When she headed downstairs to the living room a few moments later, she found the others waiting and it crossed her mind that it was a little odd that she wasn’t the one calling to her three daughters to hurry up and get ready. Even Beth had already arrived.
‘Are we ready, then?’ Jenny asked after she’d kissed Beth’s cheek. But she paused when she realised no one else was following her to the door.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘Okay, so don’t be mad,’ Brittany started, and dread filled Jenny. Nothing goodeverstarted with that phrase.
‘The thing is, Mum,’ Savannah said, picking up from her sister, ‘we kind ofdidsomething.’
‘Did what?’ Jenny asked as real panic began to set in.
‘We’re not going to the markets,’ Beth said. ‘Well,we are,’ she corrected, glancing at the other girls, ‘butyou’renot.’
‘What Beth’s trying to say’—Brittany once again took the baton and ran with it—‘is that we’ve organised a date for you.’
‘You’vewhat?’
‘There’s this app—a dating app—and we kind of set you up on it,’ Chloe said excitedly.
Jenny had a million questions racing through her head but not a single one of them would come out as she stared with growing horror at her children and best friend.
‘We thought it might take a while to get a response so we didn’t say anything, but the notifications have been going off all day, so we accepted,’ Chloe continued with a small squeal and clap of her hands. Her honey-blonde hair was pulled back in a high ponytail that was swinging like a cheerleader’s.
‘You accepted a dateforme? Without asking if I even wanted to go on it?’
‘You would have said no,’ Savannah said.
‘Of course I would have. This is insane.’
‘Jen,’ Beth started in the calm, let’s-talk-the-crazy-woman-down voice she’d had plenty of practice using on Jenny over the years. ‘The girls just thought this would be something fun for you to do … you know, get out of the house a bit.’
‘You thought it was too,’ Savannah reminded Beth, clearly not about to be thrown under the bus alone.
‘Well, you can just go andun-accept and explain what happened.’
‘We can’t,’ Brittany said with a slight wince. ‘He’s on his way over.’
‘What!’
‘It’ll be fine,’ Savannah said, airily. ‘We checked him out; it’s not like we’d set you up with some weirdo.’
‘Howdid you check him out?’ Jenny asked, suddenly concerned.
‘We’ve been chatting online to him,’ Chloe said.
‘So, he’s perfectly happy to be set up on a date with someone’s mother? This doesn’t screamweirdat all?’ Jenny asked, searching their faces frantically.
‘Well, technically, he thought he was chatting toyou,’ Brittany admitted.
Jenny opened her mouth to yell, but nothing came out. She couldn’t seem to manage a single coherent word as she stared at her best friend and daughters, lined up like a football team’s front row, staring her down determinedly.
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘We are. It’s all been arranged.’
‘But I don’twantto go on a date.’
‘We’ve waited patiently for you to take the first step back out into life again, and you haven’t done it. We can’t sit by any longer and watch you wither away,’ Brittany said.
