Dan Taylor Is Giving Up on Women by Neal Doran Page B

smell of her shampoo, or conditioner, or whatever it was that went in all those bottles with the made-up science words on them.
    ‘Now look again. There it is, very small and neat, but definitely there, your legs don’t just meekly disappear into your back. This is a good thing. And this…’ she gave my trousers a tug as if she were pulling the reins on a skittish horse ‘…this is the level of exposure you want. Any less and it looks like you’ve nothing there to hide, any tighter and you look like a West End rent boy.’
    ‘I can’t imagine all this attention is being paid to my, to my bum.’ For the first time all day, I could feel myself start blushing a bit.
    ‘I know. Women, eh? Deep down we’re all looking for great personality. It’s just there’s a lot of places where we try and find it. Remember we’re talking first impressions here and if we get this right we can buy you some time. So get back in there, and come back out when you’ve found the right ones and let me see. Yell if you need me to get any more sizes. And put your shoes on too — that’s important.’
    ‘All right,’ I said, like a petulant teenager, ‘but I’m not doing up the laces.’
    I headed back into the changing room, suddenly feeling the eyes of the world on my backside. After a couple of near-misses on colour and leg cut, we found the jeans that went in and out in all the right places, and I was ordered to buy two pairs. Then it was on to tops and before I knew it I was being bombarded with T-shirts, shirts, cardigans, sweaters, and polo shirts. Being told where it was OK to have a bit of pattern and branding on show, and when it wasn’t. I was being dressed up, and dressed down. I was told I could no longer wear anything in my favourite colour, because with my skin tones it made me look like an anaemic refugee from Chernobyl. OK, maybe Hannah put it a bit more politely than that, but I knew what she meant. The number of boxy paper bags I was carrying kept rising, as did the stinging ridges from where the string handles of the bags cut into my fingers.
    Just as I began feeling that I was being played with a bit
too
much like an oversized Ken doll, but without the intellectual capability, Hannah mercifully declared a break.
    ‘Good work, soldier, now it’s time to get that afternoon tea I promised.’
    The prospect of a cup of tea and a stale scone had never seemed so appealing.
    The changing-room curtain opened with a triumphant, swooshing ‘schhe-vingggg’.
    ‘It’s so short I’m going to have to make friends with the Thighmaster again, and to work up at the front I’m going to need a lot of duct tape, but I love it!’
    Just to avoid any confusion, I should point out that it was Hannah who said this, talking about the electric-blue sequinned frock she was trying on — I hadn’t had an epiphany about my life choices on the second floor in Selfridges.
    ‘It looks great,’ I said as she tottered about in her bare feet on tiptoes, looking at herself at different angles in the shop-floor mirrors. ‘You work it, girl!’
    She stopped her catwalk voguing for a second to look at me, before we both started laughing at what was the worst attempt to sound like a New York fashion diva ever undertaken in public.
    ‘What?’ I asked as I unconvincingly waved my arm side to side in a Z shape and executed a series of finger clicks like a very camp Zorro. ‘You look fierce, girlfriend.’
    ‘Watching that, I honestly cannot see why your mother would be convinced you’re gay,’ said Hannah.
    ‘I’m not selling that? How about something a bit more manly – Phwoarr!’
    ‘Hmm, maybe that’d work better if you weren’t clutching my handbag.’
    Afternoon tea and cakes, it turned out, had not been scheduled to take place at the all-the-pastry-you-can-eat buffet in a department store. Instead it involved tiny little sandwiches and a large glass of prosecco — OK, maybe two — in an Old Bond Street hotel, classified by