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It wasn’t a short email, and over a couple of pages she explained — in detail I wouldn’t have risked on our internal email — exactly why Christmas had been so rough. To summarise, she didn’t really get on with her mum, who was apparently bewildered and angry because her daughter was nearly twenty-eight and hadn’t yet started producing grandchildren. She was also critical about Delphine’s weight, and every other aspect of her appearance, which she insinuated was why she wasn’t shacked up with a husband and two cute little girls like her younger sister. The sister was apparently smug and always taking snide little digs. Dad was distant and not how he used to be when she was a child, and she suspected he was having an affair. Then there was her own man trouble. When she was home there were a couple of guys she used to go out with who always got in touch and expected to see her. From what I could gather, they’d both been successful in their pursuit, which only made things worse.
Then, back in London for New Year’s Eve, Delphine had had a huge row with her actual boyfriend, Alex, who’d abandoned her at some party. She couldn’t understand how he could be so mean. I couldn’t understand how either, mainly because he was a flabby, still acne-ridden, below-average-looking man in his mid-thirties, who was punching way above his considerable weight just by getting Delphine to speak to him.
Not that I was jealous, of course.
On top of all that she was struggling with work, claiming that she didn’t understand half of the things she was supposed to be writing about, and how stupid she felt working in English. And in a newsflash update she added that she was now starving because she’d missed the sandwich man. So overall 2013 had not had the best of starts for her.
Chewing on my lunch, I set about writing a reply to Delphine. It took me a while as I worked up a response on how to sort out all the troubles in her life; I wanted to be sympathetic and supportive while showing her that she was making a lot of mistakes with her choices in life, without too obviously pointing to where I thought the answer might be sitting. There were compliments that I made as daring as I thought was advisable without being too obvious. I then finished with an offer to help out with her project, and what I thought was quite a good joke about British cuisine that might make her feel better about not being exposed to all the E numbers that were enhancing my tomato-sauce-flavoured crisps, the coating on which was currently making my fingers and keyboard radiate with a greasy red glow.
By the time I was finished the main office was muttering back into life. I watched as Delphine and Jenny from Mobiles walked past my desk deep in urgent conversation, with lots of tutting and sighing.
Ten minutes passed while I stared at a flashing cursor on an empty Word document and listened for a response to my message from the occupant of the cubicle four back and two across. All seemed quiet, but then I detected that rare giggle that always seemed worth working so hard for. It continued, and got louder. I must say I started to feel quite proud of how well my little ‘Cordon Bleurgh’ cooking joke was going down. I grabbed a piece of paper from my desk, and headed for the photocopier, which just happened to require walking past Delphine’s desk.
As I got closer I could still hear her laughing — it was a gag that worked on many levels, I figured. I turned the corner and saw Jamie slouched against her cubicle wall while she leaned back in her chair, swaying from side to side and grinning at whatever it was he was telling her about. I gave them an eyebrow salute as I went by, but I don’t think they noticed, and I went back to my desk the long way around after photocopying a printout of an email on the office healthy posture guidelines. I got back to see that a response had arrived from Delphine. It said, ‘Thanks, Danny, you always know to say the right things!! If you could have a look at this pear cider report and let me know where I have stupid English you would be my hero in a shitty world!! D xxx’.
Three kisses at the end. That was two more than usual, so I felt I was making progress.
The rest of the afternoon just flew, and by the time I’d corrected a few grammatical mistakes, written a few pages of notes on the UK market for premium cider brands, added a commentary on the basic findings, and roughed out some charts, tables and graphs of available data, just to help fill out Delphine’s conclusions a little bit, it was just about home time. I headed to the kitchen for a celebratory filtered water.
‘Superman Dan!’
Janice called out to me as I sloped back to my desk. She was using her nickname for me, which was a good sign. It took a while to get the Janice matey seal of approval, but once you got a special name, it was a handy indicator of whether you were in her good books, and whether she was in a good mood. Maybe it was her work that was keeping her cheerful. She seemed to be Photoshopping® a picture of her own head onto the head of a starlet emerging from a taxi with Harry Styles. I’m not quite sure which major client that would have been needed for, though.
‘Coming to the pub?’ she asked as she adjusted the angle of her grinning face so she was looking deep into Harry’s eyes. ‘We’re going for a swift one to welcome Jamie Jammie Dodger.’
Hmm, quick work on the nickname front from Mr Dodger there.
‘Sure, the Zetland? I’ll be down in ten minutes,’ I said.
‘Luv-leee.’
Back at my desk, it was just as I started to shut down for the day that I got an email from Weird Boring Chris. He was reminding me that he was to be cc’d in on the youth market fruit beverages report that apparently was going out today. Turned out that just because I’d forgotten all about my promise to the boss that I could do a week’s work in a day, didn’t mean that Nigel had.
It was going to be a long night.
‘Good evening, Dan speaking.’
‘So according to my wife you’ve been in the office looking at porn sinceten-thirty, and you’re still there twelve hours later. There are clinics you can go to to get help with that kind of obsession, you know.’
I said something rude about his mother and a webcam. Rob snorted, and, with the conversational formalities out of the way, he got down to the business of the call.
‘So, buddy, what’re your plans for Friday night, then?’
‘Well, unless Rihanna changes her plans and decides to come over to town to go clubbing, I would imagine it’d be a pint with Mad Janice and Weird Boring Chris and home for a Mahal Palace takeaway and season two of Glee on box set.’
‘You’re going to have to let the starlets down, sport, and Mick the delivery guy will have to live without your awkwardly generous tip for one week. You’re coming to ours.’
‘I’ll have to let people know. The last time I wasn’t in on a Friday night the Palace sent the police around, worried I must have been dead or trapped under the takeaway menu drawer.’
‘Well, notify the appropriate authorities, and practise being spontaneous and witty, because you have got a date,’ said Rob.
My stomach plunged and an unexpected surge of adrenalin shot through me. I was quiet while my internal organs finished their virtual roller-coaster ride and Rob filled in the details.
‘A friend of Hannah’s called Niamh. You might have met her at Eurovision? Same age as us, lawyer, loves old musicals. Right up your street,’ he continued.
‘I thought Hannah didn’t really have any single friends that were my type at the minute?’
‘New Year, Dan. Turns out it’s not just you that has realised it can be a good time to have a look at their lives and decide to try and change them. They’re calling them resolutions. I think they might catch on.’
‘So, um, is she…er, nice?’
‘You’d be the one that people think are doing better out of the deal, but not so much that they’d assume you must be very rich, if that’s what you’re getting at. Hang on…’
There was a pause and I could hear, but not quite make out, Hannah saying something in the background.
‘I’m being told from the sofa to tell you she has the most beautiful skin. Because you know how all men are mainly looking for a really good epidermis.’
There was a distinct sound of a raspberry being blown in the room.
‘This is all a bit quick,’ I said. ‘I thought it was going to be looking at dating profiles and making snide remarks about the hair on the profile pictures of my rivals for a while. I’m not sure I’m ready.’
‘Not your call any more, Dan — you sold your soul, or its DNA equivalent, to us. So Friday at eight you’re at our place, deodorant applied before you put on your clothes. Hang on…’
More conversation from the sofa.
‘Angus and Sarah are invited too, so it won’t look too obviously like a date. Oh, and we’re also banned from saying Babah Ganoush in funny voices when Hannah’s serving her from-scratch appetisers.’
We spent a minute or two saying the names of various Middle Eastern dips and accompaniments in a range of accents and tones, just to get it out of our systems.
‘Now, how come you’ve managed to get so far behind in your work when you’ve only been back one day?’ asked Rob.
I explained the situation with Nigel and the glamour model, and how I might also have been doing a bit to help out Delphine in the day — just out of professional dedication, obviously — and that now everyone was in the pub with our new hotshot handsome colleague.
‘Helping out that saucy French one?’ Rob had met Delphine once when he’d come to meet me in the pub after work before going to the movies. We never made the movie but spent the evening squabbling over whose turn it was to go and get her jelly beans from the dispenser.
‘Good idea to free up her time so she can go and get drunk with your better-looking colleagues,’ he pointed out. ‘We’ll have to work her into our strategy though, I think. Even if it is just to get the chance to make her laugh at the mere idea. And watch her walk away.’
In the background I could actually hear Hannah’s eyes rolling.
‘What? I’m just saying…’ Rob asked with wounded innocence.
There was another pause while he received his further instructions before returning to the call.
‘And Hannah says you still haven’t answered her question from earlier for your singles account. But we only need to worry about that if Friday night goes ball-achingly badly, and you embarrass yourself, and us, in front of Hannah’s hot single friend.’
There was another pause on the line, and more mumbling between the two of them.
‘But I’m sure that’s not going to happen,’ he added, with a cough that I tried not to read as sarcastic.
Chapter Three
So it was Friday night and, at the risk of too much detail, I was testing the capabilities of modern antiperspirant technology to their limits. Since I’d found out about it on Wednesday evening, I’d spent most of my time planning for this big night.
I’d been watching the news, so I’d know what was going on in the world if the subject turned to current affairs — no chance of me joining a discussion on Osborne’s latest monetary policy decision thinking it’s something to do with Sharon and Ozzy at this dinner party. I read all the arts reviews, so if all was going well I could say to Niamh, ‘I hear the Osborne revival at the National is worth a trip if you’re interested,’ and drop in a few salient facts about Look Back in Anger, so she’d know I wasn’t talking about Kelly trying a pop comeback. I even read the back pages, in case she was one of those sporty gals.
All my clothes had been washed. Some of them had even been ironed. I’d tidied my place and changed the sheets, because, hey, you never knew and it was best to take precautions. Precautions! I’d even rushed and checked the use-by date on my bedside packet of condoms — I didn’t even like using milk that was getting near its expiry date so I was taking no chances.
On Thursday evening I thought everything was under control.
On Friday I was certain I was woefully under-prepared.
What was I going to say? Why did my clothes all suddenly look so dull and old man-ish? Should I have got a haircut? Should I bring a present? What was I going to do about the prospect of social kissing when I arrived? What if she was taller than me? What if I really liked her?
These were questions I was still trying to deal with while I stood in Carl’s Fine Wines and Spirits just down from Rob and Hannah’s. I was wearing my work overcoat, my only non-work shoes, my least saggy-arsed jeans — cords were bringing back too many bad memories still — and the one shirt I felt fitted the bill as fashionable dinner party casual smart. I thought it also hinted at the wry intelligence of a kind and caring man who wanted to look good, but didn’t need to try too hard to prove himself.
It was blue.
‘All right,’ said Carl.
‘Hi!’ I choked back before returning hurriedly to browsing. Why did he have to pick now to get so chatty? I ducked away to the front of the shop to have a look at the state of the flowers, and whether I could hand them over to Hannah without it appearing more insulting than complimentary.
Should I get some for Niamh too?
Oh, God. Just thinking about questions like this was sending my internal temperature rocketing. I looked at my reflection in the glass of the chilled lagers cabinet. You need to calm down, relax, and just be natural, I told myself. It’s just a casual dinner. Angus and Sarah are going to be there too, to take the pressure off. She’s probably more scared of you than you are of her.
Aside from a mental image of my turning up to a date with a venomous spider, my internal pep talk did go some way to calming me down. I took a deep breath, and smiled and winked at my reflection. Which I think surprised the guy stretching across me to get his cans of lager.
Feeling guilty about not nurturing my friendship with Carl the offie owner, I tried to push things forward again while I was paying.
‘Busy evening?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, not bad, typical Friday.’
‘Right.’
I felt as if everything was back on track again as I left the shop with my wine and carnations, and headed to the dinner party.
‘Ooh, Kangaroo’s Pouch Shiraz! I’ve always loved that name since I saw the shouty Jesus bloke outside Sainsbury’s drinking it.’ Hannah gave me a peck on the cheek at the door as I handed over my off-licence purchases, and we headed up the stairs to their first-floor flat’s kitchen.
‘How are you doing, Dan? All set for your big night?’ she asked. ‘You look nice — and getting better at getting that deodorant on. Hardly any marks at all.’
In striking contrast to me, Hannah was looking cool and in control, in skinny twill trousers and a groovy print T-shirt, her hair pulled back off her face.
‘You’re looking good,’ I said. ‘Is that new?’
‘Why, yes, it is,’ she said, smiling and standing a little taller. ‘Thanks for noticing. Very observant.’
‘I saw the screwed-up Zara bag sticking out of the recycling out front, and took a guess,’ I confessed.
She smiled and shook her head gently.
‘Well, good work on the compliments, anyway,’ she said, patting my arm, ‘but maybe try to keep the rubbish bins out of it when Niamh gets here.’
‘Hey, sport!’ exclaimed Rob, emerging from the kitchen brandishing a tomato-stained wooden spoon and wearing his favourite ‘lady in saucy underwear’ cooking apron. ‘Feeling lucky? Eh? Eh? Eh?’
‘Be nice to him,’ ordered Hannah. ‘He’s a little nervous, and he’s brought me flowers, which is something no other man has done for me in living memory.’
‘If I came in with flowers, dollface, it’d just give away my guilt at my tawdry affairs,’ he replied.
‘I need a drink,’ I told Rob, ‘as a matter of some urgency.’
‘You’ve missed the cocktails, and we’re out of tonic. Beer or wine?’
Grabbing a seat in the cramped kitchen, I pondered the question. When Niamh arrived would holding a beer look too loutish? White wine a bit sissy? The process of elimination left me asking for a glass of red, although a T-free G and T did have its appeals.
‘So when do Angus and Sarah arrive?’ I asked.
‘Bit of a change of plan there,’ explained Rob. ‘They were all set to leave and Angus had a disaster with the canapés he was planning for Sarah’s touch rugby team coming over for their annual piss-up tomorrow. Their evening is now going to be spent de-veining prawns, and testing his filo.’
‘But, but they were my pressure valve, my lightning conductor… It’s going to be too intense with just the four of us!’ I said, nervously swigging my wine.
‘You’ll do fine, sweetheart,’ said Hannah. ‘It probably would have become pretty obvious what was going on anyway, even with Angus and Sarah here.’
‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, ‘what do you mean it’ll become obvious what’s going on? Niamh does know what’s happening, doesn’t she? She’s in on this already, right? You said about resolutions… It’s not like I’m involved in some kind of ambush here, am I?’
Rob and Hannah shared another one of their looks, conclusively informing me that an ambush was pretty much exactly what I was involved with here. I took a bigger swig of my drink.
‘It’ll be fine, Dan. It’s not a big surprise at all,’ said Hannah in her best reassuring tone. ‘She phoned feeling a bit gloomy and fed up with life, and I said we were having some friends over for dinner so why didn’t she come and we could catch up.’
‘A catch up? She thinks she’s coming for a quiet meal with her old pals to moan about her family and work, and she’s going to be stuck with me babbling at her over the Babah Ganoush?’
‘Bar-barh GanoOOOOSH,’ said Rob loudly as he continued tinkering with his tomatoey sauce, throwing various dried herbs into the pot.
‘Don’t worry, it won’t be like that at all,’ said Hannah, although the way she started gulping down her own drink made me think I’d put an element of doubt in her mind.
‘Did she even say she was looking for someone?’ I asked. ‘Oh, God, she’s going to look at me, and I’m going to have to sit there while her face registers the horror of the trap she’s walked into.’
‘You’ll be fine, sport,’ insisted Rob. ‘Wow her with your sense of HUMMUS.’
‘I didn’t say anything deliberately because I know she’s looking,’ explained Hannah. ‘But Niamh’s always been someone who likes things to develop organically.’
‘Which means she expects to have a load of shit dumped on her, and has to get by without any chemical assistance,’ said Rob.
‘That’s it, I’m off. I’ve just remembered I have to peel ten kilos of kumquats and feel up my pastry before my netball squad comes to tea tomorrow.’
Halfway to my feet I froze, and so did the others, as the doorbell rang.
‘Honestly, you’ll be fine,’ said Hannah, giving my shoulder a squeeze as she headed down the stairs to the front door. I’m not sure if it was her hand, or my entire body, that was shaking. Possibly both.
‘Let me have a look at you,’ said Rob as he topped up my empty glass. ‘Looking sharp, buddy. It’s not many people that can pull off that glowing red-wine-stained-teeth look.’
At the bottom of the stairs we could hear the door open and Hannah and Niamh greeting each other enthusiastically. Niamh had a soft, friendly voice, and I remember feeling, alongside the embarrassment and awkwardness, a sense of hope that maybe this could turn into something. This could be the story about how we got together for years to come — the night Mum fell for Dad, despite his having tzatziki spilt down his best shirt.
‘Angus and Sarah can’t make it, some kind of culinary crisis ahead of a party tomorrow, so it’s just four of us,’ said Hannah as she came up the stairs, giving Niamh the chance to react to the development in semi-private, I suppose. Or make a bolt for the door before the night had even begun.
‘Ah, well. More taramasalata for the rest of us, then,’ replied Niamh, not sounding in the least fazed by the development.
The last of the stairs was approaching, and I stood myself up a little more straight as we waited for her to come into the cramped kitchen. I became very aware of all my limbs as I told myself to just be casual.
In a bustle of heavy overcoats being taken and weather being complained about, they came into the room. Hannah lightly hugged Niamh and gave her another kiss to say thank you for the rather nice-looking bottle of wine, and the noticeably undroopy and prettily wrapped bunch of flowers she handed over.
‘They’re gorgeous, thanks, babe,’ said Hannah, giving Niamh a peck on both cheeks and a squeeze around the waist as Rob stepped up, wiping his hands on his apron.
‘Happy New Year, toots! How are ya?’ Rob asked, giving her a big hug and noisy kiss.
‘This is our dearest old pal, Dan,’ said Hannah, ‘Dan, Niamh.’
I don’t know exactly what I was thinking the moment before it happened, but time slowed down as I realised I was leaning in, arms wide open, to give a total stranger an unexpected and unwelcome kiss and friendly embrace.
I knew immediately upon moving that the situation had called for a nod and hi, but caught up in the enthusiasm of greetings from Rob and Hannah I’d over-committed. I felt my life flash before my eyes as I continued on my irreversible trajectory towards Niamh; every embarrassing experience I’d ever had replayed itself in front of me, from being too slow to put my hand up when bursting for the toilet on my first day at infants’ school onwards. I watched Niamh’s face — pretty, with stylish thick, dark spectacle frames that emphasised her increasingly widening eyes — as I moved closer, arms extended. She had a frozen fixed smile as I lurched forward, brain filled with memories of the times I mistook my boss’s wife for his mother, and called my GCSE biology teacher ‘dad’.
Finally I had my arms around her, patting her back in as non-committal way as possible and giving a quick peck somewhere around her ear, while my memory brimmed with recollections of other times I’d been in such close proximity to a woman and had felt a need to be somewhat apologetic.
She stood, still smiling, with the look of someone who might have suspected that they were the only person not in on a private joke, as I leapt back to the safety of my spot against the kitchen wall.
‘Um, hi, nice to meet you,’ she said as she stood there, arms folded, in her straight-from-work tailored suit, braced for any further unexpected assaults.
‘Well, isn’t this all very friendly?’ said Rob into the endless silence. ‘Now, who needs a large intoxicating beverage?’
After shuffling through to the living room, with me going to extraordinary lengths to make sure there was no chance for me to be in physical contact with Niamh, we sat on different sofas and nibbled crisps while Chris Isaac crooned reassuringly in the background. Hannah and Niamh caught up on friends they have in common, and I composed myself while listening attentively and nodding along to the trials and tribulations of people I didn’t know. I assured myself there was no long-term harm done, that maybe she’d just think of me as one of those larger than life characters that was always going around hugging people and sharing a bit of banter with bus drivers. I knew I just needed to pull myself together, and ease my way into the chat the two of them were having and we could start again. It wasn’t long before I spotted my opportunity.
‘Well, Osbourne’s been at it again,’ said Niamh with a tone of weary disbelief, and I mentally high-fived myself for having done my homework.
‘Yes, it’s another sign that this coalition government still isn’t dealing with economic reality. I think at the EU summit of ministers there’ll be repercussions beyond that close vote in the Commons,’ I declared, while Hannah looked over, obviously seeing a new side to me.
‘If only he could think less about the short term and more of his legacy — like the late John Osborne with his revival at the National Theatre. Fifty-seven years since its debut at the Royal Court, which marked the real take-off of a career that encompassed more than twenty plays and Oscar-winning screenwriting. Have you seen it?’ I continued.