Eight
Life, for the most part, returned to normal after Jenny’s weekend misadventures in extreme dating—it had kind of felt like theHunger Gamesandshehad been the one running with a target on her back.
She was packing the groceries into the back of her car at the supermarket later that week when she felt someone stop beside her.
‘Excuse me, are you Florence?’
Jenny looked up quickly. ‘Ah, no. Sorry.’ She smiled. The man seemed vaguely familiar, but she didn’t know his name. His stocky build was cloaked in flannel and dusty jeans with a rip in one pocket.
‘I’m sure it’s you.’
‘Excuse me?’ Jenny straightened.
‘I’ve seen you before. Your profile. You’re Florence_71 on the Date Me Now app.’
Jenny gaped at the man, before a surge of embarrassment and anger swelled up and threatened to burst forth. ‘I’m sorry, you have me confused with someone else,’ she snapped, slamming the boot of her car and hurrying to the driver’s door. She’d told Beth to take the stupid thing down! This was why online dating in a small town was such a crap idea.
She scrolled to Beth’s number and waited for her to answer.
‘Hey, what’s up?’ Beth’s cheery voice sounded in her ear.
‘Apparently, my dating profile … that’s what. I was just approached by some random guy who recognised me from my profile! I told you to delete it.’
‘Really? Was he good looking?’
‘Beth! I’m serious. This has to stop.’
‘Okay, I get it—sorry. I tried to delete it but I couldn’t remember the password we made, then I got side-tracked and I forgot all about it. I promise I’ll do it tonight.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it myself,’ Jenny told her, before giving a huffy goodbye and dropping the phone back into her bag. If you wanted something done right you had to do it yourself. How hard could it be?
Jenny carried her glass of wine upstairs and sat down at the small desk across from her bed, opening her laptop calmly. She’d always loved that the master bedroom was such a strange shape, more long and narrow than the usual square shape. It had always seemed cluttered before her overhaul. Maybe it had just felt that way because Austin had always been such a larger-than-life figure. He took up room … not physically,he wasn’t tall or muscular, it was more his personality. He was confident—overly so, now that she looked back at it with the benefit of distance and maturity. Once all his clothes and stuff had been removed from the cupboards, the room had felt bigger. It shouldn’t have made that much difference—he’d already been moving his belongings out bit by bit before the break-up—but with all traces of him removed, the room had seemed to double in size, as though it too could finally let out a big breath.
She’d had a reading seat built beneath the window that overlooked the backyard and dragged out her sewing machine to knock up a seat cover and set of cushions in shades of pink, red and grey. She found a small timber writing desk on the side of the footpath during a council pick-up run, and dug out an old wooden dining chair that had been left over from their very first dining table and gave them both a coat of white paint before adding them to her new bedroom décor. Jenny splashed out and bought new bed covers and sheet sets, as well as curtains, and ripped up the carpet to install timber flooring. The transformation had been nothing short of remarkable. Afterwards, she’d felt rejuvenated and, little by little, she’d been turning her hand to renovating other bits and pieces of furniture, adding the little touches that made the place her own.
She took a sip of her wine and typed in the website for the dating app, then signed in, checking the sticky note with the information scrawled across it that she’d managed to extract from Brittany. Username: Florence_71. Password: getmumlaid. ‘Charming,’ she muttered under her breath. She hit the keyswith a little more force than was probably warranted and sat back as her profile loaded.
And there it was. In all its glory.
Where the hell had they found that photo of her? she remembered the day it was taken: she’d been held up at work and was hurrying to get ready for an awards night for Austin’s company. In the rush, she’d accidentally spilled tomato sauce from the bolognese she’d been cooking to leave Chloe for dinner across the top of her dress and had ended up wearing one of Brittany’s because she was already late and Austin had been furious. In the photo, the soft jersey fabric of the blood-red dress was clinging to, well, pretty mucheverything. She’d never have chosen to wear it in a million years. Austin had given her an incredulous look as she’d tugged on her heels, his only comment something muttered under his breath and a quick shake of his head as he hurried her out to the car. She’d felt ridiculous and spent the entire night uncomfortably pulling at the dress like a fidgeting child.
She stared at the image. She’d been neatly cropped out of the original photo, which had been taken of a group of people—Austin and some of his employees. Thanks to the camera angle, the dress didn’t actually look as terrible as she remembered. She tilted her head. How strange. At the time she’d felt like some frumpy, overdressed woman trying to compete against the younger, leaner women who worked in her husband’s office. But the woman staring back at her from this photo didn’t look as bad as she’d felt.
She flicked through the rest of the photos.They didn’t!She gaped at the next photo. On a dare, she had dressed as a sexynurse last Halloween for a party the girls had thrown. It had been in her own house and the only people at the party were a few work colleagues, Beth, Garry and a few of the older kids’ friends. Why on earth would they put up that photo of her? She groaned aloud and quickly searched the page for the delete button. This had gone on long enough.
Almost ten minutes later, after accidentally clicking on profiles and somehow initiating a few likes and mutual ‘into you’ invitations—whatever the hell those were—she accidentally stumbled upon her inbox. She saw the opened messages between the girls and her previous disaster dates and clicked her tongue irritably. How naive had these men been? The person they’d thought they’d been talking to had really beenfour people! Andthiswas why the whole online dating thing was so ridiculous. You could be talking to anyone on here—or in this case,fouranyones!
Still annoyed, but curious about some of the unopened messages, she cautiously clicked on one.
Hi, I’m Paul. I’m after a one-night stand—no strings. Hit me up if you’re keen to meet.
Yeah, nah, thanks, Paul.At least he was upfront about what he was after, Jenny supposed.
She opened the next one and clicked on the profile picture, shrinking away from the screen as an image came up of a shirtless, long-haired man who looked to be somewhere in his sixties, covered in dirt and dust as though he’d just come in from working in his backyard.Clearly too much effort to take a photo after you’d had a shower, she thought, closing the profile.
Clicking on the next one, she shook her head. At least this one was cleaner. Very clean, since he was standing in a shower, naked. Maybe Beth and the girls had been a bit more selective than she’d given them credit for.
Jenny scrolled through the list of accounts that were deemed, God only knew how, to be her perfect matches and felt any hope she might still have had completely drain away. This was depressing. Surely to goodness these were not the only single, available people in her age group within a three hundred kilometre radius?
