After some consideration, Clive got rid of the bow tie and undid the top button of his white shirt. It wasn’t going to help matters if he fainted.
‘Everything’s sorted. People should start to arrive soon. Come down when you’re ready or we’ll give you a call,’ Tess said.
For the first time, Clive understood why Keisha needed her emergency exit for these occasions. The nerves he had building up were making him want to combust. This was well outside his comfort zone and he hadn’t realised it would be until it had come to getting ready. He spoke to women all the time: in his old job at the post office, passers-by at the allotment admiring his plot, the volunteers at the charity shops he frequented. He was in the business of being pleasant to everyone he encountered. So the prospect of talking to six ladies in a row shouldn’t have been a scary one. But the fact that these were dates made it a different prospect altogether. The charm he usually liked to believe he possessed was standing at the exit ready to run, waiting for him to follow.
‘It’s time,’ Tess yelled up the stairs.
Clive checked himself one last time and wandered down to the café. Everyone else had already taken up their places at their tables. He realised it would be a bit different from the event with the spring chickens. They had made a few adjustments to the plans, including that each date would be five minutes rather than three and it was in the afternoon rather than the evening.
‘You’re on table two, Clive,’ Tess said, an impish expression on her face he’d not seen before.
Keisha was also looking at him differently. Perhaps it was how he’d looked when he’d set her up with George.
Clive’s date was already waiting for him and the room was void of conversation, as if it wasn’t allowed before the bell had sounded.
As soon as Clive had taken his place, the sound of the bell they’d been waiting for went and the nattering began.
‘Sorry to have kept you,’ Clive said, feeling as if the whole room had stalled because he’d waited to be called down the stairs.
Out of the corner of his eye he spotted Mrs Baldwin. He didn’t know whether to be pleased to see a familiar face or whether to be concerned this was a set-up. It would serve him right if it was after what he’d done with Keisha and George. He wasn’t going to be rude to the lady opposite him, though, and start talking to someone else in the room, even if she hadn’t replied to him yet.
Clive took her in fully for the first time, wondering why she’d not yet managed a hello.
‘You don’t need to apologise.’ She almost choked on the words as if something was stuck in her throat.
Clive gained the distinct feeling he did need to apologise, he just wasn’t sure why. ‘I’m going to anyway. I know it’s a terribly British thing to do, but I’m a gentleman, so I’m sorry.’
Now they were talking, Clive took more note of the lady across from him. She had blue-framed glasses that had a great snazzy design along the arms. They enhanced her features: white hair, high cheekbones, beautiful eyes that were almost violet.
Of course that might have been down to some anti-reflection coating on her spectacles, or the fact his apology had made her eyes gloss over.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said, truly meaning it, and for the first time noticing that they were matching. She had a burgundy velvet top on that could have been purchased as a matching item for his jacket. ‘We match,’ he said, euphoric at the notion.
‘We do! What are the odds?’
Clive leaned in, taking one of her hands in both of his. He wouldn’t normally be so forward, but there was a familiarity he wasn’t able to explain. It must have been the burgundy velvet.
‘I’m Clive. It’s lovely to meet you.’ There were only five minutes. He reckoned two must have ticked by already. He didn’t want to waste any more.
‘I’m Nancy,’ she said. More composed now. Her nerves must be dissipating as well as his.
‘Nancy,’ he repeated. ‘I knew a Nancy once, I think.’
The Nancy he knew had come into his life and left again too many times for him to know if she were real or not. She would drift in on a memory, the taste of a well-baked pie or the faint