ONE WEEK EARLIER
Monday
It’s the beginning of March but a bead of sweat winds its way down Alice’s spine as she unbuttons her damp coat and slides it off her shoulders. There’s a small round wooden table in front of her and a print of a dog sitting next to a gramophone on the wall but Alice isn’t interested in what she can see. She’s listening: for the tinkle of the bell above the door and the squeak of shoes on the sticky pub floor. But there’s no one creeping up behind her. The pub is silent apart from the tap-tapping of a man at his laptop on the other side of the room, the murmured voices of two old blokes at the bar and the clink of glasses as the dishwasher opens. She takes a steadying breath then flings the coat over the back of a chair and sits down on the padded corner seat, shuffling around the table so she’s facing the door. Her pulse slows.
Alice likes predictability. All-day delivery slots make her tense and just the thought of someone sneaking up on her, covering her eyes and shouting, ‘Guess who?’ is enough to bring her out in hives. The day she turned thirty-nine she texted all her friends telling them that under no circumstances were they to arrange a surprise party for her fortieth. It was probably the worst thing she could have done. Her phone didn’t stop pinging with threats to hire village halls, to swipe her spare house keys, to collude with Peter. One so-called friend had even tormented her with the promise of a male stripper.
She shudders at the thought and takes a sip of her lemonade. As it turned out there was no surprise party for her fortieth and, although she’d felt nervous stepping into the restaurant her friend Lynne had booked, there was no stripper either. It was a lovely evening, surrounded by good friends and full of laughter. Peter had been on his best behaviour all evening and, even though she’d girded herself for unpleasantness in the taxi on the way home, he hadn’t started a fight.
Her mobile vibrates on the table and she snatches it up, certain it’s Michael, cancelling their date. But it’s just Lynne, her best friend and workmate at Mirage Fashions, asking her how it’s going. She taps out a reply, keeping one eye on the door. It’s tipping down with rain outside and people are running past the pub, heads down, their faces obscured by heavy hoods and damp brollies.
He’s not here yet and I’m shitting myself. I don’t know why I agreed to this. Actually I do. Emily!
She inserts a rolling eyes emoticon at the end of the text, then deletes it. Her twenty-year-old daughter didn’t force her into using Tinder. But Emily certainly dropped a lot of hints:
‘It’s been two years since Dad left …’
‘I can’t remember the last time you went on a date.’
‘You’re forty-six, not eighty-six. You don’t have to spend the rest of your life alone.’
‘Doesn’t it get lonely? Spending the weekends on your own?’
She’d answered all of her daughter’s comments with a sharp comeback but when she tried to respond to the last question the words dried in her mouth. Returning to her empty two-bedroom flat wasn’t so bad in the week when her daughter was there. Besides, she was so tired after spending eight hours a day on her feet, smiling at customers and rallying her staff, that all she wanted to do was sink onto the sofa and lose herself in a documentary or some terrible reality TV show. But on a Sunday, when her daughter disappeared off to her boyfriend Adam’s place, the flat seemed to swell and Alice seemed to shrink. As she walked from room to room, looking for something to do, she felt like a marble rolling through a maze. And on the rare occasions when she spoke – to herself or to the television – her voice seemed to bounce off the walls. It was almost a relief to wake up on Monday and get ready for work.
She stares at her phone, pushing down the wave of self-pity that threatens to engulf her and deletes the part about her daughter. She presses send and, a couple of seconds later, the phone vibrates with a reply.
Leave! Meet me for a coffee and a sandwich! Kaisha can cover for me.
It’s a tempting offer but there’s no way she’s going to let her nerves stop her from meeting Michael. She decided, on 31st December, as she whirled around Lynne’s living room with her hands in the air and her head thrown back as eighties hits pounded at her eardrums, that the new year would see a more assertive Alice. She’d learned through bitter experience that when you sit back and wait for what life throws at you, you mostly get covered in shit.
She glances at her watch. 1.10 p.m. She only gets an hour for lunch and even if Michael walks through the door right now they’ll only be able to spend forty minutes together before she has to leave. An old man’s boozer with a sticky floor, tobacco-stained walls and choice of two soft drinks – ‘Coke or lemonade, that’s your lot’ – wouldn’t have been her ideal venue for a first date but he said it was his favourite pub and that they’d easily get a table because it wasn’t busy at lunchtime. She’d given him the benefit of the doubt. He was new to Bristol and probably hadn’t had chance to visit any of the nicer places yet. Either that or he has low standards. She smiles ruefully to herself, then pushes the thought away.
The bell above the door tinkles and a man in a black waterproof jacket walks in. Alice’s stomach hollows as he pauses, his gaze flitting from the blonde bloke with the laptop to the two older gents at the bar. She fights the urge to slip down in her seat and slither under the table. Assertive Alice wouldn’t do that, she tells herself as she straightens her spine and fixes a smile to her face. Assertive Alice does not hide. Instead she casts an eye over the man at the door. Michael’s shorter than she imagined, five foot eight or nine to her five foot four, but he’s better-looking than his photos (her daughter warned her that the opposite was more likely to be true). His thick dark hair is peppered with grey at the temples and he’s very masculine-looking with his heavy brow, wide jaw and strong nose, the tip pinked from the cold. There’s a tautness to his expression but it vanishes as he turns his head and his eyes flick towards her. His lips twitch at the edges. It’s not a smile per se, more a flash of recognition, and as he ambles across the carpet towards her the pit in her stomach fills with self-doubt. He doesn’t fancy her. She can see it in his face.
‘Alice!’ As Michael nears her table he half-falls, half-lunges in her direction and lands a cold kiss on her cheek. ‘Sorry I’m late!’
‘It’s fine,’ she lies, shifting across the padded bench to make room for him as he unceremoniously plonks himself next to her rather than taking the seat opposite. ‘But I can’t stay long. I need to get back to work.’
‘You’ve got time for a quick drink, though …’ His brow furrows as he takes in the near-empty glass on the table in front of her. ‘Gin and tonic is it?’
‘Lemonade.’
‘Have a gin and tonic!’ Still in his wet coat he heaves himself back onto his feet. ‘You can’t let me drink alone.’
‘I’m working! I don’t want a—’
But Michael is already halfway to the bar. As he signals to the bored-looking twenty-something barman Alice picks up her phone.
He’s here, she texts Lynne. He’s a bit … exuberant … but he’s nice-looking.
She stares at the phone, waiting for a reply, then quickly drops it into her bag as her date returns from the bar, two glasses in his hands.
If that’s gin I’m not drinking it, she thinks, warily eyeing the clear liquid and slice of lemon in one of the glasses.
‘Lemonade.’ He slides it across the table, his eyes not meeting hers.
She takes a sip to check – definitely lemonade – then sets it back down and takes a better look at Michael, or at least the part of his face that isn’t hidden behind the rim of his pint glass. Up close his skin is grey and dry, spidered with red thread veins and dotted with age spots. His thick hair is dull and brittle and his nails are gnarly and split. She sniffs subtly, silently drawing his scent into her nostrils. Booze. And something worse: unwashed clothes. He senses her watching him and sets down his pint, swivelling his bloodshot eyes in her direction.
He’s drunk, Alice realises. He’s turned up to our first date drunk.
Perhaps he’s nervous, she thinks, trying desperately to reconcile the glassy-eyed man to her right with the witty, clever man she exchanged dozens of messages with. It’s after one o’clock, technically the afternoon. Maybe he had a glass of wine with his lunch to calm himself down and one swiftly became two, or three.
‘Cheers! Here’s to meeting at last.’ He holds out his drink and clinks it, slightly too heavily, against hers. Lemonade slops over the glass and wets the cuff of her sleeve. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d come.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Catfish. You don’t know who you’re talking to on the internet half the time.’ His words aren’t slurred but they’re louder than they need to be, given there’s barely a foot between them. Definitely nervous, Alice tells herself.
‘Have you been catfished before?’ she asks.
He gives her a long, lingering look, his gaze drifting from eyes to her mouth. It rests there a fraction too long, making her feel so self-conscious she presses her lips together, pulling them between her teeth.
‘I’ve met a lot of people who can’t be trusted, but you seem different.’ He pauses. ‘Are you?’
Alice runs her hands up and down the skirt of the dress she changed into in the staff toilets at work. Nervous or not, this is too much, this intensity. She thought they’d make small talk, then segue into chat about their interests, their families and their plans for the future. She thought he’d be as light-hearted and jokey as he’d been in his messages.
She forces a laugh. ‘I don’t think I’d have got the manager’s job if I was untrustworthy.’
‘That’s not what I mean and you know it.’ He presses a heavy hand over hers. ‘Are you someone I can trust?’
Alice glances at the bar but the near-teenager is too engrossed in his phone to notice the look she shoots in his direction and the two older men have their backs turned to her. But someone has noticed her anguish. The man with the laptop on the opposite side of the pub has stopped typing and is looking at her with concern. She raises her eyebrows at him, signally what she’s not sure, but he doesn’t move from his seat. Instead his attention returns to his screen and he hunches over, typing furiously. He wasn’t watching her at all, he was staring into space.
‘I asked you a question,’ Michael says. ‘Are you someone I can trust?’
Alice keeps her gaze firmly fixed forward. ‘Yes,’ she says from between her teeth. ‘Of course I am.’
She tugs her hand away from beneath his sweating palm but he’s quicker than she is and he pins her hand to the light cotton material of her skirt.
‘Look at me. Look at me, Alice.’
No, shouts the voice in her head. I don’t want to.
There’s a part of her that wants to shout at him to take his heavy, clammy hand off hers. He’s drunk but he must be able to see how uncomfortable she is, how rigid she has suddenly become. But there’s another part of her, a bigger part, that doesn’t want to cause a scene or risk angering him. He’s not sexually abusing her. He hasn’t touched her boobs or her bum. But that doesn’t make it okay. Hot angry tears prick at her eyes. Of all the men on Tinder, she chose him. It’s like she’s got a sign on her head: complete walkover seeks utter arsehole. Decent men need not apply. Well she’s not going to let him see her cry.
‘Excuse me.’ She stands abruptly, yanking her hand from his, grabs her handbag, shifts to her left and rounds the table. Out of the corner of her eye she spots laptop man packing up his things. ‘I’m just going to use the ladies.’
Irritation flares on Michael’s face. ‘You’re doing a runner.’
‘No, I’m not.’
But I will, she thinks. When I get back.
‘I’ll get you a drink,’ Michael calls after her as she hurries across the pub, following the sign to the toilets. ‘Might make you a bit less uptight!’
Alice’s pulse pounds in her ears as she throws open the door to the ladies’ loo and stalks over to the sink. She grips the cold, ceramic sides and folds over herself, her eyes screwed shut, breathing rapidly through her nose.
‘Arsehole,’ she says, lifting her head, staring into the eyes of her tear-stained reflection. ‘Stupid bloody arsehole.’
She steps into the nearest cubicle, grabs a handful of cheap, rough toilet paper and blows her nose. She flushes it, grabs another handful and returns to the sink. She blots the tears that roll down her cheeks, cutting pale rivulets through the thick foundation that mask her freckles. As she takes a deep, steadying breath, an image of her ex-husband flickers in her brain – curled up on the sofa with his new wife and her burgeoning baby bump – and fresh tears replace the ones she wiped away.
‘Stop it,’ she says to her reflection. ‘Alice, stop it! You’ve got a nice flat, a lovely daughter, a good job and great friends. You don’t need this shit.’
She roots around in her handbag for her concealer and powder and does her best to cover the redness on her nose, then replaces the eyeliner that disappeared down her cheeks. She doesn’t want to give Michael the satisfaction of knowing that he made her cry.
‘It’ll do,’ she tells herself and snaps her handbag shut.
She steels herself before she opens the toilet door. She’ll go back to the table. She’ll pick up her coat, say a cursory, ‘It was nice to meet you,’ and she’ll walk out of the pub with her head held high.
‘Right,’ she says to herself, then she turns the handle, opens the door and steps out of the ladies’ toilets.
‘Hello, Alice.’
Michael is standing at the end of the narrow corridor, blocking her route back to the bar. As his eyes meet hers, her heart stills its frantic thumping. It pauses between beats.
A slow smile forms on Michael’s lips. ‘Did you get lost?’
‘No. Why?’ There’s a quiver in her voice that she’s never heard before.
‘I thought maybe you were waiting for me to join you.’
‘I’m sorry?’
He shrugs, his dark anorak shifting on his shoulders and Alice’s stomach lurches. Clenched in his right hand is her coat.
‘You only had to ask.’ He leers at her. ‘If you wanted a quickie. I’m all for a bit of … fun.’
‘I have to go back to work.’ She steps towards him, gesturing for her coat.
There’s a pause as Michael considers the request, then he lifts her coat and holds it out towards her. She reaches for it, limp with relief. Her fingertips graze the shiny material and she fixes her mouth into a tight smile as she mentally prepares the last words she’ll ever say to him.
It was nice to meet you.
No, it wasn’t. How about, I really must get back to work. Bye then.
Or maybe just: Goodbye.
She raises her eyes to his, the word forming between her lips, then gasps in shock as the coat is ripped from her curled fingers.
Michael holds it behind his back. His smile widens.
‘Kiss goodbye?’
She stares at him, too stunned to speak.
‘I had to take half a day off work to meet you. And I bought you a drink.’
Her incredulity morphs into anger. He took the morning off work to get pissed and shelled out for half a lemonade and he thinks that entitles him to a kiss? What century does he live in? What planet?
‘My coat.’ This time her voice doesn’t betray her. Every ounce of anger she feels is compressed into the two words.
He shakes his head then leans forward, lips pursed. Alice reaches round him, squeezing half her body between him and the wall, and grabs at the coat, dangling from his hands. ‘Just fucking give it to me!’
The air is knocked from her lungs as Michael lunges to the side, his elbow connecting with the small hollow between her collarbones. She stumbles backwards, the crown of her head hitting the wall as her handbag tumbles to the ground.
‘Don’t swear at me.’ His breath is sour, his eyes glassy. ‘Never swear at me.’
Alice presses a hand to her throat, sucking in air, her brain empty. She is vaguely aware of the soft squeak of a door opening and a dark shape in her peripheral vision but all she can do is stare up into the sweaty, open-pored face of the man whose right hand is clamped around her right shoulder, his fingers digging into the soft tissue beneath the hard bone. Michael lowers his face to hers, his dry cracked lips parting, as he draws closer.
He’s going to kiss me.
His wet, red tongue quivers against his bottom lip, saliva glistening on its tip. The revulsion that courses through her body makes her dazed brain spark back to life.
He’s NOT going to kiss me.
Her knee whips through the air then stops suddenly as it finds its target. Michael throws his head back and roars as he falls away, hands clasped between his legs.
Alice doesn’t wait for him to recover. Instead she stoops down, snatches up her bag and her coat, and she runs.
A male voice follows her as she bursts out of the pub, shouting, telling her to stop, to wait. She hears footsteps behind her, pounding the cobbled street as she heads for the Meads, but she doesn’t look back.