A little part of me I thought I had lost long ago perks up.
‘What do you think of the place?’ says Definitely Handsome Sean.
I unperk. He’s asking me about his new baby. Just because I have finally decided to get onto the dating scene, doesn’t mean the dating scene is keen on me.
‘Beautiful,’ I say, honestly.
‘Really?’ His eyes are a pale grey and his face is tanned. Is he looking at me admiringly or wondering why Christie has such a dowdy friend?
At that point, I feel about a hundred.
‘Yes, gorgeous. Thank you for the lovely table,’ I say politely, excuse myself and leave.
Maybe I’m mad to be thinking of dating. The rules have probably all changed.
Back at the table, while Shazz shows me Good Goods In Small Packages and we giggle at this, Christie gets the bill and divides it up expertly, including the tip.
‘I saw Sean talking to you,’ Christie says as we leave. ‘He’d come over to say hello. Isn’t he a darling? So handsome.’
‘Yes,’ I say, a shade too brightly.
I debate asking if he’s involved with someone but then decide he showed me not a hint of interest. It’s not him, it’s me, I think with a private little laugh.
Outside, Christie, who has mastered thetaxi-driver alert whistle, summons one to us in a moment.
‘Wish I could do that,’ says Shazz. ‘You know I used to be able to drink three times this much and now I can’t.’
‘It’s called having a child and a job,’ I said. ‘You’re nottwenty-one or in Kansas anymore, Dorothy.’
‘Yeah,’ says Shazz, as she’s helped into the back of the cab.
She falls asleep as we drive home. Christie and I talk quietly over her.
‘This was fun.’
‘We are lucky to have found each other.’
‘Do you think our kids will grow up different because they didn’t have what everyone else has?’ asks Christie.
‘I’m always wondering the same thing myself,’ I say. ‘But you know they just need one good parent who loves them unconditionally and they’ve got that. Lots of people have two parents and it doesn’t work out. And who knows what goes on in other people’s lives? We don’t. Look at your mother, pretending everything in the garden is rosy, not telling her neighbours that she has two beautiful granddaughters, all because she doesn’t want a lesbian daughter. She doesn’t want a daughter who got pregnant with a sperm donor. She wants ason-in-law with a big car, whom she can boast about. What’s fabulous about that?’
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ says Christie, sitting back. ‘I forget that stuff sometimes.’
As the cab drives into the night, I wonder just who I’m trying to convince.
10
Sid
I’m really sorry I decided that a movie would be too intimate and that a hike was a good idea, because it’s November, it’s cold up on the mountains and it turns out that people with long legs move faster than those of us with short ones. Funny that.
Finn strides on ahead of me, as if he’s got some sort of motor in his butt. I look at the way those long legs move in a fairly smooth motion from his hips. From a panting four feet behind him. I try and concentrate on the way I am striding along the path and realise that I’m not walking the same way; I am walking the way I walk when I am trying to get a bus in a hurry and there is a certain frantic pacing in keeping up. Shit. I’m not doing this right and my hiking boots hurt, which is unsurprising as they are new and cheap. Thoreau was right when he said to beware of any enterprise which required new clothes.
‘Why did you buy cheap boots?’ says Finn, spotting them the moment I arrived.
‘Because you might turn out to be a friend I want to dump because you are really boring, what with all your hiking,’ I say, half sarcastically, half humorously to him as we stand in the car park and he looks at my footwear. ‘And I can’t afford a quarter of a month’s mortgage on proper Mount Everest boots.’
‘I should have come with you to the shop. I could have got you a discount.’
