The Dating Detox: A laugh out loud book for anyone who’s ever had a disastrous date!

Ha, really? Fine. You can test it tomorrow night at Mitch’s party.

I reply:

Roger that.

I hide behind my computer all day. Andy doesn’t look at me once, and though I’m meant to talk to him about a new brief, I decide to send him an email about it when he’s out at lunch. I just can’t face him today.

I’m meeting up with Kate for dinner. She’s the third in our trifecta from university, but is slightly more absent from our social lives over the last year or so as she’s in a ridiculously stable long-term relationship. We meet near her work in Mayfair at The Only Running Footman, a pseudo-rustic pub. It’s packed with finance-type people drinking away their worries but we find a seat in the restaurant bit downstairs. I notice quite a few very good-looking men here. Shame I’m on a Dating Sabbatical and not looking, I remind myself.

Over burgers and beers I explain the theory of the Dating Sabbatical to Kate. She nods very seriously and poses relevant and poignant questions, all of which I answer with what’s becoming rather slick aplomb, till—

‘Alright, Sass. This all seems like a very you thing to do. But what if you meet someone you actually want to go out with?’

I pause, chip in the air.

‘How do you mean?’

‘What if you…you know, you meet someone you really, really fancy and want to go out with?’

‘A guy? That I fancy? And want to go out with?’

I’m flummoxed. This idea hadn’t even occurred to me. I haven’t met someone I really wanted to date in years. I just sort of do it as it seems like something to do. And if they’ve gone to the trouble of asking, unless I find them ugly or sleazy or loserish or I’m positive they’re a bastardo, then I think I should say yes, and then just see what happens. (Though this approach, as history shows, hasn’t really worked out.) But I can’t exactly tell Kate that. It sounds stupid.

‘Hmm…well…I guess I never want to go out with anyone till he asks me out. I might think someone across the bar is hot, or whatever, but I just don’t think about it much more than that till he’s made the first move. Why waste the energy?’

‘That seems kind of…reactive,’ says Kate carefully, dunking a chip in the huge dollop of English mustard at the side of her plate. It’s really weird how much she likes English mustard.

A little more about Kate: very pretty, very short and thus kind of adorable. Probably my sweetest friend. She and Bloomie and I have been close friends since about day one of university, when we met in halls, got hammered together on cider and discovered a shared love of Jeff Buckley (yep, such clichés). She grew up in a little town in Cambridgeshire, going to Brownies and riding horses, and still has that milk-fed prettiness such girls always get. Boys always loved her. Men love short women, have you ever noticed? I’m on the tall side, by the way. And I’ve never had a boyfriend tall enough to wear three-inch heels with. (Does my dating agony ever end, I ask you?) Sorry, back to Kate. She’s an accountant, though I don’t really know why, as she read Italian and French at university. She even spent a year in Florence. She’s always been a bit of a control freak, the person who makes plans weeks in advance and panics when things change unexpectedly. Perhaps that’s what accountants are like.

Kate lives with her boyfriend, a guy called Tray. Bloomie and I referred to him as Tray Nice when we first met him, then Tray Serious. Now it’s Tray Boring. He’s perfectly nice, but brings nothing to the conversational table. It’s not that I don’t like talking to him, exactly. It’s just that I like talking to everybody else a lot more. I guess they must have some crazy connection to make Kate stay with him for three years. As my dad always says, no one sees the game like the players. (He is a bottomless well of sporting/relationship analogies.) She seems pretty happy these days—a bit quieter and less prone to silliness than she used to be, and we don’t see her as much as we used to, but happy.

‘Did you like Tray before he asked you out?’

Kate squints in thought. ‘I don’t know…I just thought he seemed very intelligent and sort of…kind. Kind and interesting to talk to. And I’d decided I wanted that in my next boyfriend. Yeah, I guess I did like him first.’

‘And sexual chemistry?’

‘Oh, yes, yes, all that too,’ says Kate quickly. ‘And you know, I really was intent on having someone kind. I’d met so many, uh…bastardos. Remember Dick the Prick? And The Missing Link?’

I start laughing. Dick the Prick was a guy she met when she first moved to London, but he cheated on her and she dumped him. The Missing Link wasn’t awful, but he wasn’t particularly nice either. He was thick and pretty.

‘So after all your bastardos you decided to proactively find a clever non-bastardo?’

‘Uh…yes.’

‘That’s just like me and…’ I pause for a second to remember his name ‘…Posh Mark! He was kind!’

And thick, I add silently. Fuck me, I’m callous.

‘Yes, but I’m not sure how well suited you and Posh Mark ever were. Tray and I have a lot in common. I enjoy his company. He’s very intelligent,’ she adds. Again.

Hmm. She sounds a little Stepford Wife-y and she’s not meeting my eye, but I decide to agree with her.

‘You’re right. Lucky you, darling. So important to have someone kind and intelligent.’

There might be something wrong here, but I’m not going to push it. Kate doesn’t talk about her feelings unless she wants to. She has that nice reserved thing going on; not in a cold way—she’d do anything for any of us. I think it’s shyness. You never know if she’s really great or utterly miserable until she wants you to. I wish I wasn’t such an open book. My mother can read my mood by how many rings it takes me to answer the phone.

‘How are you feeling about Posh Mark, anyway, Sass?’ says Kate. I rang her on Tuesday night and bawled, embarrassingly.

‘Oh, fine,’ I say truthfully. ‘He was, you know, a life raft. Better than drowning in a sea of self-pity and vodka.’

‘Nicely put,’ grins Kate. ‘So where’s off the list now?’

‘Eight Over Eight, because that was our first date place,’ I say, taking a thoughtful bite of my burger. ‘And Julie’s, because we used to go there for brunch when we stayed at his place.’

‘Are there any brunch places near your place that aren’t tainted by ex-boyfriends by now?’ Kate says, laughing. She professes to not understand why I refuse to go back somewhere that reminds me of someone who dumped me. Especially as the list is getting slightly ridiculous.

‘None,’ I reply honestly. ‘Pimlico is one big no-go zone for me these days. I may have to move.’

We move on to gossiping about people we know, and talk about the party at Mitch’s place tomorrow night. The guestlist seems to be snowballing, with lots of people I haven’t seen in ages. Yay. I siphon off the back part of my brain and leave it to go through my wardrobe and plan an outfit. We finish our burgers, pay the bill and decide to go outside to finish our beers with a fag.

‘God, I miss smoking,’ sighs Kate.

‘Mwhy mdya qvit?’ I say, talking with my cigarette in my mouth as I light hers. So classy.

She takes a drag and exhales happily. ‘Tray hates it, and he IS right. It does kill you.’

‘Yes, he is right. It does.’

There seems nothing more to say. See? Even saying his name halts conversation.

‘How’s the world of accounting?’ I ask.

‘Scintillating,’ says Kate crisply. ‘At least I’ll never be out of a job, no matter what happens to the economy.’

‘Why?’

‘Accountants are always needed. We’re like prostitutes. One of the world’s oldest professions.’

This, from Kate, is outrageous. She’s in a funny mood tonight. Funny odd, not funny haha.

‘Oh well, that’s good,’ I say, starting to laugh. ‘What are you doing on Sunday? I’ve probably got the flat to myself all weekend as usual, so we could have an all-day movie fest. We’ll start with Sixteen Candles, then Overboard’—did I mention I have a thing for Goldie Hawn? I totally do—‘then Dirty Dancing, then Pretty Woman, then 13 Going On 30. Holy shit, that film makes me cry.’

‘13 Going on 30 makes you CRY?’

‘Yes. Whenever Jennifer Garner cries I lose it. I don’t know what it is. I saw her cry on Alias once, and I had only just flicked over from another channel, so I had no idea what was going on, and I cried my arse off…though we could sub in Old School and end on a high. Marvellous film.’

‘Marvellous,’ agrees Kate happily. ‘Don’t you feel, though, that chick flicks are all the same?’