by Anna Bell
I’m still debating about fixing myself up a bit, when I see him glance in my direction. He stares for a second, as if he’s trying to work out if I’m the same girl in his photograph, but luckily – or unluckily – he decides I am and gives me a small wave.
I’ve got no choice but to go over. As I get up close, he stands up to meet me and I have to hold back a gasp.
I find myself looking down at him as he’s at least six inches shorter than me – and I’m in flats. I falter for a second as my perfect specimen of a man literally doesn’t quite measure up, but only for a second – what’s in a few inches?
‘Daisy?’ he says as he leans up, presumably to kiss my cheek. I feel myself bend over as he grazes each cheek with his. ‘We finally meet.’
I can rise above the whole height thing, literally and metaphorically. He doesn’t appear to be that phased by my dragged-through-a-hedge-backwards look, so why should I care about his height? We know that size doesn’t really matter in other arenas, so why does it matter standing up? So what, if he’s shorter than me? Loads of women tower over their partners: Tina Fey, Sophie Dahl, Nicole Kidman. Plus, I’ve never dated a man shorter than me; maybe this is where I’ve been going so spectacularly wrong all these years.
Besides, I could totally hide his height in photos on Facebook if we’re always sitting down in them.
‘It’s nice to finally meet you,’ I say as I sit down.
‘Great, well, what are you drinking?’ he says, as he clicks his fingers and summons the waitress.
We sit there awkwardly for a moment while we wait for the summoned waitress, as if the click has killed any hope of a conversation. I quickly pick up a drinks menu, looking straight at the cocktail section. ‘I’ll have a Pornstar Martini,’ I say, hoping it might be a bit of an icebreaker.
Dominic does not look impressed.
The waitress slinks away and Dominic opens his mouth to say something, but he’s interrupted by the loud ping of my phone that I’ve still got in my hand.
‘Sorry,’ I mutter as I try and ignore the notification of yet another work email, and I slip it onto silent instead.
‘Doesn’t matter,’ he says, despite him giving me the impression that it did. ‘Why don’t you tell me about yourself?’
‘Um . . .’ I falter, as he’s looking at me so intently that I suddenly feel as if I’m at an interview and I slip into that mode. ‘I’m thirty-one, I’m a marketing account manager, I live with my best friend Erica in Dulwich . . .’
‘Yeah,’ he says, nodding, as if I haven’t told him anything noteworthy, ‘and what else?’
‘What do you mean?’ I scrunch up my eyes as I look at him for direction for what he wants to hear. I thought I’d told him the main facts – my age (without lying) – that I’m gainfully employed and that I live in a trendy part of town. Surely that tells him most of what he needs to know.
‘I mean, what are you about? What do you do for fun?’ he asks in his peculiar accent, which is a mixture of posh British with a Transatlantic twang. It’s as if he’s doing a bad Lloyd Grossman impression.
‘Oh, right, fun,’ I say, trying to concentrate on what he said rather than how he said it. ‘Well, let’s see . . . I go out quite a lot with my friends – you know, bars, parties . . . Sometimes I go to the cinema, and the theatre now and then.’ Even though I despise it, it looks good to check in every so often.
‘So you don’t have hobbies, then?’ he says disappointedly.
‘I’m sure I must have hobbies,’ I say in my defence. ‘I mean everyone has hobbies, don’t they?’ I just need to think what they are. I used to be fairly sporty when I was at university, I belonged to the trampolining club and I did street dancing. I’d always intended to do some form of sports in London but it was all so expensive when I first moved here, and then it’s so hard to get back into it when you’re out of the habit.
I think over what I do in my spare time, not that I’ve had much over the last few months. I can’t remember the last time I cooked something for the enjoyment of it, and I’ve got a whole Pinterest board full of craft ideas that I’m intending to emulate when somehow I manage to have an abundance of time and/or realise that I have some crafting ability – neither of which are highly likely.
Surely I’ve got to have more to my life than that? I try and mentally run through my Instagram pictures, as if to trigger my memory, and that’s when it hits me.
‘I’m into photography,’ I say, realising that I snap all day long. Dominic doesn’t need to know that I don’t own an actual camera.
‘Oh, really? That’s interesting,’ he says nodding. ‘I recently bought a new Digital SLR, I’m still getting used to it, mainly using the kit lenses – you know, while I’m a beginner. Perhaps you can give me some tips?’
I try and keep my smile from falling.
‘Yes, I’m sure I could,’ I say lying. The only tip I can give him is that the best Instagram filter to use when you’re looking as rough as a dog is Valencia, and Mayfair makes your drinks look sharper. Probably not what he had in mind.
‘I went to dinner up the Shard last week and I captured some fantastic shots with my wide-angle lens. The lights went all Bokeh in the distance and I had the perfect twilight photo. In fact, my boss was so impressed that we now have it printed on canvas on our office wall.’
‘Oh, that’s fantastic,’ I say, wishing I’d picked a different hobby. ‘I once had –’
‘And then, there were some wedding shots’ – he continues talking, not even acknowledging that I was starting to join in the conversation – ‘that I took for my very good friend. They actually preferred them to the ones taken by the photographer they’d hired. They said I’d captured the more spontaneous moments of the day so they’ve used a lot of mine in their wedding album and in frames around their house.’
‘That’s excellent,’ I say, nodding at his modesty.
The waitress comes over and places my cocktail in front of me; it looks delicious. I practically have to sit on my hands so as not to reach into my bag and pull out my phone to take a snap of it to share online. It’s rare that I go out for food or drink these days and don’t chronicle it, but I don’t feel like I can after what Dominic has just been saying.
‘So what other hobbies do you have, then?’
I’m guessing that if I say I play poker, meaning an app on my phone, he’ll tell me that he’s played at a Las Vegas tournament.
‘I like to watch live music. I’ve got tickets to see the Foo Fighters at Wembley in the summer and’
‘Who hasn’t? Everyone always says they like the Foos.’
I open my mouth to tell him that I’ve actually seen them at all their UK live tours, but before I get the chance he’s telling me about the time he got backstage tickets to see Dave Grohl’s super group, Them Crooked Vultures.
‘What about languages?’ he asks, as he finishes his story. ‘Do you speak any of those?’
I’m about to joke that I can totally speak Emoji; in fact, Erica and I sometimes have whole conversations in it. But I get the impression that Dominic, much like the rest of the population, wouldn’t believe that it’s a real language.
‘No, other than my GCSE German, which I haven’t used since I’
‘Shame; I speak fluent French and conversational Italian and Spanish. Makes holidaying so much easier. I detest people who point and speak loudly in English.’
‘Me too,’ I say, nodding and pretending I’m not guilty of doing that.
‘So what do your parents do?’ he says, rolling on the interrogation at a rapid rate of knots.
‘Um, my mum works as a receptionist at a dentist’s.’
‘Oh,’ he says, ‘and your dad?’
‘He was an accountant, but he, um, died when I was young.’ I get a bit flustered as I don’t usually like to talk about my dad’s death with strangers, and it tends to put a bit of a downer on first date conversation.
‘Oh, he worked in the City,
did he?’
‘No, he worked in Fleet, in Hampshire. That’s where I’m from.’
I think Dominic has to be the only person I’ve ever met who hasn’t acknowledged my dad’s passing with an ‘I’m sorry’, or who hasn’t asked how it happened. Instead he’s ploughed on as if he’d just retired.
‘Hampshire,’ he says, wrinkling up his nose as if I’ve told him that I’ve come from the back of beyond. ‘Is that a home county?’
‘No, but we border a few of them.’
He’s stopped pretending to hide his disappointment on his face and I get the impression that I’ve failed the interview.
‘Well, what do your parents do?’ I ask, thinking that my parental heritage has not been called into question before on a date.
‘My father is a hedge-fund manager and my mother was a barrister, but now she’s a high court judge.’
‘Right,’ I say. It figures. ‘And they live in the Home Counties?’
‘Yes, in Sevenoaks.’
‘Are they American?’ I say, testing the water about his dodgy accent.
‘No. Why?’ he says a little gruffly.
‘Oh, I thought I detected a little accent, I wondered if you’d lived there . . .’ My voice trails off as there’s a scowl descending over his brow.
‘I do spend a lot of time there for work. It’s always handy, I think, to get global work experience. I spent a year working in Hong Kong when I first graduated, and if I’d stayed with my company, I’m sure I would have been posted to a foreign office again. Have you worked abroad?’
‘No, but I once had a client meeting in Dubai which –’
‘Who hasn’t,’ he says, cutting me off as I was about to tell him a very amusing story about when I was nearly arrested for kissing Marvellous Marcus.
FYI – there was no actual kissing, just an eyelash stuck in my eye. Not that I have to clarify it to Dominic, as he’s started to drone on about when he was flown business class to Singapore for an hour-long meeting.
The weird thing about Internet dating is that you build up an idea about a person in your head based on a few carefully curated images and heavily crafted messages. Usually, I suggest meeting fairly quickly after I start messaging, as I’ve found that the longer that goes on, the greater is the expectation that the person is a perfect match. Yet, despite the fact that I haven’t built him up too much in my head, I’m still woefully disappointed that, in person, Dominic has failed to reach even the lowest of my expectations. We’ve already established that, in my head, he was a foot taller, but he wasn’t a complete arsehole who didn’t let me finish my sentences.
‘I’m just going to go and have a smoke,’ he says, getting up from the table as he finishes his story.
I’ve never been so thrilled to be on a date with a smoker. I’d usually be a bit offended that a date had sneaked off so quickly and left me alone, but, for once, I’m glad. I watch him walk onto South Bank to light up a cigarette, mentally wishing that he won’t return.
I reach into my bag to find my phone, to quickly snap the photo of my Martini which I’d been dying to do earlier, only my battery has gone flat. I rustle in my bag to find my phone charger, before realising that we’re sitting outside where there are no plugs. It makes me slightly panicky. What if there’s an emergency? Or, more importantly, what if I need to fake an emergency to get away from this awful date?
I glance over at Dominic to try and distract myself. It looks like he’s got no battery problems. I watch him on his phone and, if I’m not mistaken, he’s swiping, occasionally pausing and squinting his eyes as he does so. I recognise that squint; he’s blatantly checking people out on Tinder. He’s obviously made up his mind about me too. He could have at least got through the whole evening with me before he started to look elsewhere. Surely that’s common decency?
I take a sip of my Martini and it tastes pretty damn good. I start to drink more and more, bracing myself for the second onslaught of questions. Dominic comes back to the table and sits down. There’s an awkward silence that hangs in the air along with the smell of stale tobacco.
I’m about to suggest that we both throw in the towel, when he clicks his fingers at the waitress and begins to order some food.
‘Did you want anything, Daisy?’
The waitress has entered his order into her little machine and is looking expectantly at me, with a look that shows she doesn’t have time for this. On the one hand, it would probably make my life easier to say that I don’t want anything and to make my excuses and leave, but, unfortunately, I’m too British and polite and I can’t leave him to eat alone. Plus, I haven’t had anything to eat all day except a couple of stale Jaffa Cakes I found loitering at the bottom of my desk drawer. I barely have time to glance over the menu as the waitress taps her foot and looks over my shoulder at a new table that’s just arrived.
‘I’ll have the naked hot dog,’ I say, this time not even trying to be provocative; it’s just the first thing I saw.
She nods and hurries away.
‘So, do you like to travel other than for work?’ he says resuming his line of questioning.
‘Um, I do, but I haven’t had a whole lot of time over the last few years; things have been pretty busy.’
‘I recently went to Thailand,’ he says, sipping his drink.
‘I went there a few years ago,’ I say, trying to find some common ground. ‘To a little resort on Ko Samui and’
‘Yes, but I went to the real Thailand,’ he says with his weird drawl.
The entry visa in my passport made me think that I had too, but I don’t have the energy to get into a debate with him. Instead I sip my drink.
‘It was very spiritual. I went to a retreat, no phones, no Internet, no trappings of modern life.’
‘Sounds . . .’ bloody awful. ‘Enlightening.’
‘Oh it was. It really made me realise how I didn’t want to work for The Man anymore. It’s where I decided I wanted to be a private investor instead. It was at this fantastic Buddhist monastery up on this hillside outside of Chiang Rai . . .’
He launches into a story of his time and I do the only thing I can do to get myself through this awful date. I drink. I signal to the passing waitress for another one and I try and tune him out while also trying not to think of the one hundred and one things I’d rather have done with this evening.
*
An hour and a half later and we’ve finally finished dinner. Dominic has had his coffee, I’ve had three martinis, and it looks like this painful date is about to come to an end.
He summons the poor waitress once more with a cringe-worthy click, and she passes us the bill on a little metal tray. He reaches for it with such ferocity that I’m at once impressed with his chivalry of paying for the meal; I was about to reach for my debit card to pay my half but he’s beaten me to it. If he hadn’t been such an all-round vile man this might have gone some way to redeeming him.
‘Right, then, so I had three beers, the ribs, a coffee and, oh, I had that side order of onion rings,’ he says, pulling his phone out of his pocket and tapping the figures into it.
I watch in horror as he agonisingly itemises our bill and even adds on a shared tip. ‘So you owe thirty-nine pounds.’
He smiles at me triumphantly, passing over the bill in case I want to see it. I give it a cursory glance and see that we wouldn’t have been far off it if we’d just halved it, although this way at least I save myself £1.35!
The waitress comes over and takes our payment and then I’m finally free.
God, I can’t believe I left work early for this torture. There aren’t many days when I’d rather have been chained to my desk than be out and about in the real world, but this is definitely one of them.
‘Which way are you headed?’ he asks.
I glance at my watch and, based on the fact that it takes me a good minute to work out that it’s half past nine, I decide that I’m too drunk to go back to the office, so I’m homeward bound.
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‘I’m going on the circle line to Victoria.’
‘I’ll catch it with you, then,’ he says.
I look at him in horror, wishing that I’d said that I’d catch a bus instead.
We walk in awkward silence as we weave our way through the crowds on the bridge towards Embankment. He mutters under his breath as I fumble in my bag for my Oyster card and we soon find ourselves on the platform waiting for the train.
‘Have you lived in Dulwich long?’ he asks.
I groan internally. Will the questioning never end?
‘Not too long, about three months, or maybe four.’ It reminds me that I really need to start looking for a new place.
‘Bit of a trek to get there, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘I prefer being more central. West Kensington is perfect for me. Less than a half-hour commute to the City. Less of the pram brigade there too.’
I grit my teeth. Right now I’m glad that Dulwich is so far away – the further away from him the better.
A train pulls in and we climb on, and, wanting to signal my imminent departure, I shun the empty seats and instead stand holding the rail by the door so I can make a quick exit.
‘I’m not a fan of north of the river,’ I say, lying, as I was only thinking the other day how nice it would be to live closer to work. The hour-long commute is getting tedious, and even when the company pay for a taxi to take me home when I finish late at night, it still seems to take ages to get back.
‘I don’t think real Londoners live south of the river,’ he says. ‘I mean, I can walk to the City if I need to from where I am.’
‘Um,’ I say, biting my lip to stop myself getting into an argument with him. I’m feeling a little feisty after all those Martinis, but I keep telling myself that in just a few minutes the train will be pulling into Victoria and I can escape.
‘Granted, things are a bit easier now with the Overground, but it isn’t the same, is it? I mean, you might as well live out in Surbiton or Croydon for the time it takes you to get in.’
