I hopped onto a bar stool next to them–but not close enough that Stu’s highly virulent Ebola virus could kill me before I’d had a large glass of wine and a packet of Nobby’s Nuts.
I gave them a full debrief and they were, by turn, astonished, enthralled, proud and…horrified.
‘You have to what?’ Trish almost spat her vino across the table.
‘You’re not doing it,’ Stu commanded, like a stern parent forbidding underage drinking, discos and any contact involving the pelvic region.
‘Right then, Dad, I won’t–but only if you increase my pocket money this week.’
‘I mean it, Leni, it could be dangerous. Twelve men? Do you know that statistically at least two of them will be carrying a sexually transmitted disease? Not to mention that there’s a high chance that at least one will have a criminal record.’
For a macho guy he really did get hysterical sometimes (anxiety disorder, raised blood pressure, wrinkles).
Now that he was looking at me with an expression that sat somewhere between horror and disbelief, with a helping of concern thrown in just to make me feel even worse, my teeth started to grind. Of course he was right. And deep down I knew it. Taking this job would be utterly insane. Dates? I couldn’t go on twelve dates. I’m the woman who takes weeks to decide to try a new washing powder–and even then I feel bad for the old one. But then…My mind flicked to the pile of books at the side of my bed. Shouldn’t I feel the fear and do it anyway? Shouldn’t I fake it until I make it? Shouldn’t I take those ten steps to a new me? Aaaaaargh! Shouldn’t I stop reading bloody self-help guides and actually put some of their theories into action instead?
It was time for me to get a life–one that I actually bloody liked. I could do this. I could. I was feeling the fear so it was time to get on with it.
I decided to bluff bravado.
‘Stu, I’m not going to sleep with them, I just have to date them. You know–dinner, bowling, art galleries and stuff like that. And how bad can it be? Look at my track record in picking men. Ben? Married. Donny? The Olympic World Champion in the field of Unmitigated Boredom. Gary? Ran off with my chiropodist. Goliath? Tried to snog Trish at last year’s birthday barbecue.’
‘I warned you not to go out with someone called Goliath–bound to have inferiority issues,’ she piped up.
‘Thank you, Dr Jong,’ I replied curtly.
‘You’re still not doing it. It’s way too dangerous, and besides, you’ll hate every minute of it. This just isn’t you, Len,’ Stu demanded, thumping his bottle of Bud on the square pod we were gathered around.
He was so, so right–so irritatingly, bloody annoyingly right. My emotional pendulum swung back from ‘fearless’ to ‘realistic’–there was no denying that when God doled out adventure and ambition, I had refused with a, ‘No thanks, I’ll stick with consistency and predictability.’
I threw back a few of Nobby’s finest to break the emotional tension of it all. Take the job. Don’t take it. Take the job. Don’t take it. I used to be indecisive but now I wasn’t so sure. Once again, aaaaaaargh!
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake stop being so dramatic,’ Trish argued. ‘She’ll be fine. She might even meet someone who’s slightly elevated above her usual selection of losers and reprobates.’
Shucks. I didn’t know whether to be grateful to Trish for the encouragement, offended by the observation, or horrified that she didn’t seem at all perturbed that I might meet an axe-wielding maniac.
But her observation had already crossed my mind.
I was twenty-seven years old and I’d never had a serious/ humming-the-wedding-march/ flicking-through-bridal-magazines type of relationship. The longest one had been the two years I’d spent with the (as yet) only man I’d ever been in love with: Ben (sob–sorry, still can’t think about him without involuntary gulp and flaring of nostrils), the gorgeous stranger I’d met on a train a couple of years after I’d finished college. We were definitely world leaders in the ‘unlikeliest couple of the year’ award. Me: reserved, prone to wimpish behaviour with an adventure rating that never went any higher than trying a new muffin in Starbucks. Him: a serving marine, six foot four inches of testosterone-oozing manliness who–bearing in mind that he was a trained killing machine–had the sweetest, most caring nature. Unfortunately, at the end of two years I discovered that he also had a wife and child in army barracks in Felixstowe. Turned out that the majority of his ‘covert manoeuvres’ took place well away from the front line. Handling the Taliban must have been light relief after the stress of juggling a wife and a girlfriend, neither of whom had an inkling about the other until…nope, I didn’t even want to think about it. I threw back some more nuts and mentally fast-forwarded to the brutal aftermath that mostly consisted of me lying on the bathroom floor sobbing into the shower curtain, wishing hell and damnation of the entire male species. Since then, I’d just drifted along, embarking on a few flings with obviously incompatible blokes just to give myself a break from serial singledom.
In hindsight, what I should have done was loaded up a backpack and taken my mind off the heartbreak by trekking across Nepal seeking religious enlightenment. Or headed to the Great Barrier Reef to discover the wonders of nature and shallow sexual couplings with long-haired Australian surf dudes. Instead? Same job for years, unexciting love life, and I still lived in the same Slough/Windsor border, one-bedroom flat that I’d been renting since I first moved there. Actually, it was more Slough, but if I hung out of my bedroom window at a forty-five-degree angle clutching a set of binoculars, I could just about make out the castle. Not that I had. Well, only that once, and Mrs Naismith from next door had been holding my ankles to prevent me from plummeting to my death.
I took a long, deep breath, and in the manner of a fearless superhero (aka Nobbygirl), adjusted my jaw to a position of strength and determination. There was no way I wanted to look back on this moment and regret that I hadn’t grabbed the new opportunity with both hands (or at least the one hand that wasn’t busy chucking salted protein nibbles down my throat).
What had I vowed to do at New Year? Carve out a brand new me. And given the reminders of my mundane, deathly boring life and my deeply unsatisfactory romantic history, I was surer than ever that a little bit of crazy unpredictability was exactly what I needed to change my life.
And Zara Delta was definitely a little bit of crazy unpredictability.
‘Now, Zara, I believe you’ve got an exciting new project that you’re working on this year and you need our help,’ said Goldie Gilmartin, the nation’s favourite sofa queen. In her mid-forties with a stunning auburn pixie cut and a body that was no stranger to the gym, Goldie bore more than a passing resemblance to a young Liza Minnelli. The British viewing public loved her, and with her sassy style, forthright manner and compassion-where-it-mattered, she was close to being declared a national treasure.
‘I have, Goldie, and it might just be the most important thing I’ve ever tackled. I don’t want to give too much away, but let’s