Chapter 12 #2
‘Honestly, it’s fine.’ Saska smiles. ‘The girls can do movie-and-pizza at our place. You don’t have any plans, do you?’
‘Er, no,’ Enzo replies. ‘Not especially?—’
‘Great,’ Saska enthuses. And so Mathilde pulls off her bulging rucksack and thrusts it at him to take home. Saska assures them that they are awash with spare pyjamas and toothbrushes, and off they go.
Enzo marches towards home feeling a little deflated now.
Despite the Spike situation, he’d been looking forward to Mathilde coming back today.
Now he faces the prospect of an evening alone that he hadn’t bargained for.
Occasionally, without him noticing it sneaking up on him, Enzo finds himself feeling a little lonely these days.
He has friends, of course – from school, and the five-a-side team he plays with now and then, although he fears that his footballing days will be over soon.
He has dad-friends too, whom he’s met through Mathilde, and many of the women in school gate circles are friendly and invite him to things.
Drinks, barbecues; in the warmer months there’s no shortage of those.
Yet still certain gaps can appear on a quiet evening or a yawning weekend afternoon when Mathilde is at her mum’s, and his friends are occupied with their own families.
Sometimes Enzo even finds himself wondering if – and specifically how – he will ever meet anyone.
Despite copious badgering from friends, he has refused to involve himself further in online dating after a soul-sapping foray a year or so ago.
The women he met were either clearly not interested, or they had nothing in common, or there simply wasn’t enough of that thing – that elusive ‘thing’ – to keep things going.
Would real life dating be better? He was willing to give it a go, and so one of his five-a-side mates arranged for him to meet Janetta, Brown Owl of the local Brownie pack (Enzo had been unfamiliar with the title before then).
She’d ripped open a crisp packet and laid it flat on the pub table, and crunched away while detailing the trouble she was having with her painful ankles.
Neither suggested meeting up again and Enzo assumed that would be the end of it.
However, at around that time, Mathilde announced that she wanted to join the Brownies.
How about Cubs instead? he suggested. He was pretty sure girls could be Cubs now!
Nope, it had to be Brownies – so Enzo would literally drop her off and run.
‘Brown Owl has a twinkle for you,’ Laura teased him, followed by a flirtatious hoot: Twit-twoo!
‘You should give the apps another go,’ she added.
However, the thought of swiping appals him.
Plus, as a teacher, he fears that a pupil’s parent (or worse, an older pupil) might spot his profile and then it’d all come out at school.
Monsieur Fontaine’s on Tinder! He shudders at the thought.
‘Not Tinder, silly,’ Laura ribbed him. ‘You need an over-forties site.’
‘Why aren’t you on an over-forties site?’ he teased.
She spluttered at the thought. ‘I’m not ready for that.’
‘It’s all right for me, though?’ They laughed, and in fact Enzo knows that Laura has enough on her plate, with Mathilde and her job and a wide circle of friends. ‘But you do know that’s how people do things now,’ she added. ‘Have done for about twenty years, in fact.’
Not us, though , he thought; we met climbing a hill. This triggered a rare pang of sadness and he changed the subject.
Almost home now, he decides to stop off at the supermarket for some treats for Mathilde.
It’s not that he spoils her or treads on eggshells around her.
She is self-assured and strong-minded, a happy girl most of the time – brimming with enthusiasm for life.
But, given the cactus situation, he wants to make her homecoming tomorrow as enjoyable as it can possibly be.
With that thought in mind, he roams the aisles, filling a basket with her favourite things, as if that will make it all right: Cheestrings and Coco Pops which her mother wouldn’t approve of – but then Laura is in New York right now and needs must.
And then he spots it. An oasis in the desert at the end of the biscuit aisle. Enzo virtually gallops towards the table filled with cacti and quickly assesses the many varieties on sale. There are sizeable globes and tiny orbs, and crinkly ones and another with a showy orange flower on top.
He doesn’t really register any of these. Because there is one, single, tall, erect, spine-covered baguette.
In his excitement, Enzo grabs the thing as if it were as innocuous as a cucumber and the spikes pierce his hand.
‘Ow!’ he yelps. But the pain subsides instantly and it’s in his basket now, propped upright between a box of chocolate biscuits and the contraband cereal, and he virtually skips to the checkout with glee in his heart.
Enzo doesn’t particularly enjoy supermarket shopping normally. But these places are great, he decides now. The sheer variety of the goods on offer!
‘You know there are some that are in flower?’ The woman at the till smiles as he unloads his purchases. ‘They’re lovely, those ones.’
‘This one’s fine, thanks,’ he says, and as it glides along slowly on the conveyor belt Enzo feels like the happiest man on earth.