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Chapter Five

There were an awful lot of people wearing an awful lot of outlandish clothes for an event that wasn’t supposed to be fancy dress.

Sam had insisted it wasn’t. I’d had a sudden thought about it in the car – was tonight themed, were there to be any crazy costumes involved? – but she’d assured me, no, there was no dressing up tonight. It was just normal speed dating, she’d said, reading from a flyer all about it, followed by a disco. It was over-forties, she admitted, which was actually quite a relief. Sam and I both were, obviously, and to be honest I was glad the place wasn’t going to be full of terrible toy boys where we would feel pressure to look and act young. I didn’t want to try and be down with the kids and have to pretend I knew all about Tweeting and Snapchat or whatever. I couldn’t be doing with all that. Over forty was fine.

As soon as we walked into the packed gastro pub with the massive windows and the shiny oak floor, I turned to Sam and shook my head at her.

‘Sam!’

‘Oops.’ She put three fingers to her lips and giggled. So did I.

There before us, some chatting away animatedly, some standing around looking nervous, were dozens of people clearly in full fancy dress. Unless of course Ringo Starr and Katy Perry (dressed in the leopard-print bikini from her Roar video) had fancied a spot of speed dating in South West London tonight. I spotted a Bublé, a Madonna (the pointy bra years), a Britney Spears (sexy flight attendant guise), two Michael Jacksons, a portly Buddy Holly and a Lady Gaga who, quite frankly, could have made a bit more of an effort – she was in a red leotard and a pair of flip-flops, and was wearing three packs of bacon round her neck, on a string. In one corner, a kaleidoscope of eighties band members and musicians had gravitated towards each other like the kindred spirits they were. Look, it’s Sting! Blimey, there’s Boy George with a beer belly! Hold onto your shuttlecocks; is that George Michael, in an ill-fitting wig and some tennis shorts? It looked like a microcosm of the Band Aid studio; somewhere amongst them, Bono would be lurking, looking earnest.

‘For god’s sake!’ I exclaimed. ‘Show me that flyer!’

Sam fished it back out of her bag. I scanned it quickly, and there, across the bottom, in hot pink letters it said, Fancy dress. Theme: Music Icons through the Decades.

‘I didn’t read down that far,’ Sam protested.

I looked down at my plain pencil skirt and my silky blouse. I suppose, if pushed, I could say I’d come as someone from an eighties band… I tried to remember what those two girls off The Human League had looked like – Susanne and Thingy. I could say I’d come as one of them, the blonde one, and that yes, she’d obviously put on quite a bit of weight since the good old days of working as a waitress in a cocktail bar and gyrating behind Phil Oakey… Was she an icon though? Not especially. At least Sam had on leather leggings and that sheer black t-shirt; she could pretend she’d come as a dressed-down Cher. Or a really tall Cheryl Cole.

Failing that, we could both look really, really dull and like we hadn’t got the memo.

‘Fabulous,’ I said. ‘Just brilliant.’ And we looked at each other and burst into giggles. Never mind,’ I added. ‘At least everyone looks over forty.’

They did. There were no spring chickens amongst this little lot. Lady Gaga’s bottom was a little too creased to really carry off that leotard – bless her – had she not heard of sarongs? One of the Michael Jacksons looked like he’d risk a broken hip if he attempted a moonwalk, and the motley crew in the Eighties Corner were sporting an awful lot of wrinkles above all those ruffles, plus a crop of bristly, Old Romantic grey beards.

‘Yep, all over forty, as promised,’ Sam said. ‘Take a good look round, Daryl. Any one of them could be your Mr Right.’

‘I doubt it!’ I said, still giggling. ‘Look at them! I’ve seen more fit men down at the bingo hall.’

‘Not that you’ve ever been…’

‘Not that I’ve ever been. And check out that Justin Timberlake over there! He’s no Trouser Snake, is he? I don’t think he’s going to be rocking anyone’s body tonight.’

‘No, he’ll be rocking his own, in a chair.’ That sounded a bit rude so we both laughed.

One man looked amazing, I did concede – he was the full Adam Ant complete with white lines on his cheeks and a red swashbuckling belt, but due to his leering stance and roving, slightly protruding eyes, I doubted he was much of a dandy highwayman, more a randy postman. He wouldn’t be much cop, I was sure of it, and I didn’t hold much hope for any of them, to be honest; all the men here were bound to be deadbeats who were either desperate or secretly married. I was ninety-nine percent sure I wouldn’t be leaving this room with a date.

We queued to register. I was standing behind a girl dressed as Amy Winehouse, her hair back-combed to hair heaven and brushing against the lower reaches of an antique chandelier; my mum would be saying, ‘you’ll have someone’s eye out with that’. I felt a right twit that I wasn’t dressed up. I was already feeling uncomfortable as it was and wished I was drinking tonight. What the hell was I doing here? I’d never been to this sort of thing before; I’d never been on any kind of dating scene – I hadn’t had to. There had always been Jeff. I’d met him when I was twenty and he’d shown my brother round his first house (Jeff was an estate agent. That’s how he and Gabby conducted their affair, at lunchtimes, in furnished show homes and double beds under feature walls) and had been with him since. Prior to Jeff, I’d met boyfriends here and there – usually in clubs, like everyone else. I’d never had to do online dating, speed dating, singles’ nights, murder mystery nights which were really cop-off junkets, none of it. I really wasn’t sure it was an arena I wanted to enter. I was taking my life in my hands and I’d probably trip over spectacularly and drop it. Right down Gaga’s bacon-y cleavage, probably.

I re-swivelled the waistband of my skirt – this skirt always twizzled round – and tried to hold my stomach in, to no avail. Sam was often suggesting fitness DVDs to me; she was currently extolling the virtues of some American woman called Kimberley Lake-Payne and her ‘amazing’ 60 Day T&A Blast DVD, as well as Cardio Power, Storm-Ripped Body Pump and Tummy Shrink Showdown. Did I want to borrow any of them? I always declined. Maybe one day I would stop eating so much chocolate and start shaking my sizeable booty in Lycra, on some kind of fitness drive, but I liked to eat. I enjoyed not counting calories or working out.

‘Last time I came to one of these I burnt six hundred calories on the dancefloor,’ pronounced Sam. ‘I was wearing my Fitbit, inside my bra.’

‘You’ve been to speed dating before? You never said.’

‘No, well, it wasn’t a huge success. It was when I first split with Graham.’

‘Did you meet anyone?’

‘Sadly, yes, a bloke I dated for two months. Jacob – he was really nice, at first. Except it turned out he still lived with his mum and– worse – that he was Chief Swords Person in medieval re-enactment thingies in Richmond Park, every Sunday. The mum situation I could have lived with – if you excuse the pun – but it was the muddy bayonet in the backpack which was the deal-breaker.’

‘I bet it was!’ I said. ‘You could have told us. It would have given us hours of fun.’

Sam shrugged. ‘It wasn’t my finest hour. I’m hoping for better tonight.’

‘So, what happens after we register?’ I said, twizzling my waistband again. ‘Do we get name badges? I don’t want a hole pricked in this blouse.’

‘No, we don’t want any pricks!’ laughed Sam, and the girl in front of us turned round and smiled wryly.

‘Good luck with that,’ she said.

It didn’t exactly restore any confidence. I had a sudden desire to go home and put my jammies on. Sam must have read my thoughts.

‘Come on, it’ll be fine. There are some nice men out there, there has to be! Sometimes they’re right under your nose.’

I caught the eye of the other Michael Jackson – complete with red leather Thriller jacket, white socks and black slip-on shoes – and he gave me a wrinkly wink. I really wasn’t sure about that.

After we’d registered, and I’d got four whacking great holes in my blouse courtesy of the girl on the desk who might want to invest in some reading glasses, we stood among the expectant crowd waiting to be told what to do. Sam ran through the list of questions she had for prospective suitors, written in the Notes section of her phone. They included: ‘What do you like doing at the weekends?’; ‘What is your view on the healing power of crystals?’; ‘Do you know how to operate a washing machine?’ and ‘Have you ever, or will you ever, own a status dog?’

‘What on earth is a status dog?’ I asked.

‘A scary dog. You know, like a bulldog or something. The ones men walk down the street with, in order to look hard. It would be a deal-breaker. I don’t like dogs much as it is.’

I laughed. ‘Right. Okay.’

‘You have to break down your criteria,’ said Sam. ‘I know you think I’m away with the fairies half the time, but I can also be completely practical when it comes to men.’

‘I know you can,’ I said. Sam had been known to come up with pie charts detailing her compatibility with the men she was dating.

What were my criteria? I wondered. I hadn’t had to think about them for a long time – Jeff and I had just stumbled into going out and then getting serious, having a baby and getting married. I don’t remember ever trying to match him up with a list of criteria. What qualities would I absolutely have to have in a man? Deal-breakers? Once again, I came up with four things: nice, kind, good sense of humour, won’t ever cheat. It wasn’t really much to ask for, was it?

Finally, after the crowd of icons (and me and Sam) had got increasingly noisy and restless and keen to just get on with the bloody thing (or was that just me?), a man in a bright yellow jacket and slicked back hair, looking like something out of a holiday camp and introducing himself as Nigel Smith-Fortescue, took to the mike on the tiny stage at the end of the bar.

‘Welcome everyone,’ he boomed. ‘You all look amaaaaazing! Well done, people!’ Oh god, he was one of those. Sam was already grinning and silently offering him a rude, derogatory signal, with her left hand, behind her bag.

‘Stop it!’ I whispered.

‘Well…’ she said. He was awful, already. He was doing that thing where you point your finger and doff it at people in turn, with an annoying look on your face.

‘You people may have read in our natty little flyer that here at Icons Speed Date we like to shake things up a bit, make things a bit more interesting.’ He laughed very loudly, as though appreciating an invisible joke. Here we go, I thought. What on earth was it going to be? Group-chanting? Line dancing? Twister? ‘We have three rounds,’ he continued. ‘Three innovative, super trendy, date-tastic rounds.’

‘Hurray!’ shouted out the clearly already-pissed Buddy Holly, his glasses steamed up. Everyone laughed and Nigel Smith-Fortescue gave an over-charming smile.

‘Thank you, my friend. Thank you.’ He cleared his throat. ‘The first round – that’s Round One, people! – which you’ll adore, I know you will, is non-verbal communication. Vis a vis: miming.’ Sam nudged me. She did a Marcel Marceau box-making mime thing. I rolled my eyes. Miming! Oh gawd. If I’d wanted to not speak to anyone I could have just stayed at home.

Nigel warmed to his theme. ‘You’re not allowed to taaaalk to anyone, you must communicate only by gestures, gesticulation, the power of miiiiiime.’

A lot of the men looked quite cocky, and were very obviously looking the women up and down. They were imagining what gesticulations they could muster to impress the ladies, no doubt. I wasn’t hopeful I’d be impressed by anyone as I looked from one disappointing, often overly made-up face to another.

‘The second round – that’s Round Two, people! – is the round we call The Eyes Have It. Do you like that? The Eyes Have It? I thought that one up, didn’t I Isobel?’ A lady in the wings, in the Madonna ‘Like a Virgin’ get-up of short, white wedding dress and long white lacy gloves, gave him the ‘A-OK’ sign, with her gloved hand. ‘You have to stare across the table into each other’s eyes for two minutes. Really look into each other’s soouuuls. We reckon it will sort the birds from the bees, the wheat from the chaff.’ He looked so delighted with himself. Isobel was laughing in the wings, her teeth catching the light. She must be his significant other, I thought. Rather her than me.

So far, the whole thing sounded excruciating. I never would have agreed to come if I’d known this sort of thing was on the agenda. I had never mimed in my life – why would I have needed to? – and I hadn’t looked into anyone’s eyes for years. Jeff and I had long left behind the eye-locking during sex thing; in fact, we had long left behind the whole sex thing, full stop. I’d been blind and stupid, really. Really stupid. We weren’t doing it – I thought – because we were busy and a bit lazy and doesn’t it all drop off after forty anyway (not that, the libido thing…) and it was now all about closeness and cuddles (not that I got many of those) and doing the crossword together and stuff… when in actual fact Jeff was doing my best friend.

I’d been so angry when I found out about them. I’d thrown things at him, when he finally did come home – from the Love Hotel – to collect his stuff. I threw laundry and paired-up socks (ineffective), a block of new cheese from the fridge (very effective), anything I could get my hands on. I followed him from room to room chucking things at him and sobbing. It hadn’t been pretty, but then neither was what he’d done to me. But I was over all that now. All my anger at Jeff had long gone. Now I was calm and free… and speed dating.

It helped that I never saw him any more; I had no need to. I was seeing him this Friday, though: Freya’s graduation. I felt sick, suddenly, at the thought. The last time I’d seen him had been – when? – three months ago. He’d picked up the very last of his books and the bits and bobs he wanted from our old house. The rest of his things had already gone, and with Freya up and left and living in a shared house in Merton with her friends, I was rattling round that big old house (did I miss it? No). We barely spoke as he softly moved from room to room, gathering. I’d have to make proper conversation with him on Friday, for Freya’s sake, and I was now really dreading it.

‘Round Three,’ chirped Nigel, interrupting my thoughts, ‘after you’ve all revved yourselves up to the point of absolute freeenzy, people… is a good, old straight-down-the-line speed date round. Boring!’ he laughed. ‘Though we don’t think so.’ He looked stern. ‘Here you can capitalise on your miming and your fabulous eye-locking rounds and talk to each other – find out what makes you tick, explore each other’s very souls – before skipping off into the sunset together for the rest of your lives.’ His face broke into a beaming smile. ‘I need to tell you, I’ve been burning to tell you’ – he was almost hopping on the spot, his lapels flapping – ‘that we have ourselves our very first speed dating baby! Yes, just last week, here in a private London hospital, a bouncing baby boy was born to two of our former speed-daters, Leon and Katie, who are now very happily married. How about a round of applause?’

Sam and I clapped, half-heartedly: Sam didn’t do babies; she found them revolting. She’d never wanted children. She liked Freya though; Freya was cool. Others in the crowd, though, showed proper feeling. Some of the women went misty-eyed. Some of the men looked outright dismayed – they’d turned up tonight in the pursuit of some contraception-proofed sex, not marriage and babies.

‘Soooo,’ said Nigel. ‘That’s how we do things, here at Icons Speed Date!’ He grabbed his lapels with his thumbs and gave them a firm hitch downwards. ‘We’ll get started in ten minutes, so if you want to head to the bar in the meantime, please go ahead. A little lubrication can help people on their way, we find. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha!’

I rolled my eyes. Hang on! What was Sam doing? She’d turned away from me and was talking to someone who may have come as Bruce Springsteen; he was wearing a stars and stripes bandana. Axl Rose? As the crowd moved en masse to the bar he nodded and said, ‘see you later babes’ to her. Another man – possibly Paul McCartney but it was hard to tell – offered to buy her a glass of wine as we arrived in the scrum of speed-daters queueing for a drink.

‘Soulmate?’ I enquired

‘No,’ she giggled. ‘Free drink.’

‘You’re seeing a lot of interest already, Sam. Are you sure it’s not you who’s going to fall in love by Friday?

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s you. Don’t give up hope. The night is yet young. You’ll meet someone tonight – I can feel it in my water.’

‘You and your water!’ I said affectionately, rolling my eyes.

‘My water has never been wrong,’ nodded Sam. ‘Trust me.’

Macca – no shoes – strode on over holding a large rosé, and a lemonade for me.

‘Thank you,’ we said in unison.

‘No problem, ladies,’ he said in a deep voice. ‘I look forward to seeing you both at the tables, shortly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go for a wazz. The old pipework’s not what it used to be.’

I pretended to swoon and said, in a Scarlett O’Hara southern drawl, ‘I do declare, what a dashing young man! Romance is surely not dead!’

‘Ha, ha, Daryl, you crack me up.’

‘Well, really!’ I said. ‘A “wazz”? I’m not going to meet anyone here tonight. Neither of us are going to meet anyone here tonight.’

‘Daryl,’ said Sam sternly. ‘There are probably lots of great men in here.’

‘Really?’ I said petulantly. ‘Well I can’t see any of them.’

‘That’s because you’re not looking properly. You have to see past the outfits. The dodgy make-up and wigs. The… love-handles and gammy legs. They’re all right here, Daryl. You just need to open your eyes to them!’ She gestured round her, with a sweeping hand, while my eyes rolled so much they probably resembled a fruit machine. ‘Stop it Daryl! Your glass needs to be half full, not half empty! Open your heart!’ I looked at our glasses. Her glass of rosé was nearly all gone. I had barely sipped my lemonade. I really should be getting drunk to get through this tonight. Why had I brought my bloody car?

‘I know I said I wanted to date,’ I whined, ‘but it’s all so overwhelming. What am I supposed to say to all these men?’’

‘Nothing, until Round Three…’ said Sam. ‘Look, just chat, be your lovely funny self. Do what comes naturally and don’t worry about flirting. If it’s in the stars, it’s in the stars. He’ll come your way.’

‘If you build it, they will come?’

‘Something like that.’

‘And how come it’s not written in your stars tonight? Why is it only going to be me that meets someone?’

‘It’s not hot enough in here – they’re being a bit over-zealous with the air-con.’

I laughed.

‘Enjoy yourself,’ said Sam. ‘Try and get into it.’

I thought back to my four resolutions in front of the fountain at Trafalgar Square. Enjoy my freedom was one of them; I’d forgotten that. I should try and enjoy myself.

‘Okay, for you, Sam, I’m going to try and get into it.’

‘Fabulous!’

I didn’t really want to mime at these men, stare into their eyes, marry them and have Speed Date babies, even if that was still biologically possible, but for Sam I’d give it a go.

Suddenly a horrible klaxon thing sounded. Nigel was standing back at the mike, with the stance of an old time singer. He looked like he might break into a croon at any second, like Tony Bennett. Isobel was at his side, beaming and stuffing her cleavage into her dress with a gloved hand. ‘Singles!’ he boomed. ‘Please take a seat and let’s find you your destiny!’

Sam grinned. I groaned. Here goes nothing, I thought. I plastered a great big smile on my face and walked over to the tables.