10
2002
My bedroom floor is strewn with discarded clothes.
‘Prefer the white one,’ says Lizzie, sitting on my bed, flicking through a magazine. The white shirt was the top I tried on first, about an hour ago.
I turn towards her. ‘Hair up?’ I scoop my long hair into a ponytail. ‘Or down?’
‘Down.’ Lizzie looks out of my bedroom window. ‘Well, whatever you’re doing, you’ve got a nice day for it.’
I am trying to tone down my Dan fever in front of Lizzie. These last few days have been spent in a cloud. I’ve achieved nothing at work except daydreaming and fast-forwarding to today, 4 p.m. at the Royal Festival Hall. What will we be doing? It’s a funny time to meet. I don’t know a thing about Dan, or what he does. All I know is he makes my heart race. Lizzie says she’s happy for me and that the world can’t stop because her love life is in ruins, but still, I don’t want to rub it in her face.
As I apply some make-up we reminisce over first dates. ‘How about that time when you went out with that guy, Jan, in your sexy old turquoise Puffa jacket.’
‘It was freezing cold,’ I insist, both of us laughing. I’d come home with a date and had told him to make himself comfortable while I freshened up. I rushed into the bathroom, brushed my teeth before trying to take my coat off. I gave the zip a good yank. I tried again and again. Normal people get trapped in lifts. I get trapped in my Puffa. Desperate, I unlocked the door and fled to Lizzie’s bedroom. She was lying on her bed listening to Oasis. ‘Help!’ She tried but the zip was having none of it. My date had walked in on us when Lizzie was cutting the jacket off me with a pair of scissors.
There was this awkward silence that eventually I filled, saying, ‘Saving you the job of undressing me.’ He left. Thought we were weird.
‘We are a bit weird,’ Lizzie concedes. ‘At least you got a free meal.’
‘Didn’t. He’d forgotten his wallet. You know, all I want is someone normal, kind, funny, sexy, someone who gets the joke.’ Basically, someone like Dan. I sit down next to Lizzie and ask how she’s doing since her break-up.
‘Keeping busy. Should hear about the travel company job next week. It’s time I stopped moping around your flat.’
I nudge her affectionately. ‘I like having you here.’ For the past few weeks I’ve been feeding Lizzie chicken soup and keeping a close eye on her. I gather my handbag and coat. ‘You sure you’ll be OK?’
‘I’ll be fine, Mum. Text me, won’t you?’ She hugs her knees to her chest. ‘Let me know how it’s going.’
I blow her a kiss goodbye. ‘See you later.’
She smiles. ‘Or maybe not – I’ve got a good feeling about this.’
Dan is standing amongst the crowds, smoking a cigarette, wearing jeans, a dark jacket and pale-pink shirt. He’s on his mobile and hasn’t noticed me yet. I head over, heart in my mouth, feeling faintly sick, partly because I haven’t eaten much all day. ‘Hi,’ I say, unsure whether we kiss or shake hands, feeling shy since we’d met only four days ago. He chucks his cigarette on the ground, stubs it out against the heel of his boot. When he smiles my heart melts all over again.
I must be dreaming as we walk hand-in-hand along the South Bank. We stop and watch some of the street entertainers. There’s a tiny woman, standing on a raised platform, painted entirely in gold. Children tiptoe towards her or pull silly faces but still she doesn’t blink or move. Dan decides to drop a few coins into her pot. Magically she comes to life, taking a bow and fluttering her golden eyelashes at him.
We watch children being sketched by a caricature artist. Achild is screaming because his mother won’t buy him any popcorn. We laugh at a man dressed as a dog, his head trapped under the pretend roof of a kennel, his body under the table, covered with a black cloth. Children point at his furry black ears and wet squidgy nose, giggle when he licks his lips and says, ‘Give us a treat’. We head past the fairground horses and street dancers in lime-green and red striped tops but I’m finding it impossible to concentrate as I look his way and he looks mine. All the noise and the crowds soon fade to nothing. It’s just him and me. Our eyes exchange that understanding look that something is going to happen between us, but we want to take our time.
Dan holds his champagne flute up to mine. Our glasses chink as slowly we ascend into the sky.
‘This is amazing,’ I say. When Dan had mentioned the South Bank, I did have a sneaking suspicion we might be going on the London Eye. We’re sharing a pod with a couple of tourists and what looks like a trio of hen-party girls dressed in pink and silver, wearing matching hats. Dan and I sit down on the wooden bench running down the middle of the pod. ‘So,’ we say at the same time. I notice Dan rubbing his hand again. Perhaps he’s just as nervous as I am, although it’s hard to imagine him ever feeling nervous about anything.
‘You go,’ we both say again.
‘Me first,’ I suggest.
‘What do you do?’
‘What do you think I do?’
‘TV? Maybe radio?’
He turns to me. ‘Are you saying I’m too ugly to be on screen?’ He tries to pull an ugly face, but doesn’t succeed.
‘City?’ Please don’t be like Lucas. Or Christian for that matter.
‘No good with my own money let alone other people’s.’
