Eventually, Andy came back inside the restaurant, red faced and apologizing profusely. I looked studiously at my notes, as if I’d been doing this all the time. ‘She hung up on me,’ he said, palms in the air, as if this had never happened before. ‘She actually put the phone down.’
I made a sympathetic face but I didn’t say anything. I wanted to know what would happen if I didn’t offer advice or thoughts like I usually did; if I didn’t allow him to offload on me.
Andy stood there for a few seconds, as if needing to physically recover from the latest bashing from his Ex. It was no good – he really was good-looking, with his piercing blue eyes and his dusky skin tones. No matter if his hair had a touch of the ‘Russell Grant’ about it … He looked like an architect, I thought, and I’d always fancied dating an architect: that mix of practical and creative.
I picked up the menu and pretended to read. Eventually, when he realized he was getting nothing from me, he came round the back of my chair and wrapped his arms around my neck.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, nuzzling into me. He smelt of soap and the outside. ‘You’ve been here all this time, sitting patiently.’
‘That’s all right.’ I shrugged. ‘I always know to bring a book with me to dinner now.’
‘Or your notes, you have here I see …’ he said, indicating the work file I’d got out.
(Sarcasm is generally wasted on Andy.) ‘Why can’t everyone be as lovely as you, Robyn? Tell me. Why do I always go for the feisty ones?’
I bit my lip. Robyn wasn’t about to be lovely Robyn any more.
He sat back down again. I knew he was waiting for me to ask him about the conversation with Belinda, how unfair it all was, what a bitch she was, but I resisted.
‘So how was your day at work, beauts?’ he said, finally, after we’d ordered – me the ham-hock terrine, him the goat’s cheese and beetroot. ‘How are the certified mental as opposed to my ex-wife who’s yet to be diagnosed?’
I took some bread from the basket and tore at it. ‘Oh, you know, just a day like any other, really. Two sectioned, one attempted suicide.’
I knew that throwing a word like ‘suicide’ into the conversation this early on in the evening would be seen as provocative by Andy, but to be honest, he’d annoyed me. I felt like being provocative.
‘Oh dear. Liam again?’
‘Levi, it’s Levi.’
‘Sorry, Levi. Cry for help, I imagine?’
‘Yes, most probably,’ I said. This was Andy’s line for everything.
I wondered when I should break the news to him: now, or after the meal? In between courses? I felt like giving my own little cry for help: ‘Argh! Get me out of this!’ Maybe I wouldn’t tell him at all. Maybe I’d give him one more chance.
Andy picked up the wine menu. I could tell he wanted to get back to him and the phone call, but I was determined to carry on.
‘Anyway, I also went to Lidl with a sixty-three-year-old woman dressed in hot pants and a Stetson today,’ I said.
‘Bloody hell, is that all she was wearing?’ said Andy.
‘Pretty much …’
‘Poor woman …’ he added. He had a look on his face like I’d told her to put on the hat and hot pants as some sick and twisted joke. ‘I mean, can you imagine the humiliation, how embarrassed you’d be?’
‘Andy, she’s manic, she couldn’t give a toss,’ I said, laying my napkin on my knee. ‘She’s so disinhibited, it’s a miracle I got her to put on any clothes at all.’
‘Ah, but this is the issue, isn’t it?’ he said, leaning back into the chair and lacing his fingers. Andy likes to do this – try to have some philosophical debate, when actually, I doubt he’s genuinely that interested. I know he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
‘What’s the issue?’
‘That’s the job of the psychiatric nurse, isn’t it? To make sure she knows when she should be inhibited and when she shouldn’t.’
I tried really hard not to look irritated.
‘Well, I don’t think …’
‘I mean, can you imagine how awful that would be?’ he said, leaning forward, lowering his voice. ‘How demeaning, being allowed to walk into a supermarket in hot pants when you’re drawing your pension?’
I started laughing. Sometimes I think Andy thinks I am much more earnest about my job than I actually am.
‘Yeah. It’d be brilliant. Sixty-odd, waltzing around Dulwich Sainsbury’s in your hot pants, all the yummy mummies running out of there screaming, “Aaaaagghhh!”’
Andy pulled his chin into his neck.
‘Robyn, please.’
‘Well, honestly.’
He went back to the menu.
‘Let’s order wine, shall we?’ He smiled, determined not to make this into an argument, even though I was up for one now. An argument would make this whole thing easier, of course.
I waited. I counted.
‘Do you know what Belinda said to me?’ he said.
Eight seconds. Impressive.
‘No, what did she say to you?’
‘That I was selfish – I mean, of all the things … That she wasn’t surprised the girls didn’t want to spend much time with me because I didn’t know how to talk to them, that I didn’t understand them. She said I don’t listen to them properly when they call and …’
The starters came, and he was still going on about it. Then, suddenly, mouth stuffed full, he started waving his hand in front of my face.
‘Oh, my God, I completely forgot to tell you! I’ve got a surprise!’
‘A surprise?’ My stomach lurched. I’d psyched myself up now. Don’t start being perfect boyfriend now.
‘Yep,’ he leaned forward and put his hand on mine. ‘I haven’t got the girls next weekend – their mum’s taking them on some sort of girly shopping extravaganza; my idea of a living hell, as you know – so I thought we could go away together.’ He patted my hand and grinned at me. He did have a lovely smile, the most unusually blue eyes. ‘Well, actually, I just thought to hell with it and I’ve booked somewhere.’
I forced a mouthful of food down my throat. ‘Oh,’ was all I could manage.
‘Well, aren’t you pleased?’ he said, disappointed. ‘Robyn, come on, you could look a bit more excited.’
But I wasn’t excited, I was irritated: irritated by his having delayed our dinner by twenty minutes to have an argument with the Ex; irritated by him talking about nothing but his ex-wife; irritated and bored to tears with the whole divorce saga. No, I’d made my decision. The fact I didn’t feel even a smidgen of excitement about the prospect of a mini-break (and I’d been hankering after a mini-break for absolutely ages) cemented it.
I sighed. ‘Oh, Andy, I’m just a bit bored of it, that’s all.’
‘Of what?’
‘Of always talking about you and Belinda and the girls and the divorce.’
He looked genuinely hurt and shocked and, for a second, I felt bad.
‘But it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me, Robyn, you know that. I can’t just switch my emotions off when I see you. Like a tap!’
‘Really?’