Twenties Girl

“Fine. Whatever you think.” I turn to my computer and start typing. When I glance up, she’s gone, and I can’t help breathing out in relief. Finally. Some space. Some silence!

I’m in the middle of typing a confirmation email to Jean about Flash when the phone rings. I pick it up absently and cradle the receiver under my chin. “Hello, Lara speaking.”

“Hi there.” An awkward-sounding male voice comes over the phone. “This is Ed Harrison.”

I freeze. Ed Harrison?

“Um… hi!” I look wildly around the office for Sadie, but she’s nowhere.

“So… I guess we’re going on a date,” says Ed stiffly.

“I… guess we are.”

We sound like a pair of people who’ve won an outing in a raffle and don’t know how to get out of it.

“There’s a bar in St. Christopher’s Place,” he says. “The Crowe Bar. You want to have a drink there?”

I can read his mind instantly. He’s suggesting a drink because that’s about the quickest date you can have. He really doesn’t want to do this. So why did he call? Is he so old-fashioned and polite that he felt he couldn’t blow me off, even though for all he knows I could be a serial killer?

“Good idea,” I say brightly.

“Saturday night, seven-thirty?”

“See you there.”

As I put the phone down, I feel surreal. I’m actually going on a date with Mr. American Frown. And Sadie has no idea.

“Sadie.” I look around. “Sa-die! Can you hear me? You won’t believe it! He called!”

“I know,” comes Sadie’s voice from behind me, and I swivel around to see her sitting on the windowsill, looking totally unruffled.

“You missed it!” I say in excitement. “Your guy called! We’re going on a-” I break off as it hits me. “Oh my God. You did this, didn’t you? You went and shouted at him.”

“Of course I did!” she says proudly. “It was simply too dreary waiting for him to call, so I decided to give him a little nudge.” Her eyebrows lower disapprovingly. “You were right, by the way. He had thrown the card away. It was in his bin, all crumpled up. He wasn’t planning to call you at all!”

She looks so outraged, I have to bite back a laugh.

“Welcome to twenty-first-century dating. So how did you change his mind?”

“It was terribly hard work!” Sadie looks affronted. “First I just told him to call you, but he absolutely ignored me. He kept turning away from me and typing more quickly. Then I got really close and told him if he didn’t call you and fix a date at once, he’d be cursed with illness by the god Ahab.”

“Who’s the god Ahab?” I ask incredulously.

“He was in a penny novelette I once read.” Sadie looks pleased with herself. “I said he’d lose the use of his limbs and be covered with grotesque warts. I could see him waver, but he was still trying to ignore me. So then I looked at his typewriter-”

“Computer?” I interject.

“Whatever it is,” she says impatiently. “I told him it would break down and he would lose his job unless he called you.” Her mouth curves into a reminiscent smile. “He moved quite quickly after that. Although, you know, even when he was picking up the card he kept clutching his head and saying to himself, ‘Why am I calling this girl? Why am I doing this?’ So I yelled in his ear, ‘You want to call her! She’s very pretty!’” Sadie tosses her hair back triumphantly. “And so he telephoned you. Aren’t you impressed?”

I gaze back at her, speechless. She’s blackmailed this guy into going on a date with me. She’s messed with his mind. She’s forced him into a romance that he had no intention of pursuing.

She is the only woman I’ve ever known who could make a man call. Ever .

OK, it took supernatural powers, but she did it.

“Great-Aunt Sadie,” I say slowly, “you’re brilliant.”

NINE

Sometimes, when I can’t get to sleep, I imagine all the rules I’d invent if I ever got to be in charge of the world. There are quite a few which involve ex-boyfriends, as it happens, and now I’ve got a new one:

Ex-boyfriends shall not be allowed to take another girl back to the special restaurant they used to go to with their previous girlfriend .

I still can’t believe Josh is taking this girl to Bistro Martin. How can he? It’s our place. We had our first date there, for God’s sake. He’s totally betraying all our memories. It’s as if our whole relationship is an Etch A Sketch and he’s deliberately shaking it clean and drawing a new picture, and forgetting all about the old, much better, and more interesting picture which used to be there.