The sun still blasts through the restaurant windows at seven pm, showcasing dust on the red plastic table cloths and monochrome movie stars on the walls. Even Sophia Loren is looking the worse for wear as she smiles down on my table-for-two, her picture yellowing and wrinkled in the unforgiving light. Two large ceiling fans churn the soupy air, bringing no relief.
The initial, barbecue-novelty of this heatwave has long passed and most of the passers-by now share the same shiny, bad-tempered patina. There’s a fraught, irritable energy in the heavy air. Earlier, on the bus into town, a young woman had unleashed a barrage of swearing at an old man she accused of hogging all the space on their double seat. Physical contact with strangers is even less welcome than it ever was.
I pluck at my neckline to let in some air; sweat is gathering under the seams of my bra. Because I’ve been living in vest tops, baggy old shorts and flip-flops after work lately, I feel imprisoned by this outfit. I don’t even like this dress that much, nor the sandals that supposedly go with it, which seem to be made mainly from barbed wire and sandpaper.
I bought the shoes and the dress from a shop I normally avoid because it’s so expensive, deciding I needed to be bolder, braver, in my wardrobe choices.
Making any kind of decisions the day after your husband of fifteen years moves out of the family home and in with his new, younger partner, isn’t, it transpires, the brightest idea.
I picture her; reasonable, smiling Laura with her huge, moist eyes and her, ‘I really hope we can become friends, Nina.’
Friends.
Ian posted a picture on Facebook today; the two of them looking tanned and happy outside a pub. Laura’s face was turned to him like a heliotrope seeking sunshine. He seems to have dropped ten years in that picture and it stung, I can tell you. If that wasn’t bad enough, Carmen, my supposed best friend, had liked the post. It was as though she’d forgotten all that stuff about being ‘better off without him’. Forgotten about my broken heart.
So, I’d bashed out a furious private message to her. She’d claimed it was ‘difficult’ because we all ‘went back a long way’ and a load of other rubbish that finally made me snap. I’m pretending not to see the missed calls and four texts she has sent since then.
It’s fair to say that it has been a shitty day.
I usually love this time of year. The thought of six weeks away from the comprehensive where I work as an English teacher should be something to relish. All those weeks without lesson planning, marking and having to mop up hormonal teenage angst. Lots of time to hang out at home. The extended summer holiday usually includes some lesson planning and a couple of meetings, but for now it stretches ahead of me. That is the problem, in a nutshell.
Last night, my twelve-year-old son, Sam, went off to stay with Ian and Laura before travelling with them to visit Laura’s parents, who live in Provence. I’ve seen the pictures of where they’re going. It’s all turquoise shutters and tumbling wisteria. Idyllic. There’s even a small pool. But the icing on the cake is the resident dog, a shaggy-haired golden retriever. Sam has always wanted a dog but Ian’s allergy to pets meant it was a no-go. I can’t help enjoying the thought of Ian spending the whole holiday sneezing. Maybe I’ll get the biggest, hairiest dog I can find while they’re away. That’ll show him.
I pretended to be excited for Sam, however hard it was to mould my mouth and face into the required shapes for a response. I want him to have a lovely time. Of course I do, but the idea of rattling around the house on my own, picturing them all together as they amble down sun-sparkled lanes surrounded by lavender fields, causes a panicky emptiness to swell inside my chest.
Must snap out of this. I take a swig of my tepid white wine and blink hard. I wish I had thought to bring something to read, or at least my iPad. I’d been watching something on Netflix in the bath, and I left it on the side. Ian disapproved of this and now I do it as often as possible in a pathetic act of rebellion.
I look around the restaurant.
There aren’t many other customers. Whether it’s because it is still early, or there is no air conditioning here, it is hard to say. A couple with two small children stoically attempt to eat with one hand each, while simultaneously pushing rising offspring back into highchairs, wiping mouths and occasionally tapping at their phone screens with the other. I remember those days all too well, but how quickly they go. People told me this but I didn’t really believe it then.
I still think a Starbucks might have been a better choice for this blind date, or whatever it is. When he suggested this unprepossessing family Italian restaurant, Gioli’s, it had thrown me a bit. Feels like more of a commitment; harder to make a getaway anyway, should the need arise. But Carmen is always telling me to be bolder, to ‘get back out there again,’ and so I agreed. The man I’m meeting, Carl, is an acquaintance of Stella at work, who assured me he was a) clean b) not mad c) quite good looking, in that order. The order of importance might have been different twenty years ago.
My attention is drawn now to the back of the restaurant, where the manager, a rotund moustachioed man, is having an intense conversation with a waitress who appears to have just arrived. She is tying an apron around her narrow waist, and looking sourly over his comb-over’d head. Taller than him by several inches, she is willow-thin, with jet-black hair only a few midnight degrees up from natural judging by the Celtic paleness of her skin. Her hair is tied up in a tumbling ponytail. Her large features and smokily made-up eyes remind me a little of Amy Winehouse.
As the manager turns away, grim-faced, I shoot her a tentative smile of sympathy. The young woman lifts her fingers and makes a shooting gesture at her own head, which makes me laugh out loud.
The restaurant door flies open then and a man enters with much bustle and energy, carrying one of those foldable bikes. He manoeuvres it past a table, catching a chair that almost clatters over. I hear a murmured grumble.
He’s tall, balding, slim. Not bad looking. Carl, I’m sure of it. I offer a smile but he regards me with a furrowed brow. Like I haven’t quite matched up to expectations. Something deflates inside me.
‘Are you Nina?’ His voice is a little curt. He still isn’t smiling.
‘Yes,’ I reply, feeling my own friendly
