Wishful Thinking

by Jemma Harvey

  We asked the standard questions – Quis? Quid? Quomodo? Quibus auxiliis? etc. – and received more than usually vague answers. At intervals the children came in, interrupted, and were dispatched back to the distractions of computer and television. At length the truth came out.

  ‘I haven’t exactly met him. We’ve been corresponding by e-mail. He’s different from the others – special. You know, normal, definitely not weird, but special. He sent me a photo.’

  She conjured the picture on screen, and we studied it accordingly. Even allowing for the fact that it was an obviously flattering snapshot, he looked far too attractive for Internet dating. ‘I don’t remember him from the website,’ Georgie said.

  ‘I didn’t find him on the website. We met in a chatroom.’

  ‘I don’t like that.’ Georgie frowned. ‘On the websites people have to register, you can check back if there’s anything suspect – at least I think so. But in a chatroom you could run into anyone. He could be an axe-murderer—’

  ‘You had the axe-murderer,’ I said. ‘Anyway, his eyes seem quite far apart, and his mother-complex isn’t showing.’

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased for me,’ Lin said.

  ‘We are,’ I assured her, nudging Georgie unseen. ‘We just want you to be a bit careful.’

  ‘Georgie wasn’t particularly careful with her cardiac millionaires.’

  ‘Of course I—’

  This time, I trod on her foot. ‘Where are you meeting him?’ I asked Lin.

  ‘I haven’t decided yet. I wanted your advice. He suggested dinner, but I thought that was too much, too soon. I don’t want to rush into anything. Maybe lunch . . .’

  ‘Coffee,’ Georgie said. ‘Somewhere very public. And we’re coming with you.’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ Lin almost snapped. ‘I can’t turn up with a couple of bodyguards. That would look ridiculous.’

  ‘We’ll be at an adjacent table,’ Georgie said, warming to her theme. ‘In disguise.’

  ‘Hiding behind newspapers,’ I embellished. ‘With eyeholes cut in them.’

  ‘You’ll be several tables away,’ Lin said. ‘I’ve got to decide on a location quickly. We’re meeting tomorrow – Vee’s taking the twins away, and Meredith’s at a friend’s house, so it’s a good opportunity. I have to send Ivor an e-mail tonight.’

  We settled on a coffee-shop near Harvey Nicks, and sat down to the takeaway, the wine, and a video of Lin’s choice. Inevitably, it was You’ve Got Mail, which so disgusted the children they retreated to their rooms, if not to bed, disappearing into a world of virtual reality. ‘I don’t like it,’ Georgie reiterated, when Lin went out of the room.

  ‘I think it’s sweet,’ I said.

  ‘Not the film. Lin’s fella. For one thing, he’s got dimples.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘I hate men with dimples. They’re like lifeboats on the Titanic, fine for women and children but only dishonourable men would go for them.’

  ‘He probably can’t help having dimples,’ I pointed out. ‘Anyhow, he’s not your date.’

  Lin’s return put paid to the discussion, but Georgie’s doubts were such that the next day, at her insistence, we arrived at the rendezvous fully three-quarters of an hour in advance. ‘It gives us time to check out the terrain,’ Georgie said. ‘Like the SAS.’

  ‘Case the joint,’ I retorted. ‘Like a burglar.’

  About twenty minutes later my mobile rang. It was Lin. ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said, in the hurried tone of someone who wants to give unpopular news as quickly as possible. ‘I e-mailed Ivor again this morning. I didn’t think the atmosphere in the café was quite right. The tables are too close together.’

  Like axe-murderer’s eyes, I thought. ‘Where are you meeting him?’

  ‘Waitrose.’

  ‘Waitrose? The cafeteria? – If there is one.’

  ‘The fish counter.’

  ‘But Lin—’

  ‘It’s a public place,’ she said defensively. ‘Very public. I feel safe there. And you two won’t be so obvious.’

  ‘We’ll never get there,’ I said.

  ‘I put it back till two.’

  We fled the café, almost forgetting to pay the bill, and arrived at the nearest Waitrose at a sprint, three minutes before zero hour. I seized a trolley and threw in a few items at random in order to look like a shopper. Georgie, meanwhile, was asking the way to the fish counter. We did our best to set off at speed, but in the Saturday crowd it was impossible. ‘She did this deliberately!’ Georgie hissed. I wasn’t sure. Lin’s motives, I suspected, had been mixed. She had evidently been discouraged by her unsuccessful evening with Derek. Here, if there was no instant rapport between her and Ivor, she could make a quick getaway without being trapped at a table for the duration of coffee. Equally, I thought – like Georgie – that she didn’t really want us two trailing along. Perhaps she feared she might be making a fool of herself, and wanted to do so without an audience – even an audience of her friends. I could sympathise with that. I tried to explain this, but Georgie was too busy panicking. ‘She met him in a chatroom!’ she kept repeating. ‘Everyone knows they’re frequented solely by paedophiles—’

  ‘Lin’s grown up.’

  ‘– and psychos and—’

  ‘There she is!’

  Lin was standing beside a montage of whole salmon and tiger prawns, an unconvincingly empty basket on her arm. She seemed to be very still, as if frozen in a moment of time. A couple of yards away was the man in the photograph. Ivor. He was instantly recognisable although the dimples weren’t in evidence, dark blond hair recently shorn, his gaze fixed on Lin. He, too, had an empty basket. In a film, the whole supermarket would have gone quiet, and the air between them would be glimmering with fairy dust. I remember thinking: Oh my God . . . It was the classic eyemeet across a crowded room. The bodyguards were redundant or forgotten. Presently, they moved a little closer. He spoke; she answered. Then he took her arm, leading her away. We tracked them to a nearby coffee-shop, saw them seated at a table, clearly absorbed in each other, oblivious to the rest of the universe. He smiled at something she said; the dimples danced and vanished.

  ‘I don’t like him!’ Georgie whispered.

  ‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘Spoilsport. Just because we aren’t having any luck with men doesn’t mean Lin can’t have any either.’

  ‘I’m not unlucky with men,’ Georgie protested, punctured in the ego. ‘Things are just a little confused right now.’

  We left them to it. Later that afternoon Lin telephoned, bubbled, sparkled – the verbal equivalent of champagne. She didn’t want to get carried away, but he was wonderful. They were totally on the same wavelength. She’d got worried at the last minute – hence the change of venue – but her apprehension had been unnecessary. Their eyes had met and she’d known, somehow, deep inside, that this was her soulmate. It hadn’t been that way with Sean, or even Garry – that miraculous instant magic. The pangs she had experienced for Andy, love or nostalgia or regret, were gone without trace. This was the Real Thing. ‘You promised you weren’t going to rush it!’ Georgie wailed from over my shoulder. ‘You met him in a chatroom.’ You said the future of dating was on the Internet, Lin reminded her. Be happy for me – please. Don’t rain on my parade.

  ‘Of course we’re happy for you,’ I said. ‘But . . . don’t go too fast. Good relationships take time.’ I’d rushed into things with Nigel, and learned my mistake the hard way.

  Lin assured us that she had no intention of going too fast. They’d gone to lunch after Waitrose, then tea, but she wasn’t seeing him on Sunday. They would merely swap e-mails every half-hour. He was going to print out all their correspondence for her; someday they might publish it. Like the epistolary romances written in the Victorian age. They would be having dinner together on Thursday: the twins were in the Isle of Wight and Meredith would be at a sleepover (an invitation plainly issued by parents who didn’t know her well).

>   ‘How does he feel about the kids?’ I asked.

  He was a teacher, he was great with kids, it went with his job.

  When she rang off, I said to Georgie: ‘It does happen, you know. A friend of my sister’s e-mailed some guy in Canada for six months, then she flew over, married him, and lived happily ever after.’

  ‘How long for?’

  ‘Nearly a year so far. Anyway . . .’

  ‘All right,’ said Georgie. ‘I expect it’s just sour grapes on my part. I want Lin to be happy – of course I do. I suppose – I’m not much of a believer in romance. I did it myself: remember? Me and Franco, that was romance. Our eyes met across a crowded ball – and we were masked, so it wasn’t easy. I told you, I fell for him because it was romantic – Venice, the carnival, his panto-title, his amazing looks – and I’m afraid Lin’s doing the same. Falling for the romance, not the man.’

  ‘In Waitrose?’ I said.

  ‘Oh, yes. It’s very trendy to start a relationship in a supermarket nowadays. Don’t you see the ads? Mind you, I don’t think it would work if it was Asda.’

  We had returned to her house and, by unspoken consent, I went in for further confabulation. Over Earl Grey tea and lemon Georgie grew increasingly despondent.

  ‘I was mean about Lin and her Ivor,’ she declared. ‘Mean and jealous and vile. Just because he’s got dimples and she met him in a chatroom . . . I should be so lucky. He did look nice – and attractive – and genuine. I didn’t meet anyone a millionth that dishy through my ad. He’d better have some faults or it really will be unbearable.’

  ‘Maybe he sucks his tea through his teeth,’ I said, thinking of one of Nigel’s less appealing habits. ‘Or tries to endear himself to his pupils by being into Eminem. Or eats brown rice and farts a lot.’

  ‘You can see he doesn’t do that,’ Georgie objected, and, lowering the tone as ever: ‘Perhaps he’s just got a small dick.’

  ‘Lin might not mind. After all, Size Isn’t Everything.’ I managed to speak in capital letters.

  ‘Hmm. I’ve always thought she had a soul above such things.’

  We considered Lin’s soul for a minute.

  ‘It’s time you told Cal about not sleeping with Neville,’ I said. ‘Then you’d be happy too. Broke, but happy. Right now you’re unhappy and broke.’

  ‘I did tell him,’ Georgie said. ‘He didn’t believe me.’

  There was a depressed silence. ‘Are you sure it’s the Real Thing with Cal,’ I asked, invoking more capitals, ‘or is it just romance?’

  ‘It ain’t romance,’ Georgie said. ‘He was the office lech, for Christ’s sake. He had a sexy smile and a great body. It was just a fun way of passing the time. I never thought he could get under my skin – until it was too late.’ She took a mouthful of cold tea, and resumed unexpectedly: ‘I used to be a starfucker, before Franco. I try to make a joke of it now, but in those days I really went for the fame thing. I had an affair with a TV presenter for years – he said we had to keep it quiet, he didn’t want the paparazzi pursuing us. I thought he was serious about me – one day we’d go public – get married. I fantasised about doing the stuff Lin hated: Hello! mag and the tabloids. Basking in his reflected glory. Well, he went public, but not with me. She was an up-and-coming actress, not even pretty but she added gravitas to his image. They were a golden couple – for fifteen minutes. He still wanted to go on seeing me, though. But I ended it. I felt such a fool. I was disillusioned with the world of the glitterati – I wanted something sincere. Ha. So I went to Italy, and fell for Romance. Trading one fantasy for another. I was still a fool.’ She concluded, bleakly: ‘J’accuse . . . me. A fool forever.’

  ‘What happened to the TV presenter?’ I inquired.

  ‘The actress divorced him and went on to higher things, and he fell from grace and ended up in digital radio. So it’s just as well I didn’t marry him, really. I’d have been awfully disappointed.’

  ‘In fact, you’d be perfectly fine now,’ I said, ‘if you weren’t in debt. And if Cal wasn’t married.’

  ‘Too many ifs. I always said my wish was the most difficult. Lin seems to have got hers, and you look sensational—’

  ‘I could use a man to prove it.’

  ‘What you need is an occasion at which to shine,’ Georgie maintained. ‘It’s high time we gave it some thought. That’s better than moping or gnawing my liver – in any case, gloom and envy don’t suit me. We want a major event – an awards ceremony or something. A chance for you to wear a posh dress that shows off your curves.’

  ‘I don’t have one,’ I said.

  ‘You will, Oscar, you will. What’s coming up on the party front? There’s the Mallory launch – but that’s not glam enough. A Sci-Fi do at Waterstone’s – no. That’ll be all geeks and nerds. What about the Ultraphone Poetry Awards? They’re being televised this year.’

  ‘Are they?’ I said, impressed. Poetry rarely made TV.

  ‘It’s only BBC4, so it doesn’t really count, but everyone will dress up for the cameras. They’re holding the do at the Reform Club. That’s a cool location since it featured in the Bond movie. I was going to get something new myself.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Think debt load.’

  ‘I tell you what,’ Georgie said, grinning like a Cheshire cat, ‘if you get a new dress, and I go with you, that’ll do instead. How about it?’

  I gave in, not too reluctantly. ‘As long as I don’t end up contributing to the debt mountain as well.’

  Georgie didn’t comment.

  At work next week we had to spend far too much time being bored by interminable details of Lin’s meeting with Ivor, his many perfections, and all the amazing things he had said to her, by phone, text, and e-mail, since then. As Georgie was in the office with her, she got the worst of it. But of course, this is what friendship is all about. You suffer the ongoing saga of your friends’ joys and sorrows so you can impose on them in your turn. And, while a trouble shared is, if not precisely halved, at least spread around, happiness should be communicable. Which was why it bothered me that, although I was happy for Lin, it took a bit of an effort. Unlike Georgie, I didn’t have any major reservations about chatrooms, or even dimples. My doubts, I feared, were rooted in a sort of cynicism which filled me with secret shame. I couldn’t really believe in that eyes-across-the-room thing. Lust at first sight, yes, but the L-word Lin kept using wasn’t lust. It was fine in books – you could get away with anything in books – but reality was always somehow more mundane, short on glitterdust, and much harder work. In my admittedly limited experience, it still seemed vaguely wrong to me that love could just happen. You should have to slog at it, to build it up brick by brick, fill in the cracks, putty the window-frames, install central heating. You couldn’t just buy the whole edifice ready-made. Lin was opting for instant love, which is rather like instant coffee, a distant cousin of the real thing with much less flavour.

  (Sorry about the mixed metaphors.)

  Maybe – like Georgie – I was trying to justify feelings based on envy, because Lin’s wish had been fulfilled and she was floating on a pink cloud of bliss. I half hoped, half feared that – at least jealousy was commonplace.

  Maybe my relationship with Nigel had soured me, leaving me bitter and twisted, unwilling to believe in anything good.

  I told Lin how pleased I was for her, I agreed that Ivor sounded wonderful, that the lightning-strike of true love had come to her at last. But behind my words the niggle persisted, an ugly little worm of doubt. ‘We need to meet him,’ said Georgie. ‘Then we’ll know if he’s okay.’ She had every confidence in her own judgement, but I wasn’t so sure. I had failed to suss out Nigel, after all. ‘Go slow,’ we advised Lin – Lin with fairy-dust in her eyes, and a radiance about her of youth renewed.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m going to be sensible. I’m too old to be swept off my feet again.’

  But she didn’t look sensible.

  On Thursday, they had their first dinn
er date. Lin, who never agonised over what to wear, agonised over what to wear. Her wardrobe consisted mainly of skirts and dresses with tie-dyed or batik patterns, curly embroidery and ragged hemlines, but she wondered if she ought to borrow something off Georgie. Should she look more sophisticated? ‘Look the way you want to look,’ Georgie said. ‘Look like yourself.’ Evidently it went down well with Ivor. He told her she was beautiful – which was true, but no man had said it to her for some time – and that he didn’t like women in lots of makeup or over-priced designer clothes. He had always dreamed of finding a woman like a Pre-Raphaelite painting, pale and pure and untouched by whatever trials and tribulations life had thrown in her way.

  Pure, thought Lin. I’m pure again. I’ve rediscovered my innocence . . .

  When they went to bed together, on the Saturday, she confided that she had felt like a virgin.

  ‘Ugh!’ said Georgie, but only to me.

  On the Wednesday, he came to Ransome and met us all for lunch.

  He was definitely attractive, I decided, though slightly too boyish for my taste. Not that he was in any way like Nigel: it was a manly boyishness, as if maturity and assurance were overlaid by a patina of youthful enthusiasm, possibly an essential in dealing with teenagers and pre-teens – though another teacher that I knew said he preferred a machine gun. Georgie encouraged him to talk about his job and he responded initially with flippancy (‘Try reading Milton to a chimpanzee’), then with flashes of something more earnest. ‘I know it’s a cliché, but children are the future. If I can broaden one tiny mind – eradicate one prejudice passed on by the parents – open the window of opportunity an inch or two for someone who can’t spell window, let alone opportunity – Well, anyway, that’s the aim. You can’t do more than that. I’ll be lucky to achieve as much.’ He taught in a school in South London, with pupils from mixed social backgrounds with assorted religious and ethnic origins. His subjects were English, History and Current Events. I couldn’t help being impressed.

  When Lin went to the Ladies, he said: ‘I’m glad of the chance to have a word with you two on our own. I know you’re Lin’s best friends: she’s told me a lot about you. You must feel very protective towards her—’