Home > First Date(4)

First Date(4)
Author: Sue Watson

‘Cheeky sod,’ I say, laughing. ‘I didn’t sleep with anyone.’

‘Probably just as well, because he will kill again,’ he says in an American accent, while slowly putting his hands around my neck.

I waft him away, like a pesky fly. Harry’s only twenty-six, and sometimes it shows. We all love him, but sometimes he’s like an annoying little brother.

‘Let me know if you hear anything, or if you decide to call him,’ Jas says, ignoring Harry completely. ‘I mean, it’s not the 1940s.’

‘I know, but I—’

‘When you two have finished with the dating therapy, we have a nine thirty.’ Harry gestures towards Jas with his head.

Jas rolls her eyes. ‘Come in.’ She turns back to her desk, and I have to smile as I close the door and hear her say, ‘So, have you told Gemma that you love her yet?’

Jas loves getting in people’s business, and when she’s not being the boss, she’s the office agony aunt. Last year she convinced Harry to break up with Natalie, his childhood sweetheart, said they weren’t right together. Then, after going into Brown’s Bakery one day, she spotted Gemma working behind the counter and decided she was ‘the one’ for Harry. His budding romance with Gemma has been like a daily soap ever since, with Jas tutoring him at every turn.

‘I might become a matchmaker if this social work thing doesn’t work out,’ she jokes. But it seems Jas has good instincts for romantic couplings, because Harry’s been with Gemma for almost a year now, and they’re madly in love. Harry’s always looking for excuses to go to the café to see her, and one of those excuses is to pick up something delicious and high-calorie, which he offloads on me on his return. I’m not complaining though, Gemma bakes a mean cake and I rarely resist.

Harry’s young and makes fun of his female colleagues’ romantic aspirations, but deep down I think he’s as starry-eyed as the rest of us. He told me once how when they were first together, Gemma made him a batch of mini doughnuts, and before she put each one to his mouth, she kissed it. I think that’s probably the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard. At the time, I was still with Tom, and seeing Harry with Gemma just confirmed for me how far away we were from love. I thought last night I might actually be on to something but now it looks like I’m no further on.

 

Later, when Harry and Jas have had their meeting, Jas wanders over to my desk. Her dark, curly hair is fizzing around her face, her lips are a questioning pout enquiring without words if Alex has called, but I shake my head before she asks.

‘He just didn’t feel the same, obviously,’ I mumble, lifting my head up from the computer screen.

‘Yeah, he obviously found you repulsive,’ she says, deadpan.

I must look surprised at this, because she lets out a belly laugh, her perfect white teeth framed by red lips. I start laughing too, and now Harry and Sameera are looking up to see what all the noise is about.

‘Jas says I’m boring and ugly,’ I say to them.

‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ Harry shrugs, slipping into his default mode as the teasing younger brother.

Sameera throws a ball of paper at him. ‘You’re gorgeous, Hannah!’ she says, frowning at him.

Having ducked the paper, he’s now pretending to concentrate on work, but a dimple forms on his cheek. He’s trying not to laugh, and I can see by his face he’s thinking up a far worse punishment for Sameera than a rolled ball of paper.

Jas and I roll our eyes at each other, at the two ‘kids’ in the office.

A psychologist I worked with once told me that within a group of people, a family unit always emerges. However long they’ve known each other, people subconsciously take on familial roles, and I see this in our small team every day. Jas is in her early forties, she’s in charge and very much the alpha, the big sister of the group. I don’t think anyone would argue with my theory that at thirty-six, I’m the next big sister, while Sameera and Harry, both in their twenties, are the unruly kids.

I watch Jas as she answers a query from Harry about one of his clients. She’s so ‘on it’, knowing exactly who he’s talking about and responding clearly, in bullet points. She practises ‘controlled emotional involvement’, something we all know is the secret of a good social worker. She cares, she understands, she empathises, but doesn’t allow emotions to cloud her judgement. Unlike me.

Despite a pile of paperwork on my desk and at least five home visits to do today, all I can think about is Alex, and my emotions are clouding everything. I watch Jas through the glass of her office and wonder if she’s right that he’s like all the rest. As she said, I know it’s not just up to him to get in touch – but I want him to want a second date enough to call and ask me, rather than have me chase him.

 

A couple of hours later, I look up from my computer screen and realise, with a sharp sting, that he still hasn’t called. I wonder if he’s like me, and doesn’t want to be the one to call. How many great love affairs have been dashed on the rocks before they began because neither had the courage to make that first move?

I’d given up on men, until Jas told me about Meet your Match. She convinced me that I should ‘get back on the horse after Tom’.

‘Even if it’s just a bloke you can go to the cinema with, sleep with, someone to put your bins out,’ she’d said.

‘I want more than that,’ I’d replied, as we sat at the bar of The Orange Tree that night.

‘There’s no such thing as a man who wants commitment. They all just want a one-night stand,’ she said, as we sipped on Porn Star Martinis – ‘our’ drink.

‘But I want a home, a family, three kids and… a Labrador. I want a big garden with a trampoline and holidays in Devon, like we did when I was a kid… and…’

‘Pina coladas and walks in the rain?’ She’d sighed. ‘That’s why you can’t find anyone. I mean, talk of Labradors and kids would scare any normal man off. I think you need to be a bit more like me and lower your standards. All I ask is that a man is good in bed, makes a mean cheese on toast, doesn’t ask too many questions… and who needs a dog and kids anyway?’

Jas is ‘seeing someone’ but not in a relationship. She’s recently been hooking up with a teacher she met while working on a family case. They live their own lives and just meet up now and then, which she says she’s happy with, but recently he hasn’t been returning her calls, and she told me she thinks he’s seeing someone else. I didn’t think it would bother her too much, she’s always said she isn’t looking for commitment, doesn’t want to be married again, but I sometimes wonder if she’s lying to herself. She’s forty-two and she loves kids, and whatever she says, I worry she might regret not being a mother. Perhaps I’m just imposing my fears on her, because I very much want marriage and kids and I’m not playing games with myself pretending I don’t. I know it might sound old-fashioned, but that’s what I want, a family of my own, and someone who’s committed enough to stay with me beyond next weekend.

Jas’s weekends are spent drinking too much wine, catching up on work and cleaning her house. Her place is pristine, the surfaces shiny, with a permanent smell of bleach and every little thing in its place. She says it’s because of her past.

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