Читать книгу A Brand New Me: The hilarious romantic comedy about one year of first dates - Shari Low - Страница 11

‘Hey, love–give you fifteen quid for a quickie!’ The offer, generous but unprompted, came from a crowd of blokes in a minibus that stopped at traffic lights next to where I stood, freezing my extremities off on the corner of Piccadilly Circus.

I was so glad I’d taken the advice of Millie on reception and pitched my dress code at ‘cold weather casual’: dark boot-cut jeans, high black leather boots and a black polo-neck jumper, with a knee-length thick wool coat. Although the cold coming through the soles of my boots was making me shiver, it was still a much wiser choice than the jeans, strappy sandals and glittery top I’d been planning on wearing. But then, what did I know about dating clothes? I hadn’t been on a blind date since, well, ever, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been out on the town in London.

I’d always hated coming into town at night (too crowded, too impersonal and far too expensive for a late-night taxi back to Slough), but since Harry was travelling from Milton Keynes, I thought I should meet him somewhere convenient and this was the first place he’d suggested. I hobbled from foot to foot, trying to get some heat into my veins, my mind distracted from my imminent pneumonia by the familiar trains of panicked thought that were flashing through it: what was I doing here; I didn’t do things like this; I didn’t thrive on excitement; I didn’t get fired up on adrenalin; I definitely didn’t take unexpected events in my stride; I was a creature of habit that hated surprises and would rather undergo organ removal without anaesthetic than put myself in a potentially embarrassing situation.

This angst ran in conjunction with an in-depth, highly convoluted, complex internal dialogue that went along the lines of, ‘Stay. Go. Stay. Go. Stay. Go. Stay.’ To make the voices stop, I’d just conjured up a mental image of Archie Botham beaming with pride over his new invention when my mobile phone rang.

‘Tell me you’re not going through with it!’ Stu begged.

‘Stu, I have to,’ I answered patiently, giving no clue as to my inner turmoil. ‘It’s my job.’

‘It’s borderline prostitution! Where are you now?’

‘Standing in Piccadilly Circus waiting for him.’

‘Leni, it’s far too bloody cold for that. You could come down with hypothermia. Or you could get frostbite in your digits. That happened to Ralph Fiennes on his expedition to the North Pole. He ended up amputating his fingertips with an electric saw in his garden shed.’

That was the thing about Stu–he was generous with his hypochondria and liked to share it around.

‘Stu, first of all, Ralph Fiennes is the bloke from the Harry Potter movies and he’s never, as far as I know, attempted a one-man expedition across a polar icecap. Ranulph Fiennes, the explorer, may have done that. But I’m sure he’d be the first to acknowledge that my fingers are highly unlikely to meet the same fate as his while tucked into screaming-pink fake-fur mitts in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.’

‘Excuse me, are you Leni?’

I lifted the phone away from my ear and turned to the new arrival. My first reaction was that he looked just like the guy in the photo…about, oh, fifty pounds ago.

He gave me a big smile and stuck out his hand. ‘I’m Harry, pleased to meet you.’

With my non-telephone hand I reciprocated, taking in his eager smile and seemingly happy demeanour.

Okay, so he wasn’t Orlando Bloom. He wasn’t even Hollyoaks. But he was wearing clean jeans, brown Timber-land boots and a black felt jacket, a stripy scarf, and despite the lack of resemblance to his photograph, my initial gut instinct was that he was fairly inoffensive. Plus, he was so overweight that if I had to flee for my life he’d never catch me. ‘Leni! LENI! LENI!!!!’ came an increasingly agitated voice from the phone.

I quickly put it to my ear. ‘Look, Stu, Harry’s arrived so I have to go.’

‘Have you got the pepper spray I bought you? And keep your mobile on. And remember to say what I told you right at the start. And remember, if you’re in a pub, don’t eat the peanuts–the bacteria will kill you. And…’

‘Have to go now, Stu. Bye-ee.’

‘Leni, LENI, LENI!!!!!’

I pressed the ‘end’ button on the phone and took a deep breath as I remembered my promise to Stu, extricated after he’d spent three hours lecturing me in person the night before.

‘Sorry, that was my big brother on the phone, he’s very protective. To be honest he’s been a bit unstable since they stripped him of his world kickboxing title after they discovered he was wanted for arms possession.’

I couldn’t believe the words were coming out of my mouth. My face was beaming and my left eye was doing the twitch thing that it always did when I was lying. I so, so wasn’t cut out for this.

I half-expected Harry to turn pale, hail a taxi and run while he still had his kneecaps. To his credit he didn’t seem too perturbed and breezed right over it.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ he apologised, ‘I had to wait in for the courier to bring the money and some forms to sign before I met you tonight, and he didn’t show up till after five. So…you said that I had to decide what we’d do?’

‘That’s right,’ I agreed. Okay, in that last sentence he’d apologised for something that wasn’t his fault and sought reassurance on the night ahead–didn’t that demonstrate a little insecurity? Perhaps I could tick serial killer off the list.

‘And it should be something that I’d normally do when I take a bird out?’

I nodded again. ‘Absolutely. Just be yourself.’ Tweet.

‘Are there, like, secret cameras following us or anything?’ he asked, looking around nervously.

‘No,’ I reassured him, ‘it’s just me. But I can’t be sure my brother isn’t hiding behind a lamppost.’

His eyebrows shot up and he scoured the street to the left and right.

‘Kidding!’ Awareness alert–save terrifying jokes until you have a better understanding of his personality.

Right, it was time to get this going–I’d stood on a pavement corner for long enough. I was cold, I was hungry, and although meeting Harry face-to-face had taken my anxiety levels down from ‘potentially fatal’ to a manageable ‘hating every minute of this’, I was still desperately in need of some Châteauneuf du Dutch Courage.

‘So, Harry, what’s the plan? Where are we going?’ Assertiveness, showing interest, encouraging personal expression: thanks to a stressful afternoon swotting over A One Way Ticket to Successful Dating, I knew I was displaying three of the ten essential skills for a successful night.

‘Well, if it’s honestly all down to me…’

‘It is,’ I reassured him (number four–reassurance).

‘Then I’m taking you somewhere that you’ll have an absolute blast!’

A blast.

At least he got that bit right.