‘I’ve never noticed this place before,’ I say, taking a seat and trying to stay cool as he pours me a glass of red wine. From the outside it looks like nothing special but inside it’s cosy and romantic: dark oak tables, simple silver cutlery, half-burned candles, warm grey walls. Every table is full.
‘An Italian friend introduced me to it.’ I wonder fleetingly if the friend was female.
‘So how’s your friend Rob?’ I say.
‘Sends his love! He got an earful from Lena that night.’
‘He shouldn’t flirt with other women in front of her,’ I say.
‘Rob’s a dog. A feisty girl like you wouldn’t put up with that, would you?’
‘Don’t try finding out.’
‘Not my style – I’m too forgetful to be a love-rat. Always better to be honest.’
‘So if your memory was better you’d be Tiger Woods?’
He shakes his head. ‘I’m a one-woman man. I never lie.’
My mother’s voice pops into my head telling my anxious 7-year-old self, ‘An axe murderer doesn’t have axe murderer written on his forehead’.
‘How was your day?’ I ask, taking a sip of wine.
‘Good,’ he says.
‘What did you do?’
‘Had a few meetings about a new project, then had a set-to with Camden Council …’
‘Been dodging your council tax?’ I say.
He laughs. ‘No. I’m advising them on a clothing re cycling website for schools.’
‘Sounds interesting.’ And quite worthy. I hadn’t pegged him as a leftie.
‘They’re using a panel of industry advisors – I’m helping on the digital architecture side.’
‘And how come they picked you, are you really Green?’
He laughs. ‘No. I live in Camden, my background’s in clothing and online. And I don’t mean to sound arrogant, but I’m good at what I do …’
He doesn’t sound arrogant, just extremely confident. ‘And what was the row, are you arguing about your fee?’
‘Fee?’ he sounds surprised. ‘They’re not paying. No, I think they should take a more aggressive approach, be more ambitious: sell space on the site to other green brands. It all feeds back into the budget and that means lower taxes.’
‘Ah, so you are trying to get out of paying your council tax!’
‘Good point! Smart woman.’ He grins and hands me the menu. ‘What are we eating?’
‘It all sounds delicious … pappardelle with lamb ragu and rosemary, or steak – I do love rosemary …’
‘I was thinking tortellini or steak. The pasta here is great …’
‘I’ll have pasta,’ I say. He looks at me intently and smiles.
‘Me too. And something healthy on the side … let’s see …’
Call me shallow but I think I fell for James Stephens when he ordered the steak as our side dish.
We are a game of snap.
We both love chips with 2 parts ketchup: 1 part mayo, and think brown sauce is the devil’s own condiment.
We both hated our fifth-year maths teachers, and were the second naughtiest in class.
We both only recycle what’s easy to recycle, and think the idea of compost in your kitchen is a bridge too far.
We both have one parent who selfishly died on us before we hit puberty, and one parent who remarried and moved abroad (Victor Stephens, Switzerland/Ruth Klein, California.)
We both suspect Ricky Gervais will never do anything as funny as The Office ever again, and that he’s probably just like David Brent in real life.
We both have a 39-year-old brother (Edward/Josh) who was/is our mother’s favourite, who we see once a year, and who is a reformed playboy, lives in a hot country (Singapore/America) and drives a Porsche (red/navy). Snap x 6.
We both believe that drink drivers who kill should get life, and never be allowed behind the wheel again.
We both feel that getting married in one’s twenties usually doesn’t work out, and that we both know ourselves pretty well by now.
We both think the greatest pleasure in life is to eat and drink slightly too much and then have a little lie down.
We are both narcissists and agree that our evening has been exciting, and that the person sitting opposite us is deeply alluring and fun and we would like to see them again, very soon.
My friend Pete and I are at his local cinema, sitting in overpriced armchairs waiting for a Norwegian vampire movie to start. Having checked the coast is clear, I remove the family pack of Revels I’ve smuggled in under my jacket. I’ve paid £14 for this seat, if they think I’m paying another £6 for their Valrhona chocolate buttons they can think again.
Pete is a serial commitment-phobe. When we were fifteen, Pete and I had a heated dry-hump on the floor of David Marks’s parents’ guest bathroom. Pete has never gotten over the fact that I wouldn’t let him touch me up when I’d allowed David Marks a brief foray the previous summer, and in a tiny part of Pete’s still-teenage mind I am The One That Got Away. If this were a rom-com movie, I’d be played by Kate Hudson and Pete would be played by someone appropriately dreamy and thick-looking – Ryan Reynolds, perhaps – and we’d end up together. That is not how this story ends.
‘Did you kiss him?’ Pete always wants full details of my scant sex life, which is nowhere near as prolific, athletic or incessant as his. Pete’s phone is full of picture-messages from various twenty-something actresses and stylists gazing over their own naked shoulders at their bottoms reflected in Venetian mirrors. These photos make me feel depressed and prudish and make Pete feel moderately aroused and then bored.
‘Briefly, as he put me in a taxi.’
‘Old fashioned!’
‘Old full stop. Did I tell you he’s forty-five? He doesn’t look it or act it. He has way more energy than me.’ I have never dated anyone this much older. One of my few memories of my father was blowing out the candles with him on his forty-fifth birthday cake, when I was six. Forty-five is properly grown up. It is dad aged. Yet James radiates vitality – he is a man in the prime of his life. His expression seems to say ‘I am going where the good times are.’ I want to go with him.
‘You’d like him, Pete. You should meet him.’ If he sticks around. ‘How’s your love life?’
Pete shrugs. ‘I’m seeing one of the PR girls at work, I’m not sure about her …’
‘What is it this time?’
‘Don’t know. She’s gorgeous but she’s a bit … she’s never heard of Bladerunner.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Twenty-two.’
‘Try dating someone your own age. Or IQ.’
‘Why would I want to do either of those things?’ he says, smiling as he shoves a handful of contraband Revels into his mouth as the trailers start.
James and I are three lightning hours in to our second date, stretching out our meal, the last ones in the restaurant. We are in Curry Paradise, my local, my treat. The manager is hovering, the waiter is hoovering.