Ziggy
Ziggy
Ziggy stared at the tableau in front of him in alarm.
Daphne was settled in the armchair, reading his mother’s copy of Hello! magazine, while Kylie was sitting on the floor, a diamanté bracelet hanging from her mouth, emptying a packet of cigarettes into her lap. And she smelled awful. Where did he even start? At the bottom, he decided.
“I think her nappy needs changing, Daphne,” he said.
“Oh, does it?” said Daphne, looking irritatingly vague.
“Couldn’t you smell it?” asked Ziggy, trying not to sound too annoyed.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, dear boy,” said Daphne, “but I don’t know what your flat usually smells like. I did wonder why she was crying, but the indiscriminate yelling is a bit hard to decipher. She needs to work on her enunciation and learn about the danger of crying wolf.”
“And I’m not sure that playing with cigarettes is a good idea,” added Ziggy, congratulating himself on his calm understatement. His mother would be proud of him. Although even she might let loose a few choice swear words at this scenario.
“Oh, no need to worry. I took the lighter away from her,” said Daphne. Was she joking? He was obviously not an expert on old-people humor. “How was your extra lesson?”
Ziggy’s annoyance morphed swiftly into guilt. Daphne had been, after all, doing him a favor. And perhaps her generation did childcare very differently.
“It was great, thanks. It’s really kind of you to help me out. Look, I’ll go change Kylie, then you can tell me what I can do for you,” he said.
“Oh, please don’t change her. She’s perfect just the way she is,” said Daphne, turning over the page of her magazine.
“You’re kidding, right?” said Ziggy. He really couldn’t tell with this woman.
“Of course I’m kidding!” said Daphne, with a guffaw that would have suited a rotund middle-aged man more than a tiny old lady. “She’s far from perfect, obviously.”
Ziggy rolled out the changing mat on the bathroom floor and started peeling off Kylie’s clothes. Was it his imagination, or did she look incredibly relieved to have him back? She grinned at him gummily. How could someone so small elicit such huge emotions? A complex tangle of resentment, fear, and confusion, all wrapped up in the most overwhelming, primal love.
Ziggy prized open Kylie’s tiny fist to remove Daphne’s bracelet, before it went back in her mouth. He shuddered at the thought of all the germs she’d ingested. Still, it could be worse. At least she hadn’t been licked by the geriatric dog with chronic halitosis.
“Uh, Daphne!” he called out.
“Yes?”
“Was there a stone missing from your bracelet before you gave it to Kylie?” he said.
“No,” said Daphne.
“I’m sorry, but I think she may have swallowed it,” said Ziggy. She couldn’t get cross, could she? It was, rather, her fault for giving it to Kylie in the first place. “It’s not valuable, is it?”
“Darling, if it were a real diamond, do you imagine I’d be spending my days at the Mandel Community Center instead of sunning myself on a yacht off the coast of Sardinia? I think not,” said Daphne.
“Do you think it’ll do any damage?” said Ziggy. “It’s not exactly small.”
“I’m sure it’ll pass through, no problem,” said Daphne.
“Do you have any medical expertise, Daphne?” said Ziggy, who’d been taught always to check the small print.
“I haven’t killed a baby or small child yet,” said Daphne, which sounded less reassuring than she meant it to be.
Ziggy took a sweet-smelling, smiling Kylie back into the living room and put her next to her toy box, as far away from Daphne’s handbag and the manky dog as possible.
“So,” he said, resolving to get to business as soon as possible so he could get on with his homework and Kylie’s tea, “you want help creating an internet dating profile?”
“That’s about the nub of it, yes,” said Daphne, removing one of the chopsticks that were, bizarrely, sticking out of her bun, and using the end to scratch her nose. Did she keep them there just in case an unexpected opportunity to eat Chinese food cropped up?
“I tried Googling it, but it was all a bit overwhelming,” she continued. “And I’ve been plagued by the most ghastly, saccharine lonely hearts advertisements ever since. Still, it makes a change from the usual ads for funeral plans, stairlifts, and incontinence pads. I don’t suppose you ever get those, do you?”
“Er, no,” said Ziggy, wondering what an incontinence pad was, but with no intention of asking. “Well, I did a bit of research, and found this site, which is free, looks fairly straightforward, and specializes in…” he paused, searching for the right terminology “…the more mature customer.”
“Mature?!?” said Daphne. “Good grief, I’m not a cheese. Or a herbaceous border. Go on, then, show it to me.”
Ziggy passed his open laptop over to Daphne, who started fishing around in her bag. What was she going to pull out now? A stash of marijuana? A miniature bottle of vodka? He was hugely relieved when she extracted some reading glasses. Daphne leaned forward and peered at the website on his screen.
“Have you got some good photos?” asked Ziggy. “That’s really important. It’s sort of like your shop window.”
“This is the only relatively recent photo I have,” said Daphne, delving into the bag again and passing him a photo. An actual printed-out one with white borders, slightly faded and crumpled. The woman in the picture was rather stunning—auburn hair, streaked with gray, cut in a wavy bob, green eyes, and a teasing expression that seemed to say I dare you . And she was at least twenty years younger than the Daphne sitting opposite him. He supposed that at her age, twenty years ago was relatively recent. How was he going to handle this one?
“Uh, it’s really beautiful, Daphne,” he said, carefully.
“Well, thank you!” said Daphne. “You’re more charming than you look.”
“But I think you might need something a little more up to date ,” he said. “You don’t want to be done under the Trade Descriptions Act. And you need a few more, too. Photos that say something about you—with your friends, family, having fun at parties, on holidays, that kind of thing.”
“Well, that poses a bit of a problem,” said Daphne. “I haven’t let anyone take a photo of me for years, I don’t have any friends, I loathe parties, and I haven’t been abroad since 1999. Cuba. Fascinating. You must go.”
Cuba? In what world would he be able to swan off to Cuba ? Not this one, anyhow.
“But you know William, at the social club, used to be a paparazzo. Apparently, he spent his life hanging out outside San Lorenzo, trying to get a photo of Princess Diana and her latest beau. Maybe he can take some pictures for me. What do you think?” she said.
“Great idea,” said Ziggy, really hoping that this William would play ball, because that was a job he really didn’t want to take on—however much free babysitting she offered. “Right, let’s start filling out your profile. The first few questions have a drop-down menu, and you can choose the response I’d rather not say if you like. Then there are some more fun, open-ended questions. Shall we give it a go?”
Daphne nodded, almost enthusiastically.
“Name?” said Ziggy, hands poised over the keyboard.
“I’d rather not say,” said Daphne.
“That’s a compulsory field,” said Ziggy, attempting to keep his exasperation in check. “What’s your surname?”
“Do I need one? Can’t I just have one name, like Madonna? Or Prince? Or Plato?” said Daphne.
“The website doesn’t allow for that,” said Ziggy, trying not to sound as frustrated as he felt.
“Well, that’s going to seriously reduce their clientele,” said Daphne. “What if Madonna wanted a new toy boy? She seems to go through them quite quickly.”
“Surname,” said Ziggy, as firmly as he could muster.
“Smith,” said Daphne. How could such a common surname belong to someone so…uncommon? Ziggy typed Daphne Smith into the name field.
“Age?” said Ziggy.
“I’d definitely rather not say,” said Daphne.
“Another compulsory one,” said Ziggy.
Daphne sighed, then said, “Seventy. Not that it’s relevant.”
“I grew up in…?” prompted Ziggy.
“I’d rather not say,” said Daphne.
“Daphne,” said Ziggy, “this is not an FBI interview. You’re sounding like a dangerous criminal pleading the Fifth Amendment, not a lovely lady looking for romance.”
“Ha!” said Daphne, so loudly that Kylie looked over in alarm, tightening her grip around the head of a Barbie doll which had, like her babysitter, seen better days.
“You need to let your potential matches know as much about you as possible, otherwise this just isn’t going to work, OK?” he said.
Daphne rolled her eyes, then nodded.
“Right, let’s try one of the more fun ones. My favorite ever date was…?” prompted Ziggy.
“Watching a boxing match then swimming naked in the Serpentine at midnight and smooching in the back of a police car while wearing handcuffs,” said Daphne.
“OK,” said Ziggy, trying not to picture Daphne naked. An image like that could ruin your week. “That’s definitely more detailed. Possibly overly so. How about this one: My pet hate is…?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” said Daphne, settling back in her chair, interlacing her fingers, and smiling. “Men who wear comedy ties, people who say ‘no offense’ before being insulting, anyone using the word ‘literally’ incorrectly, which makes my blood boil. Literally. Being told to ‘calm down.’ Boris Johnson. Anyone who picks food out of their teeth while driving or leaves toenail clippings lying around. Actual little piles of DNA. Who would do that?”
Daphne took a breath, and Ziggy thought for a moment that she had finished. But no.
“Tiramisu. The words ‘moist’ and ‘gusset.’ Especially when next to each other. Drivers of white Transit vans. Meerkats. They look cute, but they’re actually terribly devious and borderline evil…”
“Daphne,” Ziggy interrupted, wondering how on earth anyone could take so violently against a meerkat. Or tiramisu. “You’re going to have to narrow it down!”
It was going to be a long evening.