Her face softens completely now and she says, ‘Well, then, that makes two of us.’

And now Owen looks at her, properly, for the first time since he walked into the restaurant and he sees a pleasant-looking woman, possibly not as smooth-skinned as the woman in the photographs on the screen of his phone, eyes possibly not as bright or quite as blue, jawline a little less sculpted. But it is her, recognisably her, and she is looking at him playfully, as though wanting him to say something else. His mind immediately empties and he blanches but she laughs and it’s not a laugh of derision or humiliation, it’s a laugh of kindness, a laugh that says, ‘Look at us, on a Tinder date, isn’t this nuts?’

A waiter arrives to take an order for drinks.

Owen thinks of the money sitting in his bank account, the money he never spends, and while Deanna peruses the wine list he looks at her and says, ‘Champagne?’

He sees immediately that he has hit a jackpot of some description, that Deanna is the type of woman to respond very positively to the suggestion of champagne. She opens her mouth to say something and he opens his mouth and finds himself saying, ‘My treat.’

She smiles and says, ‘Well, in that case then,’ and closes her wine list.

They spend some time discussing what to eat and then Deanna looks up at Owen and says, ‘You know, you look better in real life than you do in your online pics.’

Owen smiles, almost laughs, and says, ‘Wow, thank you. That photo was probably the best photo I’ve ever seen of myself, so …’

There’s a short silence and Owen realises what he’s supposed to do. He clears his throat and he says, ‘You look much prettier, too.’

It’s not entirely true; she doesn’t. But she’s certainly far from ugly. Her photos were not dishonest.

‘Thank you,’ she says.

‘Your hair is a lovely colour.’

It is a lovely colour, a kind of brittle toffee shade, with blonder bits at the ends.

‘Takes three hours in the salon,’ she says, touching the tips. ‘I’m naturally mousey.’

‘Mice are good, too,’ he says. And she tips her head back and laughs.

A waiter appears with their champagne and makes them feel suitably special as he arranges an ice bucket and chilled, misted glasses in front of them. He shows Owen the bottle and Owen knows that he is to nod, just once and say, ‘That’s good,’ even though he can’t remember the last time he had champagne.

When the champagne is poured, they touch their glasses together and Deanna says, ‘Cheers. Here’s to Tinder sometimes getting it right.’

Owen blinks. Then he smiles. ‘To Tinder, sometimes getting it right.’

He glances about himself, briefly. All around are couples. He wonders how many are on first dates. He wonders how many met on Tinder. He wonders how many are virgins. She sees him looking and says, ‘Nice restaurant. Well chosen.’

‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘It’s just a chain, but you know, Valentine’s night, beggars can’t be …’

‘… choosers.’ She completes his sentence for him and they catch each other’s eyes and smile again.

‘So,’ she says, ‘how’s your day been?’

‘Oh, pretty boring really. Got up late. Mooched about. I’m just kind of enjoying my freedom for now.’

He explained his current work situation to Deanna during one of their online chats, veering away from the aspects that reflect badly on him and playing up the aspects that made her say, Oh honestly, you can’t say anything these days, can you?

‘I don’t blame you,’ says Deanna, now. ‘That’s exactly what I’d be doing in your position. I am so tightly strapped to the treadmill that it’s not even funny. Up at six every day, on the bus with Sam to breakfast club – he’s usually the first one there, poor soul – another bus to the Tube station, desk by eight thirty, eight hours of utter tedium, Tube, bus, collect Sam from after-school club, bus home, cook dinner, homework, housework, bed. Every single day. I would give anything for a break. For a chance to jump off the treadmill for a while. See what else life might be able to offer me. I mean, I know it’s shitty that your employers have let you go without a fight, but wow, just some time to breathe, some time to be yourself.’

Owen says, ‘What about your son’s father? Does he never help out?’

‘He’s dead,’ she says, her voice catching.

Owen gulps. Not the feckless undeserving bastard he’d assumed but a dead man. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he says. ‘Really, really sorry.’

‘Yeah, well, you know. It’s been way longer that he’s been dead than that I knew him. We were only together for a couple of years. He died nine years ago. It’s a strange statistic. Hard to know how to feel about it really. And what about you? Have you ever been married? Anything like that?’

He shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Nothing like that.’

She smiles at him, knowingly, as though she sees him and his loneliness and his desperation but is not put off by it. As though she has met someone like him before.

Their food arrives: tagliatelle al ragù for Owen, a seafood risotto for Deanna.

‘I’m having a really nice time,’ she says.

Owen pauses, his fork halfway to his mouth. He puts down the fork and he looks at Deanna, and with a hint of wonder in his voice, he says, ‘Yes. Me too.’

19

On the Tube on the way home, Owen feels a plume of pleasure rising through his physiology; he pictures it as pink ink blooming over wet cartridge paper. He is being reconstituted somehow, and all because a nice, slightly overweight lady from Colindale talked to him as though he was a human being for an evening.

He’s a little drunk too, which is adding to his sense of well-being. Deanna, it transpired, was a fast drinker, faster than him, and he’d had to race to keep up with her. The champagne had disappeared in under forty minutes, after which they’d shared a bottle of wine and when that had gone, before their desserts arrived, they’d each ordered a cocktail. Owen can’t remember now what his was called, but it had tequila in it and tasted like smoke.

He’s drunk enough and happy enough not to feel other people’s eyes upon him on the strip-lit Tube carriage. He doesn’t feel jealous of the loved-up couples clutching single red roses swarming the streets. He doesn’t feel angry when people walk across him or fail to let him through. He doesn’t care if they can see him or not, because, for a full three hours this evening, he has been seen.

Owen replays the night over and over in his mind’s eye: the easy exchanges, the kind look in Deanna’s eye, the way she kept touching her hair, nodding encouragingly at him when he was talking about himself, the slowness at the end of the night, as though she was trying to delay its finale.

As he climbs the hill back to his house the air is icy sharp. A couple pass by, holding hands, the woman clutching a posy of red flowers. They smell of wine. Owen almost says something to them, something like ‘Happy Valentine’s, fellow lovers!’ but thinks better of it and stops himself with just a second to spare.

Owen stifles a laugh and turns left. He passes a man walking a small white dog. The man says, ‘Good evening,’ making Owen jump slightly.

‘Oh,’ he manages to toss over his shoulder, just a beat too slow, ‘evening.’ He’s walked past this man and his dog a hundred times over the years and this is the first time he’s ever said hello. Owen smiles to himself.

Around the next corner he sees a woman. She has hair the colour of sand and wears a brown coat that ties up at the waist. She’s looking at her phone. As he gets closer, he can see that she’s pretty, very, very pretty. Probably pretty enough to be a model. Owen’s defences automatically go up, as they always do when he is confronted with extreme female beauty. He averts his gaze and veers across the pavement, trying to clear her a path, but she is too busy looking at her phone to notice and wanders straight towards him. He tries to make room for her by moving the other way, but she moves too and suddenly they are standing face-to-face only a foot or so apart and she looks up from her phone and straight at him and he sees it there, utter, utter fear.

‘Oh,’ she says.

Owen moves again so she can pass. Yet again she moves in the same direction. He sees her eyes fall to her phone, the edge of her thumb touching the emergency icon on her screen.

He gestures her past with his arms and says, with some indignation, ‘Maybe you could try not looking at your phone for five minutes. You might find it easier not to walk into people.’ He turns and starts to walk away but then:

‘Fuck you, creep.’

He stops. ‘What?’

‘I said, Fuck you, creep.’

He rocks slightly.

He closes his eyes and draws in his breath. He pictures himself turning now, turning and running at her and pushing her over. He exhales, counts to three. He carries on walking.