The One Before the One (22 page)

He stares at me. He knows he’s lost.

‘So go. Before you lose her, too. You’ve got away with so much already, it can’t be long before your luck runs out.’

And then I turn, leaving Toby standing on the bridge, and I finally feel like I’ve said everything I wanted to say. As I walk home, I feel so light, it’s like the gentlest breeze could take me now, pick me up off this bridge and carry me somewhere else.

‘Well, well, well,’ says Lexi when I finally emerge from the changing room of Warehouse, wearing a tulip-shaped blue floral dress with an enormous belt. ‘The lady has a waist. And pins! Blimey. Look at you with your pins up to your armpits.’

I look at myself in the mirror.

‘Shut up,’ I say. I’ve always been useless at taking compliments. ‘Who are you? Gok Wan? Are you going to make me stand naked in the window of Selfridges next?’

It’s three weeks since I finally ended it with Toby on Chelsea Bridge and I’m on Oxford Street shopping with Lexi.

We’ve done the nail bar in Top Shop and ransacked H&M, completely shamed ourselves on the Designers Lingerie floor of Selfridges:

‘Fifty quid for a gusset?’ Lexi had shouted at the top of her voice whilst holding up a Moschino G-string. ‘I think I’ll go commando!’

This is the best fun I’ve had in months. This is what having a sister is all about, what I imagined. Two of the four points on Lexi’s Master list for sorting my life out done and I already feel lighter, I owe her.

Lexi is sitting down on the floor where she has been for
the past half-hour, while I’ve tried outfit after outfit. She pulls at her cheeks and groans, comically.

‘Come on now, Caroline, stop it with the false modesty. Let’s get the dress. Please! I haven’t got all day, you know.’

‘I don’t know,’ I sigh, eventually. ‘I never go anywhere to wear it.’

Lexi says nothing. I watch her through the mirror. She’s got her tongue in her cheek and is looking distinctly
guilty.
‘Lexi Steele, what’s going on?’

She starts to smirk. Her little rosebud mouth breaking into the naughtiest smile. ‘Nothing.’

‘Bollocks. I know that face. What have you got up your sleeve, you little schemer?’

‘Weeeell … I wasn’t gonna tell you till we got home. Until I’d got some booze inside you, to be fair.’

I laugh out loud.

‘So you had to get me pissed to tell me? It must be bad!’

‘Promise you won’t kill me?’

‘I’m promising nothing of the sort.’

‘Okay, well promise you’ll keep to your word? You know, the conversation we had the other night about you trying new things, taking some risks, not being such a …’ she grimaces in an effort at tactfulness. ‘Control freak,’ she says, eventually, and I feel a little pang of hurt. Was I really that bad? ‘Basically, I’ve set you up on a date.’

‘What?
When?’

‘Tonight. In about four hours time, to be exact.’

I rub my forehead as I try to compute.

‘Right, so who is this date?’

‘He’s off Match.com.’

‘Lexi!’ I fall against the wall.

‘You promised! You said, you were going to take all opportunities, try everything once.’

‘B-but …’ I’m stammering now. This was ridiculous. ‘How on earth did you manage to intercept my account? Set me up with someone?’

‘Easy. I told the truth. I found someone I thought you’d like and I emailed him, saying that I was your sister, that you were hilarious and charming and a
right
little sexpot …’ I don’t believe this. What was she
like?
‘But that you were also shy and would be a spinster for eternity if someone didn’t take action.’

My mouth falls open.

‘Okay, I didn’t say the spinster bit but I did say the rest.’

‘And?’ I was intrigued as well as flabbergasted now.

‘He confirmed, yes, you were a right little sexpot and that he’d be happy to go on a date with you.’

‘So, you’ve basically logged onto my account and acted like my wing-woman?’

‘Mm-mm. It would appear that’s true, yes.’

I don’t really see the point in arguing. This was the new me, after all, the new gung-ho me, who went on blind dates, willy-nilly, exuded an air of casual relaxation, was completely at home in her own skin. Someone who didn’t clean the inside of taps with a toothbrush, or line jars up in the kitchen. Or sleep with married men. Or make endless lists. Well, maybe just the odd one. As I’m lying in the bath before I set off that evening, a cucumber face mask cracking on my face, I can’t resist making one very short one. Just to calm the nerves. Lexi had been through it with me, her being far more experienced in the dating arena than me at seventeen, which was pretty tragic when I looked at it like that.

I sat up in the bath, careful not to get my notepad wet, and wrote them down.

It’s only minutes before leaving that I have a change of heart on the outfit front.

I stand at the top of the stairs, wearing the midnight blue shift dress that Wayne gave me, Lexi standing at the bottom.

‘I’ve decided that, although I like the dress we bought today, I’m going to wear this instead. What do you think?’

Lexi’s face lights up. A slow, delighted smile spreads across her face.

‘But I thought you didn’t buy it in the end?’ she says.

‘Wayne gave it to me – a sort of olive branch for the hand-on-heart fiasco – I forgot to tell you. Do you think it’s all right?’

She rests her chin on the banister and looks up at me with her big, dark, eyes. ‘All right? I think it’s perfect. Very, very, very cool. You look awesome.’

Awesome? Well that wasn’t bad. Especially coming from a seventeen-year-old.

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘Not too mutton-dressed-as-lamb?’

‘Nope.’

‘Not too smelly-charity-shop?’

‘Definitely not!’

‘Not too thirty-something-trying-to-be-seventeen?’

Lexi groans. ‘Just go! He’s gonna be waiting for you.’

‘But what if he’s awful? What if he’s like, four feet tall and got a colostomy bag he hasn’t told me about, or a fake leg or he’s racist or he smells or he’s deathly boring, or he thinks
I
smell and I’m deathly boring or … Oh God, I can’t bear it!’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Lexi shakes her head in despair. ‘Just
insane.
Text me and I’ll call you, okay? Sudden, acute appendicitis. You have to leave immediately and rush me to hospital.
Easy.
Now go.’ She shoos me down the stairs. ‘Go on, get out, woman.
I
can’t bear it, never mind you!’

I leave, tottering in new, excruciatingly painful wedges from Dorothy Perkins, towards Battersea Park Station, my Marianne Faithfull dress brushing the tops of my bare thighs, and I am filled with a reassuring fizz of excitement about the evening. I am going on a date, a blind date and apparently I look awesome. This was all good.

I give myself a pep talk as I walk through Aldwych towards Drury Lane: ‘It’s just a date, Caroline, not an appearance on
Question Time.
Relaaaaax. I take out the First Dates checklist from my jacket pocket and have a quick run through: be yourself, smile, do not get too drunk. How hard could it be? Very, I decide by the time I get to the restaurant. My heart is pounding, my mouth feels like it’s been freeze-dried. Quick as a flash, before anyone can see, I turn to my reflection in a parked car window, lift up my arms and my fears are confirmed: two round sweat patches. Just brilliant. Oh well, as long as I didn’t go giving him any high-fives.

The restaurant looks inviting. It’s still light but on the verge of dusk and the pretty foliage that creeps on trellises around
the arched doorway looks extra green against the milky sky. Lanterns burn outside, a placard featuring golden cherubs hangs above the door and, inside, the cavernous space flickers with cosy candlelight. A dream location for a first date; Lex has done well.

Then I walk inside. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with the inside, just that it was sort of … well,
novel.
There was definitely a theme going on, but what that was exactly was anyone’s guess: fake-gilt chairs, crushed red velvet table-clothes and, on the ceiling and panels along the sides, murals depicting scenes of Roman gods.

There is a long table down the middle, full already of a rowdy, foreign crowd. Puppets hang down from the ceiling – a little macabre, like something out of the film
Chucky.
But it was what was around the sides of the restaurant that gave the theme away, because elevated on the second ‘tier', which could only be reached by staircases around the side, were pretend opera boxes where people sat dining.

I pull the hem of my shift dress down. Maybe I should have worn a bosom-enhancing floor-length number instead? Something that made me look more like Lesley Garrett.

‘Can I help you, madame?’ A waiter in black bow tie approaches.

‘Yes, thank you. I’m looking for …’ Shit, I didn’t know who I was looking for. Then I remembered what Lexi said. ‘He’s upstairs, I think.’

The waiter gives me a knowing smile. Clearly, I had
INTERNET
DATER
emblazoned across my face.

‘That way,’ he says, gesturing to steps leading to one of the opera boxes. I climb them, feeling a new creep of perspiration under my arms. There’s only one person sitting there and I recognize him immediately, his hair newly cut against the nape of his neck.

‘Wayne?’

He looks round.

‘Caroline? Oh my God! What are you doing here?’

‘What am I doing here? What are
you
doing here … Oh …’ It suddenly dawns.

‘I can’t believe …’ He’s pointing at me now, laughing. ‘That Lexi Steele, that sister of yours, she is a
right
one.’

‘You’re telling me.’

He looks at me, that long-enough-to-make-me-look-the-other-way look.

I say, ‘Well, I must say, your profile was very misleading.
[If in doubt, just make a joke.]
You said you were tall, good-looking and had all your own hair.’

Wayne tugs at his straw-coloured mop. ‘How dare you? This is my very best hairpiece. Can’t do much about the height thing, I’m afraid. I stop here …’ he gestures to where the table comes up to his waist. ‘I’m ALL torso. As for the good-looks bit, well you girls are so fussy.’

I laugh. So, he’s funny. And good-looking. More good-looking even than I’d remembered. He’s caught the sun over the summer and has cute new freckles over his nose. He’s wearing an expensive looking powder blue jumper under a biker jacket – a definite improvement on the oily cable-knit. It makes him look sexy, effortless. Not too try-hard.

He smiles – that same warm, infectious smile – and I feel a sudden thrill: I was on my first date for years and it was with someone I fancied. What were the chances of that? According to Shona, who’d spent years Internet Dating before she met Paul, you were lucky if they were within a decade of the age they said they were. Underneath the excitement, however, I am also gripped with panic. What if he had been hoping for a six foot Swedish beauty called Anneka to walk through the door and he got me: a five foot five nervous wreck with – currently – an excessive sweating problem? What if he’s going to have to have words with Lexi?

I know what she will have been thinking: my tragic sister needs some dating practise. Wayne’s going to Sheffield soon – perfect for a no-strings practise run before I start the intensive bloke-finding programme with her and she gets a bloke for good. But what would Wayne make of giving up his evening for me? I would hazard a guess he’d been hoping for something more exotic for his last London fling …

Or maybe not, I don’t know. Because when I sit down, he leans back in his chair then looks comically under the table so that I instinctively wrap one wedge-clad foot, self-consciously, around the other.

‘Can I just say, you look …’ He blows air through his lips. ‘A knockout.’

I grin at him like a lunatic. Was he taking the piss?

‘Beautiful dress, by the way.’

I loved the way he said beautiful – dropping the ‘Ts’.

‘Thank you, it was a gift from someone with impeccable taste.’

I look around at the funny little faux-opera box we are sitting in – like something out of
Alice in Wonderland.
We are sat on benches, with a table between us covered in what Martin would definitely identify as ‘ethnitat’ – a multi-coloured hessian number with tassels and frayed edges. Encasing us, as if we are on the set of a school play, are swathes of sun-and-moon printed fabric and, opposite, obviously to look like theatre props, is a collection of clocks and dusty old books, arranged in haphazard little piles. I looked at the menu: Greek, or was that Turkish? Or Moroccan? It was hard to tell.

The starters come – dollops of hummus and huge slabs of halloumi and soggy courgette – and we politely begin, sharing from each other’s plates.

Wayne takes his jacket off and rolls up his sleeves. There was the tattoo again. Who was Justine? One of these days I would ask him about her.

I say, ‘I’ve started reading your book.’

Wayne puts his fork down and looks at me expectantly.

‘And?’

‘I love it!’

‘Seriously?’ he says, delighted. ‘You’re not just saying that?’

‘No, believe me, I’m the world’s worst liar. I think it’s sweet and touching and really funny.’ I start to giggle as I remember bits. ‘I love, love
love
the scene where Kevin goes to Argos to buy dumbbells, which he can barely carry home, then starts copying the Arnold Schwarzenegger video in his back garden in a bid to bag that total bitch, Lucy Briers.’

Wayne laughs too.

‘She is a prick tease, that Lucy Briers, isn’t she?’

‘Brilliant creation. Totally brilliant. And it’s just so sweet.’ I carry on, enthused now, in my element. ‘The Arnold Schwarzenegger thing, it totally made me fall in love with Kevin. You can completely imagine this scrawny 13-year-old, desperately pumping iron in his underpants in the back garden, whilst his mum hangs out the washing, rolling her eyes.’