LITMIR.BIZ

       4 The Leo Date

      ‘Hey, love–give you fifteen quid for a quickie!’ The offer, generous but unprompted, came from a crowd of blokes in a minibus that stopped at traffic lights next to where I stood, freezing my extremities off on the corner of Piccadilly Circus.

      I was so glad I’d taken the advice of Millie on reception and pitched my dress code at ‘cold weather casual’: dark boot-cut jeans, high black leather boots and a black polo-neck jumper, with a knee-length thick wool coat. Although the cold coming through the soles of my boots was making me shiver, it was still a much wiser choice than the jeans, strappy sandals and glittery top I’d been planning on wearing. But then, what did I know about dating clothes? I hadn’t been on a blind date since, well, ever, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been out on the town in London.

      I’d always hated coming into town at night (too crowded, too impersonal and far too expensive for a late-night taxi back to Slough), but since Harry was travelling from Milton Keynes, I thought I should meet him somewhere convenient and this was the first place he’d suggested. I hobbled from foot to foot, trying to get some heat into my veins, my mind distracted from my imminent pneumonia by the familiar trains of panicked thought that were flashing through it: what was I doing here; I didn’t do things like this; I didn’t thrive on excitement; I didn’t get fired up on adrenalin; I definitely didn’t take unexpected events in my stride; I was a creature of habit that hated surprises and would rather undergo organ removal without anaesthetic than put myself in a potentially embarrassing situation.

      This angst ran in conjunction with an in-depth, highly convoluted, complex internal dialogue that went along the lines of, ‘Stay. Go. Stay. Go. Stay. Go. Stay.’ To make the voices stop, I’d just conjured up a mental image of Archie Botham beaming with pride over his new invention when my mobile phone rang.

      ‘Tell me you’re not going through with it!’ Stu begged.

      ‘Stu, I have to,’ I answered patiently, giving no clue as to my inner turmoil. ‘It’s my job.’

      ‘It’s borderline prostitution! Where are you now?’

      ‘Standing in Piccadilly Circus waiting for him.’

      ‘Leni, it’s far too bloody cold for that. You could come down with hypothermia. Or you could get frostbite in your digits. That happened to Ralph Fiennes on his expedition to the North Pole. He ended up amputating his fingertips with an electric saw in his garden shed.’

      That was the thing about Stu–he was generous with his hypochondria and liked to share it around.

      ‘Stu, first of all, Ralph Fiennes is the bloke from the Harry Potter movies and he’s never, as far as I know, attempted a one-man expedition across a polar icecap. Ranulph Fiennes, the explorer, may have done that. But I’m sure he’d be the first to acknowledge that my fingers are highly unlikely to meet the same fate as his while tucked into screaming-pink fake-fur mitts in the middle of Piccadilly Circus.’

      ‘Excuse me, are you Leni?’

      I lifted the phone away from my ear and turned to the new arrival. My first reaction was that he looked just like the guy in the photo…about, oh, fifty pounds ago.

      He gave me a big smile and stuck out his hand. ‘I’m Harry, pleased to meet you.’

      With my non-telephone hand I reciprocated, taking in his eager smile and seemingly happy demeanour.

      Okay, so he wasn’t Orlando Bloom. He wasn’t even Hollyoaks. But he was wearing clean jeans, brown Timber-land boots and a black felt jacket, a stripy scarf, and despite the lack of resemblance to his photograph, my initial gut instinct was that he was fairly inoffensive. Plus, he was so overweight that if I had to flee for my life he’d never catch

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