Page 52 of The App Trap
I had drawn the short straw to drive, and we were off to a country pub for lunch in the bizarrely spelt Meopham, in Kent. Apparently, Deal wasn’t as nice as Harry had initially thought. I picked him up and he slid into my passenger seat with all of the elegance of a floating swan.
“Ooh, what’s this on the floor?” he askedas he picked up the screwed-up parking permit from the sex club that I’d completely forgotten to dispose of.
“Oh, that’s just a parking permit for a charity I do some voluntary work for from time to time. Disadvantaged kids and that.”
“Sounds like a sex club, ha-ha!” said Harry, eyeing the ambiguous‘Sunseekers’logo.
He wore the sort of expression that looked like he knew I was talking out of my arse. He could tell I wasn't the type to do charity work, and he knew that I knew he knew, but we closed the subject immediately and hit the road.
An hour and a half later, we hit the mean street of Meopham. It literally was one street, and for the record, it didn't really look mean––there were way too many immaculately pruned trees for that. Harry’s aunt and uncle lived around there when he was growing up, and he loved this pub. He thought it’d make a great date destination. When we arrived, I couldn't have agreed more. Well, that was until I saw a very familiar face.
Birthday Boy Frank from the Sunseekers Club sans Sara Lee birthday cake was only sitting at a table full of meaty-looking chaps. He was obviously continuing his birthday celebrations and seemed to be in a particularly jovial and social mood, which meant that if he were to see me he woulddefinitelybe popping over to our table for a catch-up.
As their table got rowdier, I became less and less relaxed. It put an enormous strain on our date as Harry noticed that I had become increasingly distant.
I’d opted to face Frank and his cronies, because I just wanted to see what was going on. I couldn’t face that tap on the shoulder without having those vital few seconds to prepare something in my head about how I knew him, orgive him a subtle nod warning him to keep it zipped about last night.
I had positioned my head right in front of Harry’s. His hair was big enough to hide my face. Even so, I could see heads turning out of the corner of my eye, and was dreading them all coming up and ruining my life with my possible future husband. The only way to resolve this would be to somehow have a word with Frank before he could cause any damage, so I seized my moment when I saw him go to the toilet, and followed him in there.
“Oh, I thought it was you, boy,” he said cheerfully.
“Yes. It is me. Listen, I’m kind of on a non-sex-based date here, and I’m not sure he’s into the whole erm…” I made a circle out of my left finger and thumb making a weird squawky sex noise, then poked my right finger through it repeatedly.
“Ah... gotcha, son. Say no more, your secret’s safe with me,” he said, tapping the side of his bulbous boozer nose.
“Cool. Thanks. Thanks so much. Oh, and happy birthday… for yesterday.”
“Cheers, boy. Good luck with him, mate. He’s a right sort. I mean, if you’re into that sort of thing.”
“Thank you. That's really kind of you to say, I think.”
With that, he stumbled out the door, and I went back to our table super-relaxed and totally on form. The connection was back between us and the flirting had increased as much as it possibly could when I wasn’t drinking.
I asked him why he had changed his tune about going out with me again. It turned out that, like me, he’d exhausted himself with the London dating scene. He was fed up of continually searching for something better, and even suggested that we were all being brainwashed into using these sites.
“Maybe it’s a government ploy to stop us breeding,” I suggested.
“What, you mean they’re just getting us all addicted to these sites so we never find anyone to get married to and make babies?” He gasped. “It’s population control. Genius. Nice and subtle, so nobody realises what’s going on,” he continued.
“And maybe they send out agents just to go on shit dates with people so that we eventually lose faith and become celibate, eh?”
“Okay, that's a bit far-fetched,” he said.
He sucked some gin & tonic through his straw and winked at me. We smiled at each other, shared a momentary silence, then he leaned over and kissed me. Then he uttered the words that everyone wanted to hear on a good date. The old classic:
“I’ve been wanting to do that all afternoon.”
Ahhh!
We finished our meal and decided that when we got back to London we should dump the car, go out, and get good and drunk, even though Harry had had a fair few G&Ts already. As we left the pub, I completely took leave of my senses due to all the excitement, and forgot that I was pretending not to know Frank.
“See you later, mate,” I said, giving him a friendly wave.
Shit the bed.
“Be lucky, son. Good to see ya,” he replied.
Harry stopped, looked at me, and I almost walked into him, ushering him out of the pub as quickly as I could.
