Chapter 32

CHAPTER 32

"It takes a while to process it," Taj says while they're out for overpriced beer by the river. "I dunno, babe, this is your first divorce, I want to make sure you're doing okay."

She really is. In the years before the first husband emerged from the attic, she had felt the burden of long singleness lying upon her. Being happy to be single had felt obligatory, a statement of feminism or autonomy or just a way to head off coupled friends who she didn't want feeling sorry for her. The weight of that requirement had made it difficult, sometimes, to figure out how she really felt.

But now she is single again rather than single still . She reads in the bath with the door open for an hour, and thinks that she will do it all the time. (She never does, but she could.) She masturbates whenever she likes, without having to either escalate to sex or rush it through without a husband noticing. She eats dinner when she gets back from work, or at eleven, or twice, or not at all. She pops downstairs to see Toby and Maryam, or just Toby when Maryam is working, then after an hour she comes back upstairs and relishes the delights of being on her own. After so many husbands, she no longer needs to worry that she is unfit for human company; she can leave her laptop open on the other half of the bed, yes I'm still watching, continue playing , without wondering whether any man will ever lie there again.

She likes being friends with Taj, too. In her original life, she hadn't spent much time with single people: Elena, Maryam and Toby, Nat, even Zarah at work, all partnered. And it's fine to have coupled-up friends, but it's different. Lauren hasn't yet figured out how she knows Taj, but it must be, somehow, through Amos, and how magnificent that he has brought them together like this, and then left them both alone.

She texts Bohai. How's it going? I'm still single, it's amazing. The bed is so big when there's nobody else in it

He texts back. Yeah my wife had an affair and she's gone to stay with her sister while I figure out if I can "forgive her," should get in the cupboard and give her back the flat but it's So Nice to have a place to myself so

She replies, You're a terrible husband

And him: She's the one who had the affair

She sends a picture of her enormous plant, which is still the only thoughtfully positioned thing in the room, furniture haphazard around it. She loves it very much.

○○

One Tuesday, something occurs to her: she could date .

She hadn't dated much, in the years between Amos and the husbands. The pandemic had put a stop to it for a while, of course. Once things had opened up again she would occasionally go out alone and wait for someone to talk to her and see how the conversation went and maybe take him home or, more often, go to his place, because you're less likely to get murdered that way, she remembers reading: nobody wants to have to deal with a body in their own flat. And then she would never see the man again, as if she could stop anything from being a bad decision by isolating it from the rest of her life.

Dating had started to feel impossible, the first trip to the dentist after years of neglect; who knew what flaws and expenses and cavities might be uncovered, how unfit she might be for a relationship? She'd started making a profile on one of the apps a few times, and then put it away, appalled by the process of deciding who to be and what to look for. Better to convince yourself that you're happy with what you have than to search for something else and maybe fail.

But compared to the intensity of Michael and Iain and Rohan and Jason and a dozen Davids, surely a couple of low-pressure dates should be easy?

Toby and Elena are both too coupled to be up-to-date on the apps, but Taj knows what she's doing, so Lauren heads up to the park near her flat on Saturday.

"Are you sure you're ready?" Taj asks. "A month ago you were crying on buses. Sleeping on my sofa because your flat was creepy when it was empty. Watching GIFs of baby elephants for two and a half days."

"Yeah, I'm good," Lauren says. She was living another life when that happened; she remembers none of those tears. She thinks about the claim that it takes half the length of the relationship to get over somebody. Her first relationship with Amos ended years ago, and her second lasted about twenty seconds, so she's probably good to go.

Taj sighs. "Okay. We need: close-up, distance shot, you doing something you like, you at a party so they know you have friends. And nothing where you've cropped Amos out of it. It's bad luck."

Lauren prances while Taj takes photos. "Okay, take your coat off so we can get some close-ups and it doesn't look like they're all from the same day." She stands on a ledge to get a good angle, phone raised, while Lauren stands below her on the pavement, jumping out of the way when approaching cyclists ding.

Back at Taj's flat, she puts on one of Taj's sequinned dresses, which is too big but they bulldog-clip the back, and Lauren leans casually against a wall.

"I dunno," Taj says, showing her some pictures, "my wall's too wall-y. Let's try the corridor, looks more like it might be a bar," so Lauren stands against the dark stairwell's concrete, USB-powered disco lights plugged into Taj's laptop and perched on the steps that lead up to the next floor. "Sip! Okay, laugh. No, take the straw out. Think easy-going. Look left! Look right!"

A man in a blue shirt walks down the stairs. "Having fun, ladies?"

"We are, thank you!" Lauren says, and her eyes follow his steps: what about him? Would she date him?

The photos are ridiculous, but they go through them together and they crop and edit the colour and make an account, and she tries to write a bio. Hello , she writes. I'm here because I'd like to go on some dates.

"Sounds fake," Taj says.

I'm not fake , Lauren adds.

"Nobody reads the bio anyway," Taj says.

And they start scrolling through men. "What's your type?" Taj asks.

Lauren has listed so many criteria, written on so many Post-it notes, done so much research, married so many different men. What's her type? Well, how long does Taj have? But then, she's not looking for a husband this time. Just for a nice man to spend a bit of time with. "Someone with a hobby. Like maybe he's into crochet. Or those big tables with fake mountains and the little toy dragons that you paint and then you use them for playing games. Or…ice sculpture."

She likes it when the husbands have hobbies because it gives them something to do, and because it helps her to remember which is which. A dozen television husbands blend together, twenty video-games-in-the-spare-room husbands blur into one—a whittling husband stands out. But she also likes it when a man cares about a thing, when he concentrates on it, leans in, narrows his eyes or bites his lip, gives himself over to details.

Taj sighs. "I'm not saying you don't want someone who's into Warhammer, but I promise you don't want someone who's so into Warhammer that they talk about it on their dating profile."

"I want someone who likes things," Lauren says. "I want someone who's having a nice time." It's barely a dent in her criteria list, but it feels like a good place to start.

Taj takes Lauren's phone and matches her with a tall man a mile away ("Looks like he brews his own beer," she says), and a short man somewhat closer (mentions bookbinding on his profile). Then Lauren makes her stop because tall maybe-beer-brewer has messaged her already.

"Okay, but don't get fixated on one guy," and Taj sends a message on her behalf to the bookbinder, who doesn't reply.

"Why wouldn't he reply?"

"Lots of guys match with everyone, they swipe and swipe. See what their options are and get picky from there."

Lauren has, she supposes, no right to complain about this system.

"Oh," Taj says, "and don't message for too long. Plan an in-person meet-up or don't bother."

That's fine. She doesn't want a chore, she has husbands for that; she wants an actual date, she wants to meet up in a pub and to have to check whether it's him and then laugh and get food and split the bill and wonder whether there's going to be a spark. "Okay," she says, and arranges for a late-afternoon drink on Thursday with the maybe-brews-his-own-beer guy.

Going on DATES, she messages Bohai.

Me too it's crazy , Bohai messages back. Affair wife has shacked up with affair guy. But, with dating you have to explain who you are? and decide if you like each other??

Imagine, she sends back, and wonders if she owns a hair curler in this world, and if so whether she should try to find it.