Jill Mansell - Mixed doubles

When it came to people’s lives, it was generally agreed that Liza Lawson’s was the kind you could envy.

She was single, successful, blonde and beautiful, with dark- brown, come-to-bed-this-minute eyes, flawless skin and a bewitching smile.

There is little more alluring than a woman utterly at ease with her body, and Liza – a curvy size fourteen – had never experienced the slightest urge to diet. She liked herself just as she was, and everyone else seemed to as well. She’d certainly never had any complaints.

Liza’s job was pretty enviable too. Her career as a food writer had received a massive boost eighteen months earlier when she had landed the plum position of restaurant critic for the dazzlingly successful Herald on Sunday. Now, each week, her article appeared beneath the same photograph of herself smiling provocatively up from the last page of the colour supplement, with her gold-blonde hair falling over one shoulder and the beginnings of a heavenly cleavage peeping over the scooped-out top of a low-cut black velvet dress.

Men were forever falling in love with this photograph of Liza, and writing to tell her so.

Women envied her, because if looking like that and eating for a living wasn’t a dream existence, they didn’t know what was.

And restaurant owners wondered frustratedly why they had never spotted Liza Lawson in their restaurants, even when they knew she’d visited them because there in the Herald’s glossy Sunday supplement was the review.

Waking up late the following morning, Liza made her way gingerly downstairs. Two letters lay on the mat by the front door. She stuffed them into her dressing gown pocket, put the kettle on for coffee and opened the new packet of paracetamol she had had the foresight to buy yesterday afternoon. A hangover on New Year’s Day was pretty much de rigueur; it was just a shame the way the older you got, the more blistering the effects became.

It was also a shame she had to work today, but a deadline was a deadline and the job had to be done. Slotting bread into the toaster – just one slice, to reassure her nervous stomach – she made coffee and hoped her appetite would recover in time for lunch.

While Liza ate breakfast she played back last night’s messages on the ansaphone. One was from an old lover, calling from London to wish her a happy New Year and inviting her to visit him at any time. The second was from her sister in New Zealand, drunkenly bawling ‘Auld Lang Syne’

down the phone along with what sounded like an entire team of All Blacks. The third message was from someone called Alistair, sounding self-conscious but determined, shyly telling her that having for many months admired her from afar, he would be thrilled if Liza would do him the honour of accompanying him to the theatre one night.

. we’ve never spoken, but maybe you’ve noticed me playing squash at the country club,’ he explained falteringly. ‘I’m thirty-seven, six foot two, not in bad shape ... um, I have dark hair, grey eyes and I drive a blue Volvo. Does this ring any bells?’

‘No,’ said Liza, swallowing another paracetamol.

‘... oh dear, this isn’t working out.’ Alistair’s voice was sounding worried now. ‘I don’t know how else to describe myself. Look, I’ll hang up. I don’t live too far from you. Why don’t I drop a photograph of myself through your door? Then at least you’ll know—’

At that point the tape ran out, because Liza had forgotten to rewind it the night before.

‘Good thinking, Alistair.’ She smiled as she retrieved the envelopes from her pocket. The first was a belated Christmas card from another ex, married and with children now but from the wry postscript sounding as if he wished he weren’t. ‘Missing you,’ Liza read at the bottom of the card. ‘Really missing you. How about dinner sometime?’ And he had scrawled the number of his mobile phone.

The second envelope, hand-delivered as promised, contained a small photograph of Alistair, whom she wouldn’t haverecognised if he’d run her over in his blue Volvo. Still, he looked perfectly presentable and considering he was shy, the note enclosed with the photo was written in a masterful hand.

‘Have I made a complete pig’s ear of this attempt to ask you out?’ he had written with endearing candour. ‘I assure you, I’m not the hopeless case you must by now think I am. A few more salient details – I’m a barrister, divorced, three children, healthy income, detached house, fond of theatre, opera, Scrabble and Maltesers. Now I’m embarrassed again – I sound like a one-man dating agency. Enough. If you would like to contact me, my number is ... If the prospect is too awful, please throw note and photo away and pretend this never happened. But I hope you don’t.

Yours respectfully, Alistair Kline.’

This was the kind of thing that happened to Liza. It was the kind of girl she was.

When Dulcie accused Liza of being a flirt, Liza declared she wasn’t. Men simply liked her; she didn’t do anything to actively encourage them. The way she acted towards men was never contrived.

‘Do I flutter my eyelashes at them? Do I flash my cleavage?’ she argued. ‘Do I clutch their biceps and tell them how big and strong they are? No I do not. I never do any of that. You do.’

This was true, Dulcie couldn’t deny it.

‘I’m married; it doesn’t count. Anyway, that’s harmless flirting. Amateur stuff. You’re the professional. You don’t make men think you’re flirting with them, you make them think you’re in love with them. Dammit,’ protested Dulcie, ‘you make the poor sods think they’re the only person on the planet worth being with.’

‘You’re jealous.’

‘Of course I’m jealous! I want to know how you bloody do it.’

Having witnessed the phenomenon a million times, Dulcie had an inkling. She suspected it had something to do with Liza’s dark-brown eyes and the way she looked at men when she was talking to them, the way she concentrated on them with such total absorption, the way she smiled

.. .

Sadly, it didn’t appear to be copyable. Dulcie had tried it a few times herself on her own in front of a mirror, but — being brutally honest here — all she’d looked was constipated.

There must be an art to bewitching men, and you either had it or you didn’t. Dulcie could do standard flirting — she giggled, she joked, she could make men laugh, which was something —

but she was never going to be in Liza’s league. Which was a shame, because it was undeniably a handy knack to have.

Yet Liza, in turn, envied Dulcie, because attracting men might never have been a problem but staying interested once she’d got them was something else again.

She didn’t know why, she simply couldn’t do it. Something to do with a low boredom threshold, maybe. She could adore them initially, fall head over heels in lust, love — whatever — think this is it, this is the big one ... then after four or five weeks the old, niggling tell-tale signs would begin to surface. She’d got to know them, she was up to date with the stories of their lives, she’d heard all their best jokes. Insidiously, boredom started to set in. While they were still enraptured by Liza, Liza found herself noting — and becoming increasingly irritated by — the way they cleared their throats, scraped their forks on their dinner plates, revealed a penchant for irritating catch-phrases, watched endless reruns of Star Trek .. .

It was a failing over which she had no control. Liza thought she must be a hopelessly shallow person, happy to pick the icing off the cake but uninterested in the sponge underneath. Once she grew tired of someone, there could be no going back. The adrenaline had seeped away, the spark was gone. Another relationship bit the dust.