Darren, who I knew a tiny bit from the pub, was always neat, wearing crisp white shirts, tucked into creaseless jeans, hair short back and sides. One day, while saying goodbye, he casually asked if I fancied going out with him. I must have screwed my face up, as he quickly added: “Please, I really really fancy you and I’d really like to get know you better.” Really? My god! So, of course, I agreed, feeling ashamed of my reflexive aloofness.
Darren suggested we just hang out in Victoria Park the next Saturday, it was nice weather, we could pick up some food at Tesco and have a little picnic. Having not been on a date before with anyone so enthusiastic, hope suddenly sprung eternal.
Darren was at our meeting place early, flanked by a dog whose whole head was made up of jaw. When it saw me, it spread its front paws and eyed me dead on.
“Come on Rose,” said Darren, “say hello,” yanking it towards me.
“Oh, you’ve got a dog!” I said.
“She’s not a dog,” he snapped, “just a little puppy. Ent ya gel?” and reached down to ruffle its massive rectangular head. Turning back to me, he said confidentially: “Cost a grand.”
What a tosser, I thought. And then: Oh god, this is going to be a nightmare, isn’t it?
By the time we’d reached the Tesco at the end of the road (he couldn’t go in of course, so I bought the finger food), I’d learnt that ex-girlfriend Sonia (who he had a twenty month old daughter with) had tried to kick his door in a few nights earlier and that he was sleeping on a mattress on the floor because he couldn’t afford a bed. And ‘little’ Rose, who he kept yanking back, was to provide him with lots of little Roses (he already knew where he could get a stud -classic man about a dog tale, which took us on to the park).
Once in the park, I was mere spectator to the drama of him and Rose playing fetch. Particularly endearing was the way he’d wrestle the squeaky dog toy from Rose’s jaws, whilst she furiously resisted. The getting to know you better section more grim.
“What do you do then?” he asked, with zero interest, spread out on the grass, like a Lord.
“I’m an admin officer. You?”
“Nah, don’t work,” looking at me as if I was crazy, “where d’you work then?”
“In the civil service.”
“Yeah,” rolling his eyes, “Which bit?”
Making up a lie on the spot, I hoped he didn’t notice me gulp. Same for the area I lived in. And so on. Adept at avoidance, he didn’t get much out of me.
Darren, of course, was an open book and helped on by the fact that I was asking question after question, as if I was really interested (which I was, in a way). Dad was short, charming, napoleonic and had fifteen children with six different women. ‘My father used to punch us with the full force of an adult and we were just little children,’ is one line I’ll never forget. This resulted in bedwetting and sleeping in the bathtub. More hair-raising details followed. I’ve no doubt it was all true but it was delivered to extract pity, nothing more, as I knew this behaviour, having been bullied mercilessly by a ‘friend’.
I grabbed my chance when Darren demanded I be available to celebrate his baby’s second birthday – “It would be really important for you to be there,” the bizarre reckoning.
“Let me look in my diary,” I said, picking out the small black book from my bag, knowing already I had something scribbled in. I waved the page at him in triumph: “Sorry, can’t come. Look!”
Darren made no secret that he was well pissed off, so I delivered him his Dear John verbally. I did have to say: ‘Yeah, but I’m not into you though,’ about a million times after that (chewing a piece of gum helped massively with the ‘don’t care’ aesthetic) but broken record technique always works.
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The Lies They Tell 