Would Like to Meet

by Polly James

  “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” I say, my voice sounding borderline hysterical. “Have you and Eva slept together?”

  “Of course we have,” says Stefan. “That’s why she knew I’d be good for you.”

  There’s a five-second delay while I sit there, mouth wide open in astonishment, but then I get a grip and gather speed. In fact, I’ve already made it out of the restaurant and stolen someone else’s cab by the time Stefan’s parting shot sinks in: “I’ve had a lot of happy customers.”

  * * *

  I turn my phone back on as soon as I settle down in the taxi, ready to call Dan and explain, but then I see that I’ve already had a missed call from him. Oh, and he’s left me a voicemail, too. I take a deep breath, and dial 121.

  “If that’s the kind of sleazeball you find attractive, Hannah,” he says, “then I have no idea why you ever wanted to be with me. But don’t worry, if it wasn’t over before tonight, it bloody well is now, so do whatever the hell you like.”

  I dial his number immediately, but his phone goes straight to answer phone. I have no idea what I’d say even if he did answer, so I try phoning Eva next. She’s not answering either, so I start typing a text to Dan, but that makes me feel so car-sick that I have to stop. By the time I get home, I’m feeling so awful I spend the next few hours throwing up, and then I crawl shivering into bed and cry myself to sleep.

  I wake a few hours later when I hear a girl’s voice on the landing, but I feel too ill, and too despairing, to get up and check if it’s Ruby or a new brunette.

  Chapter 36

  Dan doesn’t respond to any of the texts I send him this morning, before I phone in sick. That doesn’t go down well with the Fembot at all.

  “So, Hannah,” she says, “working at home yesterday and then off sick today? What an interesting combination. I’ll meet with you first thing tomorrow, then.”

  I’m so distraught about Dan, and so furious with Eva, that I don’t even care if I’ve pissed the Fembot off. And I am sick, anyway. This can’t just be a hangover, so I bet those bloody mussels were dodgy – almost as dodgy as what Eva did, setting me up with someone like Stefan. I’m about to tell her what I think of that, but there’s no answer when I call her number, so I send her a text instead.

  Call me asap!

  I wait a few minutes for her to do as I’ve asked, but she doesn’t bother, so I turn my phone to silent and crawl back into bed. Joel doesn’t even check on me before he leaves for work.

  * * *

  I must have slept all day, as it’s getting dark by the time I wake up when I hear the front door slam. It’s Joel, and there seems to be someone with him as I can hear talking coming from downstairs. Maybe it’s Dan, and he’s forgiven me? I check my phone, quickly, just to see if there are any messages from him, but there aren’t, so he’s hardly likely to come round here if he’s still too cross to reply to a text.

  I’m about to turn over and go back to sleep when Joel shouts upstairs.

  “Mum! Mum! Where are you? There’s someone down here to see you, but I have to go out again straight away.”

  It is Dan – oh, bloody hell. Look at me! And God knows what my breath is like. I jump out of bed, regret the sudden movement and walk slowly to the bathroom to clean my teeth and brush my hair.

  “Hello, Hannah,” comes Eva’s voice.

  Oh, sod it, it’s only her.

  “Down in a minute,” I say, but then I take as long as possible to pay her back.

  It doesn’t seem to work, as Eva looks totally unfazed by the time I get downstairs. She passes me a weak cup of tea she’s just made, then says, “Hangover, or food poisoning – or both? Stefan says he thinks the mussels you two ate last night were off.”

  “That’s not all that was bloody well off,” I say. “How could you, Eva? I thought you were my friend, so I didn’t expect you to pull a stunt like that.”

  “I am your friend, you idiot,” says Eva. “Now tell me what you’re so angry about.”

  That process takes a while, and Eva seems no wiser by the end than she was at the beginning.

  “I thought it’d do you good to get over your paranoia about having sex with someone new,” she says. “Then you’d get your confidence back, and be able to move on from Dan. Stefan’s really good at what he does, and you’ve got to admit he’s gorgeous, too.”

  “He’s a sleazeball,” I say. “And good at what, anyway? Is he your ex-boyfriend or a gigolo?”

  “A bit of both,” says Eva, giggling. “I’ve never paid him, though, and he wasn’t intending to charge you either. He draws a firm line between work and pleasure.”

  I say nothing, and just sit there, scowling, while Eva starts questioning me about how the date actually went. She’s like one of those celebrity lawyers once she gets started. (Or a Rottweiler.) First she gets me to admit that I did think Stefan was handsome and sexy, and then she forces me to admit that he made me feel quite sexy, too.

  “So he was basically a warm-up act for you and Dan?” she says, with the sensitivity she ought to be so famous for.

  “No,” I say. “That was just Dan, and me, and raw chemistry – until Stefan came along and blew it.”

  Eva frowns as if she’s considering what to say next, but then she comes right out with it.

  “Bullshit!” she says. “You and Dan hadn’t reacted to each other like that for ages before you split up, according to you. So is it at all possible – I mean, even remotely possible – that Stefan managed to make you feel you were sexy again, and then you communicated that to Dan?”

  I don’t answer. I hate admitting it when other people may be right.

  * * *

  “So, Hannah,” says the Fembot this morning. “Where’s the report that Esther wrote? She says she emailed it to you, and you were going to show it to me today. You know, the report you were supposed to be writing yourself? I hope yesterday’s sickness was more genuine than your so-called working from home?”

  I’m so nonplussed that my mouth falls even wider open than it did when Stefan released the Eva bombshell.

  “Um,” I say, when I realise that time’s been passing while I’ve been too stunned to think. How does the Fembot know that Esther wrote the report? That’s not how the plan was supposed to work – and anyway, Esther’s version was rubbish, so I had to spend most of last night re-writing it after Eva left.

  I try to put that as tactfully as I can, and end up managing to make it sound as if Esther producing the first draft was the intention all along.

  “I see,” says the Fembot, looking unconvinced. “And the sickness? Was that real or due to alcohol?”

  I don’t know the answer to that question, either, and I am rubbish at lying, so it’s a gift when the Fembot’s phone begins to ring.

  “We’ll continue this later,” she says, as she waves me away as if I was a nasty smell.

  I head back to my desk and mouth, “What the fuck?” at Esther. She sends me an email.

  From: Esther Wood

  To: Hannah Pinkman

  Subject: Misunderstanding

  Tell you during coffee break.

  Esther does try to follow through on her promise when we take our mid-morning break, but her explanation doesn’t really make sense, except for her claim that the Fembot bullied her into telling the truth about who was writing the report. I’m still not quite clear about what made the Fembot suspicious in the first place, though, but Esther’s moved on by now and is demanding to know every detail about my date with sex-fiend Stefan. She’s not half as shocked by his occupation as I was, and seems to think it’s a good thing that Dan and I were so rudely interrupted.

  “I don’t want to encourage your fantasies that you’ll get back with Dan one day,” she says, “because that’s not what friends should do. I think you were both so drunk you would have fancied anyone.”

  I glare at her, as this is not something I want to hear, which probably means it’s true.

  “And neither
of you was in any condition to make sensible decisions, by the sound of it,” adds Esther, pressing home her advantage. “Otherwise why would you even consider getting back together with a man who annoys you as much as Dan?”

  I don’t remember saying Dan annoyed me that much, though the not-listening was irritating, plus the sighing and the eye-rolling whenever I said something he thought was stupid – like Formula One being really tedious. And the lack of interest in sex, now I come to think of it. He must have been as pissed as a fart last night to fancy me again.

  “You’re right,” I say to Esther, as she passes me a cupcake that looks like the Cookie Monster. “Thanks. I feel better now.”

  I mean better in the sense of feeling angry, rather than sad, but there are no such distinctions required to describe how I feel about the apology the Fembot offers me when she returns from lunch. That makes me feel better in every way.

  Apparently, she spent her lunch hour reading my report, and then a copy of the local paper, which contained a short piece about the number of people who’d been taken ill after eating at the same cafe-bar that Stefan and I were at, on the very same night. The article says that Environmental Health has slapped a temporary closure order on the owners, and the Fembot says she feels so bad about falsely accusing me of faking my illness that she wants me to take the rest of the afternoon off.

  “If you can write a report as good as this when you’re not feeling one hundred per cent, Hannah,” she adds, “then imagine how effective you’ll be when you’re fully recovered. Now off you go, and rest up at home. Then you’ll soon be fighting fit.”

  The words, “fighting” and “fit” remind me I had been planning to become exactly that, so I do two sit-ups as soon as I get home. Then I get back under the blanket on the sofa, and revert to feeling sorry for myself.

  Chapter 37

  It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Dan’s never going to reply to any of the texts I’ve been sending him.

  Esther made it sound a good thing that he didn’t actually kiss me, while she was lecturing me about it at work yesterday, but now I’m not so sure. Maybe nobody will ever kiss me again, except in the pecky, tentative way I sometimes kiss Pearl on her powdered cheeks – unless I change my mind about a gigolo. I’m not going to, though, no matter what Eva says.

  She phones just as I am leaving work for the day and when I tell her how I’m feeling, she does her best to persuade me to reconsider my decision never to date Stefan again.

  “No,” I say. “I may be hopeless at flirting in clubs, and shit at blind dates with orc fanciers and sex maniacs, but I am never going to pay someone to sleep with me, or sleep with someone who usually gets paid for it, even if I would get a “session” free as a favour to you.”

  I drop my voice when I realise this is probably not a conversation I should be having at full volume while walking around Tesco and trying to think of something to cook for tea. People are definitely giving me funny looks, so I tell Eva to hold on a minute while I find a quiet corner in the Healthy Options section.

  “It wasn’t a favour to me,” she says, once I confirm it’s safe to continue. “Stefan really fancied you. And you shouldn’t turn your nose up at the chance of whole-body orgasms, I can tell you.”

  I ask Eva what other kinds there are, but she refuses to elucidate, although she does say her opinion of Dan has just improved “dramatically”. That doesn’t help at all, so then she apologises for the Stefan idea and for its effect on me. That doesn’t help much, either, and nor does the fact that someone else has just turned into the aisle I’m hiding in. Is there nowhere in this shop to hold a private telephone conversation, for goodness’ sake?

  “I’ve got to go,” I say to Eva. “The walls here all have ears.”

  “But I’m worried about you,” she says. “What are you planning to do?”

  I don’t know, do I? First I’m going to escape from here and go home, but as for what I’m going to do for the rest of my life … that’s anyone’s guess.

  “I’ll probably join a convent or something,” I say, before I hang up.

  That’s when I notice the elderly woman who’s contemplating me from across the aisle. She’s weighing two different-sized bags of quinoa in her hands, is smiling enquiringly, and seems to be a full-blown nun.

  * * *

  When I get home from Tesco, Joel confirms that Dan’s secondment is over, but that’s all he says, and anyway, it’s too late for the information to be of use. Not when I’ve already encountered Dan while on a date with a gigolo. As a result, I just grunt at Joel as if I’m not interested, then sneak off upstairs to call Dan again, but there’s no reply so I leave a message begging him to call me back. When my phone begins to ring five minutes later, I answer it so quickly it stuns the caller into a protracted silence. I have to say hello three times before Eva finally starts to speak.

  “Continuing on from when you hung up on me earlier,” she says. “I’m sorry about Stefan and Dan. I really am. Will you forgive me, Han?”

  “No,” I say, to which Eva replies that I’ll change my mind, once I know what she’s just bought us for my birthday.

  “Us?” I ask.

  I’d rather think about the “us” part of the sentence than the other bit. I have no desire to do anything for my fiftieth birthday, other than to go and hang myself. I don’t care what Pearl says about never knowing what’s round the corner: sometimes you do, and it isn’t swanning off to China with a new man, it’s just more crap. What with Stefan screwing up my one chance to get back with Dan, and Danny having gone totally silent since Pammy claimed she was in China, I can’t see that the next half-century gives me a whole lot to look forward to.

  Eva succinctly sums that view up as “utter bollocks”, and then she adds, “I’m taking you to France for the weekend. To an arts residential thing. Come on, you know you want to go.”

  “No, I don’t,” I say, at which point Eva demands to speak to Joel.

  I don’t know what she promises him, but he does a much better job of arguing her case than her. First, he makes me look at the centre’s website, and then he shows me endless photos of French beaches and cafes. By the time I go to bed, I’ve agreed I’ll go – though I haven’t admitted I’m looking forward to it. I’m holding out on that.

  * * *

  Phew. Danny hasn’t disappeared forever, which is good, but what he says when he contacts Pammy tonight is definitely very bad.

  I didn’t renew my contract for another three-month secondment, because I thought if I moved back home, you and I could finally meet up – and then we’d know if this thing between us would survive reality. The thing I thought we had.

  Pammy hasn’t even started to reply before Danny carries on typing.

  I guess when you decided to claim you were in China so you didn’t have to phone or Skype me, that told me all I needed to know. So how about we just stay friends?

  I can’t see any alternative, especially not after the Stefan incident, so I’ve got no choice but to agree.

  “Just friends” is better than nothing, isn’t it? That’s what Pearl and Albert keep claiming to be, though I’m not convinced. They’re sitting very close together in the photos they’ve just emailed me from Beijing, and if their smiles were any wider they’d obscure the view.

  “We’re having a fantastic time,” Pearl adds. “China is a wonderful country.”

  “I know,” I say, in my reply. “A close friend of mine has always wanted to visit, and he goes on and on about it.”

  I cross out “close” before I hit send. After all, Danny just said “friends”.

  Chapter 38

  I’m driving Eva mad, while she’s driving us through France to this arts weekend, or so she claims.

  “Can you please quit phoning Joel every five minutes?” she says. “You haven’t stopped since we left home, and now you’re distracting me when I should be concentrating on driving on the wrong side of the road.”

  I apologise an
d switch to texting instead. I wrote Joel a massive list of do’s and don’ts last night, but I forgot to leave it on the kitchen counter when Eva picked me up in the early hours. Then I dropped it down the loo while we were at a service station. Eva says that proves you shouldn’t try to text and sit down for a wee at the same time, not when you’ve got an important list in your back pocket.

  “You need to trust Joel a bit more, Hannah,” she adds, after she’s finished tackling a particularly complicated intersection. “That is, if you ever want him to get around to leaving home.”

  I’ve got mixed feelings about that prospect, if I’m honest, so I just keep quiet and slide my phone back into my bag. Joel was so unhappy that I was going to be away for my birthday, I’m feeling quite guilty enough about him already.

  “But I was going to throw you a party, Mum,” he said, when I told him about Eva’s plan, when she first mentioned it a week ago.

  “You were leaving it a bit late, weren’t you,” I said, “given my birthday’s this coming weekend?”

  Joel asked me whether I’d never heard of the word, “impromptu”, and then said maybe he’d have the party anyway – at our house, and without me.

  “Seeing as you’ll be away,” he added.

  Recalling that worrying development, I take my phone back out of my bag and send him yet another text.

  If you even think of having a party in our house, I will kill you when I get back.

  I’m just adding some kisses to soften the blow, when Eva lets out a manic “whoop!”

  “See that?” she says, gesturing wildly over towards our left and swerving dangerously in the same direction. “There’s the sea, and it’s blue!”

  I glance up, then back down at my phone to check if Joel has replied.

  My signal’s disappeared.

  * * *

  Well, we’ve finally arrived, and Eva’s right – this place is beautiful. No wonder she’s been here so many times before. It’s a 17th-century manoir in the Charente-Maritime on the Atlantic coast near Royan. It sits in its own grounds, which look quite spectacular in themselves, but the best part is that the estate leads down through a small wood onto a sandy beach fringed with pine trees. The air smells incredible when I step out of the car – fresh and salty, but overlaid with the scent of pine and lavender. I take so many deep breaths that I make myself quite dizzy, so then I have to get back in the car for a few minutes, until the spinning stops. Then we get our bags out of the boot and make our way from the gravelled car park along the path towards reception.