‘A singles thing then? Or speed dating?’
Kate had always wondered about speed dating and had secretly always wanted to give it a try.
‘I don’t think so. I’m not ready.’
‘You’ll never know whether you’re ready if you don’t try. And what if you end up meeting someone? Just go and see what happens. Report back at the next meeting.’
Hattie folded her arms in front of her, looking very pleased with herself. Andy rested their head on their arm and sighed loudly, letting Hattie know that they didn’t approve.
‘What?’ said Hattie defensively. ‘We’re not in the official group now. I’d never say this in group. This is the pub. And I think Kate and Freddie should try dating.’
A pause as Kate tried to work out what Hattie had meant.
‘Not each other, obviously!’ she added dramatically. ‘We don’t need any inter-group drama. There was enough of that when Steve asked Lizzie out.’
‘Hattie!’ Andy scolded.
‘Oh, it’s OK. I deserved it,’ Steve sighed before he looked up at Kate and Freddie to explain: ‘It was stupid. It was a while ago. I misinterpreted things.’
Kate had a vision then, of being stuck like she was for ever, of nothing ever changing. She’d decided to come to the group because she couldn’t stand things the way they were, because she wanted more. That meant she had to challenge herself, to do things that she wouldn’t ordinarily do to get out of her rut. And if these new, strange people and this group could help her do that, well, wasn’t this what it was all for?
‘OK,’ Freddie said it first. ‘I’ll sign up for a dating app thing. I’ll give it a go. Nothing to lose, I guess.’
‘Yeah, same here,’ Kate agreed, feeling light and hopeful.
Chapter 7
So. This was happening. A date. An actual, real date. A date that Freddie was going on, with a real woman, in the real outside world. What could possibly go wrong?
It all happened terrifyingly quickly.
He had downloaded the app as soon as he got home after the pub because he knew that he would back out of the challenge if he slept on it, and uploaded the only three pictures of himself that he actually liked. One was a goofy selfie he had accidentally taken last November when he had dropped his phone and wanted to check that the camera still worked. He knew that it wasn’t the most flattering of photos, but he liked it because he looked relaxed and carefree, feelings he so rarely actually felt. He didn’t put that photo up first, though. For the profile shot he chose a picture from David and Stella’s wedding, where he was suited and booted and came complete with a pink peony in his lapel. He hadn’t been the best man – his brother had a retinue of friends all more qualified for the job than Freddie – but he had managed to make the cut for the wedding party, and had felt pretty great in a cravat and a suit jacket with tails. The final shot was from a comic book convention he had gone to the previous summer, where he had bought an opportunity for a posed photo with Richard Dean Anderson from Stargate SG-1, one of his favourite TV shows as a kid. He had decided to crop the photo, so that what was left was an image of Freddie looking pale, slightly hunched, one hand stuffed awkwardly in a pocket with the other one stretched away out of shot. He didn’t look his best – he had been so overawed by meeting one of his heroes that he had been barely able to smile – but he looked like how he felt most of the time, so he thought it was honest.
There were no actual lies in his profile, but Freddie figured that a vague and gentle fudging was probably OK. He wasn’t imagining anything going far enough for him to have to explain the truth. It was only a practice run, after all. Freddie had Hattie in his head, telling them that this was just one date; he didn’t even have to really like the girl, he just had to get used to being relaxed around women. She had reassured him that no matter how scared he was, nobody could ever tell whether someone was a virgin or not, that he didn’t have to say or do anything that he didn’t want to, and that all they would do is casually chat, in just the same way that he had been doing with them that evening.
Then Freddie thought about Kate, and about whether she was going to go through with her side of the challenge. It might be nice to catch up next time and compare notes.
He had shown Damien the profile of the girl he was meeting once the date had been settled. Not because he wanted Damien’s opinion per se, but because having an opinion, any opinion, felt important and validating. It meant it was really happening, meant that he had someone to hold him accountable should he try and back out.
‘Well she seems . . . normal,’ Damien had said, not quite sneering, but very nearly. He had just got home from work and was cleaning his coffee machine.
‘But nice though, right?’
‘Are you asking me for permission to see her or something?’
‘No, I just . . . Nothing seems wrong about her?’
‘So you think it might be a trap?’
‘No, I—’
‘She could be a raging Tory, I suppose, or even worse, a raging Communist. Either way is bad, I guess. As long as she’s not an influencer, or a “YouTuber”.’
‘What would be so wrong with that?’
‘She could ensnare you into appearing in her videos, or make you film her doing weird kooky things. Oh, don’t look at me like that! I’m sure you’ll be fine. I’m sure that she’s perfectly normal. Exactly as her photo suggests.’
To be honest, Freddie thought Mia was pretty stunning. If anything, too stunning. He wondered if he should have picked someone who he didn’t find so attractive for his first ever date. It might have made things easier.
Hattie had given him the impression that meeting up and chatting with someone you already kind of liked the look of would be easy somehow, but it definitely wasn’t. Freddie would have been too intimidated to have even made eye contact with her if they had encountered each other for the first time in real life. But he had liked her photo, so swiped in the right direction, and then it transpired that she had done the same. Mia messaged first, asking how his day had been, and he had replied, until there was a pretty steady stream of messages. She was sweet, and funny, and they were in almost exactly the same place in a binge-watch of the US version of The Office. She had made a joke suggesting that Freddie might be the Jim to her Pam, and he had been so frightened by the prospect that he closed the dating app down immediately and didn’t open it again for six hours. After which he decided that he was being stupid, that this was just some silly flirting on her part, and what would the point of any of this be if he didn’t flirt a little back, and finally replied suggesting that they meet for a coffee.
So now here he was, a week later, in a coffee shop he had walked past countless times but had never allowed himself to go into because the drinks were too fancy to justify. Well, now he had a good reason.
Freddie found himself flicking back on to the dating app, checking up on Mia’s profile just in case he had forgotten what she looked like. She seemed approachable, with big glasses over doe eyes made even bigger in one of her photos by some filter or another. Her hair was bobbed to just under her ears, and in each of her photos she seemed to be on an adventure: posing on a beach with arms outstretched here, peering out from behind a tree there.