The Love Market

by Carol Mason

  As I stand still in the doorway, all I can think is this: I could have been married to him all these years. We could have been on holiday and this could be the most natural thing in the world, me coming out of the bathroom and him lying here on our bed.

  ~ * * * ~

  When we do eventually go out for a walk, my mobile rings. It’s Kim. I had sent her on a date with Ralph Caswell, a fifty-one-year-old divorced dentist. If I don’t pick up, she’ll ring back until I do.

  ‘Everything was going fine, until he came back from the toilet,’ she says.

  Oh no. I can’t do this now.

  ‘It wasn’t until he’d sat down again, and put his napkin back on his knee that I saw it. It was suspended there, between his nose hairs like an anaemic spider in a web. It actually glistened, like a bead of dew.’

  I put my head in a hand.

  ‘It was moving in and out with his breathing. Like it had a mind and a central nervous system of its own. I spent the entire meal riveted to it, waiting for the moment when it was going to fall into his food.’

  ‘Kim,’ I say, my walk slowing now, and Patrick looking at me. ‘Look, I’m in London right now, but I’m coming back shortly. So let’s meet. Let’s sit down, have a glass of wine and a chat.’

  ‘About my refund?’

  ‘That. And about how things are going in general.’

  ‘They’re not going very well, are they? I’d rather talk about my refund.’

  ‘I know. I realise. And I promise you that if after we’ve chatted, and you still want a refund, I will give it to you.’

  ‘Can I have that in writing?’ she says.

  We hang up. I look at Patrick and smile. ‘I think I’d rather have your job too,’ I say.

  Twenty-One

  In the morning we walk down Queen’s Gate all the way to High Street Kensington, and have coffee at Café Nero, before moving on to Kensington Palace gardens. I tell him about Aimee, the accident, the divorce, and how with every decision I’ve ever made in my life, I’ve spent far too long second-guessing whether I’ve done the right thing. It’s a wonder I’ve ever managed to run a business.

  ‘They’ve offered me a job in Toronto, with a television network, anchoring the nightly news,’ he says. ‘They’ve given me twenty days to sign the contract.’

  ‘Wow. That sounds very glamorous. You’re going to be on the TV every day? What’s to decide? Don’t you want it?’

  ‘I should. Since I pulled out of the Middle East, I’ve been back in Toronto kind of spinning my wheels, doing a bit of lecturing at college, waiting for assignments, but not getting the same fulfilment from the work any more. Before that I spent the last six years in one of the deadliest spots in the world for foreign press, so if I’m going to leave, the time is now and this couldn’t be a better opportunity. The network wants young blood. Someone who can interview and ask all the tough questions. They think I’m it.’

  ‘That’s fantastic,’ I study him. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Maybe. For some. But I’m not sure I know how to be on the other side. My entire career has been standing there in the hotspots of conflict. I’ve spent my life reporting breaking news and trying to find a way to add the context, thriving on the pure adrenalin of it. I’ve been part of a team of people, Celine—reporters, TV crews, photographers, not just those from the AP but from bureaus all over the world, back in the heyday, before the bureaus started falling like dominos. These people’s idea of relaxing is jamming into a high-risk bar in Baghdad to talk shop, debrief, bounce around ideas that might help us all broaden our understanding of the complex stories we were immersed in. This has been my life. I don’t know how to have a home, in a city, how to go into an office, sit in a chair and speak into a camera day after day after day. Even though, yes, they’d be paying me three times my salary to do it. And I’m probably going to live to see out my old age.’

  ‘But surely your life’s more important than some adrenaline rush?’

  ‘Try telling an alcoholic that his liver is more important than his vodka.’ He smiles distantly, bringing his eyes back to mine. ‘Anyway enough about that. Tell me about Mike,’ he says. ‘I know you’ve told me some things, but, I guess…I’m sorry. Maybe it’s wrong for me to ask.’

  I hesitate for a moment or two, transitioning into this new territory. ‘Mike. Well… Mike is the most decent, most guileless man in the world. He’s a great father, and he was a good husband. And he deserved to be married to someone who had no doubts.’ I look at him.

  He holds my eyes. And then he kisses me, affectionately, on the cheek. ‘You and I wouldn’t have had doubts,’ he says. ‘If I’d been able to marry you back then.’

  ~ * * * ~

  We stand admiring Kensington Palace through its black and gold gates. We watch the dogs playing off lead, one of them friskily trampling over ornamental flowerbeds, and the couples out walking, enjoying their park on this beautiful May day. We gaze at each other, the way two people do who are quite fascinated with each other and have no one they have to hide it from.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ he asks me, abruptly. That same urgency he had back in Sa Pa, in his hut, right before he was leaving to go back to his wife.

  ‘I honestly don’t know.’ I knew this would come up. I had just had a moment where I’d caught myself being aware that I’m too happy. ‘A part of me always believed that if I ever did meet you again, you could never live up to my fantasies. You know, when you want something, and you obsess about it, you make it more than it really is? So this is all rather shocking, that you actually are living up to them!’

  He drags me out of the path of a family of geese who seem to be on a mission to peck my feet. Patrick thinks it funny.

  ‘What we need is some perspective on this,’ he says. ‘A reality-check. The fact is, neither of us is married.’ He releases my hand and puts his arm around me. ‘So theoretically, anything is possible. You live in the north east of England, and I live, for now anyway, in Toronto. Admittedly a small but fixable problem.’

  ‘Fixable how?’

  ‘I haven’t got to that part yet. I’m at the perspective stage, not the clarity stage. But what I always find is you never have one without the other, so I’m just waiting for the solution to hit me.’

  ‘What I think is going to happen is, you’re going to go home to your beautiful Canada, accept your fabulous job and become an overnight sex symbol for the entire female Canadian population. And I—’

  I can’t say the words I’ll never see you again because they’re going to kill me, and, besides, I don’t want to give him ideas.

  ‘—We’ll email, keep in touch, see each other when you pass through London.’

  ‘No,’ he says, stopping on sun-dappled ground under the canopy of a huge plane tree, and facing me, gripping me by the shoulders. ‘That won’t do for me. Maybe it would have weeks ago. Maybe before I came here. But now…’

  ‘Hang on, I was going to add “until it gradually fizzles out”.’

  He pulls me into him as he leans back against the tree. ‘It’s not going to fizzle out. I made a bad decision years ago. I’m not going to make another one.’ He rests his chin on the top of my head. ‘I’m not sure what I can promise you right this very second, because as I said, I don’t have an instant solution, but I can promise you that. Occasionally getting together while we’re both living different lives isn’t what I would like or would be prepared to setting for, I don’t think.’ He looks at me in complete seriousness. ‘It’s either all or nothing. That’s just the way I am.’

  He pops a kiss on my cheek. ‘So which is it going to be?’ he says.

  Twenty-Two

  Back at the hotel, I check my email, and try phoning Aimee to make sure everything’s all right, but she’s not answering her mobile so I just leave a message, repeating that I’ll be home tomorrow night.

  I have several emails. The first is from Kim, wanting to get together to talk, “so I can get this over with and get my
refund.” I told her I was in London! Gosh! Leave me alone! The second is from Jacqui, asking ‘How is it going?’ I reply saying, ‘Fantastic! Just like before!’

  Then there’s a message from Sandra Mansell, my quietly spoken spa owner client, whose photo my dad had a thing for. It just came in about twenty minutes ago.

  Dear Celine,

  Had a lovely time last night. Although it was NOT what I expected! Your father is an extremely adorable, charismatic man, and SO interesting! If only he were forty years younger! Please thank him again for a lovely evening. I was very flattered.

  Sandra.

  ~ * * * ~

  Father?

  Evening?

  Flattered?

  What is she on about? I quickly type back telling her where I am, and add, I’m sorry, Sandra, I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about! I am about to ring my father now, to find out.

  Then I ring my father.

  Of course I know he won’t pick up when he sees it’s me. So I do Kim’s trick of hanging up then ringing again, until I’ve annoyed him enough.

  ‘Hey,’ he starts singing, ‘did I happen to meet the most beautiful girl in the world? And if I did, was she called Sandra? Sandra…’

  ‘Anthony!’ I growl. ‘What on earth is going on? How did you end up spending the evening with one of my clients?’

  ‘Not the entire evening. Though it wasn’t through lack of trying. Just dinner.’

  ‘You took her to dinner?’

  ‘I did, yes.’

  I have to sit down. ‘How?’

  ‘Well, she didn’t exactly go out with me. She went out with a six-feet tall, thirty-eight-year-old paediatrician from Jesmond, who has never been married, wants children, loves foreign holidays, country walks and fine dining.’

  It takes a moment for the penny to drop—which it does, as soon as I hear his dirty chuckle.

  ‘Hang on, you set this up? You pretended you were one of my clients?’ I’m so stunned I think I’m must be still asleep and having a nightmare. ‘But how? How did you do that?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t exactly set it up. It was your trusty assistant, Freddy, who phoned her and told her about the date.’

  ‘My who? Who is Freddy?’

  ‘Nice fellow. A little long in the tooth to still be working at his age. But he has an instinct for a match made in heaven.’

  ‘Hang on, you’re saying that YOU posed as the assistant I don’t have, then you rang a client, and set yourself up with her when she thought she was meeting someone else?’ Patrick is just coming out of the shower.

  ‘She’s thinking of sitting for me. I told her that the planes of her face make her the ideal model.’

  ‘Oh God help me!’ I hold onto my head. I bet he wasn’t looking at her face. ‘I don’t believe this. How many others have you done this with, Dad?’

  ‘None,’ he says, disdainfully. ‘But now you’re giving me ideas.’

  When I hang up, I fly off another email to Sandra.

  I am so sorry! I am so embarrassed!!! I can’t believe he’d do something like that! I don’t even know how he got your contact information!!!!! This is terrible! Please accept my apology!!!! Will have much more “appropriate” match for you as soon as I return!! Promise! And will kill my father!

  Then I re-read, delete all the exclamation marks and send.

  When I come back upstairs from breakfast and check messages again, Sandra has written:

  Had a wonderful time with your lovely father!!! No need at all to be embarrassed! As I said, he was utterly charming, and knowing someone would go to those lengths to meet me really gives me hope!

  Well, I suppose that’s one way of looking at it, yes.

  Twenty-Three

  We agree that Patrick is going to come up north.

  I am to go on ahead today—Sunday—as planned. Then Patrick will take the train up on Wednesday. I will check him into the Station Hotel in Newcastle. And I will try to wangle as much time with him as I can get, before he has to go back down to London the following Sunday, for his Monday morning flight. I’ve decided, after a good deal of thought, that I’m not going to tell Jacqui. Patrick and I will have too little time together as it is, without my having to parade him before everybody. Plus we still don’t know where any of this is going—perhaps there will never be any need for him to meet my family. But most of all I don’t want Aimee or Mike knowing about him. It would hurt and confuse Aimee. And it’s impossible for me to imagine how Mike is going to feel if he knows that Patrick is back in my life—only perhaps, that his marriage had been a sham.

  We go to Kings Cross Station and get Patrick a train ticket, and he waves me off on the platform.

  While I’m on the train I miss him already. I sit in a daydream for a while then force myself to do a bit of work, mainly to catch up, because I’ve fallen so far behind this last week or so. I email Trish to make sure she’s going to show up for her coffee date with Liam Docherty the ex-footballer. She cancelled on him the first time. Then I spend a bit of time pouring over my mental filing cabinet of ladies to try to find someone for Trish’s James Halton Daly. He emailed me this two days ago.

  ‘Know that Rome wasn’t built in day, but am fossilising waiting for the list of lovelies you are setting me up with….?’

  Something niggles me about James. He’s right; I haven’t exactly jumped to line him up with dates. There really is no reason why. I think I just have to try harder. I pull up his digital photo on my phone so I can stare at it and rack my brains.

  I have Petra, another client who owns a spa in a posh end of Newcastle, and is very attractive in a high maintenance way. Perhaps too? Then I have Elaine Thompson, who owns a travel agency. She’s worldly, interesting, but five years older than James. A bunch of others just wouldn’t be on his intellectual level. I could see him getting really turned off by Lorraine McNaughty’s lack of self-confidence, and Julia Forrest’s talkativeness and her very strong and sometimes incoherent northern accent. Diane Bookington isn’t a bad one. I re-read her profile, and the notes I made on her. She works in marketing for the Northern Sinfonia, is certainly attractive, well-educated, dignified… I stare at her photo now, then back to James. They’d certainly look fine together. I can’t think of a reason not to match them.

  Well, only one that keeps floating around in my head…

  ~ * * * ~

  Monday is a powerhouse day: I frantically check stuff off the to-do list so I can free up time for Patrick. The day starts with Aimee stomping around the kitchen in the new cork-heeled shoes that her dad bought for her, grunting incoherent replies when I ask her how her weekend was.

  Next, I do something I’ve never done. I finally return Jacqui’s millionth phone call and I lie to her. I tell her that Patrick was fantastic, but I’m not sure all the old feelings are still there, for either of us. She’s at work, so can’t talk much. ‘But I thought you said he was fantastic and it’s all just like it was years ago…?’

  Nothing escapes my sister. ‘Well, it was. I mean, he was. And he is.’

  ‘So what’s wrong?’

  I stumble for words, then ask her if we can dissect this later.

  Then, I ring Kim on the off-chance that she will agree to meet me in her lunch break. She does. I take the train into Newcastle, popping first into the Station Hotel to inspect rooms and book the best one for Patrick.

  It’s a warm May day, and Kim is wearing a floral dress with a lime green cardigan over it, and lime green fifties-style sling-back shoes. With her luminous blue eyes and the pink lipstick she’s put on, and her blonde hair, she looks strikingly girlie and unintimidating. She orders a Pinot Grigio spritzer and sinks it quickly. But she glances around a lot, as though she has skipped bail, or she doesn’t want to be seen with me.

  ‘I just don’t think I can do it,’ she says, whipping a glance around both shoulders again. I’ve never seen her this on edge. ‘I’ve spent the best years of my life trying to meet someone and for reasons that are
beyond me it just never seems to work out. And I’m just so tired of getting my hopes up, only to repeat the same disappointments.’

  The waitress comes to take our order. Kim petulantly says she wants “nothing”, then calls her back and changes that to a chicken salad. The salad arrives, she comments that it looks oily. She doesn’t touch it, but knocks off a second spritzer. I tuck into my lamb burger anyway because I’m starving. ‘Kim, there are things we can’t control and things we can. You should try to remember that of all the matches I’ve sent you, not one of them didn’t like you. It was you who didn’t like them.’

  Her cheeks turn the same shade as the fiery undertip of her nose. ‘What was there to like?’ she says, with a small sarcastic laugh. ‘If I’m paying highly for a professional service, I should be able to meet better men than I would find walking down the street.’

  Ah! That’s just what they all think! When Kim signed on with me, she came up with a Wish List of what she wanted. Right down to her completely shameless declaration that he should have “a tanned complexion but not be a foreigner.” He had to be six feet or over, with all his hair, possess the type of physique that said he worked out at least three times a week, and have no hard skin on his feet. On top of that he had to have an income of over eighty-thousand pounds a year. I had four people who matched her ideals—although, admittedly I took a gamble on their feet. I introduced her to all of them and she found fault upon fault with each one of them.

  I catch with a finger the little river of grease that is on its way down my chin. ‘I think I know what the problem is,’ I tell her.

  She tries to drain her glass even though it’s empty, and says a sceptical, ‘Oh?’

  ‘You remember how you only used to go for blue collar types? Then when they saw your fancy BMW they seemed to lose interest? You thought they were rejecting you, yet still you went after them. You kept thinking they weren’t impressed with you. But the problem was they were too impressed with you—you were out of their league. Now, I’ve fixed you up with five good matches—in addition to the four that were almost tailor-made to your specifications—and you’ve rejected all of them—almost all for trivial reasons.’ Her eyes have not once blinked. Not a muscle in her body has moved. But she looks like she’s ready to explode. ‘So I’m thinking either you’re now getting your own back—revenge on the male sex at large. Or, deep down, you really don’t want to meet someone.’