I got an email from a man whom I met a couple of months ago for a coffee, and then never heard from again. He said he hadn't asked me again out because - and this is a direct quote 'I sounded a bit cross about my ex.'
I was shocked. First of all to hear from him after all this time, and secondly because of the allegation that I had seemed cross. Not ruddy cross enough, was my first thought. I'm remarkably forgiving, considering, a point that even the ex concedes.
It's the man's job that's really the problem. Completely coincidentally he's a divorce lawyer and with all his previous girlfriends who, surprise surprise after the age of 40, have all been in the process of disentangling from their spouses, he's been expected to act as unofficial council. He didn't fancy reprising the role with me.
Not that I asked him to, I hasten to add.
It's a bit of a occupational hazard, I would think, being a divorce lawyer who dates, but I sympathised. A lot of the men I meet can't even wait until the second date before they tell me about 'their novel' and frankly, even if I had the power to publish them, there's nothing more guaranteed to make me want to go to the loo and make a run for it. If they told me they dressed in Edwardian undergarments and liked tropical fish there would be more of a likelihood that I might at least pretend interest.
But he had me on the defensive, a place I'm so used to being I should really get a mortgage instead of just renting. I thought very long and hard about what he said. I don't think I was really that cross about my ex. Am I horribly bitter? What an awful thought. I seem to remember being asked about him, and perhaps I latched a little too eagerly on to the subject given that, at this point, the man had been talking about buying a pair of second hand shoes from Oxfam for the previous 20 years (this came on top of a long telephone call in which he itemised all the DVDs he owned but hadn't watched) and I was almost ready to stab him in the eye with a fork. I remember floundering with that awful stomach curdling feeling (that he was also, apparently experiencing, but for different reasons) that accompanies the panic of realising you have absolutely nothing in common with the person you are with and the coffee hasn't even arrived.
'What do you think?' I asked the shrink I've been seeing since I did my pre-Clinical MA in shrinkie things and who sort of stuck, long after my desire to be a psychotherapist. 'Do I really sound that angry with the ex? You listen to me at regular intervals - am I Mrs, or rather ex-Mrs Angry?'
She remained impassive as I sat nervously opposite her in the Scorpion's tail of her Eames Chair. 'Let me get this straight,' she said eventually 'So this man bored you the only time you met, and months later wrote and told you that he didn't ask you out again because you were cross about your ex-husband?' .
'Yes.'
'And initally he was the one who sought you out?'
'Yes.'
'Well, fuck him,' she said succinctly. 'Really, just fuck him!'
'Or not,' I responded as she tried to repress a smile.
I beamed at her in relief.
Ach, people think that therapy isn't worth the money. Believe me, it is. It really, really is.
