vulnerable!’ she’d shouted at the receiver once she’d hung up. ‘It’s against the rules to treat me like this! You total wanker!’
Her best friend, Connor, had christened Oscar the One Night Wonder and tried to make a joke of him ever afterwards, to ease Annie’s pain as quickly as possible. Now, whenever she thought back to that little episode, she tried to remember just the very good bits (not so hard) and hey, Oscar had broken the ice, hadn’t he? He’d been the first person she’d ever slept with since her husband. Not that he deserved the honour.
Annie was now as expert at reading the Lonely Hearts as she was at the property ads.
‘Successful businessman’ meant ‘runs corner shop’, ‘discreet fun’ was always ‘adultery’, ‘tall’ equalled ‘giant’, for ‘bubbly’ read ‘on horse-strength antidepressants’.
‘You’re going to meet your next Mr Right one of these days, you’re going to bump smack bang into him when you’re not even looking,’ Dinah soothed her. ‘You’ve just got to give yourself time to let it happen.’
Annie gave her a sympathetic look. Her sister was touchingly sweet and naïve in so many ways. Did she really think something this important could be left to chance? To fate? That she should rely on Mr Perfecto waltzing into The Store one day, setting eyes on her and declaring that she was the one?
In Annie’s experience, men were nothing like that. Even when they were madly in love with you, they rarely did anything about it. They had to be seduced, cajoled, reassured: in short, hunted down.
Even securing Roddy, hardly one of life’s shy and retiring types, had been hard work. Nineteen-year-old Annie, wildly in love, convinced this was the man for whom she was destined, had had to keep a constant track of his nightlife via a friend to make sure she turned up at all the right places, accidentally , looking as sensational as possible for the early nineties when everything came from Gap, was black or grey or plaid, and the highest heels were kitten. (See the first series of Friends for details and try to imagine: the hair-straightener hadn’t even been invented!) But the plaid miniskirts had worked and finally she had landed the prize. And there’s nothing, nothing in the world as wonderful as the one you’ve longed for, dreamed of, ached over, suddenly turning all his dazzling attention on you. Full beam.
The very depressing thing about blind dating was that she’d not yet met anyone who even came close. Instead of bringing Annie a sexy new life full of glamorous, hot men and sizzling romance, the hopeless encounters made her miss Roddy and every moment of comfortable, intimate married life even more.
But never mind. New plan. Whenever her thoughts turned for too long to happy years in the marital bed, she shooed them away with deliberate reminders of Roddy’s tatty tartan trouser bottoms and farts under the duvet.
When she met the next Mr Wonderful, he would definitely, definitely not fart under the duvet.
Annie turned back to her sister: ‘Dinah, I haven’t given up the chase, babes, I’ve just discovered a much, much better hunting groun d. I’ve been trawling the bargain basements for a man, when I should be looking for a really class label.’ With a flourish Annie brought out the glossy brochure she’d found inside Svetlana’s cast-off handbag. ‘One of the wealthiest wives in London gave this to me,’ she explained, ‘so it’s got to be a very good idea.’
‘Discerning Diners?’ Dinah read aloud from the cover in a tone of disbelief: ‘ London’s most exclusive dinner dating experience . . . Oh Annie, I don’t know . . .’
But Annie brushed her sister’s reservations aside and eagerly spread out the profile pages of the ‘dynamic, single, hand-selected guests’ who would be coming to next week’s five-course, five-star ‘dining experience’. No more meeting crappy men in crappy bars. Annie was going
Her best friend, Connor, had christened Oscar the One Night Wonder and tried to make a joke of him ever afterwards, to ease Annie’s pain as quickly as possible. Now, whenever she thought back to that little episode, she tried to remember just the very good bits (not so hard) and hey, Oscar had broken the ice, hadn’t he? He’d been the first person she’d ever slept with since her husband. Not that he deserved the honour.
Annie was now as expert at reading the Lonely Hearts as she was at the property ads.
‘Successful businessman’ meant ‘runs corner shop’, ‘discreet fun’ was always ‘adultery’, ‘tall’ equalled ‘giant’, for ‘bubbly’ read ‘on horse-strength antidepressants’.
‘You’re going to meet your next Mr Right one of these days, you’re going to bump smack bang into him when you’re not even looking,’ Dinah soothed her. ‘You’ve just got to give yourself time to let it happen.’
Annie gave her a sympathetic look. Her sister was touchingly sweet and naïve in so many ways. Did she really think something this important could be left to chance? To fate? That she should rely on Mr Perfecto waltzing into The Store one day, setting eyes on her and declaring that she was the one?
In Annie’s experience, men were nothing like that. Even when they were madly in love with you, they rarely did anything about it. They had to be seduced, cajoled, reassured: in short, hunted down.
Even securing Roddy, hardly one of life’s shy and retiring types, had been hard work. Nineteen-year-old Annie, wildly in love, convinced this was the man for whom she was destined, had had to keep a constant track of his nightlife via a friend to make sure she turned up at all the right places, accidentally , looking as sensational as possible for the early nineties when everything came from Gap, was black or grey or plaid, and the highest heels were kitten. (See the first series of Friends for details and try to imagine: the hair-straightener hadn’t even been invented!) But the plaid miniskirts had worked and finally she had landed the prize. And there’s nothing, nothing in the world as wonderful as the one you’ve longed for, dreamed of, ached over, suddenly turning all his dazzling attention on you. Full beam.
The very depressing thing about blind dating was that she’d not yet met anyone who even came close. Instead of bringing Annie a sexy new life full of glamorous, hot men and sizzling romance, the hopeless encounters made her miss Roddy and every moment of comfortable, intimate married life even more.
But never mind. New plan. Whenever her thoughts turned for too long to happy years in the marital bed, she shooed them away with deliberate reminders of Roddy’s tatty tartan trouser bottoms and farts under the duvet.
When she met the next Mr Wonderful, he would definitely, definitely not fart under the duvet.
Annie turned back to her sister: ‘Dinah, I haven’t given up the chase, babes, I’ve just discovered a much, much better hunting groun d. I’ve been trawling the bargain basements for a man, when I should be looking for a really class label.’ With a flourish Annie brought out the glossy brochure she’d found inside Svetlana’s cast-off handbag. ‘One of the wealthiest wives in London gave this to me,’ she explained, ‘so it’s got to be a very good idea.’
‘Discerning Diners?’ Dinah read aloud from the cover in a tone of disbelief: ‘ London’s most exclusive dinner dating experience . . . Oh Annie, I don’t know . . .’
But Annie brushed her sister’s reservations aside and eagerly spread out the profile pages of the ‘dynamic, single, hand-selected guests’ who would be coming to next week’s five-course, five-star ‘dining experience’. No more meeting crappy men in crappy bars. Annie was going
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