The Ex Factor

She’d hoped it would be a cool Brick Lane place, of the type Rosa was always having to do features on, where they served the food in hammocks or only ate cereal or things on toast. She looked at the laminated menu—a bit of curry was stuck on the side. It wasn’t a cool place. And Will was late. Despite years of dating, Ani had not been able to reconcile herself to the lax attitude to time most people displayed. On impulse she texted Marnie: Waiting for late date. Many misgivings.

Marnie came back: Might be OK? Give him a chance!

Horrible Indian restaurant. Twenty minutes late. Rebound man.

Hmm. Three strikes already. May as well stay though—a girl has to eat.

That was true, Ani thought. It was nice having Marnie back, rather than off roaming the world somehow. She’d actually missed her. Despite everything. So she stayed, but she’d already eaten her way through five poppadums with lime pickle when Will walked in the door. Twenty-five minutes late. Just inside her threshold for ‘no longer pretending it’s OK’, which was half an hour. ‘Hi!’ She half rose, wondering if they’d hug, then sat down again when he pulled out a chair. ‘How are you? Good Christmas?’

‘I—OK, I suppose.’ He sighed deeply. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just—well, I ought to tell you. I had a run-in with Kat last night.’

Kat? Who the…? ‘Oh. Your ex?’ Ani tried to infuse the syllables with threat, understanding, and indifference all at once. It was hard.

‘Yes, she—well, she came around. Said she wanted to get a few things.’ Ani braced herself to hear they’d slept together. ‘She gave me back the ring,’ he said, dolefully. ‘Her engagement ring.’

‘Oh—well—is that good? Maybe you can sell it?’

‘They have almost no resale value. It’s worth like a tenth of what I paid.’

‘How can that be? The metals at least—’

‘The truth is, Ani, jewels have no real value. It’s like everything with weddings. It’s worth what you’ll pay for it. When you still believe you’re in love. But take that away and it’s just a cake, or a dress, or a bit of metal.’

Ani was thinking through the implications of that. ‘It’s almost as if you’re buying…’

‘Hope,’ he finished bleakly. ‘Yeah.’

Hope, she thought, eyes focused on a smear of pickle on the passing waiter’s shirt. Hope was what kept her going on date after date, year after year, thinking, what if this, tonight, was the one, and she cancelled because she was tired and really wanted to watch The Good Wife? What if her perfect man, the love of her life, slipped her by because she wasn’t paying attention, because she slacked off for a second, because she was too impatient and sharp and scared them away? But she could now see that, despite Marnie’s encouragement, tonight’s hope was outside the restaurant, setting off sadly down the street. What had Marnie said? A girl has to eat. ‘I haven’t had any dinner,’ she said firmly. ‘Shall we order?’

‘Oh. I guess. I’m not sure I could eat much.’

The waiter came. ‘Any ideas?’ she said to Will, brusquely. ‘I’ll have a lamb bhuna and a peshwari naan, please.’

He was staring at the menu. ‘It all sounds the same to me. Kat and I used to eat in a lot, salads, healthy stuff. She really kept in shape.’

‘So why did you pick this place?’

‘I thought you’d prefer it.’

Ani held her breath till her ears popped. ‘Look, my parents aren’t even from India, they grew up in Uganda. Just pick something.’

‘I don’t like spicy food,’ Will said to the waiter. ‘So something mild. A korma?’

Ani and the waiter exchanged a look that needed no translation.

She did her best after that, and they chatted about food, about work, about Louise and Jake and whether they were really as happy as Louise would make out—nothing like a little shared bitch to grease the wheels of social interaction—but at the end of the day it was a cheap Indian restaurant with strip lighting, blaring Indi-pop from a TV in the corner, and only three of the tables occupied—one with a rugby team, who chanted and whooped every time someone took a drink. ‘Down it! Down it!’ Ani looked at her phone surreptitiously and realised only forty minutes had gone by. Suddenly she didn’t care if it was rude—she wanted to go home.

Will clearly had the same idea. He’d taken out his wallet and was staring into it.

‘Shall we just…’

‘It’s here,’ he said mournfully.

‘What is?’

He held something aloft, winking and glittering in the strip lighting. ‘I forgot I put it in here. I—I—How could she? How could she?’ He burst into tears.

At that exact moment the waiter clocked the ring, and nudged the others, who started clapping and cheering. ‘Congratulations! Wedding bells!’ Ani realised, surreally, they were singing an off-key version of ‘I’m Getting Married in the Morning’. The rugby boys caught on and started whooping again, and two other miserable-looking couples, insulated in anoraks against the cold January night, joined in with some desultory applause. Ani was still reeling. Will seemed to have frozen in shock.

‘Ding dong, the bells are gonna chiiiiime…’

‘Get in there, mate! Give her one! A kiss I mean, haaaaaa.’

‘No, no, there’s been a—no…’

‘So do not let them tarry, ding dong…’

‘Nice one! Wedding night five!’

Will stood up, knocking the remains of his ultra-mild curry onto his cream trousers. What had she been thinking? She could never love a man in cream trousers. This was what happened when you settled for less than perfect, when you gave people the benefit of the doubt. He shouted, semi-hysterically: ‘I don’t want to marry her! I just want to marry Kat, and she doesn’t love me any more!’ And he flung the ring across the room, where it bounced off a framed picture of the Taj Mahal and landed in the insipid rosé wine of a woman in a green anorak.

Later, when she’d dispatched a weeping Will in a taxi, and paid for her meal and his and also the wine of the anorak woman, and explained to the disappointed waiters that no, she wasn’t Kat, and fended off two offers to ‘give her one instead’ from rugby boys, Ani took out her phone to delete his number. She never should have added him in the first place—no contacts in the phone until date two. Stupid.

She found herself trudging along in the cold, the collar of her Reiss coat pulled up against the wind, taking out her phone to text Marnie. Marnie would understand. And that—almost, maybe—made up for everything else. She saw she had a WhatsApp message from Rosa and clicked on it as she walked. Ooohhh noooo may have got commissioned to write a piece on the stupid dating project. Might have to do it now.

Why not? Ani thought. Nothing could be worse than almost getting accidentally engaged in a restaurant with wipe-clean menus. And her friends would do a better job of finding her a man than she was herself. It wouldn’t be hard. Me too, she typed, before she could change her mind. What’s the worst that could happen?

Chapter 5 A Decaf No-Syrup Low-Fat Soy Latte (#ulink_96f28973-f465-563c-8797-7521e80db250)

Helen

‘Great news!’ said Marnie down the phone. ‘Ani and Rosa are totes in for Project Love.’

Helen’s heart sank. ‘Ani’s in? Are you serious?’

‘Apparently she had some really awful date and changed her mind, get her to tell you about it. So you’ll do it, won’t you?’

No no no no no. ‘Ach, I don’t know. I haven’t dated in years.’ Two years, to be exact. She hoped Marnie would never do the maths.

‘All the more reason to start!’ Helen and Marnie saw the world in very different ways. Marnie kept an ever-growing list of things to try—eating bull testicles, hiking the Inca trail, wakeboarding—while Helen kept a list of ‘things I’ll quite happily die before I ever do, thanks very much’.

‘I don’t know, Marn. What if it all goes horribly wrong, or he wears Superman pants like Ani’s date, or he’s secretly a serial killer? I just read a story exactly like that in Take a Break.’

‘You don’t need to marry the guy! Just have two drinks, then politely leave if you don’t like him. That’s the minimum—just one is rude, you may as well tell them to their face they’re an uggo.’

‘See, I don’t know any of these rules.’

‘It’s like a game, Helz. You love those. Imagine you need to get to the top level. Remember when we used to play the Game of Life all the time? It’s just like that, only your dearest friends will choose your little blue pin for you.’