on an editorial set. I’m feeling really buzzed to have two good jobs on my hands.

  After three days, Lyla stopped asking if we could have a little pink snake as a pet, and I promised her that we can borrow Mollie from Kath as many times as she likes and take her out for walks, groom her and let her sleep at our house. I’m hoping with all of that she’ll have forgotten about the dick snake and we can put this whole fiasco behind us. I’ve got enough on my plate without worrying that Lyla is going to be spending thousands of pounds in counselling as an adult, talking about her mother’s strange aversion to snakes and how she can now never trust a man.

  Lyla is spending the rest of the week with Simon and Storie, and I’m making the most of it. He’s texted to ask me to pack her swimming costume, so with any luck she’ll have some nice, normal family time at the leisure centre and won’t be taken to an eco-swamp to dive for kelp or something equally absurd. At least he’s actually thought ahead and planned something for her; I should just be grateful for that, kelp or no kelp.

  The pamper party goes well. Every couple of months the council set up a bit of an afternoon for the elderly, hire a few MUAs, hairstylists and such and put on nibbles and cupcakes. All the local older ladies pop by and ask for a bit of blush or pink polish, and it’s lovely. I’ve never taken on this kind of job before, and I’m surprised at how much I like it. I thought it might be a bit dull compared to photo shoots and editorial work, but it’s one of the most heart-warming ways to spend an afternoon ever. They sit and tell you about their grandchildren, or their plans for their garden this summer and it’s just a nice way to spend the afternoon. Arguably it’s not the most artistic or creative job, but you work with great people and come away feeling really warm inside. What I also love is that Natalie waives 70 per cent of the fee. I’m not sure all the freelancers do that, but she does and I admire her for her altruism. Thinking about Natalie’s business and how she cares for other people, and how, in turn, this afternoon I’ve cared for other people, it touches me. It’s hard to wallow in yourself when you’re giving yourself to others. I should do this more often. Today wasn’t just about make-up; it felt so much deeper than that.

  The editorial set, though, is the polar opposite – the gazelle-like models are much more interested in their phones than in chatting to me. Natalie handles it and even an altercation with the photographer about late payment, with such grace. She’s like a swan. Completely calm and elegant on top, but under the water, where you can’t always see, she must be working her perfectly pert bottom off to keep things not just going, but thriving. Hats off to her. I love spending time with such a strong woman. Whenever I’m working with her I feel l
ike she’s teaching me how to be a better woman – without her knowing it. Working alongside her, being given these opportunities, watching her, learning from her, chatting to her, she makes me feel like I can achieve anything I want to.

  But nothing prepares me for the thrill of the next job.

  FIFTEEN

  ‘OK, ROBIN, LET’S DO this!’ Natalie smiles at me and I follow her through the huge glass doors into the studio’s atrium. I’ve been looking forward to this high-profile job for ages, absolutely thrilled that Natalie’s invited me to assist her, and I’m going to give it my best. I want to prove to Natalie that I’m serious about my work for her and appreciate everything she’s letting me do.

  Clive Fitz is a world-renowned fashion photographer, and he’s been flown in from LA to work on Glamour magazine’s spring fashion editorial. It’s clear from the get-go that he really thinks he’s something else.

  There’s a whole team of us on board to make ten of the UK’s most coveted models look even more beautiful and intimidating than they already are. Looking around at the size of the team, this is my biggest job to date and I can feel butterflies in my tummy. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this excited and ready to get stuck in. The two stylists are having an argument about whether exposed hems are the next big trend or not.

  ‘They’re so raw, Elissa,’ one of them shrieks.

  ‘I just feel like they’ve been done, Cassy,’ the other snipes back, threatening every stylist’s worst nightmare.

  Focus, Robin. This is your chance to show Natalie what you can do.