I think I should probably find a job before I start looking for a shag.’
‘Absolutely, one hundred percent agreed, you’ll hear no arguments from me,’ Sumi said right before she grabbed my phone, held it up in front of my surprised face, swiped, tapped and, five seconds later, my Tinder profile was reactivated.
‘You’re a monster,’ I told her as she sat beside me, swiping through my options. Dozens of different faces gazed up at us, a smorgasbord of available men just waiting to be tapped. ‘You know I’ve never had any luck on the apps, no one does, it’s totally pointless. Besides, I’m not ready.’
‘I met Jemima on an app, Lucy met Creepy Dave on an app,’ Sumi reminded me, as though invoking Creepy Dave might help her argument. ‘Look at your pictures, they’re amazing! You look fit and nice and not like a complete arsehole. That’s Tinder gold.’
‘Thanks.’ I cringed at a clearly staged photo of me with my mouth open laughing at absolutely nothing. ‘Fat lot of good they’ve done me so far.’
‘No bites?’
‘The last date I went on arrived thirty minutes late, dripping in sweat, wearing his running gear and, because that wasn’t bad enough, his knob kept falling out of his shorts.’
‘If his knob was big enough to fall out of his shorts, you might have been a bit more understanding,’ Sumi, a lesbian who had literally never even touched a penis, suggested.
I reached across her to nix a photo of a white man proudly displaying his dreadlocks. Immediate red flag.
‘And if his mum hadn’t been waiting for him outside the bar, I might have been.’
‘Maybe his mum was an Uber driver who needed some practice?’
‘Maybe he was the next Norman Bates?’
Sumi frowned at London’s love offerings. Man with a baby tiger, man skydiving, man on top of a mountain. Man on top of a mountain holding a baby tiger immediately after skydiving.
‘I know you’re going to tell me you’re too busy to be in a relationship right now but I do think a good shag would sort you right out,’ she said, causing the man sitting to my right to choke on his gin and tonic. ‘It’s good to clear out the cobwebs, you know?’
‘I’m not against the idea of being a relationship,’ I told her, politely pretending not to notice as my seat neighbour sopped up his drink with several napkins. ‘I’m against the idea of dating. I don’t have the time or energy to waste drinking overpriced cocktails with people I never want to see again.’
‘Oh, of course,’ Sumi agreed innocently. ‘Because you’re so busy living in your parents’ shed not working?’
‘Put that down as my headline,’ I told her, catching my own eye in the mirror behind the bar. I looked tired. ‘I do want to find someone, eventually. No one wants to be the weird single friend that shows up to family parties in last night’s eyeliner and scares the children, but it’s too much right now.’
‘But a good first date is the best.’ Her eyes sparkled as she gazed into a memory. ‘All the laughing and talking and finding reasons to touch each other, wondering who’s going to make the first move, wondering if they’ll ask you out again, wondering when they’re going to text …’
Sumi’s first dates sounded as though they’d been a lot more fun than any of mine. ‘That sounds great,’ I said, giving her a look. ‘But Frasier isn’t going to rewatch itself, is it?’
Her smile softened into something more understanding. ‘I think you need to get back on the horse. I think you might have forgotten how much fun horses can be, if you give them a chance.’
‘All the horses I ever rode were destined for the glue factory,’ I reminded her.
‘To new horses,’ she said, tapping her glass against mine. ‘Sexy, clever horses with their own teeth, financial stability and a home that isn’t a shed.’
‘What about a stable?’ I suggested.
‘Only if it’s Jesus,’ she replied.
Laughing, I tucked my hair behind my ears and shook my head. I had missed her so much.
‘Before I forget,’ Sumi said, tapping a long, black acrylic fingernail on the screen of my phone. ‘You need to send me your new number before I accidentally call some random American in the middle of the night.’
‘I need to send everyone my number,’ I told her, rubbing peanut dust on the leg of my only pair of jeans. ‘They updated my contacts from the cloud so I’ve got everyone’s details but no one has mine. Is there an app for that or have I got to text everyone I ever met?’
‘You sweet precious baby,’ Sumi said with a fake swoon. ‘There’s an app for everything, even I know that.’ Her nail rattled across my screen and, in just a few taps, a little green icon appeared on my phone. ‘This is what we use for group texts at work. End-to-end encryption, no one can hack it.’
It was fair to say Sumi was more than averagely engaged with conspiracy theories.
‘Hit that, connect it to your contacts and open up a group message. Then you can text your number to whomever your heart desires.’
‘How did I manage three whole years without you?’ I asked, marvelling at the wonders of modern technology.
‘It is a question I ask myself every day.’
Editing radio shows was easy, iPhones were a whole different story. This was why I didn’t dare download TikTok. Fear of the unknown.
I stared at the screen, trying to come up with just the right message. How was I supposed to say ‘Hi, I’m back in London, please don’t ask me any questions about my surprise return that was one hundred percent my choice and also I live in a shed now’ without sounding completely pathetic?
‘You’re sending people your new number, you don’t have to write an essay,’ Sumi climbed down from her stool, peering over my shoulder to see my fingertip poised over a blank screen. ‘I’m going for a wee, see if you can finish it before I get back.’
‘Good to know, enjoy it,’ I told her as she click-clacked off through the bar in her stilettos.
Hi, it’s Ros Reynolds, I typed out before I could overthink it. Overthinking was one of my greatest talents. Given the chance, I could talk myself out of literally anything in under five minutes. Instead, I took another glug of the wine while I tried to imagine what I would say if I were writing it for someone else.
Hi, it’s Ros Reynolds. This is my new number, I just moved back to London! Let’s catch up soon.
One exclamation mark, no emojis. Short, sweet, to the point and, most importantly, not pathetic. It was a winner. I tapped the little arrow in the corner and saw a small white box pop up.
Group Text wants to access contacts? I hit ‘Allow’.
Choose recipients or select all?
‘Can I get you another drink?’
