50 Ways to Find a Lover (3 page)

I don’t write these things. I always put
Lots of love
, which doesn’t come close to articulating how much they mean to me, but is less alarming for the reader. Today I am realizing my love for them has got me into, to quote my mother, ‘a bit of a pickle’. I’ve somehow let them cajole me into applying for a reality TV show against my will.

I look at my dad sitting on my sofa. My sofa looks very uncomfortable. It’s not that my dad’s fat, it’s that my sofa is small. A small two-seater. If my sofa could speak it would be saying the same thing that my dad used to say to me when I was young and sat on his lap: ‘Move over to the other side, this leg’s gone to sleep.’ My dad sits on it with both arms spread out wide and his right leg stretched out. My dad had a bad motorbike accident when he was nineteen and now he can’t bend his right leg very easily. If someone were to move the sofa, my father would be in a perfect position to do a
Fiddler on the Roof
dance.

My dad’s in his late sixties with a friendly, lined brown face. He is so brown today owing to the near-daily golf that his white polo shirt dazzles with a whiteness rarely seen in Camden. He looks like a man who would never say no to a pint of bitter. I wish I could offer him a pint of bitter now, as he’s getting tetchy.

‘They’re twenty minutes late. Bloody rude, I’d say. I could have squeezed in a couple of holes this morning.’

‘Shame you didn’t bring your clubs, Dad, you could have practised your swing using reality TV producers’ heads for balls,’ I mutter.

I am nervous. When I am nervous I like to swear or talk about mindless violence. It is one of the many reasons why I am single and one of the many, many reasons why I shouldn’t be on reality television.

‘We’re doing this because we love you,’ says my mother. Her eyes are closed. My mother is sitting at the dining-room table. A dining-room table that never sees any dining. Simon is giving my mum a shoulder massage. My mother is also training for the London Marathon. She is short and slim and according to all my male friends really quite fruity-looking for a woman of sixty-seven.

‘Oooh, Val, you’re ever so tense here,’ Simon exclaims. My mother moans. My father raises his eyebrows.

‘Love is hardly pushing your child into doing a reality TV show in order to find a man she doesn’t even want,’ I say sulkily, brushing my hair for the seventeenth time.

‘At least you tidied your room, darling,’ she coos.

I don’t have the heart to tell her that it is purely a superficial tidy. A few days ago I started the important steps of thorough room-tidying, which are:

In the end I just squeezed everything I own into the hall storage cupboard and vacuumed my carpet.

We are waiting for the reality-TV people to arrive and interview us on camera. We have had two rounds of telephone interviews. Despite stating clearly that I neither want a man, nor to be on a reality TV show, I am through to the last round.

I hate being filmed as myself. I don’t mind it when I am acting because someone tells me what to say. That being said, the last time I was filmed I was playing a cashier on
The Bill
. When it was aired I looked like an overweight, over-emoting person with special needs. Also – and this is the point which everyone seems to be ignoring – I DON’T WANT A MAN. The Baldy blow-out was absolutely the last time I shall ever reach out to a member of the opposite sex. Therefore I have thought of some tactics to employ so that I don’t get picked:

My mobile phone starts playing its Bros ‘When Will I Be Famous?’ ringtone.

‘I bet it’s these bloody TV people saying they can’t make it,’ I mutter, fishing my phone out of my handbag.

‘Oh my God! It’s my agent! Please, please, say I got Phoebe!’ I gasp before I answer it.

‘Sarah, it’s Geoff. I’m just calling to say they thought you were terrific. Honestly, they were quite blown away by you. But they’ve gone for someone younger this time. They really hope that they can work with you in the future though. I just wanted to let you know.’

My door buzzer strikes the second blow of the morning. Simon and Mum and Dad all spring upright. I slip further into my armchair like a small child who doesn’t want to go to bed.

‘Thanks for letting me know, Geoff. I have to go now,’ I say. My bottom lip starts dancing. I stop it quickly with my teeth. My father limps over and squeezes me.

‘I’m fine. I’m an actress. I take rejection in my stride,’ I tell him. My voice sounds too high to be sincere.

Mum has let three incredibly tall strangers into my living room. A gangly young male runner is posted by the window on traffic-warden duty. An older, chubbier man called Ray takes a huge camera out of a huge bag and smiles at me with what I believe to be pity. Fran, the elegant producer, hugs me. She smells of a perfume I know, but can’t remember the name of, sprayed over just-put-out cigarette. It makes me want to gag.

‘I feel I’ve known you for ages after all our phone chats,’ she says, looking at me and rubbing her hands together. She reminds me of boys from my childhood neighbourhood who would dissect squirrels to see what was inside them.

My living room is very small. There are currently seven people in it. I am on the sofa with Ray practically on my lap, his huge camera a fag-butt length away from my nose.

‘Fran, I just need to say that I honestly don’t want to do this show. I really don’t want a man. I’d rather have gout.’

‘Now then, Sarah, sometimes in life we don’t know what we want. You would be great for this show.’

‘Fran, on the contrary, I know what I want and it does not involve going on a reality TV show in order to find a man.’

My father pipes up. ‘Don’t be silly, Sarah, it’ll be fun.’ Everyone nods and agrees and Fran wires me up to a microphone. I didn’t think we’d get to belligerence so swiftly.

‘Let’s roll,’ she says to Ray. I notice her glee.

‘Let’s not,’ I mutter.

‘So, Sarah, what have you been doing recently?’ she asks.

‘Oh, you know, crack, heroin,’ I say.

There is a pause. My mother tuts.

‘Oh, Sarah, you’re quite a challenge,’ Fran sighs.

‘Why?’ I say.

‘You say you don’t believe in love and yet your mum and dad have been married for forty-seven years,’ she tells me with a smug smile.

‘Come on, that’s not the norm, that’s a bloody miracle.’

‘I think you just dwell on the negative about love, Sarah,’ she says. Simon clucks his approval at her. I bet she listens to Eckhart blinking Tolle as well. ‘There are plenty of happy couples out there, Sarah, you just close your eyes to them.’

I sigh. I knew this would be awful. I didn’t think it would feel like Christian therapy. I open my mouth to speak. But then I close it again and Fran continues.

‘Perhaps you can’t love, Sarah.’

‘Sorry?’ I say incredulously.

‘Perhaps you can’t love,’ she says firmly.

‘Of course I can.’

‘Who do you love?’ She’s challenging me and looking into my eyes. I want to tell her where to shove her bloody programme but instead I answer her question truthfully.

‘My parents – so much it hurts – my sister, my niece and nephew, Simon, my friends.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to have one special person to share life with? Someone who believed in you as a person and an actress? Someone who made you laugh and made you want to be better? Someone who you thought the world of ? Wouldn’t that be nice?’

‘Well, of course it would.’

‘Well, that’s love, Sarah, so you do want it.’ Then she smiles triumphantly at me. ‘I think you want it quite a lot actually. I think there’s a Shakespeare line about protesting too much.’

‘I’ve gone off Shakespeare,’ I lament.

Suddenly Simon perks up.

‘She does want a man, of course she does. She plays this bloody Bob Dylan song all the time.’ He starts making this unpleasant groaning noise and I realize he’s murdering Bob Dylan’s ‘Make You Feel My Love’. ‘And she just asked out some bald bloke so she must want to be with someone.’

‘So why don’t you want us to help you look for love?’

‘Um, I don’t know,’ I say quietly.

‘You must have some idea,’ she says. She sounds softer now.

Simon pipes up again: ‘She’s shit-scared, Fran, but I’ve told her she needs to “feel the fear and do it anyway”.’

‘That’s a great bit of advice that, I saw it out there on your noticeboard. What are you scared of ?’

‘I don’t know. Being rejected, I guess. The bald bloke blew me out.’ I say this in a funny voice. I do this quite often. I say things I really mean but don’t actually want to say in a funny voice. It’s not a great trait.

Everyone says, ‘Ah’ sympathetically in unison. I look at them. The kindness in their faces makes me want to cry.

‘We want to help a young woman like yourself to find a lovely man. What sort of man would you like?’

‘Fran, I’m pretty sure no one will want me,’ I say in earnest.

‘Sarah, you’re attractive and talented, and Simon and your parents think you’re fun to be around. I think a man would be lucky to have you.’

Everyone says, ‘Mmm’ in unison.

Now, I am a Leo. Flatter me and my defences go down.

‘Come on, Sarah, imagine the perfect man – what would he be like?’

I start to create the perfect man for me in my head and then I begin to speak in little stuttering sentences.

‘Well, funny, I guess, and kind . . . someone who loves what they do and is ambitious . . . but not cut-throat . . . maybe someone like my dad. I’m not very fussy about looks but I don’t like beards. I don’t want someone who smokes dope all the time. In fact I don’t want someone who smokes at all. Someone who likes art and wine and going out for dinner and is quite creative, someone who’ll get on with my family and friends, someone who likes sleeping as much as I do . . .’

I’m in full flow now and beginning to quite enjoy my creation when suddenly we all hear a loud scream of terror followed by an elongated pronouncement of the expletive ‘fuck’ coming from the hallway. We freeze. Camden isn’t the safest place to live. Perhaps a crazed drug addict has broken into my flat. Simon jumps up. He fearlessly opens the lounge door. The gangly runner is revealed standing knee-deep in my girl debris. He looks at us. His face blushes like a slapped bottom. Then he looks down at the sea of tights, pants and CDs at his feet.

‘I thought this was the loo,’ he says, stunned. Simon jumps up and starts to throw my belongings back into the storage cupboard. The gangly youth helps him.

‘That’s enough with Sarah. Let’s talk to Val and Mike, shall we?’

I curl up on my sofa and watch my mum and dad, and then Simon, being interviewed. There is so much talk about love that I think we might be in the United States. I imagine being chosen for this programme. I imagine meeting someone and falling in love. I imagine myself having a male chum for adventures and sex and lazy naked afternoons in bed drinking wine and watching American serialized dramas. My cheeks flush. Then I imagine being rejected by a man in front of the whole nation and my body shudders.

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