Wise Follies Read Free

the bicycle shed once. It was awful.’
    ‘Oh, yes, that’s right! You told me. Your braces got stuck together and you were sure it would lead to pregnancy.’
    We’re both spluttering with mirth now like two gleefully naughty little girls. All the differences between us have gone, if only for a moment.
    As Annie leaves I wonder if she’s right. Maybe I do need to become more proactive about men again. Go out more. Be less fastidious. The Gold Blend man is most unlikely to run out of coffee in my vicinity. Romance isn’t going to come to me out of the blue – that’s become painfully clear. Just as I’m thinking this the phone rings. I approach it wearily. Someone’s probably phoning Mira. Her friends tend to leave rather complicated messages. I reach resignedly for a notepad as I pick up the receiver. But the call is not for Mira.
    It’s from a man. And it’s for me.

Chapter 2
     
     
     
    The phone call was from Eamon. The last man I had sex with. He was ringing to invite me out to dinner. I must say I was extremely surprised. Eamon hasn’t contacted me in ages. Even though it means missing a particularly interesting episode of Coronation Street , I’ve accepted his invitation. In fact, I’m sitting with him now in a swish French restaurant. Céline Dion is singing about everlasting love in the background.
    Eamon looks older than his thirty-nine years and is quite handsome in a restrained, well-ordered kind of way. He takes regular exercise and is generally moderate in his views and lifestyle. He is very practical and methodical enough to save coupons from the back of food packets and get cut-price dinner-sets. His longings don’t seem to lunge at him, like mine do at me, and he doesn’t talk much. Not usually anyway. We are very different.
    He is currently surveying the wine list and I’m wondering whether to order the lobster or play safe with the Chicken Kiev. The lamb sounds pretty good too but I can’t bring myself to consider it. Lambs to me mean fluffy white creatures gambolling through spring meadows. It may sound sentimental, but that’s just the way I am. I’m frowning at the menu. I wish there wasn’t such a large selection. I wish someone would just march up and say, ‘Here, take this,’ and get it over with. Procrastination has been a bit of a problem for me for some time now.
    As you may have gathered, I am not in love with Eamon. If I was I’d be gazing into his dark brown eyes and not fretting about whether to ask the waiter if the chicken is organic. I’d be scanning his solemn, perfectly symmetrical features tenderly. I would have asked him what he is thinking at least five times instead of wishing I hadn’t read my weekly horoscope in The Sunday Times . Apparently the sun is changing signs and Neptune, ‘the planet of deception’, is in a challenging aspect to the ‘unsettling’ Uranus. There is also talk about intensified feelings being triggered by a Full Moon. I should have stayed with the gardening column.
    ‘What are you having?’ I ask Eamon. He has picked up his own menu and has looked at it for about ten seconds.
    ‘The lobster,’ he announces, with exemplary lack of equivocation. I bathe in his decisiveness for a brief moment. Whatever one may say about men, they can be very soothing.
    ‘Yeah, I think I’ll have the lobster too,’ I reply, closing the menu firmly before I’m tempted to scour it again. The starter was easy. We opted for salads.
    ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ Eamon is saying as he unfolds his thick linen napkin.
    ‘Well, thanks for inviting me,’ I smile chirpily. ‘I haven’t eaten in such a swanky place for quite a while.’
    Eamon seems unusually pleased at this revelation. ‘So you haven’t – mmmm – been going out much then?’ he asks, smiling.
    ‘No, I haven’t,’ I concur. ‘Ah, here come our watercress salads. My! Don’t they look pretty!’ My exclamation is entirely sincere. It’s so nice to feel pampered. No one