Alice Brown's Lessons in the Curious Art of Dating Page 0,134

as any other girl. More! She could talk politics and sport. She could do walks in the hills and afternoons at the cinema. She could cook her man a roast, chat to his mother, play with his dog.

But what hope did she have of men seeing all this, she thought miserably, if even her best friend couldn’t?

Kate.

Why couldn’t she be Kate?

If she were Kate there was no way she’d waste her life hiding at work or worrying about the size of her hips. She’d have a boyfriend in an instant. Kate was lovable. Not like her. She was just fuckable. Good for a shag but not for falling in love with.

Lou reached the apartment block’s door. And suddenly the world was behind her and she was dashing up the stairs, not bothering to stop the tears from falling.

Why couldn’t anyone see that what she wanted was the same as what Kate wanted? A man; a home; a family. She couldn’t admit it, of course. People would laugh. She wasn’t the type. But what was the type, exactly? What gave Kate and her kind the monopoly on being able to admit they wanted a happy ending?

Lou slammed her front door behind her, pulled off her clothes and dropped them in the bin. And then she cried for a very long time.

AUDREY

Audrey was doing one of the things she hated most in the world: fidgeting. But she couldn’t help herself. The wait for the bus was lasting forever, and as each minute stretched interminably on, she tried to ignore her mounting paranoia.

Everyone knew, she was sure of it. Every set of eyes she’d come across since leaving the house bored directly into her. Normally nobody gave her a second glance in the morning; she was just one of the invisible middle-aged. But today was different. Today she was sure that every waiting bus passenger and passing driver knew, just knew, that she was the scandal of the matchmaking world.

Eventually the bus arrived. Audrey gratefully made her way to the back of the lower deck, pulled out her hardback and pretended to be immersed in its flimsy plot.

She tried to ignore the rising panic gripping her throat. Now that she was on the bus, she was closer than ever to work . . . and Alice. Her plan had been to arrive early and scuttle straight into her glass-walled office (why, oh why hadn’t she opted for brick?). By the time the others arrived she could pretend to be ensconced in paperwork or in the middle of an important call.

But now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe she should speak to Alice and get it over and done with? Not that she’d refer to last night’s shenanigans, nor permit Alice to either. But maybe she could ask her to fetch her a coffee, or give her a client update: just a little something to show that she wasn’t hiding.

Of course, she wasn’t going to explain yesterday’s bombshells from the Dating Practitioners’ Society meeting to anyone. She needed time—much more time. Although she’d spent the entire night thinking, she’d only managed to scratch the surface of her crime against Pickles, the pain of her broken heart and the indignity of who it was that broke it. The ruins of her professional reputation had had to wait. So the temporary strategy was to instruct the girls to tell all callers that she was unavailable, thereby keeping the matchmaking world at bay a little bit longer. And if she could avoid the phone for two days, then it would be the weekend, and she’d have plenty of time to concoct a defense. If she could only hold on that long . . .

“Audrey?”

Audrey jumped from her book with a start.

“I thought it was you! May I?”

A man was standing over her, his body lurching in tandem with the movements of the bus. It was Maurice Lazenby. If it was possible for Audrey’s heart to sink any further, it did. Maurice gestured to the empty seat next to her and she nodded in weary submission. Maybe she deserved to be Mauriced.

“I’m so glad I caught you,” he declared as he settled into his seat and fussily straightened his raincoat around him. “I was planning to call to see if I could arrange a meeting. I’m very keen to hear about any progress you’ve made in finding me a match. I hope you won’t find it forward of me to tell you how very pleased I am—well, excited really—that