Daphne
Daphne
The first hour of the Senior Citizens’ Social Club had been every bit as dire as Daphne had been expecting. More so, even. Why was it that people assumed you could throw a total group of strangers together and, just because they were approximately the same age, they’d get along? It might work with five-year-olds, but not with septuagenarians who’d accumulated vastly different life experience, bad habits, and entrenched opinions. It had been clear to Daphne, within minutes, that she had nothing whatsoever in common with any of her fellow “club members.” And thank the Lord for that, frankly.
One of them, to Daphne’s horror, was the badly dressed, irritatingly helpful man she’d yelled at the other day on King Street. What were the chances of that? She’d considered trying to make amends, but she didn’t want to reveal any form of weakness in front of this group of strangers. And besides, he kept glaring at her as if she’d kidnapped one of his children and sent him their ear in the post, rather than just been a tad tetchy. The man obviously had no backbone.
But then, just as Daphne had resolved never to walk through the door of Mandel Community Center again, things had looked up.
For a start, their mundane tea party had descended into a general slanging match, aided by Daphne herself who, given that she’d barely been out of her apartment for fifteen years, had forgotten the city had instituted a public smoking ban in 2007. Not that it would have made much difference if she had remembered. She’d never been one for following rules.
And then, just as she’d started to contemplate stabbing her own hand with a cake fork to ease the burden, a riveting and entirely unexpected death! For a while, it had felt just like the old days! She’d put on a good show of pretending to care whether Pauline had a pulse, and had called the emergency services while Lydia—who was a complete wimp, to be honest—had wailed and Pauline’s mangy old dog had howled.
Two paramedics had arrived, who were so handsome that Daphne had considered feigning a life-threatening illness herself. They’d reassured the hysterical Lydia that it looked very much like Pauline had died from a massive stroke, which could have happened at any time. The ceiling collapse appeared more dramatic than it actually was, and certainly couldn’t have killed Pauline on its own.
Now Daphne was rather looking forward to the next club meeting, although it was unlikely they could keep up this level of excitement and action, sadly.
Daphne spread some marmalade on her toast, picked up her plate along with her laptop, and took them back to bed, so she could scroll through OurNeighbours.com in comfort.
Today’s chat, it transpired, was all about Pauline! For the first time in decades, Daphne felt the thrill of being on the inside looking out, rather than on the outside looking in. She had been there, in the room where it had happened.
According to the chat, Pauline had been killed when the entire local community center had collapsed on top of her. Metaphorical fingers were being pointed everywhere. There was much blaming of the local council, for underfunding and egregious breaches of Health and Safety regulations. They didn’t use vocabulary like “egregious,” of course. Most people on the site could barely spell. She’d never seen so many misuses of “their,” “there” and “they’re.” Pauline, God rest her pedantic soul, would have been horrified.
The usual suspects proffered conspiracy theories involving terrorists; the racists muttered about the hall having been constructed by “foreign” contractors; and one young man, who Daphne suspected had received one too many detentions from Pauline back in the day, believed it was a revenge attack.
The only thing taking the edge off Daphne’s enjoyment, apart from the toast crumbs which kept scattering over her sheets, despite every effort to keep them on the plate, was an unsettling sense that time was running out .
Pauline, after all, was almost exactly the same age as Daphne. She was a salutary reminder that life was so often shorter than one might have anticipated. Daphne could go at any time . And what would she leave behind? Nobody at all to miss her, not even a mangy dog. Just a collection of rather nice furniture, clothes, and jewelry that would end up being sold for a pittance by philistines on OurNeighbours .com. The thought made her unbearably and unexpectedly sad.
Daphne remembered the newspaper article she’d spotted a couple of months ago. Just an innocuous couple of paragraphs on one of the back pages. Words which had stopped her breath and made her feel both devastated and hopeful simultaneously. Words which had shed an entirely new light on her situation.
Perhaps, given her new circumstances, it wasn’t too late to change the ending to her story. Was it possible that she could share what was left of her life with someone else? Maybe find a man with perfect manners, the ability to follow instructions, and most of his own teeth? She had always made her gums a priority and had no intention of settling for someone who’d been lackadaisical with theirs.
Daphne walked over to her whiteboard, uncapped the red pen, and on the right-hand side, next to the words Make some friends , she wrote, in firm, decisive letters, AND FIND A PARTNER .
She stared at it quizzically. The question, of course, was: How?
The social club might be a source of some amusement, unexpected drama, and surprisingly good cake, but it was looking unlikely to provide her with friends, let alone a lover. She was going to have to spread her net much, much wider and, once more, employ the power of the World Wide Web.
Daphne typed how to find love on the internet into her search engine. This was a mistake. Before she could blink, she was bombarded with ads for dating websites. There were just too many of them. She typed in which is the best online dating site? and started to read, making neat notes on the reporter’s notepad she kept on her bedside table.
First, it seemed she had to define her objectives. Was she looking for romance, or a hook-up? She Googled “hook-up,” which, it transpired, was all about sex. Daphne hadn’t had sex for over fifteen years, and wasn’t sure it all still worked. Perhaps everything had gone rusty and seized up, like an old bicycle left in the rain.
She wasn’t much convinced by the idea of romance, either. She didn’t want anyone composing terrible poetry for her, singing up at her window, or turning up with sad-looking flowers from the local garage. No, she just wanted someone to talk to other than herself. Or her plants. Or, God forbid, Art and William. Someone to share dinner with, and discuss what was on the telly, like they did on Gogglebox .
What was the website for that?
Daphne narrowed her search to the sites that focused on meaningful relationships . However, these seemed to be obsessed by getting to know each other . Exchanging information about skills, careers, hobbies, families, and so on. That was hardly going to work, was it?
Daphne had plenty of skills—leadership, planning and organization, code-breaking, nose-breaking, troubleshooting, actual shooting, to name just a few. But she couldn’t exactly talk about any of them. Not without opening a whole squirming can of worms. She had no hobbies that would portray her in a good light, and no family, not since Jack had gone.
Just the thought of Jack floored her. She was usually so good at keeping all of that locked in her mental filing cabinet. This was what happened when you started letting people in, and letting parts of yourself out. It hurt. Like the nerves of a limb coming back to life after a near brush with frostbite. Daphne banged her laptop shut in frustration, sending more toast crumbs flying.
This was all a waste of time. How could you create a future when you had no present you enjoyed and no past you would admit to?