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Chapter 7 How Everyone Met Everyone

Rosa

‘Are your emissions killing the planet?’

It was 2001 and I was making my way through Bath University Freshers’ Fair when I suddenly heard the words. I sniffed at myself, alarmed, before realising the boy who’d called to me was manning the Greenpeace stall. He was six foot tall, tanned from a summer working on organic farms, and his dreadlocks and beard were bleached almost white. We drifted towards each other as the night wore on, until we were furiously snogging on his fetid futon, under a poster that pleaded with us to ‘Stop Whaling Now’…

‘Stop Wailing?’ Suzanne said, frowning (or maybe, it was hard to tell).

‘Whaling,’ said Rosa. ‘You know, like whales. The animals?’

‘Oh, those.’ Suzanne turned to Jason. ‘Rosa isn’t really a writer, of course, but will it do?’

Rosa laid down the draft article she’d been reading to them: Jason wanted ‘how they met’ stories for each of the exes, so she’d had to delve deep into her memories of the time before David. BD. It seemed like another life.

Jason was listening with his chin in his hands. ‘So what happened next? Why didn’t it work out?’

‘Oh, the usual uni stuff. You know.’ The Tom thing had lasted for ten days, a long time in First Year, and mainly involved strategically bumping into each other in the student union while Supergrass played on the stereo. Then he was spotted tangling pierced tongues with a tattooed girl called River (‘Puddle, more like,’ said Ani, fast becoming Rosa’s favourite person at Bath), and Rosa began exchanging significant glances with David Strauss, the editor of the student paper (despite Tom deeming all media ‘the immoral finger-puppets of capitalism’), and that was that.

‘Well, I can’t wait to read the others.’

Rosa looked at Suzanne, whose nostrils were doing their best to express incredulity. ‘You mean…it’s OK?’

‘It’s great. I love the voice.’ Jason smiled warmly, gathering up his iPad and pushing back his shaggy fair hair. ‘Got to run, I have to interview the head of the World Bank in five, but top work, Rosa.’

Suzanne watched him go, her eyes fixed somewhere round the bottom of his suit jacket. She whipped her head round; Rosa hastily stared at her article. ‘Hmph. Well, you better get on and set those dates up. Jason will be watching with a lot of interest.’ Almost as much interest as Suzanne was taking in his bum.

‘Sure thing. It’s all underway,’ Rosa lied.

As Suzanne stalked off, muttering dire words on where were the pull quotes for the bloody juice cleanse story for God’s sake, Rosa went back to her desk and found the Twitter account she believed was Tom—@manarchist. She sent a message. Hi, Tom, is that you? How are you?? Sorry to get in touch out of the blue but would love to pick your brains about something.

As she awaited his response, she wondered if Marnie would like him. She’d been tweeting about the project already:

@marnieinthecity Can’t wait to get started on #exfactor dating project. My fab friend is going to find me a lovely date!!!

But of course she’d like him. Tom was handsome, and passionate, and maybe he’d started showering more than once a week by now, and Marnie seemed to like most men, regardless of looks, age, intelligence, or even not-being-a-twatness. As long as he was single, Rosa was pretty sure her work was done.

* * *

Ani.

He was late. Why were they always late? And I didn’t like what I was wearing. I’d probably be too hot in the theatre, and sweat on him. And while I was counting my anxieties, why were we going to the theatre anyway? Wasn’t it more traditional on a first date to actually, you know, talk?

Ani stopped, and sighed, pulling her mind from 2010 back to the present day. Across the desk, Catherine—who was twenty-seven but looked fourteen—was on the phone to her mum talking about the 5:2 diet. ‘So today all I’ve had is four carrots, one boiled egg…’

Checking her boss wasn’t around—he was out at a boozy lunch in his club—Ani called Helen. ‘I need help.’

Helen sounded stressed. ‘I need help too. This bloody article.’

‘Tell me about it. What am I supposed to be saying?’

‘Well, just a bit about the guy, how you met, why it didn’t work out, that sort of thing. Which one was he again?’

‘The one who took me to the most God-awful play I’ve ever seen. Where the cast came up and threw stuff at you, remember I told you about it?’

‘Nope. I’m going to need more than that for the database.’ Helen and Rosa kept a mental Rolodex of all Ani’s dates over the years. It was well into the hundreds by now, and sometimes Ani couldn’t even remember them herself.

‘Simon, 2010, receding hair, bought himself a drink at the theatre and didn’t ask if I wanted one, stuck to soda water all night while I accidentally got drunk, theatre critic?’

‘Oh yes, got it now. Awkward Theatre Critic Guy. And you’ve picked him for Rosa?’

‘Well, they have the same job, and he was quite good-looking, and he wasn’t so bad. Just—you know.’

‘Not quite right for you?’

‘Yes. And don’t say I’m commitment-phobic.’ Ani could hear Helen’s diplomatic silence.

‘Maybe he was just nervous back then. Why didn’t it go anywhere?’

‘Aside from taking me to the world’s worst play and not asking if I wanted a drink? I don’t know. I don’t think he fancied me. No kiss. So I didn’t call him.’ Sometimes Ani found it overwhelming, how hard it was to connect with people. Dating was like groping for a foothold on a cliff, and falling again and again. It was hard to imagine how anything could ever work.

‘It’ll be OK though, won’t it?’ She could hear the worry in Helen’s voice. This would be her first date in years, after all.

‘Of course. It’ll be…fun.’ Even to herself, Ani didn’t sound convinced.

‘An experiment, anyway.’

‘That’s right. An experiment.’

‘Speaking of which, I better go and set your date up! Marnie’s already sent me the email address for mine. Dan someone. Lord knows who she’d pick, he could be anyone.’

‘So she didn’t pick…you know? Ed?’

Silence down the phone. Then Helen laughed in a strained fashion. ‘Ed? Ha ha, no. I don’t think he’s—I think he’s not about at the moment. They’re not in touch.’

‘And you’re really OK with her, after everything?’

‘Of course! Ed and I were just friends. Anyway, it was ages ago. Of course I’m OK!’

Ani really wanted to ask who Helen had chosen for her, but they’d all agreed not to give out pre-date information in case it jinxed things. Just because one friend hadn’t got on with them, didn’t mean the other wouldn’t like the guy. ‘If you’re sure.’

She hung up and went back to worrying about Simon and Rosa, her dear and recently heartbroken friend. It would be OK, surely? It had been years—maybe he’d changed, maybe he was a bit more suave. She called up an email.

Hi Simon! Long time no see, huh? I hope you don’t think this is weird but are you single?

* * *

Helen.

Helen put down the phone, and scowled at what she’d written.

‘Oi, Moby. MOOOOOOBY.’

When I first heard the nickname the cool boys had given me, I thought they meant the singer. Which was mystifying, as I wasn’t cool, edgy, or indeed bald. Then I realised they meant a different Moby, one less known for their ambient hits. Moby Dick.

‘Just ignore them,’ said the boy who sat behind me in Computer Camp.

‘I can’t,’ I said miserably. ‘They’re the cool boys.’

‘They’re the cool boys at Computer Camp,’ said the boy, pushing his thick glasses up his spotty nose. ‘Like duh. None of us are cool.’

He’d been right, Helen thought. The year was 1997; the location, Reading University Summer Computer Camp. Helen was fifteen, finding way too much meaning in the words of Alanis Morissette songs and, at that point, still four hours away from her first kiss. Nik was small for his age, and had glasses, and spots, and dressed in what looked like his mum’s idea of trendy clothes. But who was Helen to talk? She’d had to buy her clothes in Etam, not Tammy Girl, so she was at the Camp disco in a massive pair of denim dungarees. Uncool even at Computer Camp.

Nik had pushed his tongue dutifully around her mouth, hands clamped on her waist (a large area). Helen had moved her tongue too, and so what if her mind kept wandering to the piece of code they’d learned that day, it still counted as her first kiss, and even Marnie, who’d already kissed twelve boys and let one feel under her bra, had been a tiny bit impressed when Helen had rung her from the payphone to tell her. She and Nik had lost touch after Computer Camp, since Helen didn’t have a mobile or the internet at home, and, anyway, she’d been a bit preoccupied in the months following it. However, a quick Facebook search threw him up.

Helen scrolled through his profile—articles from The Economist, the odd photo, check-ins at various airports round the world. His latest picture showed a man in board shorts, posing on the deck of a boat. A proper grown-up man, with chest hair, who looked to be reasonably handsome. Helen hoped so. She didn’t think spotty nerds who knew all the dialogue from Return of the Jedi were really Ani’s type. But globetrotting business tycoons who hung out on boats—very much Ani’s type.

She sent him a message. Dear Nik, how are you these days? You seem to be doing really well. I hope you don’t mind me asking this, but do you ever date? Weird request I know!

Helen sent it, then pushed her laptop away and went to her wardrobe. The mirror showed her current self—a woman of thirty-two, size ten-to-twelve, with blonde hair curling round an anxious face—but in her head, sometimes, she was still Moby. Sometimes she wondered if she always would be.

At the back of the wardrobe was a pink box, pasted all over with hearts and stickers. She remembered Marnie making that nail polish smear, back in 1995, the two of them squashed up on Helen’s bed. Inside were photos—her and Marnie in their primary-school uniforms, arms round each other’s shoulders. Helen had never noticed before, but Marnie was wearing odd socks in the picture, and her jumper had a large hole in it. Something squeezed Helen’s heart, looking at that tough little girl, with her fierce expression. It was worth doing this ridiculous project, if it made Marnie happy. And who knew, maybe it would even work out for some of them? Rosa and Ani—yes, and Marnie too—deserved to find lovely boyfriends.

She set it aside and found the picture she was looking for. On the back her mum had scrawled: Helen takes the prize for World Wide Web design! Computer Camp 1997. Helen stroked the red, delighted face of the girl in the picture, clutching her cheap plastic trophy. She’d been so happy at Computer Camp, with no idea that everything was soon to fall so spectacularly apart. If she ended up seeing Nik again—if by some chance he and Ani hit it off—he would find Helen very much changed as well.