You Had Me at Hello by Mhairi McFarlane

Author:Mhairi McFarlane
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
ISBN: 000748805X
Publisher: Avon
Published: 2012-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

41

In the falling dusk, my heels go clip clop clip clop on the pavement, and when I check the time and break into a canter, clipclopclipclopclipclop. I’ve discovered the great thing about living in the city centre is you can walk everywhere and the crap thing about living in the city centre is you have to walk everywhere.

I feel nervous at this date with Simon but I can’t honestly say any nerves come from thinking I might be about to fall head over heels in love, or even head over shreddies into bed. He’s attractive, I can see that. My appreciation is very much of the objective, unfelt, other-ladies-must-like-him variety though. But Caroline’s right, I’m better off behaving like a single person and doing some dating straight away, rather than leaving this step another year. If I feel out of the loop now, well, that’s only going to get worse.

Sometimes I think I need a bossy life sat-nav clipped to my belt. ‘At the first opportunity, make a U turn …’

I reach the corner near the restaurant and slow down, instinctively smoothing the back of my dress to make sure it isn’t caught in my knickers. After hobbling here with the bandy gait of a Monty Python man in fishwife drag, I try for a more fluid swingy motion, one foot directly in front of another.

I read somewhere that the footprints of a debutante in sand are one long line, not side by side. I ignore the shooting pain in my left heel that tells me Manchester pavements aren’t the beach and I’m no book-balancing beauty. I try to paint a beatific sailed-here-on-a-scented-breeze expression on to my features.

After saying I was free and easy where we dined, I had a late-dawning realisation that I didn’t want to go anywhere frighteningly exorbitant with Simon and ratchet up expectation. I suggested an Italian place near the Printworks that’s really an enhanced Pizza Express and expected him to argue to prove he was discerning, but he agreed straight away. Must be in the English gent code that you don’t quibble with a lady’s choice. Or he liked the realistic pricing.

I see Simon’s stood outside, it obviously also being in the English gent code that you don’t enter the venue without the lady. He could’ve heard me coming: I was clattering down the street like a dog that needs its toenails clipping.

He greets me with: ‘Good evening. You look fantastic. Shall we?’

I don’t look anywhere near as crisply-pressed and collected and plausibly first date-ish as him – white shirt, and what could, distressingly, be chinos – but I appreciate the sentiment, and agree we shall.

We’re shown to the sofa in the waiting area, by a gigantic potted palm. The restaurant is a symphony of the tinkle of glassware and cutlery on china and chatter. Black-clad waiting staff flit about in the choreography of attentive service. This is where the rest of society has been spending its Saturday nights, not propped up in bed with a 3-for-2 deal paperback by ten p.

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