My Secret Lover

Pandora’s box of
insecurities has not quite been prised off, but it has been tampered with, and
uncomfortable questions, sensing a way out, are tapping away inside.
    Is my general hatred of wedding
dresses significant in a non-sartorial way?
    Is marriage just something else in a
long line of things that I think will make me happy, but ultimately disappoint?
I’m thinking of the Tinkerbell outfit when I was six, and the denim jacket when
I was sixteen.
    In my early thirties I thought
getting a boyfriend would do it.
    My advert read:
     
    Not very attractive woman, good legs,
seeks man
    for fun and games. No Canadians.
     
    I got fifty-seven replies, two of
them, oddly, from women.
    Michelle started calling it Soul
Destroyers after five of the six guys I arranged to meet were disasters (apart
from the one who pretended not to see me, there were three serious nerds and
one recovering alcoholic, which I felt should have been mentioned even though
we were only meeting in Starbucks).
    If it hadn’t been for Andy, I would
have had to do another ad ruling out PlayStation 2.
    When we started seeing each other
regularly I realized that having a boyfriend wasn’t enough after all. It had to
be marriage. Unless it was marriage, then I would always be thinking, If we’re
not getting married, when’s it going to end? And How old do you have to be
before you’re an old maid? That sort of thing.
    Michelle advised me to leave
brochures for Sandals resorts lying casually around my living room, but it did
sound a bit precipitate, when Andy was idly flipping through, to start going on
about weddings on a beach wearing nothing but your swimming trunks. We’d just
won a couples’ quiz in Pinner and I think it was the euphoria which made me
think that avoiding the expense of a morning suit would clinch it for him.
    We split up for a while. To be fair
on Andy, he wasn’t afraid of commitment in the unspecific lager advert sort of
way that a lot of men are. He was wary because his first marriage to a
hairdresser called Tina ended after eighteen months when he was twenty-four. I
think this is why he’s always been suspicious of Michelle.
    I’d be lying if I said that his
divorced status wasn’t one of his major attractions.
    How desperate would you have to be to
sleep with a man in his forties who hadn’t been married at least once? I’ve
done it and believe me, desperate.
    I missed the quizzes and the sex, but
most of all I missed having a boyfriend. You can only do ‘I’ve just split up
with someone’, for so long.
    I was on the point of Soul Mates
again, or even the one in the Financial Times (only because it’s called
Affairs of the Heart, which sounds like one of those great American funny weepy
women’s movies starring Sissy Spacek), when Michelle bumped into Andy in
Safeway late-night shopping one Friday and he asked after me. Being my best
friend, she told him that there was someone I seemed to be getting quite
serious about, and the next day, he arrived at the door with a mixed bouquet
from a bucket outside the garage and a proposal. Would I like to go to the
quiz?
     
    ‘I have another question for you,’ he
said in bed afterwards.
    Michelle says I should have phoned a
friend before giving him my answer.
    It wasn’t what she had intended when
she’d chatted to him by the 3-for-2 promotion.
     
    I ring my mother when I get home.
    ‘Feeling better?’ she says.
    ‘Yes, sorry about that.’
    There’s a long silence.
    ‘I’m online...’ she finally says.
    ‘Oh. OK. Bye then.’
    ‘Lydia...’
    ‘Yes?’
    ‘Anything wrong?’
    ‘NO, I’M FINE!’
    I was until I rang you.
     
    What does she find to chat about all
day on the Internet? And who to? Does she know that there are a lot of weirdos
out there who pretend to be younger than they are? If they think they’re
talking to a well-off widow, which she probably makes out she is, they might
pretend to be older than they are. There are even people these days,
apparently, who hack into your e-mail and then become friends by pretending to
have an uncannily similar life to yours. Which is why Andy is always changing
his e-mail address, although, frankly, there’s not a lot of mileage you could
get out of ‘Quiz? Usual time? Usual place?’
    She’s old enough to look after
herself, anyway.
    But for how long?
    When my mother asks why I’m so
grumpy, I sometimes want to tell her, it’s because you’re getting old. And realistically,
let’s face it, you