Love @ First Site Page 5

  "A psychological double bluff," says Richard dismissively. "And did he get distracted by the door just before he legged it?"

  "Not that I saw, no. A large group came in, but he didn't seem to notice them. We were rather engrossed in each other at that point." The nausea has returned.

  "And absolutely nothing else unusual about his behavior?" Richard's clearly not convinced.

  I jut out my bottom lip, deep in thought. "Only that it was a beautifully sunny day but he didn't want to sit outside."

  Richard slaps both his hands on his knees in a gesture of triumph. "I rest my case, your honor."

  "Sorry?" I'm scowling again.

  "Well, how much proof do you need?" He pulls a "duh" expression on me. "He didn't want to sit outside because he was afraid he'd be seen with you. Now why could that be?"

  He has a point. The more I thought about Simon's reluctance to eat al fresco, and the way he got so easily distracted by the door, the more it all backed up Richard's theory.

  "He must have seen someone he knew among the big group of people that came in," I say morosely. "That's why he went out the back way."

  My misery descends like a black cloud over the gathering, the silent gloom eventually punctuated by the doorbell.

  "I'll go!" Lars leaps up a little too gratefully.

  "There'll be plenty of other, more suitable dates," says Tab comfortingly. "I can see you meeting someone a little bit older and really successful . . . you know, a big gun."

  "As long as he's not of small caliber and immense bore," says Richard.

  I feel bad about being a manic depress-o-gram on their anniversary, but I can't help myself. I kissed my Prince Charming and he turned into a frog. Things couldn't be worse.

  "Hello!" a familiar voice rings out.

  Yes they could. Kara has just walked in, her beady eyes scanning our dejected faces.

  "Are we contacting the dead?" She raises a quizzical eyebrow.

  "Almost," says Tab. "We've just been hearing about Jess's first Internet date."

  "Really?" The delight in Kara's voice is not dissimilar to that little slurping noise Hannibal Lecter makes at the thought of a gently poached human liver with a glass of Chianti. "Do tell."

  Tab opens her mouth and starts to speak, but I do the verbal equivalent of wrestling her to the ground. "Nothing to tell really," I babble. "He was quite nice, but there was no spark. I won't be seeing him again."

  Kara looks dubious, her narrowed eyes assessing everyone's reaction to my little statement. Tab is staring at the floor, Will looks impassive, Lars has flushed bright red, and Richard's tongue is so deliberately and firmly wedged in his cheek that he looks deformed.

  "And the real story?" Kara fixes me with her best steely glare.

  "He did a bunk before the end of the date, and we think it's because he was married," I mumble.

  "God, what a bummer." It's Dan, Kara's boyfriend. I hadn't even noticed him enter the room. "Do you know where to find him? We'll send the boys round." He looks at Richard and Lars for support, then clearly thinks better of it. "Well, me and Will anyway."

  My arms suddenly break out in goose bumps, despite it being a fairly warm evening. "Christ, maybe none of it was true . . ."

  "None of what?" Madeleine tops up my wineglass in a show of sisterly support.

  "His name, his background, his job . . . maybe it was all a huge, fat lie." I replay it all in my head, trying to assess the viability of everything he said.

  The doorbell rings again and, this time, Richard drags himself away to answer it. Craning his neck to try to see who's at the door, Lars turns back and looks directly at me. "Did you not zay you heff been e-mailing each other?"

  I nod silently.

  "So e-mail him and ask him vy he dunked you in ze big end."

  "You mean dropped me in at the deep end." I smile. "In fact, left me in the lurch would be even better. No, even I have too much self-respect to chase him for an explanation." I stand up. "Right! Enough of this depressing bollocks, let's party!"

  I put on a good show of being the life and soul with the rest of Richard and Lars's friends who are now arriving at the party, but inside I'm dying. Not from embarrassment that my friends had to hear my tale of abandonment, but from genuine disappointment and, if I'm honest, a little bit of hurt.

  My brief taste of the heady mixture of alcohol-fueled lust and a warm spring day has reminded me just how much I miss intimacy. I had been coping well with celibacy, but now I feel like my insides are on spin cycle. A little bit of what you fancy leaves you wanting more, but sadly "more" doesn't seem to be an option.

  Locking myself in the downstairs bathroom for a brief respite from party chitchat, I lean my forehead against the cool wall tiles and wonder whether my next date will be as bittersweet. After all, I've promised to have two more.

  There's a team of Till Divorce Do Us Part dancers jumping around inside my head as I attempt to lift my face from the pillow. It flops down again almost immediately.

  Basically, I drank to forget. And drank. And drank. The party had eventually whittled down to the usual suspects, and we'd all sat round the kitchen table talking bollocks and teasing Lars about his new Garth Brooks album blaring out of the CD player.

  It led to Richard demanding that everyone had to come up with a spoof title for a country and western song, and Tab had kicked off with "Get your tongue outta my mouth, cos I'm kissing you good-bye."

  By the time it got to Richard, who came up with "Her teeth were stained, but her heart was pure," I was in danger of wetting myself and had to sprint to the loo. The next thing I remember was Richard shaking me awake in the spare room, where I lay after apparently crashing there an hour earlier.

  He said he fully intended on leaving me there until morning, but trouble was, my gaping mouth was pressed against Kara's pink suede jacket. Worse, as Richard gleefully pointed out to me, I had drooled all over it and left a stain that, rather prophetically, resembled an angry woman with her fist in the air.

  Once stirred from my slumbering stupor, I became obsessed with getting home to my own bed so I could tuck up in my fleece jammies and lie in to my heart's content the following morning.

  Except my hangover clearly has other ideas, and I can't fall back to sleep because of a persistent thumping between my eyes. The phone rings, the usually faint tone sounding like Big Ben going off next to my head.

  "Hello?" My voice cracks with inactivity.

  "Hi pumpkin. You all right?" It's Olivia. "I was just checking you haven't forgotten lunch."

  I have. "Lunch?" I rub my right eye, trying to soothe the dull throbbing.

  "Jess! I knew you'd forget. Don't you dare try and wriggle out of it."

  My hand automatically slaps against my forehead, not a good idea in my current state. "Oh God, the parentals." It's our collective pet name for Mum and Dad.

  "You got it. One o'clock sharp. You know how Mum hates us to be late."

  I groan with a ferocity to rival a wounded warthog. "I've got such a terrible hangover I can barely form a sentence. I'll just hang out in the den with Matthew and Emily."

  "No you won't." Olivia's tone is faintly apologetic. "They're not coming. Emily has a tummy bug, so Michael's gratefully staying at home with both of them. It's just you and me, I'm afraid."

  Four cups of black coffee and several cold water face sluices later, and I'm on my way to Surrey, wearing the same outfit from the night before. Decision making isn't my strong point at the moment, but at least the outfit's fairly smart. You see, there's no just pitching up for Sunday lunch in comfy jeans and a sweater. Not with my mother anyway.

  As children, Olivia and I were always dressed immaculately with matching frocks, highly polished patent shoes, and frilly socks. Think Minnie Mouse on acid.

  Our mother was very slim and trendy, the Jackie O of Surbiton. She stood out a mile amongst the suburban crowd, quietly setting her own personal standards, oblivious to the astonished stares of those around her. "Ne
ver forget, girls," she used to intone loudly. "Life belongs to the pretty."

  Consequently, at school dances, when the rest of the year was wearing the latest tight top with Hunny Monster shoulder pads and polka dot crop trousers, Olivia and I stood sullen-faced in midcalf floral dresses, our hair relentlessly brushed into a silky ponytail.

  Olivia was the first to rebel, though she wasn't brave enough to let Mum in on the secret. With a hidden-under-bed stash of clothes bought from thrift stores, she would leave the house looking like Pollyanna, retrieve a carrier bag from a hedge down the road, and arrive at the disco looking like punk queen Polystyrene.

  It took me another three years to pluck up courage to do the same, but neither of us ever had a hair out of place in mother's eye line. Consequently, one of our shared greatest joys in life is to slob around the house in sweats, hair unbrushed and wearing no makeup.

  But I know when I show up at the parentals, Olivia will also be wearing something smart. At thirty-four and thirty-six, old habits die hard and we're still indoctrinated to be on parade.

  "Darling! How very . . . black," my mother falters, scanning my outfit up and down. She leans forward and sniffs my shoulder. "Do I smell smoke?"

  A dilemma. Do I let her think, incorrectly, that I have puffed my way through twenty fags on the journey down? Or do I tell her the truth, that her daughter is such a slovenly disgrace that she's still wearing last night's clothes?

  As she's Chief Constable of the fashion police, it's difficult to gauge which scenario will prompt the greater disapproval.

  "I wore it last night to Richard's party and ended up staying there. So it was this or his Carmen Miranda Mardi Gras outfit." The sleepover lie is inspired, I think.

  But mother seems unimpressed. "Jess, you simply cannot sit through lunch in yesterday's clothes."

  I open my mouth to protest that I had only worn them for a couple of hours the night before, but she doesn't let me speak.

  "No buts. Go upstairs to the little wardrobe in the spare room. There's a clean outfit there I keep for such emergencies."

  World famine, motorway pileups, droughts, monsoons--all bona fide "emergencies." In Mum's world, add faintly unkempt daughters to the list.

  By the time Olivia arrives twenty minutes later, I'm sitting at the lunch table in a pale pink twinset with tiny, embroidered flowers around the neckline and a beige, A-line skirt. The "emergency" shoes were too small, so I'm still wearing my black stilettos with strict instructions from Mother to keep them firmly wedged under the table.

  "Ah, the emergency outfit," smiles Olivia, once Mum is out of earshot. "What have you done to deserve that?"

  "I turned up in last night's clothes." I sniff sullenly.

  "Good one. I had to wear it once when Matthew spilled orange juice down my front just before Mum's lunch guests arrived."

  She sits down opposite me. "So, the sleepover. Anyone nice?"

  I raise my eyes heavenward. "I wish. I was at Richard and Lars's for their first anniversary party." I lower my voice even more. "I didn't actually stay. I just fell back into the same clothes this morning and they smelled of smoke . . . so, bingo!" I tug the twinset.

  Mum arrives back in the room, clutching a steaming tureen of vegetables. "Where is your father? I sent him for some fresh strawberries about an hour ago."

  On cue, Dad's highly polished old blue Bentley purrs past the window, the tires crunching on the gravel drive. It was a sound that evoked memories of my childhood, waiting for him to return home from work and feeling butterflies of excitement when he arrived.

  Olivia and I walk to the door to greet him.

  "My darling girls!" he exclaims, enveloping us both in a double hug. "How delightful to see you." He proffers two punnets of strawberries at Mum as she breezes past.

  My father, Alan, is a tiny bit bonkers, but we love him dearly. By day, he's chairman of GBHome, one of those giant furniture companies that always has a sale on. He started at the bottom, put his motto "Don't work in a shop unless you like smiling" to good use, and worked his way up.

  By night and weekends, he's an inventor. Not a very successful one, I might add, but it made for a fun childhood throughout which we tested various inventions of varying success. My favorite was a pair of slippers with mops as soles, perfect for doubling up as floor cleaners.

  The highlight of my father's life had been when his car-drink-holder-cum-ashtray was accepted and featured in the Innovations catalogue. It sold only a couple of dozen, but Dad didn't care. In his mind, he'd won the jackpot.

  "Remind me to show you my latest invention after lunch," he says, and Olivia and I share a secret, fond smile.

  "Oooh, what is it?" I enthuse.

  He goes pink with pleasure. "You'll have to wait and see."

  Mum reemerges from the kitchen with a vast joint of lamb and places it in front of Dad. "There we are, Alan. Carve away." She plants a little kiss on the top of his head.

  Placing an arm around the curve of her back, he pulls her towards him and gives a little squeeze. "Well done, dear. I'm sure it'll be delicious as always."

  Watching them, I feel a warm swell of nostalgia for the family lunch we religiously share every Sunday, come rain or shine. It is a house rule that no one is to make any plans that would jeopardize the sacrosanct gathering, the glue of our family life. Around this table, we catch up properly on each other's week, who is doing what, who is up, who is down and, most importantly of all, who needs a bit of family TLC.

  "So." Dad starts carving. "First things first. How are my gorgeous grandchildren?"

  Olivia smiles. "Emily's got a tummy bug, but apart from that, they're both fine."

  Dad turns his head towards me and raises his eyebrows questioningly.

  I shrug. "Sorry, no grandchildren to report on. But little old me is just fine, thanks."

  Mum spoons carrots onto my plate and looks at me pensively. I know what's coming.

  "Any man on the horizon?" she asks casually, belying what I know is the razor-sharp intention beneath.

  "Nope." I pop a new potato into my mouth with the sole purpose of disabling my jaw for further comment. I wasn't accounting for Olivia.

  "But things might pick up soon, eh?" she says, giving me an encouraging smile.

  Mum's eyes shoot up from her plate. "Oh?"

  The potato is hotter than I thought, and I'm throwing it around my mouth, trying to make a "shut up" noise at the same time. To no avail.

  "Yes," Olivia plows on. "She's joined an Internet dating service."

  A deathly silence descends, as if she's just announced I'm now transsexual and changing my name to Josh.

  After a few seconds, Mum glares at me direct. "Is that true?"

  A large lump of gristly lamb has wedged in my throat and I swill it down with water, rapidly gathering my thoughts at the same time.

  "Not strictly. Kara put an ad on the Internet without my knowledge. For my birthday . . ." I add as an afterthought.

  "I see." Mum visibly relaxes a little. "So I presume you just had it removed," she says, as if my potential love life is simply a troublesome carbuncle.

  At this point, I could simply lie and say yes, and that, blessedly, would be the end of the matter. But I find myself feeling faintly annoyed at her blatant disapproval.

  "No. Everyone persuaded me I should at least go on a couple of dates to try it out. Including Olivia," I say pointedly.

  "Olivia!" admonishes Mum. "Fancy encouraging your sister to resort to something so desperate."

  An apologetic-looking Olivia opens her mouth to reply, but I power in first, propelled by sheer indignation.

  "It's not desperate!" I say firmly. "It's entirely normal in this day and age."

  Mum looks doubtful. It's clear she views the whole idea of women advertising for men immensely distasteful.

  "But darling . . ." Her tone is conciliatory. "Surely the men on there are just pitiful creatures that no one else wants? The kind who live lonely lives, who could di
e in their little bedsits and not be found until they were eaten by maggots and a neighbor noticed the smell." She has always been one to overdramatize.

  We are all momentarily stunned by this gory analogy, simply looking on silently, our noses faintly wrinkled at the thought. Dad pushes the remainder of his food to one side of the plate.

  "I mean, Jess, sweetie, they could even be ax murderers," she plows on.

  Enough already. I feel my back stiffen with annoyance. "Am I pitiful?" I demand.

  "No, of course not," she replies in syrupy tones. Dad shakes his head reassuringly in support.

  "Am I unwanted?"

  "Of course not." She's tutting now for extra effect.

  "An ax murderer then?" I scowl.

  "Now you're just being silly."

  "Well, I'm advertising on the Web site, so it figures there will be some nice, normal men as well."

  Mum looks doubtful but says nothing, clearly knowing better than to interrupt such an impassioned protest.

  "People go on the Internet because they're just too busy to socialize much," I continue. "Not because they're desperate saddos."

  I stop speaking and look around the table for some moral support, but all I see are pitying expressions.

  "I read an article the other day that said twenty thousand people per month are joining Internet dating sites. They can't all be psychos. In fact, I met a really great man on my first date." As soon as the words leave my mouth, I could kick myself.

  "Really?" I can virtually see the bit clamped between my mother's teeth. "Jessie, that's wonderful news. Tell us more."

  Even Olivia leans forward with an eager expression and I remember she knows absolutely nothing about this.

  I shrug, biding time for a hasty backtrack. "Nothing much to tell really. He was very nice and we had a lovely time, but there wasn't a spark there so I doubt we'll be seeing each other again."

  "Oh." Mum pushes out her bottom lip in disappointment. "That seems a bit of a hasty conclusion. After all, the spark might come later."