Chapter 7
7
NADIA
What s your favourite food? I ask as we wander along the South Bank away from the drinks.
You re sounding like Marisa.
That is true. But I m not actually interrogating you; I want to buy you dinner to thank you for this evening.
You re going to do me a big return favour on Sunday, plus even without that what are friends for, and therefore I cannot allow you to pay for me, but dinner would be great if you have time.
He has a point, I realise. If we carry on with this, it ll get silly if whoever gets helped out plus-one-wise buys the other dinner each time. Okay. Fair point. We ll go halves. But you have to choose where we go. That s only fair.
Only if you have a right of veto.
I will accept that right of veto, I say generously, because there are one or two things that I hate .
I didn t have you pegged as a fussy easter. Tom sounds slightly disapproving, like people should just not be fussy.
Not fussy. Just discerning. Mainly, I just really don t like peas.
Oh, okay, well, all good, because I don t know any pea restaurants.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, we re seated in a pub that Tom says he s been to a few times before. It s next door to a very nice-looking but reasonably priced Italian restaurant with someone playing the piano in the corner that I would have loved to go to.
To be fair, the pub has a wooden floor, velvet chairs that are both comfortable and clean, and lots of traditional features, and it s busy but not rammed, so everyone has a seat, and there s a hum of conversation but you can totally hear yourself speak. So it s very nice.
However. High on the wall to the right of the very attractive olde-worlde fireplace is an enormous TV screen with a football match showing on it and a large proportion of the pub s clientele are not speaking, their attention fixed on the match.
Tom bears all the marks of a man who d really like to be focusing his entire attention on the match too and might if he s honest have chosen this pub because of the match. Which, obviously, is understandable if watching it is what he d been planning to do this evening rather than go to my work drinks. But being with someone who s more interested in a TV screen than you does make for limited conversation. Which is why, after a few disastrous sports-watching-related dates, I now always swipe on by when confronted with anyone who describes themselves straight off as a football or rugby fan.
I wonder for a moment how Tom would describe himself. I think he d go a bit sarcastic, do one of those descriptions where he pulls out three very random and niche facts about himself and makes you laugh. So you could get sucked unsuspectingly into spending an evening with him only to discover he s blatantly a huge football fan. (I m not thinking at all about the time I was on a second date with someone who was so fixated on Formula One – I am so not into watching cars go round in circles and people possibly die in terrible crashes – that it took him fifty-seven minutes after I had told him I was leaving and walked out to message me to ask if I was okay and where I was.)
It s fine, though, because Tom and I are not actually dating and he s just done me a massive favour, so his football fannery does not matter to me.
Sorry. He shifts his chair infinitesimally away from the direction of the screen. Just wanted to keep an eye on what s going on. It s a friendly but it s interesting to see England s form before the Euros start.
Absolutely, I say politely.
You aren t a football fan? He s clearly trying to pretend that he doesn t have an eye on the screen, but he really does.
No, not really. Well, not at all actually. It s so refreshing not to have to pretend when talking to a man I don t know that well. On a date, I d be (pathetically, I now realise) saying that I quite liked it and then I d be up a conversational creek when asked what team I support or expected to have knowledge about the intricacies of the offside rule. I don t know anything about it at all and it s never appealed. So refreshing.
Tom laughs and says, Whoops. This pub was quite a selfish choice then, sorry. Although. What? How can football not appeal? It s an amazing game. What sport do you like? What s your favourite sport? Oh. He mock-panic eye-swivels and says, I just heard myself and that sounded way too hypocritically interrogatory following our conversations earlier.
I laugh and say, I m going to allow it unless you go full Marisa and veer towards questions about porn-watching.
He laughs. Noted. I will try really, really hard not to ask anything of that nature. He pulls his eyes away from the screen again and says, So what is your favourite sport?
Tennis, I say firmly. Which is genuinely an amazing game. A lot of football fans have zero interest in tennis, I ve noticed. Wimbledon final or a football match?
Football every time.
I tsk. Honestly. I take one of the menus from between the salt and pepper pots in the middle of the table. There s loads of football and Wimbledon s only once a year.
In my defence— Tom puts his beer glass down and takes a menu too —I ve been a huge football fan – specifically Arsenal and England – since my early teens, initially because I wanted to fit in with my school friends and then because I just fell in love with the game. I like playing too. I m in a five-a-side team that plays, badly, in a local league, and I love it. A great release from the rest of life.
I nod. Fair enough. There are not many people who don t need a release from life. In fact, I should admire Tom for the fact he can still be interested in football after his big Lola disappointment at the weekend.
Tom looks up from his menu. I m guessing you won t be ordering the pea risotto or the broad bean and garden pea salad. Looks like it s pea season.
I laugh. Yes, June s a bad month for me to eat out.
Kind of interesting to find out what your fake-other-half-for-the-evening s going to choose? Tom says after a minute.
Totally, I agree. It s strange having a fairly intense evening with someone the way we did on Saturday and feeling that you ve got to know them quite well but also basically knowing absolutely nothing at all about them.
Easy choice for me. Tom puts his menu down. Pie and chips. He glances up at the screen, which makes me realise that he very politely has not in fact looked at it for at least a couple of minutes. With mushy peas on the side, he adds with relish. You have to go classic pub food in a pub.
Hmm, I say.
You planning to go non-classic?
Kind of.
I order linguine with prawns and chilli oil.
Not classic, Tom says after the server leaves us. Don t say I didn t warn you.
While we re waiting for the food, we order a second glass of rosé (me) and a pint (Tom). It s no surprise to me that our drinks tastes are different, because it s fast becoming apparent that we have nothing in common.
Wild camping? I repeat in horror when Tom asks if I like it. As in with no campsite or loos or showers or electricity or anything? No. Definitely not.
But there s the beauty of waking up in the morning surrounded entirely by nature and absolutely nothing else, Tom says.
I shake my head. I don t mind a hike. And I said I ll go glamping this summer for a long weekend with my brother and his wife and kids, and I m genuinely looking forward to it, but I have no interest in being without a proper loo and running water for that length of time.
Salsa dancing? Tom says a few minutes later, sounding aghast, when I mention how much I like it. Certainly not for me. Please don t tell me that you re going to need a plus-one for a salsa evening.
Well, now you mention it… Next Friday…
His eyes swivel and then he laughs when I say, Joking.
There s a roar from a lot of people around us, and Tom looks over at the screen.
Yessss, he yells when he realises what s happened.
He looks back at me, clearly having had to force himself not to continue looking at the screen, and I say, That is very polite of you but you have to watch the replay.
He breaks into a wide grin, and says, Yeah, I do.
I watch it too and have to admit it was a very good goal.
The two teams are now one all, and there are only ten minutes left of the game.
So it s a friendly? Is it important at all? I ask.
Kind of. Tom then – half an eye on the screen again – explains about preparation for the Euros and group stages and how England have been playing recently under their new manager and some other things that I immediately forget.
Let s watch the rest of it, I say.
Sure? He quirks an eyebrow. I mean, it isn t tennis.
I ll try really hard to deal with it, I tell him.
It s surprisingly tense. Most of the people in the pub are rooting for England, and they deserve to win if they ve been playing like this the whole time, because they ve definitely had way more possession than the other side.
When a man with a very curly blond mullet sneaks a goal in for England just past the post ninety seconds before the final whistle, and the pub erupts, I m yelling just as much as everyone else. We basically carry on cheering until the game s fully over. It s hard to remember that it was just a friendly.
My word , Tom says when we ve all quietened down (I think most people must have quite sore throats by now), I ve had a good effect on you. You were enjoying that.
I accept that I did, in the moment, enjoy it. But ten minutes is not ninety minutes. And it was an international. And there was a good atmosphere around us.
Have you been to an actual match in person?
I shake my head.
You re going to have to come to one with me. If you want to dislike football, fair enough, but you ve got to have something to base your hatred on. So far, from where I m standing, you never watch it, and on the rare occasions that you do , you like it.
Hmm. I take the last two sips of my wine. Maybe. In the right weather.
I ll do my best. Another one?
I look at both our empty glasses and then at my watch. I m tempted, but it s nearly ten thirty and it s a work night. And you sound really busy with work so I feel like we should go home.
You must be busy too? Tom asks as we stand up.
Well, yes and no. As an accountant, I have a lot of stuff to do but nobody s going to die or fail their GCSEs if I oversleep one morning.
Firstly, just in case you mean that seriously, all jobs make the world go round and I cannot describe how much of my job involves pointless admin now. And secondly, er, wouldn t Mean Michael go mad if you were late?
The key is to have a loyal friend tell him you re extremely ill but nonetheless working from home because you re so devoted to the job.
Tom nods, like he s impressed. Nice.
As we amble in the direction of the station, I say, Thank you again for earlier. It was so cool when you met Sammy.
I know. This plus-one thing is actually very low maintenance: high net return for minimal outlay. I ve been thinking: I just have to show up to your work things every so often for literally half an hour at a time, still doing the taking it slowly thing, and everyone will be convinced. It could go on for years. Definitely for the whole of your dating detox.
Yes. It s perfect. And , because it isn t real, we can just stop when we like.
Tom nods. What you re trying to say is that I m a genius.
You actually are, I agree. When we were with Marisa at the drinks, I was trying to work out whether I felt guilty. Like, I probably should have done, because she s a very good friend, but also, sometimes you just really, really want people to stop trying to interfere in your love life. Or lack of. And maybe she would be upset if she knew, but hopefully she d just understand that I have been over Sammy and his snideness this week, and also that I don t want to hurt her feelings by telling her that I really want her to stop trying to find dates for me, but I do.
Precisely. Tom grabs my elbow and jay-walks us across the road (which makes me squeak; I always very anally wait for the green man). I don t want to hurt my family but they ll never find out. And it isn t really a lie. Lots of people take friends as plus-ones to events. People are just assuming there s something between us because we ve only just met and we re of different genders.
You re so right. I beam at him. We aren t doing a bad thing at all.
We get on the same train again, and bicker amicably again about what sports we do and don t enjoy watching until Tom gets off at Clapham Junction after extracting a promise from me that I ll text him when I get home so he doesn t worry about me.
Once he s gone, I check my phone for messages and, yes, there are loads .
They re mainly from Marisa saying that she really liked Tom and how pleased she is for me and how nice he was and how maybe we can double date now (she s going out with this absolute dick called Jeremy and no we cannot obviously – Tom s going to have to be fictitiously very busy), but there are several others from work girlfriends and Sammy (how did he even get my number?) saying that Tom s hot and I am punching (thank you, Sammy). And another one pops in from Marisa saying that she s sorry, sorry, sorry about giving Sammy my number in a moment of weakness because he kept shoving Hugo spritzes at her and she kept drinking them, and I am certainly not punching, it s Tom who is punching.
I think about Tom and decide that he definitely is what a lot of people would call a catch but there is the football downside to him. And his love of pies. And the fact that he would walk straight on by that lovely-looking Italian restaurant in favour of the pub. And his taste in films.
Definitely not my type in real life, however nice, funny and good-looking he might be.
In fake-plus-one life, though, he s exactly my type. Everyone at work completely bought the me-and-Tom thing. It s perfect.
* * *
I m still extremely pleased about our fake relationship when Tom and I meet at Waterloo on Sunday to go to his parents house at the northernmost end of the Northern Line.
Hopefully it will work as perfectly for Tom as it has for me so far.
He messaged while we were on our separate trains to say that his mum literally this morning slipped in a little, Your cousin Jack s bringing his new girlfriend. He s only twenty-seven and already looks as though he s likely to settle down soon, comment when she phoned him to check – for what Tom said was about the tenth time – that he was going this afternoon. He said he thinks she must be planning to try out a fancy new recipe or something because he never pulls out of family things and she never usually checks up on him.
He also said that everyone s going to get a surprise when they see me because on both occasions he s tried to tell his mum that he s bringing someone she s bulldozed (his word) on through with some chat of her own and he hasn t had the opportunity, so he s decided to give her a nice surprise. Plus, he didn t want to introduce me as an actual girlfriend, so he thought it would be best just to say when he gets there that he s brought a new friend and waffle a few words about how we met very recently and it s early days in our friendship, nice and ambiguous so that no-one s really deceiving anyone.
Nice dress, Tom says, one eye on me and one eye on the hordes of people swirling round us as we make our way towards the Tube entrance.
Thank you. I m proud of my choice of clothing today. If you re going to do something, do it properly. What would a very new, early-days-but-things-look-promising girlfriend wear to meet her boyfriend s parents at an afternoon barbecue? She d wear her prettiest summery flowery dress and bring a nice bag. I spent quite a long time trying to work out whether the new girlfriend would dress it down with trainers or go a bit more formal, and decided in the end to go for strappy but flat gold sandals, because I m never quite sure what the older generation think of trainers, and Tom said his grandmother and her sister, his great-aunt, are going to be there, and I wouldn t want to be disrespectful.
Tom is wearing trainers, and these aren t my most comfortable footwear ever, so I m regretting my shoe choice, but never mind. This isn t about me, this is about Tom getting a break from people nagging him while he s getting over his Lola disappointment.
I ask him about Lola once we re seated on the Tube.
I m still not sure whether I should let sleeping dogs lie or maybe look for her just to check she s okay. But, on balance, if she got cold feet, I m not sure how appropriate it would be to try to find her; I certainly shouldn t try to meet her in person if she doesn t want to. I might send her another message in a couple of weeks time, just saying I hope she s okay.
I think that sounds very wise, I say. It definitely sounded like a high-risk strategy finding her in person and telling her he loved her. That could be great but rationally it seemed more likely it would be a complete disaster.
* * *
When we arrive at Totteridge and Whetstone Tube station, I m surprised to see that it s now three thirty; it s taken us about forty minutes from Waterloo. It s a long way from Central London.
Tom tells me that his parents house is a ten-minute walk.
I look at him with narrowed eyes. At your speed? I check.
No, at the speed of a galloping horse or a snail. Yes, at a person s speed.
I shake my head. Your speed is not my speed. I don t think he s fully aware of that because each time we ve walked anywhere I ve basically been trotting to keep up with him, but I can t do that in these supremely uncomfortable shoes. I bought them at the end of last summer in a sale, and they were not a good buy it turns out. I need to put some plasters on my toes and heels. Fortunately I ve come prepared for any eventuality; I have many things, including plasters, in my tote.
With me plastered up, we begin the walk.
At my speed.
A couple of minutes in, Tom said, I m guessing that we re going at your pace now? And that s why you said my speed is not yours?
Yep.
To change the subject away from my slow walking, I say, So tell me about your family.
It s large. Noisy, fun, nice. They re great. It s just that the older generation s little obsession with me settling down and having kids is sometimes not what I want. My brother Jake has three kids, aged five, three and one, and my sister Libby has twins aged four, and three of my cousins, all similar age to us, also have young kids, and my mum can t help letting slip from time to time her conviction that I need to have kids imminently or everyone will be missing out because there ll be a big age gap.
I m not totally sure what to say because I don t want to criticise Tom s mum to him, obviously, but I do think it s very silly for families to say things like that. What if he doesn t want kids, or can t have them for some reason, or who knows what. Plus, there have to be pros and cons to different age gaps, surely.
I settle for saying, Weird how, even though of course it s lovely, sometimes people really caring about you and wanting the best for you can be slightly suffocating.
It s exactly that.
* * *
For the rest of the walk Tom tells me stories from his (mis-spent) youth based on what we re walking past at the time, until we turn into a leafy road with a small number of extremely large houses, and he tells me we ve pretty much arrived.
Halfway along the road, we stop at the iron gates of a quite extraordinarily wide house, and Tom presses the buzzer on a keypad to the side, saying, This is us.
Moments later, the gate slides sideways and we walk through into the gigantic drive, where there are literally seven cars parked (I count them twice), with space for several more, without anyone having to be even the tiniest bit careful with their manoeuvring. It s basically the size of a small actual car park.
The house itself is stone and has more windows across the front than I can count at first sight.
I can hear everyone out in the garden, Tom says, directing me diagonally across the drive towards the corner of the house.
When we get to the corner (it takes an appreciable length of time to walk over there), we go through a very pretty archway framed in rose trees and I see lawn. Lots and lots and lots of lawn. It feels like acres. Over to our left, there are dozens of people, adults plus several little kids, all talking and laughing. Straight ahead of us, basically tucked away in the right-hand corner of the garden, there s a tennis court. In the far left corner, which is really far away, there s a swimming pool surrounded by a fence and a gate.
This is very nice, I say. I think of my three-bed-plus-loft-conversion-semi childhood home in New Malden and wonder whether Tom grew up here. And whether it s nice living in such an enormous house; wouldn t it be a little un-cosy? You could all spread out and never really even see each other. Obviously the garden s absolutely stunning, though. You could have so much fun in it.
Yeah, we re lucky with this garden. Come and meet everyone.
Best fake-new-girlfriend foot forward, I say.
As we get closer to the group, I see that there s quite a white colour scheme going on with the way everyone s dressed, and congratulate myself on the lucky chance that I chose the dress I m wearing – pale cream with little yellow flowers – rather than the sky-blue alternative I d been considering.
Maybe Tom forgot to tell me about the colour theme. Maybe he didn t know. It s only really the women who are doing it; the men are mainly dressed similarly to Tom, who s wearing a white T-shirt but blue shorts, more of a half-arsed white theme.
As we get even closer, I note to my surprise that a lot of the women aren t just in white, they re in tennis -style whites, as in white skorts and tops, or tennis dresses. The men look quite tennissy too, I realise, scanning the group with my eyes.
Maybe there s a tennis-dress theme to this party that Tom forgot to tell me about.
A woman with silvery-blonde hair and a very good tan of the type fair people can only have in June if they spend a lot of the year in sunnier places or a lot of time outside in not much clothing, and who has extremely toned legs (much more toned than mine even though she has to be nearly twice my age) hurtles towards us, arms outstretched, calling, Tom!
Mum! He envelops her in an enthusiastic hug, before saying, Apologies, I should have introduced you immediately. He releases his mother and says, Mum, this is Nadia, a new, um, my new, um, friend.
I m impressed. He sounds exactly like you would do if you had a very new girlfriend who you didn t yet want to label as such.
Nadia. His mum puts her hand out and I move forward and shake it. How do you do?
Very well, thank you. It s lovely to meet you. I give her my best wide-but-polite smile, and she does smile back, although her smile s tighter than mine. I m pretty sure I read once that the royals disliked Kate Middleton for saying she was pleased to meet them instead of How-do-you-do-ing them, but luckily I m never going to have to impress this woman for real.
Sorry we re a bit late, Tom says. Terrible journey.
I blink. We had an excellent journey. And we were both about five minutes earlier than the time he d suggested we meet at Waterloo. And when we made general chit-chat about what we d been doing earlier in the day he said he d been to the gym and then just chilled. Which leads me to suspect that he hadn t wanted to arrive any earlier.
Don t worry, darling. But we should probably play your first matches sooner rather than later. You and Nadia can partner each other; we can jig things around. You can get changed inside, Nadia.
Changed? I query. Are they… maybe… wearing tennis kit because… we re all supposed to be playing tennis? I can t play tennis with serious tennis players. I do like playing, in an occasional, really not very good way, but not properly . Do you mean to play tennis?
Tom and his mum both look at me as though I m a little mad and as one say, Yes?
I don t have any tennis kit with me, I tell them. Why would I have tennis kit with me? When I thought I d covered any eventuality I d thought of things like plasters, an umbrella, a cardigan, an emergency cereal bar and a pair of scissors. I did not have sports covered.
Oh. Tom s mum stares at me for a moment, but not as much as Tom s staring at me.
I really thought I d mentioned it, he says.
I think back. I ve had a busy couple of days; maybe I wasn t paying enough attention. Oh.
I think you referred to a couple of games , and in my head I interpreted that as board games, I explain.
Board games. Tom s mother stares at me as though I ve just told her I was expecting to play naked games.
I nod and smile and say, Yep, a misunderstanding. Anyway, not to worry, I m very happy to watch you all. More than happy, actually. I do love watching tennis, any standard, not just Grand Slams, and I would way prefer to watch than play, because clearly several of the family take tennis quite seriously. No-one owns an actual adult tennis dress if they can t play.
No, no, we wouldn t hear of it. You can borrow some kit.
Oh, that s very kind, I say, sure that I won t really be playing tennis this afternoon with these people. But I don t have any trainers with me and I can t play in these. Honestly, I m really happy to watch. I do love watching tennis.
She does love watching tennis, Tom agrees. We had a conversation about tennis-watching the other evening while we were watching the England match.
I can find you some shoes, Tom s mum tells me.
And then she marches me off towards where a terrace merges seamlessly into an enormous kitchen, which is a slightly odd mix of farmhouse units and an expanse of modern, shiny-tiled floor so huge that it brings Heathrow Terminal 5 to mind. And also makes me wonder how long it would take to clean.
Back to the essentials, I do not want to play tennis this afternoon.
But never mind, all in a good cause, and how bad can it be?