Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner
17 December 2010
Saturday
Manon
She can feel hope ebbing, like the Christmas lights on fade in Pound Saver. Manon tells herself to focus on the man sitting opposite, whose name might be Brian but could equally be Keith, who is crossing his legs and his foot bangs her shin just where the bone is nearest the surface. She reaches down to rub it but he’s oblivious.
‘Sensitive’, his profile had said, along with an interest in military aircraft. She wonders now what on earth she was thinking when she arranged it, but then compatibility seemed no marker for anything. The last date with a town planner scored 78 per cent – she’d harboured such hopes; he even liked Thomas Hardy – yet Manon spent the evening flinching each time his spittle landed on her face, which was remarkably often.
Two years of Internet dating. It’s fair to say they haven’t flown by.
He’s turned his face so the light hits the thumb prints on his glasses: petroleum purple eggs, the kind of oval spiral they dream of finding at a crime scene. He’s talking about his job with the Rivers Authority while she looks up gratefully to the waiter who is filling their wine glasses – well, her glass, because her companion isn’t drinking.
She’s endured far worse than this, of course, like the one she travelled all the way to London for. ‘Keep an open mind,’ Bri had urged. ‘You don’t know where the man of your dreams might pop up.’ He was tall and very thin and he stooped like an undertaker going up the escalator at Tate Modern – giving it his best Uriah Heep. Manon thought that escalator ride was never going to end and when she finally got to the top, she turned without a word and came straight back down, leaving him standing at the summit, staring at her. She got on the first train out of King’s Cross, back to Huntingdon, as if fleeing the scent of decomposing flesh. Every officer on the Major Incident Team knew that smell, the way it stuck to your clothes.
This one – she’s looking at him now, whatever his name is, Darren or Barry – isn’t so much morbid as effacing. He is talking about newts, she’s vaguely aware of this. Now he’s raising his eyebrows – ‘Shopping trolleys!’ – and she supposes he’s making a wry comment about how often they’re dumped in streams. She really must engage.
‘So, one week till Christmas,’ she says. ‘How are you spending it?’
He looks annoyed that she’s diverted him from the flow of his rivers. ‘I’ve a brother in Norwich,’ he says. ‘I go to him. He’s got kids.’ He seems momentarily disappointed and she likes him the more for it.
‘Not an easy time, Christmas. When you’re on your own, I mean.’
‘We have a pretty good time, me and Col, once we crack open the beers. We’re a right double act.’
Perhaps his name’s Terry, she thinks, sadly. Too late to ask now. ‘Shall we get the bill?’ He hasn’t even asked about her name – and most men do (‘Manon, that’s a funny name. Is it Welsh?’) – but in a sense it’s a relief, the way he just ploughs on.
The waiter brings the bill and it lies lightly curled on a white saucer with two mint imperials.
‘Shall we split it?’ says Manon, throwing a card onto the saucer. He is sucking on a mint, looking at the bill.
‘To be fair,’ he says, ‘I didn’t have any wine. Here.’ He shows her the items on the bill that were hers – carafe of red and a side salad.
‘Yes, right, OK,’ she says, while he gets out his phone and begins totting up. The windows are fogged and Manon peers at the misty halos of Huntingdon’s festive lights. It’ll be a cold walk home past the shuttered-up shops on the high street, the sad, beery air emanating from Cromwell’s, and out towards the river, its refreshing green scent and its movement a slithering in the darkness, to her flat where she has left all the lights burning.
‘Yours comes to ￡23.85. Mine’s only ￡11,’ he says. ‘D’you want to check?’
Midnight and Manon sits with her knees up on the window seat, looking down at the snowy street lit by orange street lamps. Flakes float down on their leisurely journey, buffeting, tissue-light. The freezing draught coming in through the sash frame makes her hug her knees to her chest as she watches him – Alan? Bernard? – round the corner of her street and disappear.