Someone Like You

Leonie sat down on the edge of Mel’s bed. ‘It’s lovely to have you back,’ she said, wishing she didn’t feel like an intruder in their bedroom after a mere three weeks’ absence.

‘Yeah,’ muttered Mel. ‘Wish we weren’t going back to school though. I hate school. I wish it was January.’

Unusually, Abby wasn’t in a mood to talk. She often followed her mother into bed, sitting cross-legged at the foot of the bed, stroking Penny’s velvety ears and talking nineteen to the dozen until they realized it was half eleven and gasped at the thought that they had to get up at seven. Tonight, she smiled a suspiciously thin smile at Leonie and went back to her book, obviously not wanting to be drawn into any conversation. Maybe she, too, was missing the perfect Fliss, Leonie thought sadly.

Feeling in the way and miserable, she retreated. She turned off the hall light, locked the back door after Penny had been outside for her ablutions, and warned Danny not to have the TV on too loudly. Then she went to bed.

She rarely switched on her clock radio at night but tonight she felt lonely, so she flicked the switch. A late-night discussion show was on and the subject matter was dating agencies.

‘Where would ya find a fella in the back of beyond without some help?’ demanded one woman, fighting back against a male caller who felt that paying for introductions was the last resort of the hopeless.

‘I bet you look like a complete old cow,’ the male caller interrupted smugly, pointing out that he was married with four kids.

‘And I bet your wife is screwing around on ya, ya old curmudgeon,’ retorted the woman.

The radio host intervened, sensing the argument was going to hit the four-letter-word level. ‘We’ll be back after the news,’ he said smoothly, ‘for an interview with a couple who found true love in the personal ads.’

Leonie was hooked. An hour later, she turned the radio and her light off and lay in bed in darkness. She wasn’t alone after all. There were lots of people who felt lonely and didn’t know where to go to meet new partners, people who felt too old for the twenty-something pub scene and too young for tea dances. The woman on the radio had been like Leonie: a lonely woman who couldn’t imagine falling in love ever again. Two adverts in her local Belfast paper later, she was dating a lovely man. Now they were getting married and were going to be the subject of a documentary about finding love in unusual ways. Why shouldn’t I try that too, Leonie asked herself. If she had a man, she wouldn’t feel depressed about Ray and Fliss, or about how Mel seemed bored to be home, or about how fat she was getting, or anything.

She curled her toes up under the duvet at the thought of her exciting plan: she’d take out a personal ad or join a dating agency. Her mission, should she choose to accept it, was to find a man. That was it, she had to have one. And then she’d feel better about herself. Wouldn’t she?

‘What does GSOH mean?’ Leonie asked, staring at her horoscope in the tiny kitchen during the ten minutes they tried to snatch each day between morning rounds and the beginning of surgery.

Angie, the practice’s only female vet, looked up from the crossword she did effortlessly each morning in seven minutes flat. ‘Good sense of humour,’ she replied in her crisp Australian accent. Clear grey eyes scrutinized her colleague. ‘Why?’

‘Nothing.’

A moment passed.

‘You thinking of personal ads?’ Angie asked.

Leonie flushed and grinned. It was always a mistake to bullshit Angie, who was one of the smartest women she knew. ‘Yes. Desperate, isn’t it? I’m never going to meet a man round here, am I?’

‘Not unless you want to run off with the postman – who does fancy you, in my opinion. He takes a long time delivering the mail when you answer the door.’

‘You’re a cow, Angie. He’s practically at retiring age. And if he’s the best I can do, I may as well give up. It drives me mad, you know. People think if you work in a vet practice the place is a throbbing hotbed of lust with hormones all over the place because we deal with animals. I don’t see why,’ Leonie said plaintively. ‘What’s so sexy about staring at Tim’s face while he operates on some cat’s anal glands?’

‘It’s the old doctors and nurses thing,’ Angie remarked sagely. ‘Romantic novels are full of doctors and nurses having it off in between quadruple bypasses. It’s fictional fantasy, but everyone thinks it must be the same here. It’s the white coat that does it. Women want to be bonked senseless by a guy in a white coat because he’s in charge and they can indulge their “I couldn’t help it, m’lud, he made me do it” fantasy.’

‘Fantasy’s all very well, but the reality is very different,’ Leonie said, giving up on her horoscope because Virgos were going to have a bad day and fight with everyone. ‘Tim’s happily married, Raoul is engaged and, unless we both turn gay, you’re out of bounds. Maybe if Raoul went back to South America, we could hire a new hunky young vet and our eyes would lock over the operating table when we were neutering a ginger tom.’ She sighed at the thought. ‘Then again, he’d want to be deranged to fall for a divorced mother of three, wouldn’t he? An insolvent mother of three, at that. I’m broke again, Angie, my overdraft is in the stratosphere and Mel is whingeing on about new clothes…’

‘Personal ads are a great idea,’ Angie interrupted before Leonie got carried away on misery. ‘Loads of people use them these days and you’re not going to meet the man of your dreams in this town, now, are you? What would you say in your ad?’

Leonie extracted a piece of folded-up newsprint from her pocket. ‘I got this from the Guardian in the surgery waiting room. It’s got pages of ads. “Soulmates” they call them. I just don’t understand what they all mean. I read it for ages earlier and it’s like reading Mongolian. Listen to this: “Zany Slim Blonde F, GSOH, n/s WLTM creative M, preferably TDH for loving r/ship. Ldn.”’

Angie translated: ‘Zany blonde female with a good sense of humour, non-smoker, would like to meet a creative male, preferably tall, dark and handsome for a loving relationship. Based in London.’

‘Ah, gotcha.’ Leonie scanned the rest of the ads. ‘The only problem is that all these women are slim and all the men want slim women. See: “seeks slim, attractive woman…” She could be an axe-murderer, but as long as she’s slim, it’s OK.’

‘Don’t be daft,’ said Angie, who was tall, attractive in a sporty way and very, very slim.

‘It’s true. Look at them.’

Together, they scanned the list. The men, who described themselves as anything from ‘cuddly’ (‘That means fat,’ Angie pointed out), to ‘Not easy to describe in four to five lines’ (‘Short, fat and often mistaken for a pot-bellied pig,’ said Angie).

They giggled over some of the descriptions: the surgical walker who wanted a fun and adventurous companion; and Sir Lancelot who was seeking his Guinevere.

‘Would a wimple and chastity belt be necessary?’ Angie mused.

‘Listen to this: “Shy male, 35, virgin, seeks similar for relationship.” How could you be a virgin at thirty-five? That is weird.’

‘Not if he’s religious,’ Angie countered.

‘Oh yeah, I hadn’t thought of that. What does “seeks for possible relationship” mean?’ Leonie asked, bemused.

‘That he wants to shag you senseless after a meal where you went Dutch and then he never wants to see you again,’ Angie said knowledgeably. ‘Happened to a friend of mine in Sydney. She’s a veteran of the personals, but even she got badly burned once. He said he was a gorgeous doctor and he wasn’t lying, so she forgot her plan to play hard to get and they did it on the first date. Champagne, chocolate body-paint, Polaroid camera, the lot. She never set eyes on him again. Bastard.’

Leonie shuddered at the thought of someone with Polaroid photos of her naked self. She read some more: ‘ “Seeks classy blonde for fun and games.” This is mad stuff. Why doesn’t he just hire a hooker?’

‘These are hip and trendy ads. You want a nice country ad in a country paper.’

‘You sure?’

‘Positive. Someone with a cosy hearth who has several animals, pots of money and who looks good in wellington boots.’

‘Wicklow is full of blokes like that,’ Leonie dead-panned. ‘The surgery is probably jammed with a consignment as we speak, all bearing red roses at the news that I’m looking for lurve. Oh yes, and a sick sheep they need looked at. Come on, we’d better get to work.’

They discussed the personal ads some more that morning as Angie whizzed through spaying four cats, two dogs and descaling the teeth on a very old beagle.

Leonie assisted her, shaving the animals’ bellies and disinfecting them before Angie got to work. It was also her job to monitor breathing and colour. Older animals were often put on oxygen during operations. Younger ones tended to do well without it, but Leonie kept an eye on their colour to make sure they were getting enough oxygen. At the first sign of a tongue going grey, she’d give them pure oxygen.

‘Be honest in your advert,’ Angie advised, delicately sewing up a tabby kitten’s soft beige belly. ‘Say “voluptuous”, because you are and you want to make sure whoever wants to meet you knows that. You don’t want to end up with some bloke whose aim in life is to make you lose a stone.’

‘It’s nice to have at least one friend who’s honest with me,’ Leonie said, keeping an eye on the kitten’s breathing. ‘If I asked anyone else, they’d lie through their teeth and tell me I’m slim, really. My mother is always telling me I’m beautiful the way I am and not to think about dieting, which is bullshit.’

‘Your mother is a wonderful woman and no, it’s not bullshit. Half the women in the country are trying to kill themselves dieting. It’s a waste of time – you know it. Most people who lose weight put it right back on again eventually.’

‘Tell me about it!’ Leonie groaned, feeling the waistband of her blue uniform biting into her flesh. ‘If I was to put an advert in the paper, what would I say?’

‘Voluptuous, sensual…’ began Angie.

‘Get out of here!’ shrieked Leonie, secretly pleased. ‘Sensual! You can’t say that.’

‘Why not?’ Angie finished the kitten. She gave her a shot of antibiotics and brought her back to her cage.

She returned with a Yorkshire terrier for spaying and took up the conversation as if she’d never been away. ‘You are, in every sense of the word. Sensual isn’t just to do with sex, you know. It also means someone who enjoys using their senses, and you do.’

‘Yeah but saying “sensual” in an advert in the Wicklow Times will result in a rush of callers thinking I’m looking for an entirely different sort of man friend, the sort who leaves the money on the mantelpiece.’