I think,Oh yes, they would.
‘I’ve seenThe Devil Wears Prada,’ he adds.
‘Did sisters or girlfriends make you watch it?’
‘My niece – my sister’s little girl, Danielle.’
He had, I allowed myself to notice, a nice smile.
‘I am putty in her hands. So are her brothers. I was babysitting some years ago, it was a toss up between a Transformer movie orThe Devil Wears Prada, which is her favourite movie, and she won. Some day, she will be running the country.’
‘You are a new man. Congratulations.’
‘Thank you.’ He inclines his head modestly. ‘New man, single man, that’s me. Can’t get a woman to save my life so have just given up.’ He stops dead. ‘Sorry – don’t know where that’s come from. Thinking out loud. All those young people in Whelan’s gazing into each other’s eyes and making plans for later. I felt both a hundred years old and entirely out of the game. I realised a long time ago that it was time to get out of the game, but a band venue with young people really gets the message across.’
He rubs the bridge of his nose thoughtfully and I think he might be as tired as I am.
We’re getting closer to the counter and are standing side by side.
‘Do you think,’ I say, and I wonder if maybe my mini bottle of wine has pushed me over the edge here, ‘that people really weren’t meant to date? That somewhere in the whole theory of evolution people are supposed to exist in little extended family groups. And sometimes, if they are very lucky, they make it as couples, but otherwise not?’
He gives me a long searching look.
‘You might be on to something there,’ he says. ‘I thought I had it right with my last girlfriend and – and then I didn’t.’
I held up a hand. ‘I’m not listening to how she was a horrible bitch, you hate her and she ruined your life,’ I say, only half kidding.
‘No,’ he says. ‘It was – forgive the cliché – complicated. But I don’t diss and tell.’
He actually sounds forlorn and I think I’ll send him over to Vilma so she can counsel him on getting over people. In my experience, straight men don’t allow male friends enough emotional access to counsel them past relationship pain.
It was his go with the person behind the counter, and he began politely ordering all sorts ofcarb-related things to fill the two young guys in the corner. I’d typed in everyone’s order on my phone, because I knew I’d never remember it – between chai, lattes and matcha teas and buns with no nuts in them, unless they had anything with Nutella involved, and then thenut-free thing didn’t count...
‘How about your dating history?’ the man says as we stand beside each other in what feels like a companionable silence. ‘What I mean is, why have you come to the conclusion that dating is over?’
‘I lived with a guy for nearly thirteen years and broke up a year ago. Nobody since.’ It felt important to say this. The new me was laying the facts out there. I live on my own: so what? ‘I’m perfectly happy with my box sets.’
‘Me too,’ he says. ‘Box sets are brilliant.’
‘Box sets, a takeaway and a single, perfect glass of wine. Hangovers are just horrendous when you get older,’ I add, shuddering. When I make my cocktails at the weekend, I only drink one now. The firstpost-Marc month involved far too much wine. I do not want to be the single woman statistic who drinks her way through her weekends and gets the shakes on Monday mornings without a shot of vodka.
‘It must be age – I can’t cope with hangovers either,’ he says. ‘I swim a lot and I can’t go for pints with the lads anymore because I’m not prepared to pay the entertainment tax.’
Suddenly I smile up at him, the irony of it all hitting me as it so often does when I think of the way I live my life now.
‘These are supposed to be some of the best years of our lives,’ I say, half to myself. ‘We are youngish, free, and clearly reasonably solvent if you have a racing bike and we spend our lives eating takeaways and watching Netflix.’
The man looks at me. ‘I disagree. The rules of life are societal constructs. Who says these are the best years and to enjoy them properly we have to live in pairs and have children?’
‘Teacher?’ I ventured.
‘University lecturer,’ he said, then added, ‘I’m Finn. Why can’t men and women merely be friends? Honestly, genuinely just friends and let someone else fulfil their biological imperative.’
I raise an eyebrow and decide he’s broken up recently too. Only the really recentlybroken-up talk like this. It’s as if being uncoupled pulls out a little stopper in your brain and lets all these random truths out.
We shuffle along as our various teas and foodstuffs are put onto trays.
‘You and I should be able to see a film or an exhibition and not feel we have to pair up like little robots.’
