Blind Date by Frances Fyfield Page B

girls. You were not supposed to take love seriously: it was simply supposed to happen. You were not supposed to live as your parents had lived, with placid devotion; you were supposed to kick over the traces, regard companionship as an optional extra, like bread on the menu. OK, he had beaten the others to it. The thought of a dating agency had dogged his mind as soon as it was mentioned, but he had cleared the hurdle, done it. He felt himself shriven. The Owl adjusted his specs, went back inside the office. He was pleased that Michael was busy and Rob preoccupied. Big shots. They talked about it; he had gone and done it. He had confessed the need. The girl he would meet through the agency would be blonde; she would be shy; she would be beautiful.
    P ray for me, Angela said in the afternoon, thinking of an icon she had once seen, wearing beautiful robes. Her office space was only a desk, with half a screen providing privacy. Inside it, watched by the huge eye of her computer screen, the girl whom Patsy and Hazel treated as a child sat surrounded by carrier bags. So agonized was she about what to wear for this meeting after work, she had carted the lot over the bridge with her in the morning. There would be no prying eyes today: no Patsy and Hazel to ask questions since they were bound for Devon, no insistence that she share the secret of the whole enterprise and ruin it, like exposing a film. There was a teddy bear in the corner with hair the same colour of corn as Angela’s own, both of them similarly glassy eyed, as if both were prizes waiting to be won at a fairground. That was what Hazel would say, but Angela was in control, really, she was. She picked up the thick piece of paper, read it once more and stuffed it in her handbag. Then she took it out again, ripped it up and let it fall into the bin, so that no-one else would ever see what she had already memorized.
    â€œProfile:John Jones is thirty years old. He describes himself as loyal, trustworthy and homeloving. He works for a successful company and keeps a cat…”
    Hardly a mover and shaker, then, Hazel would jeer. Angela shuddered at the thought of scrutiny. A mere three lines and she was trying to convince herself that this might not be love at first sight. What, then? Practice? An adventure? An exercise in hope? The nerves were appalling. She glanced at all the other literature, containing advice. Meet in a public place! Don’t invite him home until you know him! Don’t forget precautions when meeting a stranger! Forget? They were emblazoned in her memory. The afternoon passed, each hour longer than the last. The clothes were finally planned down to the last detail, although she knew she might still change her mind. Would he like the way she looked? What would an executive want? She would take enormous care with make-up: too much was offputting, too little the sign of a lack of effort, or was it the other way round? First impressions were so important. Meet on the Embankment, six o’clock. He had a nice voice. She could get an hour in at the basement gym, tone everything, appear with the spring in her step and her hair shining, utterly in control.
    Late Fridayafternoon, the gym was almost empty. One disgruntled girl with wobbly thighs was leaving as Angela arrived.
    â€œDon’t know why you bother,” the girl grumbled, “figure like yours.”
    Which had nothing to do with anything, of course. Angela sweated here in order to make herself worthy. She was never comforted by remarks like that, because no-one could see what she saw: a body unduly white and soft, refusing to respond to the kind of punishment which would make it like a ballerina’s. All this effort was a way of earning undefined, future rewards, and also of clearing the mind of some of the debris, because as soon as she was on the treadmill, she could think only of her brief sense of superiority for doing it at all. Then she remembered she had not bought shoes