The Heartfix: An Online Dating Diary. Stella Grey

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СКАЧАТЬ been, places where he’d felt at home and not felt at home. I was smiling so much that my cheek muscles hurt. Once he felt that I admired him and that he could make me laugh, he began to like me better.

      After lunch we had a walk around the city together. We had a perfectly nice, if awkward day, wandering and visiting a museum, and stopping off at coffee shops. Over the third coffee I think he began to sense that I was disappointed; I think he saw that his own disappointment was obvious, and that he hadn’t taken care to disguise it, which was rude, and so he raised his game. Perhaps it had occurred to him that he wouldn’t ever have to see me again, and he was right, of course; he didn’t. Despite its preposterous origins it was, after all, just a date. So he did this mad veering in the other emotional direction. He acted like a man in love. He became almost giddy, when we came out of the café, and wanted to buy me a dress (an offer politely declined). We looked inside churches, like tourists, and he began to walk with his arm hooked around my shoulder. He asked me repeatedly if I was happy, and said repeatedly that he was. It was all becoming quite baffling.

      At about five o’clock he said he needed a shower and would return to his hotel, and did I want to come. I said, ‘Sure, why not,’ and went with him, with a man I didn’t really know, on a first date, into his hotel room, because I felt safe, like most murder victims probably do. He made me a coffee and we sat together. It was a fairly lavish affair, his room, with a sofa at the end of the bed. It was possible that he’d picked it in anticipation of a seduction he no longer wanted to go through with. He was keeping his distance, so I had to sidle up to him. There were, at my instigation, short periods of kissing, but they didn’t go anywhere further and it was Peter who broke them off. He made a bumbling speech about liking to take things slowly. He began to have the body language and tone of someone trying to make light of an unsolicited seduction attempt. Perhaps he’d been determined that there would be no physical intimacy, and maybe there were good reasons for that, but I had come to meet him absolutely sure there would be, and each of us surprised the other with our assumptions. I tried to make a joke of it and he made fun of me. It was clear that my assumptions were inappropriate. He said he really must have a shower, and I sat pretending to read yesterday’s paper, while he showered and changed somewhere out of sight. He’d already been there one night, and there was a Jack Reacher novel on the table, and I was surprised because the author hadn’t appeared in his top ten novelists. They’d all been determinedly highbrow. The minute he reappeared he said, ‘Right, let’s be off,’ and we trooped out.

      I was deeply confused, at this point. The massive build-up had felt like a series of dates and (this does seem strange, looking back) I’d been sure that we’d be desperate to get our hands on one another. I’d imagined that we might even spend the next morning in bed, enjoying sleepy pillow-talk, face to face. I wanted to get first sex over with, so that it would be the official beginning of us as a couple and we could both stop being nervous, but the signs were that none of what I’d anticipated was going to happen. The signs were that the whole thing was already a failure, and my heart was heavy as we walked along the road together. He said nothing and his face had closed to me.

      I was already dreading the evening, but in the end it was survivable. He downed three gin and tonics before we went to the show, and talked about his work, and in the theatre he startled me by reaching for my hand as we sat together in the darkness. Afterwards, over dinner, we talked about Shakespeare we’d seen and favourite box sets, and it was fine, though I had to pedal hard to keep the conversation going. Then, out on the street, he hugged me one-arm style and kissed my hair and said he was tired, and went off to bed. But not before a second attempt on my part. I felt the need to make things worse, which has been a habit of mine, at various times in my life: if things are bad, sometimes I just can’t resist making them a whole lot worse. In this case, my self-esteem had crashed, even faster than the relationship had. I tried to get him to sleep with me, once more. When he was hesitant I said, ‘I’m not going to talk you into this, Peter, obviously.’ (Looking back at this makes me sad.)

      His train wasn’t until lunchtime, and we were supposed to be spending the morning together. He texted saying that unfortunately he had to work, so there would only be time for a quick coffee. I met him at a station café. He stood as I approached, but there was no kiss hello. He asked me how I was and said it had all been lovely and we must do it again soon, mustn’t we? I walked with him to the platform, where he said, ‘Bye, love,’ as he got into his carriage, kissing my cheek and not looking back. I went home feeling like a dam that would burst its banks, and had a good cry, because mysteriously the wonderful thing had been all wrong. I told myself that there had been too much for the day to live up to. I’d already had a text from him that said, ‘Well THAT was fun,’ with a smiley attached. The useful thing about emoticons is that they preclude the need for kisses. When the email I expected arrived, it said that he’d been thinking a lot about how difficult it would be to sustain a distance relationship, and how booked up most of his weekends were for the next two months, what with one thing and another.

      I’d invested such a lot in this and I wasn’t prepared to let it go, not like that. But when I replied, suggesting we keep in touch, I got a long-winded response explaining that he was too busy to reply. The signs could not have been clearer – the man was virtually wearing a T-shirt with I DO NOT WANT YOU written on it; the man was virtually digging an escape tunnel – but I couldn’t let the episode go, partly because of a profound sense of failure. There were things that had to be said, and I said them, in eloquent letters that were deleted unsent. There wasn’t any point bringing something to a definitive end that might not be absolutely over. Perhaps it was just a blip. There are blips in marriages, after all, so why don’t we allow for the ups and downs, the shadows and light, in emergent relationships too? Why are we so quick to call it a day if things take a chilly turn? People are complicated and their lives have hidden complications, if you don’t know them very well (or indeed at all). I had been the one who’d rushed things on; I’d expected snogging, at the least, and he had resisted me. I think it was his absolute determination not even to kiss me that made me need to humiliate myself. He’d been really, really clear, in some ways, but then he hadn’t been able to stop himself transmitting mixed messages, perhaps out of kindness. And so there was leeway for more self-delusion to take hold. It might not be the end of the relationship, I reasoned; it might just be a rocky beginning. I gave myself this talk and was partly persuaded.

      I decided to have another go at resurrecting the situation. I texted Peter the next afternoon and told him I’d eaten too much lunch, a plate of spinach pasta dressed with oil and parmesan shavings, and had fallen asleep on the couch afterwards.

      ‘You should have anticipated that I was going to do that,’ I wrote jauntily, ‘and stepped in and stopped me.’

      ‘You need to take responsibility for your own life,’ came the reply. (What the hell? I was just attempting banter with you, Peter. You were supposed to reply in kind. It was silliness. Are men so unused to bantering with women that they think everything they utter is only ever literal?)

      Stressed by a peculiar sense of injustice, I went to stay with my mother. Bored on the long train journey, I decided to initiate a text Q and A. Two weeks ago Peter had been mad for a bit of whimsical Q and A. I began with, ‘So when did you last eat cheese?’ I admit I felt a little unwell, a little neurologically unusual. I was exhibiting signs of being just the kind of woman men on dating sites are talking about, when they say, ‘No stalkers or bunny boilers.’ Peter didn’t reply, so I texted again, saying I was on a train and bored, and off to see my mum.

      His response was, ‘Have a great trip.’

      I texted straight back. ‘Are you okay, is everything okay?’

      The phone buzzed a minute later. ‘Lot of work to do, and things on my mind. Talk to you when you get back.’

      I couldn’t leave it that long, the not knowing. We had to have a straightforward conversation. But I couldn’t ask the question I wanted to – СКАЧАТЬ