And it wasn't a blind date either. His name was James, she'd seen enough photos of him to know exactly what he looked like, and they'd exchanged enough emails for her to be reassured that he was charming, intelligent, witty and able to spell. Basically he seemed great. Better still, when she'd asked him if he owned a bike, he'd said not since he was thirteen. Which, let's face it, was a major plus.
OK, here we go. She crossed the road and made her way into the restaurant. He was sitting at the table waiting for her. Which was always a good start. He was wearing a nice burgundy and white striped shirt and – phew – not a pair of turquoise Lycra leggings. Dark trousers, that was fine. Well-polished shoes, too. And a smile.
‘Patsy. At last. Lovely to meet you.'
He greeted her with a genial kiss on the cheek and Patsy wondered if, years from now, they would reminisce about this first meeting. Was this the man she was destined to spend the rest of her life with? Would they have children together? Was it weird to be thinking these things within ten seconds of meeting someone?
Does he know I'm thinking them?
An hour later, she had all the answers she needed, and one more course still to go.
‘ … so then my ex-wife called me up and told me she was moving back to Oxford. And she asked me for more money, so I said she couldn't keep doing this. I mean, she'd already got me to pay for her to go to Santorini, and that used to be where we went on holiday when we were still together.'
‘Oh, Santorini's great,' said Patsy. ‘I went there with-'
‘So I said to her, God, how can you be so thoughtless? And she just said I shouldn't be so sensitive, but I mean, how does she expect me to react?'
‘Oh dear,' said Patsy. ‘I'm lucky with my ex-husband, we still get on well and-'
‘She does it on purpose to wind me up,' said James. ‘She's always been an attention-seeker. We went to New York for our honeymoon and she spent the whole flight chatting up the guy sitting across the aisle from us.'
Maybe a change of subject would help. Patsy said, ‘So where did you go on holiday when you were a child? Where did your parents-'
‘And then when we got back from our honeymoon, I found this new number on her phone with just a P next to it, and when I rang it, I recognised his voice. It was the guy from the plane. Whose name was Paolo. You see, that's what she's like, that's what I had to put up with for five years.' James shook his head, besieged with memories of his ex-wife.
‘We used to go camping in South Wales.' Patsy gave it one last try. ‘At a site just outside Tenby. When my little brother was four years old, he had a Superman suit and one day he jumped off the harbour wall-'
‘She told me she loved me,' said James, tears springing into his eyes. ‘And I was stupid enough to believe her.'
‘Yes, but-'
‘I can't get over the way she's still playing her games. I can't believe people still fall for them.' He opened his phone and said, ‘Do you want to see a photo of us on our wedding day?'
The couple at the next table had been eavesdropping; they'd stopped talking to each other and were now sitting with their cutlery poised above their dinner plates. Patsy glanced at her watch – almost nine o'clock – and said, ‘No thanks.'
It was the first time James hadn't interrupted her. Mainly because he was scrolling through the photos on his phone, fully intending to show her the pictures of his wedding day anyway.
‘Here we are. There she is. Look at her, just look!'
The couple next to them were struggling not to laugh. Patsy didn't have any on her own phone, but purely to entertain herself she said to James, ‘Would you like to see some of my wedding photos? I have them right here-'
‘Three thousand pounds, that wedding dress cost. She said she wanted to look like a fairy-tale princess and I told her she'd always be my fairy-tale princess.'
Right on cue, Patsy's phone began to ring. She said apologetically, ‘I'd better get this,' and pressed answer.
‘Hi,' said Lily. ‘This is your nine o'clock call. How's it going – is he as nice as you thought?'
How could she have got it so wrong, yet again? But Patsy knew why: it was because emails couldn't be interrupted in mid-sentence. James had written to her, she had replied to him and the exchanges had continued in an orderly fashion. Not until they'd met up and had a proper verbal conversation had his chronic inability to let anyone else finish a sentence become apparent.
‘Oh no, he hasn't.' Patsy sat back in her chair and looked dismayed. ‘Really? That's terrible. And the other leg's definitely broken? That's awful, poor Dan! Is he conscious?'
‘That bad?' Lily sounded sympathetic. ‘Come on, get yourself out of there and come home.'
‘Yes, I will. I'll meet you in A&E. See you soon. Bye.' Hanging up, Patsy said, ‘I'm so sorry, I'm going to have to go. My brother's in hospital … I need to get there straight away.'
‘You haven't seen the wedding dress yet. Look at her, there she is. Isn't she beautiful?'
‘Very beautiful. But I'm afraid I have to leave.'
‘Funny, isn't it, how often that happens?' James was barely paying attention, his gaze still fixed on his phone. ‘Seems like every time I meet up with someone new, they get a call in the middle of the first date. And it's always something urgent that means they need to rush off.'
Oh.
The awkward silence was broken only by the smothered snorts of amusement at the next table.
‘Well.' Patsy took a couple of twenties out of her purse and put them down beside her plate. ‘It could have something to do with the way you never listen to a word anyone else says because all you want to talk about is your ex-wife.'
She said it gently, not meanly. But James was too busy gazing at his phone once more to notice. With a sigh, he stroked the screen. ‘Is it any wonder, though? She'll come back to me one day, I know she will. She's my princess.'
‘Honestly,' Lily let herself into the cottage, ‘it's like babysitting without getting paid.'
‘Except I'm toilet-trained,' said Dan.
‘I do hope so.' He'd called her ten minutes ago, a plaintive message asking her to come over and help him. ‘What's the problem, anyway?'
‘I want a cup of tea. In the living room. I mean, I can struggle to the kitchen and make a cup of tea. It's not easy, but I can just about manage it.' Dan gestured helplessly at his leg, his crutch, his strapped-up arm, and, for good measure, his spectacularly black eye. ‘But I can't carry it back to the sofa.'
‘You poor lamb. Have you tried balancing the cup on your head?'
He gave her a mournful look. ‘Is that what you want me to do?'
‘How about if we get you one of those kids' plastic lorries you pull along the floor with a piece of string? You could hold the string in your teeth,' said Lily.
‘Or I could do that Snow White thing and train small wild animals to carry the cup through to the living room in a basket. Or,' Dan said pointedly, ‘you could just be kind and do it yourself, to help out your poor disabled friend.'
‘Hero friend. You forgot the hero bit.'
‘I'm just being modest,' said Dan.
Lily made two mugs of tea, brought them through to the living room and silently willed him to make some disparaging jokey comment about Eddie Tessler still not having been in touch. She was longing for him to say it, bursting to be able to casually reply that in fact he had.
But Dan was now talking about the thriller she'd lent him, which was no good at all. Taking her phone out, she began glancing at the screen and turning it over and over in her hands while Dan rattled on about murders and double-crossing tricksters and his own views as to who the killer was.
‘ … OK, the guy was carrying a loaf of bread.' When Dan got involved in a thriller, he really got involved. ‘So what I'm thinking is, he could have hollowed out the loaf and hidden the gun inside … '
‘It's no good telling me what you think,' said Lily. ‘You haven't finished the book yet, so I'm not going to tell you if you're right.'
‘And then when he jumps off the train, I bet he left the gun in the bag of the woman who went to the loo … '
‘Oh, by the way, did I mention I got a call from Eddie?' She'd tried her level best to contain herself, but the words came blurting out anyway. She'd been holding them in for over thirty-three hours.