Seventeen
Ryan is waiting for me outside Hammersmith Tube station. He doesn’t see me at first, which gives me the opportunity to take a moment to admire his loveliness. The gorgeous brown eyes and the rugged frame I’ve noticed before, but this time, in the early evening sunlight, I see just how attractively his hair curls. It’s obviously important for me to notice these points so I can share them and build up his self-esteem. I definitely don’t actually fancy him. I am selflessly bettering him for the benefit of womankind.
Before I can get too swoony, he spots me and waves tentatively. He heads over, simultaneously trying to gallantly take my rucksack and kiss me on the cheek, which results in me awkwardly becoming trapped in my bag strap and him kissing my nose. It’s times like this that I wish I had an elegant little satchel, just containing a chic tablet, a book on French philosophy and an incredibly classy red lipstick. Instead, Ryan has to lug around a tired school backpack containing a tube of Pringles from a month and a half ago and a laptop that looks like it’s connected to a Soviet satellite.
He doesn’t complain, though, swinging it easily over his shoulder and starting down a small lane across from the station.
“So, are you finally going to tell me where we’re going?” I ask.
He just laughs, “Wait and see.”
Damnit, I think. This is the second surprise he’s organised. My own creativity for dates usually just about stretches to finding the free dessert voucher for Pizza Express online. It’s going to be hard to keep up if there is even a date three. Date three?! I chide myself. Remember why you are doing this. This is a short-term mission, ‘Anastasia’.
I spend the walk running through all the places I’ve ever been in Hammersmith, and wondering if it could be one of those. The food in the Swan pub is pretty good; could we be going there? I’ve pretty much given up and am completely stumped as we turn into a quiet street, and Ryan announces proudly, “We’re here!” He then leads me across the road to a sign reading Russian Art and Culture – Special Exhibition . “Surprise!” Ryan beams, albeit somewhat nervously.
“Ooooh,” I say neutrally, my mind hamster scrabbling.
“It’s an exhibition on Russian émigrés who moved to London – after the revolution,” Ryan says, slightly hesitant and nervousness creeping back into his voice as he notices my confused expression. “I thought it might be interesting, given your family history. If you’d rather do something else, that’s totally OK!” He manages to sound nonchalant enough, but his eyes give him away, and I’m touched by the effort he’s clearly made.
“Oh! Cool! Yes, it is – definitely,” my eyes light up, more from realisation than anything else – but hopefully, that’s enough to convince him.
The exhibition is actually pretty interesting: photos of Tsarist aristocrats slumming in London boarding houses, tragic letters across Communist borders, etc., but it’s hard to pitch the right level of interest when this is all part of your entirely fabricated family history. Should I look more mournful and less like a culture vulture visitor? I practise about a hundred different expressions as we browse through the exhibits. I temporarily lose Ryan to a display on Orthodox church-building in Britain and use the opportunity to surreptitiously check my phone for a reminder of when the blooming revolution actually happened. I can just about deal with the logistics of this white lie gone big, but the annoying pang of guilt in my stomach is gnawing at my nerves. It feels worse than that dodgy bacon roll the other week. I scroll frantically, but my phone’s struggling to catch enough internet to run me through the entirety of 20th-century Russian history. Damnit. I look up, and Ryan is in animated conversation with an elderly man in a suit. He beckons me over. For a shy person, he certainly knows how to become confident at the most inopportune times. Guilt has turned my insides into a churning washing machine.
“Anastasia, this is Professor Ivanov. He’s the curator here.”
Another belly somersault.
Ryan continues, “Anastasia’s family were émigrés too. They had to change their names!”
“Oh really?” the curator raises bushy eyebrows to look properly at me for the first time, “from what to what?”
Stomach somersaults reach Cirque du Soleil levels. “Oh, to Edwards,” I reply – keeping my voice level.
“Interesting. So many people kept their family names as their one-link home. Your family must have had a particularly difficult time on arriving here,” the curator pronounces sagely. “And what was their original name?”
Why? Why do my little white lies always grow like this? You would think I would learn.
I open and shut my mouth a couple of times in the hope that it comes up with an idea faster than my panicking brain. The third time open, and I pour out what I think are some Russian-sounding syllables. “Bar-row-sky,” I tentatively pronounce.
“Barowski?” The Curator’s pronunciation of my made-up surname is infinitely superior.
“Ah. Interesting. Barowski is an old name, more from Silesia than anywhere. Your family is Jewish, then.”
My mouth, overconfident since the last save, opens with zero consultation with the brain: “Yes, that’s right.”
He directs us to a small exhibition on revolutionaries during the Russian Civil War before leaving us to it.
Ryan glances across at me, “So it’s Anastasia Barowski! I feel very boring in comparison. My mum moved from Jamaica as a teenager, and my dad’s great-granddad moved here from Sierra Leone, but no royalty or anything dramatic as far as I know.”
I murmur something non-committal, cursing myself for now, having not just a fake name but an original fake name that the first fake name used to be. Not to mention having acquired a new religion. I briefly think about my parents’ twenty years at Knutsford Methodist Church, not to mention the fact that Dad’s love of brunch has a significant amount to do with its pork foundations.
As I look closer, the exhibition does turn out to be fascinating. In particular, a whole section on Russian émigrés and film-making brings up some of the old masters of European cinema that I hadn’t thought about since university. But I can’t shake off the pangs of guilt and the constant stress. Where did this dishonesty come from? I’m pretty sure I was a truthful kid, but now it just drips out when I part my lips. When did it start? I think about how much I had to stretch my CV even to get interviews. And then I recall how acerbic Chris could be if he thought I’d done something dumb. It just got easier to cover things up or tell a lie here or there. Yes, I did remember to do that. Yes, I knew that really. Yes, I thought that was funny. I just forgot to laugh. So career and Chris – that’s when I started. Or is that just another lie – the easiest place to put the blame?
I deserve everything I get in this exhibition. Knowing my luck, I’ll be called upon to sing the old Russian national anthem. Miraculously, though, luck is with me for once, and there’s no further opportunity for me to probe my Romanov history.
It gets easier once we leave, and Ryan takes me to a little Thai place tucked away off King Street.
I peruse the menu. What to eat elegantly? I’m not known for my dainty eating when I’m hungry, and the stress of my wrong turn down some other family’s memory lane has worked up an appetite.
Ryan glances over his menu, “You do like Thai, right? If you can’t find anything, we could go somewhere else?”
“Oh yes, I love Thai, just trying to pick something new. I’m feeling adventurous,” I say gaily.
Normally, my dates would take this as a cue to smugly take charge and show off their knowledge of Thai cuisine, dropping in their “gap yah” at an elephant sanctuary in Koh Samui. Ryan doesn’t do this; he just offers to share. There’s a funny, warm feeling somewhere in my chest that gets warmer. This is not the plan. What am I doing? I’ve gone so far along now that I’ve forgotten my original charitable purpose. But this is getting out of control. He thinks I’m called Anastasia Barowski. I’ve lied to him, and I’m creepily pretending to be some kind of blokey pen pal. Get a grip, woman; it’s time to get back on mission. Make this your final date, end the mission on a positive note to boost his self-esteem, and then get out of there.
I assume my most judgy mindset. Once the waitress takes our order (I throw daintiness out the window and go for the spiciest curry), I plunge in.
Through a mouthful of prawn crackers, I demand: “So Ryan, what makes the ideal woman for you?”
He takes a cracker and chews thoughtfully. “I’m not sure ‘ideal’ is ever the best word, to be honest. Is anyone ‘ideal’ for anyone else? And if they were, that might be kind of dull, surely? I guess I’m looking for someone who’s at least in sync. Who challenges me. And who makes me laugh, and who laughs with me.”
Damn. That was an annoyingly unobjectionable answer. I wave it away with a cracker clasping hand, “Yes, yes. But in appearance terms,” I say, trying to be as objectionable as possible.
“Err,” he swallows nervously. “I think you just have chemistry, or you don’t. What about you?” he asks hesitantly.
I resist the obvious. “Ears.”
He splutters. “Ears?”
“You can tell a lot about someone from their ears,” I say simply.
“OK. Mine, for example. What can you tell me about mine?”
“You are… very creative… and… honest.”
We’re rescued from my ear analysis by the waitress depositing our dishes. I’m on high alert for bad table manners. Damn. He eats hungrily but neatly. Meanwhile, I’ve been overly ambitious on the chilli front and am practically choking through every bite.
Ryan looks worried. “Are you OK?”
“Fine,” I rasp. “I (cough). Like it. (cough). Spicy.”
“Are you sure? Because we can swap if you like?”
I wave the offer away, opting not to speak because my throat has basically closed up. Again, an annoyingly kind offer.
Once I’ve established I’m not going to die from over-spicing, I decide to take a more direct approach to problem-finding. “So, what would you say your flaws are? Apart from being shy. If you had to choose something.”
He looks at me thoughtfully, “You’ve got a very Paxman approach to dating this evening, Anastasia. Everything OK?”
“Oh, just making conversation,” I answer, feeling my cheeks flush under his gaze.
“I’m not sure. You’d be better asking someone who knows me. Speaking of that, my housemates and I are thinking of having a barbecue next weekend. You could strap them in the interrogation chair instead if you want to get all my bad points.” He smiles but looks a little nervous.
Oh no. Meeting friends. This isn’t good. This can go no further.
“Next weekend? I’m not sure I can make that,” I answer, feeling a wave of sadness as I think about my alternative plan – trying to hack Adam’s Netflix account for a boxset binge on my phone (needs must when you are living sans broadband).
“Ah, OK. Sure?” He asks.
“Err, I’ll check my diary and let you know tomorrow.”
“No worries,” Ryan manages a quick smile, but he looks disappointed, and my heart flips. This isn’t good. It’s the classic battle. My head knows that the reason I’m here is to boost Ryan’s self-esteem after my original little agony uncle white lie. My heart, however, has other ideas. It’s fluttering wildly in my chest every time he looks at me with those big brown eyes, and my stomach flips every time I catch a glimpse of his biceps rippling. My body is betraying me at every turn.
There’s a bit of an awkward silence where poor Ryan is clearly trying to work out why I don’t want to come to the barbecue, so I take the opportunity to try and convince myself I’m just having palpitations from too much coffee and then start talking about my new job with Sir John in quite a clinical, detached, job interview type fashion. Unfortunately, he looks genuinely interested and asks me a series of questions about my new lodgings and my new boss. He becomes genuinely concerned and compassionate when I tell him about Sir John’s apparent reluctance to discuss his family history and my intuition that there’s something there that he doesn’t want to divulge. Ryan listens carefully and makes very gentle suggestions as to how I could build up Sir John’s trust and take my time getting to know him in order to write the best account of his life.
He’s effortlessly made me go from interview style to treating him like a confidante whose opinion I deeply depend upon. It’s incredibly annoying. I quickly change tack. He is clearly perfect and completely flawless, so I feel I have no choice but to reveal my own deeply flawed self. I take a deep breath and begin my performance.
I survey the restaurant to choose a victim. It’s a really cute couple, clearly deeply in love. I start snickering and gesture towards them, “They won’t last a week!”
Ryan looks slightly startled. “What?”
“Them, over there. I give them a week. She looks like an airhead, and he looks so cocky.”
“Right…”
Ryan is looking slightly puzzled. Good. I look down at my plate and scrape my finger through the sauce remnants. I bring my finger to my lips, making sure to smear some of the sauce on my chin. I make a loud smacking noise as I lick my fingers and make sure to have a good root around, picking at my back teeth. To my disgust, Ryan isn’t watching! He’s looking out of the window. I make a louder sucking noise, and he looks up. “You OK?”
“Fine, fine!” I say airily. “Just didn’t want the sauce to go to waste!”
I then start spluttering on the last of the curry, and he swoops around to my side of the table, hands me my water, and rubs my back. “Let’s get you home, I think,” he says gently.
Oh, good, I think. He’s finally had enough of me. I sit back, satisfied, as he asks the waiter for the bill. He insists on paying (which is simultaneously a source of guilt and profound relief) and then helps me with my coat. We walk slowly down the street towards the Tube station, and to my strange hybrid of disappointment/relief, he doesn’t try to hold my hand. He’s very quiet, and I quickly remember I’m supposed to be leaving him on a high.
“Thank you for a lovely date,” I say. “You really are so kind and thoughtful.”
He looks adorably bashful and gives me that lovely smile. I clench my teeth and forbid my brain from thinking romantic things.
We get to the station entrance, and I look up at him awkwardly. “Well… bye.” My teeth-clenching trick isn’t working anymore. I feel really, really sad at the thought of never seeing him again. I blink hard.
“Wait up,” he says, interrupting the tragic love story unfolding in my head as he grabs my hand. “Let me at least escort you home.”
“Oh… but you know… I’m living with Sir John… I don’t think…” I trail off, mumbling.
“Not for that reason. Don’t worry,” Ryan says, looking embarrassed. I just want to make sure you get home safely, and I want to spend more time with you on the way. If that’s OK.”
Damn him for being so unbelievably cute.
He escorts me down to the platform, and during the three-minute wait, I am completely oblivious to the drunks stumbling and yelling on the platform, lost in my imaginings. I feel shy and strangely lacking in inspiration for conversation on the way back. Mainly because of that inner voice screaming, “The mission is over. Abort now.”
I bat back the questions he continues to ask about me – I’m so sick of talking about Anastasia – and manage to keep the focus on his latest project at work. He’s working on another chapel refurbishment, as well as the flat-to-house refurbishment that we picnicked at, and I can tell how much he loves it. Ryan’s whole face becomes animated when he talks about it.
Too soon, though, we’re back, and we’re walking towards Sir John’s. We pause in the driveway, and unbelievably for London, we can see the stars above us. Those traitors. Still holding my hand, he pulls me towards him, and I desperately try not to notice how toned he is. I know I’m starting to fall for him.
“Goodnight, Anastasia,” he murmurs as he tucks a stray strand of hair behind my ear. He watches as I walk up the stairs to the front door, making sure I’m safely inside. As I turn the key in the lock, I ignore the increasingly prevalent feelings of guilt and let the butterflies take control.