Cleo

“Can I call you sometime?” he asked icily, as he gathered up his jacket and I escorted him to the door with Cleo in our wake.

“No. I mean, yes. Yes. Definitely. Um. Good night.”

I closed the door softly but firmly. Cleo flicked her tail at me and stalked down the hall.

Exposure

In the face of real danger a cat freezes.

“He made you change your outfit?!” Nicole was trying to control the volume of her laughter, so only half the newsroom could hear.

“He didn’t make me,” I said, giggling, yet already regretting the capacity women have to be mercilessly indiscreet about their intimate encounters with men. Especially when somebody makes a fool of himself. Except this time the personal humiliation involved was mine.

If only I’d been wise enough to have said “fine” when she’d asked how the date went and left it at that. But then she would have suspected serious emotional entanglement, and nothing could be further from the truth. “He just looked mortified, so I offered to change.”

“Seriously? I wouldn’t have bothered.”

The annoying thing was, Nicole would never have to bother. She could walk down the street in her grandmother’s dressing gown and hair rollers and still turn every male head within a square mile.

“And it was a terrible play! There were so many ham actors you could’ve made a pork roast. Honestly, he has no idea…”

“Probably trying to impress you. Did you…did he try to…take things further?”

“Course not!” I said, my face suddenly feeling like it was in a sauna. The kiss was nothing. An aberration best deleted from conversation and memory. “I think he’s just lonely. I won’t be seeing him again, anyway. Too young and boring.”

“Told you so,” said Nicole, her fingers galloping over her keyboard. “Got to get this story in by eleven o’clock, and I haven’t done a word.”

“What would a guy like that want with an old solo mum with two kids, anyway?” I muttered, trying to decipher a notepad of shorthand that had made perfect sense when I’d scribbled down the words of a fading international author the previous week. The jottings now resembled ancient Arabic. “He must have a screw loose.”

“Who?” said Nicole, her attention focused on finding the home number of an elusive television director she needed to interrogate.

“The boy.”

“Oh, the toy boy. Forget him.”

Yes. That’s what he was. Toy boy, an excellent, freshly invented expression with a cleansing ring to it, like mouth wash. With a label like that he could be sealed in cellophane, put in a box and shut away as one of life’s more regrettable experiments.

Tina slid a list of story ideas onto my desk. At the bottom of the list she’d scrawled “Halloween feature. Find some way to make this interesting. We did pumpkins last year. Awful!”

Work. Where would I be without it? There was no better anesthetic.

“Phone call for you, Helen,” Mike, one of the nosier political reporters, shouted across the room. “Some snooty-sounding bloke. It’s come through on my line for some reason. I’ll transfer it to you.”

There’s an art to how a woman journalist answers her phone. She must sound fresh and approachable, in case the caller has a story that has potential to wind up on the cover of Newsweek, which is about as likely as dinosaurs stirring themselves out of their graves and plodding through suburban neighborhoods. And there must also be a Teflon edge to her tone, in case it is a nutter or the Heavy Breather.

“Thank you for last night,” the voice was measured and formal.

“Oh!” I said, stupidly.

Nicole’s fingers froze mid-air over her keyboard. She put her head to one side and whispered, “Who is it?” Her instinct for a story was always spot-on.

I nestled the phone under my chin and mimed “one l” with my fingers.

“I had a great time,” he continued.

Oh God. He was lying. He would’ve had more fun giving blood.

“So did I.”

Nicole rolled her eyes and shook her head at me slowly.

“Sorry the play wasn’t up to scratch,” he said.

“It was fine, honestly…”

Nicole took a pen from her desktop and ran it like an imitation scalpel across her neck.

“I was wondering if you’d like to go out for dinner next weekend?” he asked.

Shock rippled through me and settled on my feet like a pair of leaden shoes.

“I’ve got the kids next weekend,” I said, cool and sensible. Nicole nodded approval and resumed her keyboard tattoo. That was it. Finito. No joy, toy boy.

“What about the following weekend?” he asked.

“Oh!” my lead shoes turned molten hot. “Well, no. I don’t think I’m doing anything.”

Nicole towered over me, the steam from her nostrils almost visible.

“Good. How about seven-thirty Saturday?”

“Sounds good.”

“See you then.”

“Damn!” I muttered, clattering the receiver down.

“Why didn’t you say no?” asked Nicole, my frustrated life coach.

“I don’t know. Couldn’t think of an excuse.”