Year of Being Single (13 page)

Frankie grabbed her phone and googled Couch to 5k. She had run once, a million years ago, before she had kids. She and Rob used to run. She’d had an iPod and some Nike trainers and they’d pounded the streets in the evenings after work. She missed it, she realised, though she hadn’t thought about it for years.

Couch to 5k: here it was. Week One, a five-minute walk followed by twenty minutes of alternate running and walking, leading all the way up to Week Nine and a thirty-minute run. It didn’t look too bad.

She rooted through her wardrobe. There, at the back, under an old breast pump and a bright orange T-shirt from the 90s, which said ‘Stupid Girl’, was a very creased pair of pink, Lycra leggings and her battered pair of Nike trainers. It all came flooding back to her: the sound of rubber on tarmac, Nirvana in her ears, her boobs wobbling in her largely ineffective sports bra. She could do it again, couldn’t she? She could run. Of course she could! In fact she was such an old pro, she was pretty confident she could skip straight to Week Six.

She stripped off her skinny jeans, revealing a knotted sock secreted up the left leg she’d failed to notice all day, and pulled on the leggings. Boy, they were tight. She’d been a size ten in those days, not the chunky size fourteen she now was. They stretched over her bottom and thighs to the point of see-through, but they were just about okay, she supposed. She had nothing else. She added socks, the trainers and the 90s T-shirt. It was chilly out but she remembered how quickly running warmed her up, and it wouldn’t get dark until seven. She was going to do this!

As she shut the front door behind her, she suddenly felt a little silly and utterly self-conscious. There would be people staring at her, small children pointing and laughing. Oh God. She nearly went back in again and slammed the door. Instead, she went through the gate, into the back garden and out to the back alley that ran behind her row of houses. She’d go to the end then head along the river. If she was going to look ridiculous there would be fewer witnesses that way.

She ran. At first her earphones kept coming out, everything was wobbling, the lack of sports bra was a bad idea. The back alley was full of nettles and brambles and she spent a lot of it hopping over doggie do’s and broken glass. But, as she headed down the path that snaked next to the river, she found her feet. She had the wind in her hair, the road beneath her steadily plodding trainers, ‘Sounds Like Teen Spirit’ in her ears…

She’d been going about ten minutes when she had to stop by a tree and catch her breath. She had a stitch. She couldn’t remember having one of those since school. Clutching at the tree’s gnarly trunk, she staggered against it, gasping.

Moments later she realised she wasn’t alone. ‘Are you all right?’ said a voice.

She looked up, embarrassed. She probably had been making a too-theatrical job of bending over at the hip, clutching her side and grimacing. Well, if you’re going to have a stitch, you may as well make sure it’s a good one. Life-threatening.

Standing there was a man, also in running gear, but far from looking an utter fool in his. He had on navy shorts, a navy hoodie and white socks and trainers (Rob had those trainers, she noted) and he looked great in them. This man didn’t look like he was trying to out-neon an 80s go-go dancer. He was also very good-looking. He had shaggy sort of nineteenth-century hair and blue eyes that looked like they’d had a manly lick of the mascara brush. Incredible eyelashes. He wouldn’t have looked out of place up on a Jane Austen horse, in military uniform. He was far too good-looking a man to see her looking like this.

‘Oh, I’m fine, thanks,’ she puffed. ‘Just a stitch. A runner’s occupational hazard.’ She stood up and did what she hoped was an athletic-looking lunge-type stretch. ‘You know what it’s like.’

He looked like he didn’t. ‘First run?’

What? How the hell did he know that? And it wasn’t her first
ever
run. She suddenly realised her leggings had gripped themselves up her bum in an enormous wedgie and she had an unbearable urge to prise them out, which of course she couldn’t do. She wriggled a bit to try and dislodge the wedgie but it stayed firmly in place.

‘No, course not. Is it
yours
?’

‘No. I run 4k every day.’

‘Oh right. Show-off,’ she said and she now had an irresistible urge to stick her tongue out at him, so she did.

He looked surprised, then to her surprise, he burst out laughing. ‘I like your spirit,’ he said. ‘So are you following a programme?’

‘Couch to 5k.’

He nodded. ‘That’s a brilliant programme. I actually run a local Couch to 5k meet-up, if you’re interested. We meet in the Tesco car park, Sunday mornings. Ten o’clock.’ He pointed over to Chelmsford’s main Tesco’s, the other side of the river.

‘Oh right, thanks,’ said Frankie, staring at his bicep. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘Great. Well, nice meeting you.’ There was a beat as he looked at her with his ridiculously long-eyelashed eyes and she enjoyed looking back into them.

‘You too.’

Right. Should she set off at a casual, nonchalant jog, or go straight into an authoritative power run? Hang back and let him go off first? She didn’t know which way he’d come from and which way he was going. He smiled at her, turned and broke into a run. Phew; she was going in the opposite direction.

As she got into some sort of stride, successfully avoiding the random giant swan that had decided at that moment to amble from the riverside and cross her path, she wondered what his bum looked like in his shorts and turned her head. To her horror he had turned back too and was grinning at her.

Damn. The see-through wedgie. How embarrassing.

Chapter Nine: Grace

Grace had been secretly dating for a month.

She’d met five different men. All of them (shamefully) had been from Hook, Line and Sinker. She’d decided to give online dating a go, after all. Well, she didn’t have much of a choice. Nana McKensie’s birthday do was fast approaching and she was running out of time. Over the course of four weeks, from mid-February to mid-March, Grace had bitten the bullet, picked the best of a bad bunch and had been on five dates with five men. There was supposed to have been a sixth, a ‘Tim’, but he’d cried off from dinner at the last minute, citing scheduling difficulties. She took this to mean he was married with five children. It was no loss – she’d had enough of the dating by then, anyway. It had been very disappointing.

The night she’d joined the dating website and almost been side-tracked by an escort, she’d ended up (red wine speeding her progress) ‘friending’ and getting in touch with sixteen different men. Six she’d agreed to dates with. She’d met the first four men at lunchtimes, asking them to come to the little Thai restaurant in the street behind the hat shop and having Gideon on reluctant stand-by with an emergency call and a sick grandfather should she text the word ‘help’.

Number One had been a nice enough chap – a bit dull, an accountant – but he talked about himself non-stop. If she tried to offer up anything about her life, his eyes glazed over and then he’d say ‘anyway…’ and carry on. She’d learnt an awful lot about him: he liked jigsaws and watching documentaries about avalanches; he’d been married for fifteen years but his wife had left him for a driving instructor; he had two daughters who were doing really well at school (great!); he’d once shaken hands with Johnny Ball outside the old White City studios whilst queuing for the National Lottery draw. It was all fascinating. She’d left him with a weak handshake and a desire to never see him again.

Two and Three were fairly indistinguishable – both thin of hair, both tall and skinny-ish, both nothing like their photographs or their profiles. One had professed a love for fine wine; he hadn’t, he sank five pints of cider over pad thai and green chicken curry. The other had declared himself a rock climber; he looked like he wouldn’t be able to climb a post box.

Four was an Aussie who had a laugh like a drunk hyena who’d enjoyed one too many tinnies round the barbeque before he’d set off (she called on the sick grandfather for him), and Five she agreed to meet for dinner because he said he was a foodie. It was excruciating. He’d insisted on going to one of those chef’s tables for a ten course ‘tasting menu’ and all he did was talk about all the food he’d ever eaten and where and keep trying to feed her forkfuls of stuff when she was trying to speak. Just awful.

It had all been terrible. Soul-destroying. Depressing. Even hilarious, if it had only happened to somebody else. And, apart from Gideon, she had nobody to talk to about it. For the whole month she’d not said a word to Frankie and Imogen. She didn’t dare! She was supposed to be single, not massively letting the side down by dating a succession of internet randoms. It was another reason she’d done lunches – she was worried about being seen going out of the house at night. She’d risked it only for the Saturday dinner date with The Taster, when James had had Daniel, and she had driven there and back like a fugitive. If her friends had spotted her coming or going, she would have pulled a long-lost, fictitious auntie out of the hat.

Online dating had been a disastrous experiment. There was no one she could take with her to Nana Marie’s one hundredth birthday celebrations and she was getting desperate. Frankie had offered to go as her plus one, which was very sweet of her – Frankie hated musicals – but taking Frankie would not have the desired effect. She wanted to stick one in James’s gullet; she had to turn up there with a man.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. She’d remembered Greg, the escort, and two days ago she’d got back to him.

Are you free on Friday please, as I’d like to book you for dinner?

She’d needed a glass of red in order to do it, but she needed
him
. He was a cheated-on ex’s only hope. She’d ask him to take her to Nana McKensie’s do and pretend to be her boyfriend, but first she’d have a trial date with him to check him out. What if, like men Two and Three, he was nothing like his profile picture? What if he talked like a mouse on helium? She wasn’t Debra Messing and this wasn’t
The Wedding Date
… He could have advertised as Dermot Mulroney and turn out to be David Brent. She’d have a date with him, suss him out and if he was suitable, she’d take him to Nana’s theatre night.

Luckily, he was free.

Grace checked her reflection in a shop window. She was on her way to meet him now.

She didn’t want to look like she was ‘up for it’ in any way, neither did she want to look boring and frumpy. It was silly, really. He was a male escort; he probably didn’t care what she looked like, but
she
did. She’d gone for glam but not too glam – black skinny jeans, nice top with a hint of sparkle, a little navy blazer, and some heels that were high but not too high. She didn’t want to be wobbling around if she got drunk, not that she was planning to.

She walked down Moulsham Street. She was petrified but very excited and strangely proud of herself. She was going on a date on
her
terms. She was in control. Her heart was under her own protection. It actually felt liberating – she’d booked a man for dinner and there was nothing wrong in it. Nothing at all. It was merely a
business
transaction. One that could save her life.

She prayed he was what he’d said on the tin; it was the 13th of March today (Friday the 13th – lucky for her, she hoped) and the theatre trip was the 1st of April. Nana always said all the best people had their birthday on April Fool’s Day. She also liked to say ‘time is of the essence.’ This had never been truer.

Maggie, James’s youngest sister, was babysitting Daniel. She’d turned up at half seven with a huge tote she’d plonked on the kitchen table and started pulling stuff out of. Sweets, chocolate bars, magazines, knitting. Within seconds it was spread all over the table. Grace resisted the urge to grab a wicker basket from a shelf and shovel it all in it. She liked Maggie though. She was fun and Art School – always in a scarf, all year round, always giggly, always really nice. Daniel deemed it very uncool to have a babysitter at his age, but he liked Maggie a lot too. She told great jokes and she liked Star Wars Lego.

Maggie had broken rank from James’ adoring siblings by being pretty disgusted with her brother’s behaviour, and thought Grace was out on a nice date with a man she’d met at a sandwich shop near work. Frankie and Grace thought she was at Taekwondo – the new, adult class for the fitness-minded over thirties. Her friends would appreciate that: self-defence training. It fitted in well with the silly single for a year ethos. And if she really needed self-defence tonight, she supposed she could always have someone’s eye out with her stiletto heel.

‘You look great,’ Maggie had said, as Grace went out the door. ‘I hope the date goes well.’

‘Thank you,’ said Grace. ‘Me too.’

Grace had booked a taxi, which met her at the other end of the road. She’d told Frankie she was getting picked up by someone in a white suit for Taekwondo, and hoped her friend wouldn’t see her skittering along the street in her going-out gear, her head down. As she got into the waiting cab and shut the door, she gave a sigh of relief. She’d got away with it, so far.

She tottered into the restaurant. Her feet were hurting already. They may not have been the highest she owned, but her shoes were cripplingly tight. She’d hardly worn this pair; she’d bought them online at House of Fraser a couple of years ago, stupidly anticipating lots of romantic date nights, which had never materialised. At least they were getting an outing tonight, however nefarious.

The restaurant was small, obscure and Italian. Luigi’s. She’d never been there before and didn’t know anyone who had. There was no way she was booking one of the chains, Prezzo or Café Rouge – far too dangerous. It was better to go somewhere off the beaten track, with questionable reviews. As soon as she went up to the little wooden podium thing, at reception, she could see Greg over the shoulder of the tall girl with the fake, maître d’ smile.

He was wearing a pale blue shirt. His hair was close cropped – he’d had a haircut since his photo. He was wearing a pair of glasses and studying the menu. He was, immediately, gorgeous and, apart from the haircut, looked
exactly
like his picture. Her heart started thumping in her chest. She felt light-headed. He was really here. Well, he wouldn’t stand her up, would he? She was paying him. But still, she was almost surprised to see him. And she had to walk over to him somehow, in these heels.