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was a useful reminder of everything and everyone I don’t have to put up with any more, put it like that. Like a vaccine shot of aversion therapy in the buttock. After that, I appreciate every single little thing about work today.’

      She beamed and Patrick beamed back, perfectly in tune.

      ‘Oh woe, I have first years at ten a.m. I challenge you to appreciate them,’ Patrick said. ‘I think this lot are the worst yet.’

      ‘We say that every year.’

      ‘I know, I know … but were we ever this bad?’

      ‘We did go on to become batshit old lecturers ourselves, so we’re hardly typical.’

      ‘I suppose so.’ Patrick swilled his tea. ‘I had one last week who sat there and said “Henry VII was brilliant, just brilliant.” As if you can skip the set texts and get your pom poms out and cheerlead instead. And I said “Brilliant how?” and he said’ – Patrick mimed a blank stoner face – “Just … brilliant.” Roll over Simon Schama, there’s a new guy in town. Another of them thought parsimony had something to do with income from parsnips. They should get a TV show together, Bill and Ted’s Excellent Historical Adventure.’

      Anna laughed. ‘’Fraid I can’t say the same in return. My freshers are eager beavers. Plus, Operation Theodora Show kicks off this week.’

      ‘Well done you. Can’t wait to see it. Feather in your cap with poison Challis, too.’

      ‘Hope so.’ Victoria Challis was their head of department. She didn’t have a warm and inviting demeanour, it had often been noted. She did, however, have the keys to the research funds and promotions cabinet.

      ‘Lunch later?’ Patrick said.

      ‘Yes! My shout. It’ll take my mind off having to go wedding shopping with my sister tonight.’ Anna picked up a folder on Patrick’s filing cabinet and lightly batted it against her forehead.

      ‘Ah. Choosing flowers and trying different flavours of sponges and so on?’

      ‘She’s looking for her wedding gown—no, NO sentiment,’ Anna held up a finger as Patrick formed a soppy face. ‘There’s the “aww” factor and also the “argh”. If Aggy finds The Dress and it’s huge, I’ll have to follow the showy theme as a bridesmaid. It’ll be tangerine or canary yellow shot silk with a zebra print fur trim, like some “Santa Baby” swingy thing. My sister’s taste is very “Miami”. She has already uttered the bowel-freezing phrase “seen something in the Ashley and Cheryl Cole wedding”. Given they’ve divorced, it might even be the actual thing on eBay.’

      ‘Ah. Well. I am sure you’d look marvellous in a refuse sack.’

      Anna made her umpteenth face of gratitude. ‘Thanks. See you later.’

      Patrick beamed, doing a little wave as she exited.

      Returning to her office and sitting down to her computer, Anna saw a name she didn’t recognise in her email and realised it was Neil from Friday. She could see from the preview window that this said rather more than she required; it used the word ‘lovers’. And an emoticon. Christ’s fuzzy clackers.

      She opened and read it, feeling her piss steadily boiling as she did so.

      Dear Anna,

      I am sorry you didn’t feel our date had the required ‘spark.’ I enjoyed it very much. If you will allow me to give you some feedback in return, I think you may be more likely to discover this elusive ‘spark’ if you are more open in your attitude. I found it difficult to get you to enter into a real conversation and our topics rarely strayed from the superficial. In fact, I got the sense you found honesty positively intimidating. I require a little more confidence in my lovers. And in general, I am tired of women over thirty who claim to want to meet an available man, then play the game of ‘catch me if you can’ once they know he’s interested. This rigmarole is not for those of us not in the first flush of youth

      However, having said this, I’d be prepared to try a second date if you persuade me it is worthwhile.

      Best wishes,

      Neil

      Anna wrestled the temptation to craft a stinging riposte. She should resist. Ah, sod it. She opened a reply.

      Dear Neil,

      I’m not playing any game, I’m simply saying no thanks to another date. Maybe you’d have had more luck if you didn’t make presumptuous and egotistical judgements like this about women you don’t know. Or make rude observations about their age. Or quiz them on their sexual preferences on the basis of a half hour acquaintance.

      Best,

      Anna

      She hit send and took an angry swig of cooling tea.

      Online dating could turn the most spangled romantic into a grizzled cynic. Wasn’t the internet supposed to herald a new era of ease and democracy in such matters? Instead it made the league tables, and winners and losers of the game, even more explicit.

      Here was its stark reality: seeing that the person who hadn’t replied to your days-old message had logged in mere hours ago. Or noticing that the exciting entrepreneur who told you he was moving to Amsterdam, and thus sadly not free for a date, appeared to be very much still in the UK and available to other women.

      Spotting that for all the ‘I want fascinating conversation’ claims, the site’s most popular of either sex were always the conspicuously beauteous. It was really ‘Am I Hot Or Not’, with some bullshit tacked on about how you liked crunchy peanut butter and the cool side of the pillow.

      Oh, and men still tended to date five years younger than their own age.

      Some people imagined Anna was grandly holding auditions, enjoying testing her market value. Or gadding round as if life was some Nora Ephron film, the world bristling with potential suitors you’d bump into while holding a brown paper bag with a baguette sticking out of it.

      No, Anna was searching for a soulmate who probably didn’t exist, in a place where he almost certainly wasn’t.

      Well-meaning types would say: ‘You’re the last person you’d expect to still be single! The world’s gone mad!’

      Anna had to disagree there. For her, the world had always been this way.

       11

      There wasn’t really the conventional phraseology to describe what had happened to Anna, in terms of her physical transformation. If she said something understated like ‘I used to be heavier’ or ‘I blossomed after university’ or ‘I was a bit of a duckling’ people nodded and said ‘oh me too, I didn’t really come into my own until my mid-twenties’, or similar.

      But to end up looking like a completely different person, one born to a radically different genetic fortune? That journey was so rare as to only usually feature in saccharine films with makeover montages. Bonsai supermodels ‘disguised’ in dungarees, ready to remove the specs and shake their glossy Coke can-sized curls out of a barrette.

      Anna had not been a plain child. Plain suggested unremarkable, average, easy to miss. She was very eye-catching. A combination of her inflatable size, oily complexion, orthodontics, heavy metal singer mop of untamed black curly hair and homemade outsize clothes (God how Anna came to hate her mother’s Singer sewing machine), made her stand out.

      Seeing any glamorous potential in her future would’ve been deemed blind optimism, emphasis on the blind. Anna was, as her Rise Park peers often reminded her, fat and ugly.

      She lost the weight when she was twenty-two. ‘The weight’ as

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