“Small world!” he’d said with a laugh when he saw me. Buoyed by his presence, I performed well in the interview, but I couldn’t help but feel that our encounter in the coffee shop clinched it for me. They offered me the job on the spot, and I started a month later.
See? Told you the group often sends me on a jaunty trip down memory lane. We’re wrapping up now. Jack sends one final glance in my direction. If I’ve played my cards right, he’ll try to talk to me at the end, prompted by my staunch refusal to engage with him. It’s a delicious thought, a game I know how to play well. Marcie’s magazines taught me the rules:To generate interest, play it cool. Let him come to you.I hope I’m not too rusty conversationally. Flirtatious looks are one thing. Dialogue is quite another.
But Jack doesn’t try to speak to me at the end. He’s the first out of his chair, and he heads toward the exit without a second glance. I’m momentarily dumbstruck, staring after him, open-mouthed. I was sure I’d done it right. I’d gone by the book: stirring his interest before appearing indifferent to his response. I set up the game flawlessly, laying the pieces carefully on the board, but now he’s refusing to play.
It must have been my hair. It really is bad. Thin, greasy, and brittle. I’ll book an appointment with the hairdresser.Thenwe’ll see if he can resist my charms.
I’m the last to leave. I pick up my coat, head through the door to the lobby, and catch sight of the sign-out book. Fiona tries to insist we signin and out in accordance with health and safety regulations, but most of us don’t bother. A small act of rebellion, a middle finger to sadness. Jack doesn’t know that, though.
I run my finger down the list and there he is. Right at the bottom. The hasty scrawl of a man in a hurry.
Jack Reynolds
Three
It’s vital tomove quickly in these scenarios, because they don’t come along very often. The coincidence with the date is too significant to ignore: Someone, somewhere, has given me a second chance at love, and I intend to grasp it with both hands. I pull out my phone as my bus winds its way through the quiet streets toward home. It doesn’t take me long to find Jack’s Facebook profile. More than a thousand friends and not a single mutual. A shame. A connection would have given us something else in common, but I’ll have to work with what I’ve got. I don’t add him, obviously—I’m not a creep—but I do scroll through the photos that are publicly accessible.
He comes from money, that much is clear. The tailored suit and clipped vowels could have told me that, but these pictures confirm it. They go back years, depicting a painful combination of Jack Wills shirts, rolling tobacco, and gray tracksuit bottoms pulled low to accidentally on purpose reveal Calvin Klein underwear. Evidently, he likes a party. And women. There are many of him in his teenage years, clearly tanked on booze and God knows what else, with his arm draped roundgirls who all look the same: back-brushed blond hair, smudged eyeliner, white smiles that must have cost thousands.
To his credit, the profile looks as though it is now all but defunct. The last profile picture he uploaded was in 2012, which was a questionable time even for those of us who didn’t attend fifty-thousand-pound-a-year boarding schools.
His Instagram profile, set to private, reveals even less, though the thumbnail—a picture of him standing atop a cliff wearing hiking gear—suggests he has, at least, moved on from posing with champagne girls in seedy nightclubs. No sign of the wife. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing.
I can’t remember her name. I was so distracted by his flawless introduction that it went straight over my head. It started with an “A,” I know that. Anna, maybe. Alice? That was it.
A quick search for Alice Reynolds reveals nothing, and then the bus pulls into my stop, and I have to jam my finger into the button several times and run for the exit before it pulls away again. On the pavement, I fumble for my hand sanitizer and apply it liberally, feeling sick. I try to block the thought of the germ-infested button. Only once the 99.9 percent effective sanitizer has dried on my skin do I feel better and begin the walk home.
Home—for the next twelve hours only—is a flat on the ground floor of an imposing redbrick mansion block. From the outside, you would be forgiven for thinking that I, too, had a charmed upbringing. You would be wrong. It may have been grand once—circa the Victorian era—but on the inside, its age shows. For the last six years, I have contended—daily—with weak water pressure from the ancient pipes, black mold in the bathroom, and my landlord, Barry, who “pops his head round the door” most days—ostensibly to complete some maintenance task, though we both know it’s in the hope of catching me in various states of undress.
It is not, therefore, a surprise to find him lurking in the entrance hall as I step through the front door. Any lingering sentimentality about my departure is quickly dispelled. Barry is one male whose gaze is not—and never will be—welcome.
When he sees me, Barry resumes what he believes to be his most casually alluring pose. He rests one hand on the doorframe to his own flat and sucks in his stomach, the furred bottom of which pokes out from beneath his stained T-shirt, which is three sizes too small.
“ ’S not too late, you know.”
I’m not close enough to catch a whiff of his unique brand of halitosis, but I take a precautionary step back anyway.
“I’m good, Barry. Thanks, though.”
“We wouldn’t have to go the whole way. We could work our way up. You can have the flat on a week-by-week basis. That’s a good deal, right? An hour of fun for a week of free accommodation?”
It pains me to admit it, but I have given serious consideration to this proposal. Barry smells and picks his nose, and I suspect—strongly—that the last time he washed his genitalia was three months ago, when he asked if he could use my shower due to a buildup of limescale in his own. To put it politely, the thought of his penis makes me want to projectile vomit. So I am stuck, as you might say, between a rock and a hard place. Because the alternative is nearly as horrifying as genital warts and three months’ worth of smegma.
I’ve always prided myself on being a careful person, even to the point of fastidiousness. Grief blew that right out of the water. After Freddie’s death and the unfortunate loss of my job, I became quite reckless about my prospects. I’d been working for five years by that point. In the absence of a social life, I’d built up quite a nice little nest egg. I’d hoped Freddie and I might use it as a deposit on a flat, but he was dead, and I was all alone. So I didn’t immediately try for another job. Instead,I chipped away at my egg until it was less ostrich, more quail. It was at that point I realized I was in trouble.
So I did what any self-respecting young professional would do. I went to Barry with my tail between my legs, hoping he would take pity on a grieving woman. His kind “offer” was the solution he came up with.
“I’m still fine, Barry. Thanks.”
He releases the breath that’s been holding his stomach in. The T-shirt rides up another couple of inches in defeat. “Staying with your mum, are you?”
I’d rather not think about it, so I nod tightly and hope he gets the hint. He doesn’t.
“She live near here?”
If he thinks I am giving him even a clue as to my mother’s address, then he really is delusional. “No.”
“Will you come back and visit?”
