Jane Sigaloff - Name and Address Withheld

One long, convoluted paragraph later, Rachel looked up. There it was—her life in black and white. She added a few commas and full stops before signing it without thinking, then deleted her name and, remembering the problem page etiquette of her youth, typed ‘Desperate Matt Dillon fan, London’. Smiling, Rachel replaced the pseudonym with the more credible ‘Name and Address Withheld’ and pressed print quickly, before she lost her nerve.

Deleting the document from her hard drive, she held the only hard copy above the wastepaper basket for a few moments, resisting the urge to scrunch it into a ball, instead folding it and putting it in a self-seal envelope. She hadn’t enclosed her address. She didn’t really want or need an answer. But by sharing everything with a total stranger at least now she felt she’d been proactive. She addressed the envelope and slipped it into her briefcase. Maybe she’d post it. Then again she could always shred it tomorrow at the office if she changed her mind.

As she clambered back into bed Rachel closed her eyes and promised herself that she would make more of an effort. Five years of marriage were worth fighting for. She was far too young to be a divorcee. These agony aunts are fantastic, she mused. She felt tons better already.

Sunday morning dawned a little earlier than usual at 56 Oxford Road. Lizzie had been wide awake for a good half-hour, pinching and tensing various body parts and wondering whether it was physiologically possible that she had put on a visible amount of muffin-related weight since Friday night. If she concentrated hard she was sure she could feel a spot on her nose. Perfect timing. A first-date outbreak. She resisted the overwhelming urge to wipe her t-zone on the duvet cover and finally conceded that more sleep was out of the question. Time wasn’t going to tick by any slower if she got up.

Soon Lizzie was languishing in her second bath in twelve hours. Last night’s had promised to detoxify her and this morning’s foaming oil was supposed to be sensual, although it smelt more like a melted down throat lozenge than an aphrodisiac to Lizzie. Maybe that was where she’d been going wrong all these years.

A strange transformation was taking place. Over the last couple of years, via a gradual process of attrition, Clare had introduced a new dimension to Lizzie’s cleansing ritual. A quick splash with soap and water had been outlawed, and while at first she had complained about the complexity and expense of it all, Lizzie now secretly enjoyed her ablutions. Her brother might have taught her how to spit bathwater a very long way, but he hadn’t given her the inside track on exfoliation and soap-free cleansers. Thanks to Clare, Lizzie now had a beauty ‘routine’ of sorts.

Fifteen minutes ago she had decided to administer an amateur mini-facial to her over-cleansed pores in preparation for lunch. Only now, reading the small print on the back of the tube, it appeared she needed a muslin cloth. But where on earth did you get a muslin cloth before eleven on a Sunday? And what did you do with it the rest of the time? Her bathing idyll shattered, she hurriedly washed the mask into the bathwater and pulled the plug.

Once safely returned to dry land, she inspected her shins slowly to check she hadn’t missed any hairs on her earlier shaving spree while debating what to wear. At least if you met someone after work there was only so much you could do in a maximum of five minutes with mascara, a hairbrush and a hand towel in the Ladies’. Sunday lunch usually called for the ‘girl next door’ look, but this was proving difficult to plan as she didn’t know where Matt lived or where they were going. As Lizzie moisturised all over she couldn’t help wondering whether this was all a waste of time. The more effort she made, the more disappointing the date usually turned out to be. But the pampering was for herself. Honest.

Back in her bedroom, Lizzie stood in front of her chest of drawers, the towel tied round her waist gradually loosening itself, forcing her to gyrate her hips slowly as if trying to keep an invisible hoop aloft. Clare must have thought this was some sort of pre-date limbering up process when she chose that moment to bring Lizzie yet another cup of tea. Maybe it was a thinly disguised attempt at sabotage. Lizzie was sure that she had read somewhere that tea was bad for cellulite. The towel finally fell to the floor.

‘Great, Liz, he’ll love it. The nude look is really in this year. You might think about a few accessories though.’

Lizzie reclaimed the damp cold towel and tied it firmly round her body, using her armpits to clamp it in place before taking her tea from Clare.

‘Ha-ha…’ A slight edge of panic crept into her voice as she just stared into the open drawer. It might as well have been empty for all the inspiration its contents were currently emitting. ‘What on earth am I going to wear?’

‘Why don’t you start with underwear?’ Clare climbed into Lizzie’s bed to watch her getting ready. She’d given up on dating. She didn’t want to have to think about putting a loo seat down when she stumbled to the bathroom during the night, and her days of removing pubic hair embedded in the soap because Mr Shag didn’t believe in using a sponge were over. But if Lizzie was still determined to give men the benefit of the doubt then at least Clare could experience the first date build-up vicariously, and of course she was there to give Lizzie all the sartorial and moral support she needed.

He could do the justification. The fact he was entitled to a little bit of happiness. The fact he wasn’t having what most people would call a relationship with his wife these days. The fact that he’d found someone to have some fun with. The problem was that, whether it was in name only or not, he was married. Fact. No matter which angle you approached the situation from, he only came out of it one way. As a two-timing, unfaithful lowlife.

It may be a cliché, but Lizzie really was different. And when he’d woken up yesterday he’d felt fresh for the first time in months. He’d walked round London with his eyes wide open, invigorated by the smells of life and the sounds of the capital. Everything appeared to have more colour. Now he was sounding like some sort of love-struck teenager in a creative writing class. There really was no hope.

Matt knew he was being selfish, but being fair hadn’t worked that well for him so far. It wasn’t that he resented his wife’s success, her hours or her focus. Quite the reverse. He’d never done needy. And he’d been so proud of her. Objectively, he still was. He wouldn’t care if they barely saw each other if, when they did, it was special. Now it wasn’t even mediocre. And she wasn’t prepared to try. That was the problem. One-way traffic. Their relationship wouldn’t have passed even the most relaxed quality control.

Yet, even with all the excuses, devious just wasn’t his style. He was a nice guy, not some Lothario, and frustratingly he seemed to be at the mercy of his principles which apparently weren’t interested in keeping a low profile. He was going to tell Lizzie over lunch. She was an agony aunt; she knew life wasn’t perfect. He’d just have to trust her to understand. And hope she didn’t run a mile.

By the time the doorbell rang at nine minutes past one Lizzie had been pretending to read a magazine on the sofa for the last twenty minutes, but not a word had sunk in. Instead it appeared that the glossy pages were simply reflecting her nerves straight back at her. She didn’t know what she was worrying about, and it had been so long since she’d last been on an official ‘date’ that she couldn’t remember whether she’d always felt like this.

Clare had finally—and thankfully—gone to work just over an hour ago, but that had left Lizzie with nothing to do except sit, sit, sit, check her appearance in the mirror and then go to the loo again. Her clothes said relaxed and weekend but not scruffy, and she’d put enough effort into her accessories and eye make-up to signify effort without trying too hard. At least she was waiting at home and not pacing up and down in the cold, round the corner from where she had actually arranged to meet him, in order to try and be a couple of fashionable minutes late.