1
Emma
I’ve been on thirty-seven first dates in the past three years. Five made it to a second. Two of those to number three. One of them even became a nearly-relationship, managing to limp along for seven weeks.
I’ve met men who never bothered dragging their eyes up above my neckline, tried to ‘loosen me up’ with shots, came right out with it and asked if I was going to sleep with them before we’d finished our first drink. Men who talked about their exes the entire time. Or about themselves. Men who lied, men who pretended to have forgotten their wallet or, on one delightful occasion, took one look at me, turned around and walked straight back out of the pub.
I’ve spent evenings with men I found eye-wateringly boring. Wasted hours with some who were rude, patronising, creepy or, in one instance, later revealed himself to be horrifically racist. I lost a whole afternoon on a pleasure cruise with a man who wore a balaclava to prevent non-existent government drones from getting a photo of his face. Two invaluable lessons learnt there: always ensure I have an escape route and never let my sister Orla set me up.
Around half my dates were fine. A good few were fun, interesting evenings, and I would have happily seen the guys again. But then he was busy, or I was busy, or he lived that little too far away or actually had just met someone else or was about to go travelling round the world for a year or…
So now, to this evening, and I was on what had turned out to be the Date of All Dates. Oh yes, this one topped them all. Not as in, ‘So, kids, this was how your father and I met.’ More like, ‘I will be retelling this terrible date story for the rest of my life.’
The man in question? My reasonably attractive neighbour, Ralph Hutchens.
The reason I was still here, with a man who had arrived drunk, proceeded to get even drunker, undone every button on his shirt because ‘it’s hotter than a brothel in this craphole’, asked the waitress for her phone number, then had the audacity to ask me why I was still single, at my age – ‘You’re what – forty?’ (I’m thirty-three) – then proceeded to fall asleep, while crying, face-first into his pasta?
Reason one: it was the Saturday after Valentine’s Day, and in my warped, semi-desperate mind even being out on a hideous date tonight somehow compensated for being at home alone every other night this week. Reason two: I wouldn’t be home alone if I’d stayed in. My littlest sister, Bridget, was getting engaged at that very moment in the apartment we shared. Reason three: I was hungry, the food here was delicious, and the least Ralph could do was buy me dinner.
Dinner was one thing – I wasn’t quite desperate enough to hang around for dessert. The instant he fell asleep I grabbed my coconut milk cheesecake, which the waitress had decanted into a takeaway box before I’d even told her I was leaving, handed her a decent tip and left Ralph Hutchens the bill.
I had, perhaps somewhat over-optimistically given my recent date track record, promised Bridget’s boyfriend, Paolo, that I would be out until late that evening. Having spoken, in person, to my charming, funny and stone-cold sober neighbour on multiple occasions, I had stuck out the ninety-minute date for eighty-nine minutes longer than it deserved, but it was still only nine-fifteen when I arrived back at the Victorian house containing the two-bedroom apartment we called home.
Tiptoeing barefoot down the hallway, praying the music emanating from our open-plan kitchen-living space would drown out the creak of my bedroom door, I crept inside, unpopped the button on my jeans and crawled under the duvet. Realising that I had no cutlery to eat my dessert with, I improvised with a credit card, then opened my laptop to Netflix. An hour later, as I prepared to turn out the light and hopefully enter blissful oblivion, the messages started pinging through to our SisterApp WhatsApp group:
Orla, second eldest sister after me:
Hey, Emma, howd your V-day date go with sexy neighbour???
Sofia, sister number three:
Did you get home ok?
Annie, older than Bridget by a full twenty-two minutes, and therefore sister number four:
Kiss goodnight after walking you home? Or walking INTO your home??
And then a text message from my Italian mother, who had no idea I’d been on a date, but always seemed to know when I least needed some ex-fiancé gossip, written in her trademark, near-indecipherable style:
Today Pam queuing at pharmacy tells me Jake and Helen having another baby. Pam say Helen is blooming again running marathons no sickness. Can you believe it Jake married and baby 3 coming and you still no man. Anyway, I gave them our love. See you Sunday, Mamma.
I sent a brief reply to my sisters, mainly to stop Sofia from worrying – she was supposed to be keeping her stress levels down:
Home safe and sound. Chose not to kiss neighbour, who seemed a lot less sexy after he had thrown up in plant pot. Will fill you in on Wednesday. You should all be too busy with your own men tonight to be worrying about my lack thereof xxx
I deleted my mum’s message. From my phone, at least. It wasn’t quite so easy to delete the pain jabbing between my ribs like a blunt pickaxe. Although, a nice long cry while working my way through half of my secret vegan chocolate stash helped. Okay, three-quarters of my secret stash, but hey – as the eldest of five sisters, three of whom were married before they turned twenty-five, and the fourth of whom was currently getting engaged, I was feeling the old-spinster-on-the-shelf pressure. That, with a big dollop of loneliness and disappointment thrown in. I had really liked sober Ralph Hutchens.
* * *
‘Morning, Old One.’ Bridget took one look at me, shuffling into the kitchen in my threadbare hoodie and faded pyjama bottoms, and jumped up to pour me a coffee, her dark bob swinging an inch above her shoulders.
‘Funny, that’s what our delightful neighbour called me last night.’ I accepted the mug gratefully, and slumped onto a chair.
‘I read the messages. Do I need to know details in case I cross paths with him in the foyer?’ Bridget slid a croissant out of the oven and onto a plate. She knew there was no point offering me one – I hadn’t eaten breakfast since Helen Richards called me The Emmapotamus in year seven.
‘He was smashed off his face. Had been with his workmates at another pub somewhere, but it’s hardly an excuse. I left as soon as he passed out. He probably won’t even remember it.’
‘That’s gross.’ Bridget’s tiny nose wrinkled in disgust.
