Dan Taylor Is Giving Up On Women. Neal Doran
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as we sat over brunch amid the pseudo-smoke-stained gloom of a chain French bistro. ‘You don’t think there’s a chance you’ll be able to get Angus to put in a word? Explain things so you can see her again?’
‘I’ve been texting him this morning,’ I explained as I gingerly nibbled dry pellets of muffin from my Eggs Benedict. ‘She’s apparently never felt so angry and lied to. And is pretty pissed off at him, as well, for getting the two of us together in the first place.’
Hannah pushed her hair behind her ears as she concentrated on developments. It was long-ish blonde-ish, not quite curly but not exactly straight. I’d once made the mistake of saying it was messy, which hadn’t gone down too well, although I’d meant it in a good way.
‘She’s probably sublimating what she feels. What she’s really angry about is that she and Angus aren’t together,’ said Rob.
‘Not everyone has as big a crush on Angus as you do, hun,’ Hannah told her husband, before turning back to me. ‘Couldn’t he fill her in on what really happened?’
‘She probably does want Angus to fil—’
‘Bup!’ Hannah’s hand went up to stop Rob’s gag so I could continue.
‘She only partly calmed down when he told her that the marketing bloke with the fashionably challenging spectacles had asked if he could have her number. So I don’t think the signs are that good.’
‘And don’t forget the text she sent you at three a.m. saying, “Don’t ever contact me again, you bastard”,’ Rob chipped in helpfully, dancing a sachet of sugar across the back of his knuckles.
‘Yeah, there was that,’ I conceded. ‘And written with proper words and punctuation instead of text speak, which these days is legally binding or something.’
‘Well, I suppose if a bloke had run off looking sick after I took my top off, I don’t think I’d be too keen on a second date,’ Hannah conceded. ‘But it’s so unfair she’s not even listening to your side of the story. I mean, you were trying to be nice.’
‘I’m not sure she sees it like that,’ I said.
This is probably a good time for introductions. Together, Rob and Hannah are my best ‘couple’ friends, the Harrisons. And I’m Dan, their perpetually single friend. Their reminder, when married life can start losing its sheen, that the alternatives are really no better.
Their Project.
You know the kind of thing — you may be in a couple and have a Project yourselves. Somebody you look out for, and worry about. Somebody you want to see happy but who isn’t doing such a great job on that front on their own. You want them to have what you’ve got, but also — if we’re being honest here — you enjoy this window into the world of the unattached, which is off-limits to you these days. Or at least it should be. If it’s not I suggest you stop reading this now and go and find yourself a good marriage counsellor, or shit-hot divorce lawyer.
Or maybe you’re on your own, but have couple friends. The type who always have a sympathetic ear for your problems, who are always coming up with ideas for how your life could be improved immeasurably by salsa classes or the latest trend in speed dating: ‘You’ve got two minutes in a sensory deprivation tank and, if neither of you scream in claustrophobic terror because you’ve mistaken the other person’s foot for a giant rat, they set you up on a spa day. It was in The Guardian!’
If that sounds like you then, I hate to break it to you, but you’re their Project.
But anyway. It was New Year’s Day and I’m reporting back with news from the frontline of singledom. The night before, I’d been involved in the latest of a series of painful skirmishes with the opposite sex, at a party thrown by our mutual friend, the lovely, and irritatingly handsome, Angus. As When Harry Met Sally always reminded us, New Year’s Eve was one of the toughest times of all to have no one. As I stood making desperate small talk with hipsters in the kitchen of a Bethnal Green studio flat — more than two years after my last big break-up, and about six months after I finally got over it — I could vouch for that.
But then, despite my general distrust of the whole concept of house parties, my night had got a lot better. I’d been banging my head off the back of the fridge in boredom while talking to some guy, an ‘old school guerrilla advertising man’ apparently, who was explaining why it was cool not to have a television. Then Gabrielle had burst in dressed, as far as I could tell, like a fifties bobby-soxer but somehow making it look stylish. I could be getting the era wrong, I’m not really up on fashion, but I do remember thinking her two-tone black and white heeled brogues were cool.
‘Come out and dance!’ she’d shouted, ‘They’re playing my favourite song!’
I’d looked myself up and down in my crumpled cords, and white shirt that was perfect for showcasing the red wine someone had spilt on it earlier, and run a hand through my so-unfashionable-it-almost-counted-as-a-personal-look hair. I’d figured she couldn’t mean me. But as I’d gestured to the guy standing next to me, who was dressed as if he were in the next big indie folk boyband, she’d grabbed my hand and pulled me out to the living-room dance-floor.
The next couple of hours had been brilliant. OK, she’d thought all my best moves were me doing some ironic dad dancing, and I’d panicked slightly when I discovered she was a student — it was OK, she was a post-grad and safely into her twenties — but aside from that we’d talked and danced and laughed and I’d thought I felt a definite spark.
And then there’d been a bit of a mix-up…
‘It was a simple misunderstanding,’ I moaned to Rob and Hannah. ‘We were talking about birthdays, and I said how being born on twenty-eighth December is the worst possible day because when you’re a kid everyone bundles it in with Christmas for presents. Then later in life people almost resent you for having a cause for celebration when it’s the last thing they want to think about.’
‘Oh, sorry, Dan, that reminds me—I thought Rob was bringing your present today, but he left it behind,’ said Hannah.
‘Yes. Left it behind. In the shop. Along with the card. Sorry.’
‘Don’t worry, it just adds more weight to my argument. But anyway, then Gabrielle says she can top that seeing as she was born on September eleventh. Apparently in 2001 it made for the worst ninth birthday party ever, and every year since it’s not really been a time for party hats and balloons.’
‘Yep, she trumped you there all right, sport,’ said Rob.
‘I know. But then I mentioned how for me that date will, above everything else, be the day I lost my fiancée. So there may have been a misunderstanding about the circumstances. And the year. But just because my 9/11 was in 2010 doesn’t change the fact it’s the same anniversary. And who’s to say Gabrielle wouldn’t have invited me back to hers later anyway? I didn’t do anything wrong deliberately.’
‘You lost your fiancée?’ snorted Rob. ‘You were dumped by your girlfriend and then casually linked it to one of the twenty-first century’s worst terrorist atrocities but don’t think you did anything slightly shady, morality-wise?’
‘But I didn’t make the link, she did! I…I was just talking as if it was another day, and to do anything different would mean that They Win.’
We sat in silence for a while. Rob weighing up the attraction of pushing on with a guilt trip, but also swayed by the appeal of the crass logic that could make the exploitation of others’ tragedy a tool in the War on Terror. Hannah looked as if she was beginning to realise that my story probably wasn’t going to be workable as an anecdote for my and Gabrielle’s ruby wedding anniversary.
I sat there thinking that Kate could have been my fiancée if she’d said yes when I proposed that September morning in 2010. Instead she cried and said it was all over, and that it had been for several years, really. So on a date most remember as one where the whole world became a scarier place, I remember being left