bet it comes New Year’s Eve, the party animal,’ she says, snuggling up to Mike, who is also incredibly nice if quite boring. He is smiling, looking happy as anything with his new wife and embryo. In contrast, Phil is playing with his fork like a six-year-old staring at an iPad. I feel the need to overcompensate for both of us, so I get up, walk around the table and give Jessica a proper hug. ‘So happy for you,’ I say, reaching over to Mike and hugging him too. ‘You’ll be the best parents.’
‘Thanks, we are so happy. Now hurry up you two, this little one is going to need a playmate,’ she says, beaming.
‘Yup, we’re on it,’ I say, a little too enthusiastically. Phil drops the fork and starts reading the menu, even though we have already ordered. He used to be so sociable, so upbeat. It’s what attracted me to him. I need that person by me, someone more flamboyant, more attractive to others, more sociable. It’s how Alice was. Her social skills made us the most popular girls in school. Everyone wanted to hang out with the Davies Twins. But in truth, they liked the novelty of twins but only one of the set. I wasn’t a good friend to people like Alice was. My spiky nature didn’t draw them in like her warmth did. Without her, I would never have been popular. When she died, it didn’t take long for it to be screamingly obvious that without a more likable counterpart, no one was bothered about keeping me as a friend. Apart from Jessica, whom I keep sweet to stop Phil trying to set me up with other potential girl mates, because he thinks that is what I need.
‘OK, who is the birthday girl?’ says the waiter, coming back to the table. He’s carrying a bottle of champagne and four glasses.
‘That’ll be that one,’ says Mike, pointing at me. Jessica grins at him.
‘Wow, champagne? Thanks,’ I say, rubbing Phil’s leg. He hasn’t done anything like this in a while. Romantic gestures used to be quite normal.
‘No, what?’ he says, looking concerned. ‘We didn’t order this?’
‘No you did not! A “Jason Scott” called the bar and asked us to bring this over,’ the waiter says, clarifying. I feel myself blush a little, I’m not sure why.
‘Ooooooh, that’s so sweet,’ says Jessica. ‘Maybe I’m allowed a tiny glass?’ she says, looking to Mike for approval. He nods, and the waiter starts to pour. ‘So, is Jason still as dreamy as ever?’ Jessica asks.
‘Ha!’ I say, genuinely touched by the gesture; a little gobsmacked, if I’m honest. ‘Yeah, he’s still pretty dreamy. But no, weird, he’s my boss. And I’ve only got eyes for Phil. Cheers.’ I hold up my glass, but only two join it in the air. A huge screech fills the restaurant as Phil scrapes his chair back and stands up.
‘Sorry,’ he says, realising he caused a scene. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’ He walks off quickly towards the toilets, and I sit alone with Jessica and Mike, trying to pretend like everything is normal.
Tara
‘I’ll come pick you up by noon tomorrow,’ I say to Annie, kissing her goodbye.
‘Come any time, we’ll take the dog out in the morning and have bacon and eggs,’ says Mum. She’s so brilliant, despite finding my choices and lifestyle almost impossible to think about. She’s so desperate for me to find a father figure for Annie that she has agreed to have her every Friday night so that I can go on dates. ‘Just don’t tell your father about this,’ she tells me every week as I leave the house. ‘You know he can’t bear to think of you with boys. The fact you got pregnant as you did, well, it nearly killed him. You proved all fathers right!’
She’s funny, my mother. Somewhere between liberal and conservative and I never really know which way she’ll go.
‘I know, Mum. If you could remind him that I’m forty-two, that would be great. Anyway, look at what we got out of it?’ We both peek through the hall door and into the living room. Annie is taking selfies on Mum’s iPhone.
‘She needs a father figure,’ Mum says.
‘She doesn’t need one, Mum, we’re fine. But it would be nice for her to have one. And it would also be nice for me not to die alone.’
‘Do you have a date set up for tonight?’ she asks.
‘I do. He looks OK, works in media, cute. Hopefully not a murderer.’
‘Tara, please. Don’t joke. I read about a girl getting murdered on a date. It’s not funny.’
‘Mum, people have been dating a long time. But OK, I’ll try not to get murdered.’ I open the front door. ‘Give my love to Dad.’ I shut the door, then quickly open it again. ‘By the way, what does he think I do on Friday nights?’
I’m curious to know what Mum came up with, because she’s right, the idea of me being with men makes my dad convulse.
‘I told him you’ve started a knitting group.’
‘What? Mum, that’s pathetic.’
‘You might have to buy something on eBay and pretend you made it for his birthday. Sorry, I panicked. It was the first thing that came to my head.’
I hug her, and leave. She opens the door a few seconds later and shouts, ‘You don’t have to sleep with them all, Tara!’ down the street.
Was that liberal or conservative? I can’t quite be sure.
Back at home I have a quick shower, slip on a cute silk shirt with my faux-leather trousers, a bit of make-up, bouff my hair and I’m ready. I gave up making too much effort on dates ages ago. I always wonder what it must look like to guys, who just wear whatever they wore to work that day, when a woman arrives dressed to the nines in something fancy, with loads of make-up. It sets a precedent at the start that I really can’t be bothered to maintain, so I wear a mildly more uptempo version of my usual clothes. I think that’s right. Although I’m still single, so I guess that says something.
Being single when you have a kid is weird. Not just because everyone you meet either judges or sympathises with you, but because you have to think about so much more than just fancying someone. It’s called being responsible, I suppose. I can’t allow fuck buddies into my home to meet my daughter, it would be too confusing for her, so I generally don’t have them at all. That’s good for Annie but it sucks for me.
Annie has never known me to be in a relationship, so I need to handle the situation carefully. I introduced one guy to her last year because he was so completely awesome. I seemed to abandon all elements of fear when it came to Annie and invited him into our lives. Turns out he was so awesome that he was married. Because obviously, excellent men in their forties are never single. Why would they be? Fuckers.
He spent a Saturday afternoon in my house making Annie laugh so hard she went to bed giddy with joy. When she was asleep he and I started having sex and halfway through, his phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Eventually, because it was really killing the mood, he answered it, then burst out crying. It was his wife letting him know that his dad had just had a heart attack and died. He was literally inside me as he took the call. I mean, it was possibly the worst thing to happen during sex since those two people in China were doing it up against a floor-to-ceiling window in their apartment and the window fell out. He was so devastated, I couldn’t even have a go at him about not telling me he was married. I had to comfort him,
