Straight Talking Read Online Free PDF Page B

to be single and happy than to be with a man who treats you badly, who undermines you, who damages you? Look at me, I’m blissfully happy being single.”
    Mel looks up and we both laugh at the irony, and I know then that nothing will change, that we will be having this conversation again in a week or a month, the same conversation we have been having for nearly three years.
    “Hey,” a big kiss is planted on my cheek by Emma. “I can’t stay all afternoon, Richard’s coming back to get me. We’ve got to choose a new bathroom this afternoon.”
    Emma and Richard. Three years and they still haven’t got married, but not for want of Emma’s trying. I think Richard does genuinely love Emma, he does want to be with her but he keeps saying he’s not ready to get married, and as far as I’m concerned when a man says he’s not ready to get married what he means is he doesn’t want to marry
you
.
    You probably don’t understand why that’s a problem, I admit it took me a while to figure it out. But Emma’s thirty-six, and she’s already been engaged three times. Each time she’s issued an ultimatum, marry me or I’m leaving, and each time they’ve agreed. For about three months. They’ve always walked out on her, and she should have learned, but she hasn’t. Ultimatum time is coming around again, I can feel it in my bloody bones.
    “New bathroom?” says Mel, smiling mischievously. “Does this mean . . . ?”
    The question tails off and Emma sighs. “I don’t know,” she says. “The latest excuse is that he’s waiting for his business to take off, and hopefully by the end of the year he’ll be settled and he’ll be ready to get married then.”
    You see, there’s always been an excuse. First it was that he had to find a flat, but then they decided to live together so he had to think up another one. Then he left his stockbroking business to set up by himself, so this is his latest, he has to settle. Never mind the fact that he probably earns more than all of us put together, he has to
settle
, whatever the hell that means.
    They make a great-looking couple. He’s big and brawny, an ex-rugby player, and she’s tiny and petite, with perfect features and big brown sad puppy dog eyes, eyes that make men melt, that make them want to take care of her.
    On the surface Emma and Richard have everything. Looks, money, friendship, but scratch the surface and you find Emma’s lack of confidence, her neediness, her desperation. And Richard? Classic fear of commitment.
    The older I get and the more people I meet, the less I think I know. How do you know people? How do you know relationships? How do you know? You only ever know as much as people want you to know, and anyone can pretend to be anything, if it suits them.
    I remember a blind date I had last year. I met a woman on the program, she was being interviewed, and we really hit it off. Six weeks later she phoned and said, “Can I ask you a personal question? Are you single?” After I’d stopped laughing hysterically, because I’m not just single, I’m famous for it, I told her I was.
    “I’ve got this friend, you see. Gary. He’s forty-one, tall, good-looking, and I think you’d really hit it off. I’d love you to meet him. Can he call you?”
    Of course he could call me, you never know how or when the right man will come into your life, so he called, and he came and she was right, he was tall and good-looking, and funny, but there was something about him, maybe it was his over-familiarity, and I decided immediately that we wouldn’t make a good couple, but that I’d make the most of the evening anyway.
    He took me to L’Altro in Notting Hill and halfway over dinner, halfway through a bottle of wine, I realized that I didn’t like him, but Jesus did I fancy him.
    He drove me home, walked me to the front door and as I put the key in the lock I turned to face him and this amazing chemistry just locked us together. We were like a pair of bloody