She found herself thinking about Freddie, and whether he had gone through with his side of the challenge. She wished she had his number, so that they could share stories of their respective misadventures. Online dating might have been easier in some respects, but Kate had been there before. She had signed up for apps, spent forever searching and swiping and sifting through sexist and icky messages, and in the end was left vaguely traumatised. But now, feeling as low as she did, she wondered why she had ever thought that speed dating was a better alternative.
Kate had popped back to her flat, her lovely, precious-but-half-empty flat, to get changed before leaving for the bar. She chose a black dress that had buttons all the way up the front, even though the ticket encouraged people to wear red or pink for St Valentine, and hoped that it was flattering enough (she had nothing pink in her wardrobe, and the only red was a big fluffy jumper). She wore her heeled black boots, even though they were uncomfortable, and left her hair loose. It was comforting to feel it around her face. When she was younger she used to twist strands in her fingers and chew on it, and on the Tube now, whilst she low-key panicked about everything she was potentially going to lose in the near future, she found herself reaching for a twist of hair again, but refrained from chewing only for the sake of her lipstick (bright red and given to her by Renee).
The bar was hip and dark and just around the corner from Holborn station, and she was one of the first people there.
‘I’m here for the thing?’ Kate said tentatively to one of the organisers, a chipper guy who couldn’t have been more than twenty years old, and who Kate thought might have preferred organising a university bar crawl to a singles event for late twenty/early thirty somethings. But he was kind, kinder than he needed to be, and gave Kate a name sticker with hearts all over it, and told her to enjoy her free drink at the bar whilst they waited for everyone else to arrive.
In all there were forty of them, twenty girls and twenty boys. And once they were all assembled, Kate realised that she was very much out of her depth.
Initially the thought of speed dating had been wonderful. She could just sit there, nice and comfortable, whilst a parade of men were brought before her. She could make a choice, and had the security of knowing that if the connection was bad, then she would only have to talk to them for two minutes max. What Kate hadn’t thought about was that, even though it was the men doing all the moving around, they made choices too, and out of the twenty girls, she saw herself as the worst option. There was a strange upside to online dating, Kate thought, in that you never knew what you were up against.
She wasn’t like the other girls, in their flirty dresses and calamitous heels. She couldn’t see how any of these men would ever choose her, given the options. She didn’t feel beautiful, didn’t feel intelligent, didn’t feel as if she had anything to offer. This was going to be a disaster.
The chipper guy from the door, accompanied by an equally chipper girl of about the same age, wearing a similar T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the company organising the dating experience, appeared before them to say that the games were about to begin.
‘Don’t be nervous,’ the girl said, coming over to Kate and leading her to one of the carefully positioned tables and chairs around the room. ‘They smell fear, you know. And you look terrified!’
‘Ha-ha,’ Kate laughed, a little overexuberantly. She was terrified.
She let herself have an initial scan of the guys in the room, and nobody jumped out at her.
Too muscly.
Too beardy.
Too tattooed.
But then, initial attraction had never been Kate’s strong point. She marvelled at people who were able to spot each other from afar and attract the other like sexually charged magnets.
Each man seemed like a strange alien, too much of an unknown entity. She couldn’t imagine herself with any of them. It didn’t help that some were clearly already making their moves on some of the women. Kate supposed it was possible that if she liked one of them, she could win him over with her dazzling charm, make a genuine connection over a shared interest, but with only two minutes to play with? There was no hope.
Before the first man reached her table, she stood up.
‘Everything all right?’ the hostess asked. ‘We’re about to start the first round.’
‘I have to go,’ Kate said. Her heart was thudding in her chest.
‘But you’ll make the numbers uneven,’ the girl said, all the playfulness gone from her voice.
‘I’m sorry,’ Kate flustered. ‘But I can’t be here, and I really have to go.’
‘Don’t expect to get your money back or anything,’ the girl called as Kate hurried on her coat.
The panic attack hit fully once she was outside. She managed to walk a distance away before she found herself desperate to sit down – to lie down if she could – but found enough energy to lean on a nearby building, its smooth marbled exterior soothing despite the cold. Gradually her breathing calmed, and the sweat on her forehead subsided and evaporated. She was left with the intense need to have a cup of tea and a good cry.
Chapter 9
‘A date? Our Freddie went on a date?’ Baz was more incredulous than Freddie would have liked, despite the validity of his disbelief. ‘How? When? Who?’
‘Her name was Mia. And it was nice, but it was also nothing,’ Freddie replied.
They were in a bar not far from the university building, close enough that Freddie could walk there easily for the group meeting later.
‘Still, that’s the first time I’ve heard you talk about a girl since, what was her name? In university? Carnation?’
‘Camellia.’
‘Camellia! Never seen anyone so lovesick. What happened there anyway? Did you ever tell me, or did I just forget?’
‘You forgot,’ Freddie mumbled. There had, of course, been nothing to tell. But Baz didn’t need to know that. The months after graduation were a rush of job and house-hunting, with Baz moving back to the Midlands for a bit before he managed to find and land the graduate placement he wanted. Anything could have happened during that time, and Freddie had let him believe that anything did.
‘So what was with this Mia then? Why did that happen?’
‘It was just a dating app thing I was trying out. She was cute but not over her ex and it clearly wasn’t going anywhere.’
‘Well, good on you mate.’
‘Thanks.’
Baz put his beer back down on the table and, leaning across, kept his voice quiet: ‘You know you can talk to me, if you need it?’
The tone caught Freddie off guard, uncertain about what he was referring to. Baz had been there when his life had gone a little off the rails five years ago, but that was in the past. He’d moved on. He was fine now. Very nearly perfectly fine.
‘Oh, yeah. I know. Thank you, I will.’
‘No listen Freddie, before Wayne arrives and lowers the tone. You know I worry about you sometimes.’
‘Why? There’s nothing to worry about.’
‘I think that after Camellia,’ the way Baz said her name made Freddie wince, ‘and then when everything went downhill not long after . . . I think sometimes that we never really got the chance to catch up. I don’t know if I was a good friend to you. Or, at least, as good a friend as I could have been.’