LITMIR.BIZ

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there was a break-up.’ He flashed his eyebrows up and down and I stared at my plate. Tricksy bastard. ‘How about a deal. I’ll ask you a question and then you can ask me a question. Sound fair?’

      ‘Not really. You’re a professional question asker,’ I replied tartly, ‘and I’m a photographer.’

      ‘Well, I can tell you’re not a wordsmith, anyway,’ he rallied. ‘Professional question asker?’

      The wordsmith in me winced. One week out of my job and I’d already lost my grasp on the English language.

      ‘Question: where do you live?’ I asked before I lost my temper.

      ‘I have a flat in London and an apartment in New York, but I wouldn’t say I live anywhere,’ Nick replied. ‘I do like a girl with an appetite. Nice. My question: what do you value most above anything else?’

      ‘Oh, I, um …’ I was stumped. And still trying to work out if he’d just called me fat.

      ‘You don’t get to think, you just have to answer,’ he said, clicking his fingers over and over and over. ‘Come on, Vanessa.’

      ‘My friends.’ I shook my head. ‘My best friends. Best friend. Amy. My turn: how old are you?’

      ‘Thirty-six,’ he said. ‘I know, I look great. Question two: what’s your proudest achievement?’

      ‘I …’

      ‘No hesitation.’

      ‘Getting my first job before I graduated.’ I waved my hands in the air, trying to slow myself down. ‘Before I was a photographer. Full-time photographer. Me again: do you have a girlfriend?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because I don’t,’ Nick replied. ‘And that’s two questions for me.’

      I wasn’t nearly as good at this game as he was. Over the next ten minutes, I answered every one of his abstract, nonsensical questions. I told him what colour I felt like, I told him I would never move back to where I grew up, I told him I preferred birthdays to Christmas and preferred the city to the country, the country to the beach and that I had never, ever cheated on anyone. All I managed to learn about Nick was that he was born in London, he had lived in New York, Paris and Argentina, that he didn’t have a driving licence, was a night owl rather than an early bird, and his favourite colour was blue. He was right – I was not a professional question asker.

      ‘Is this what you do in difficult interviews?’ I asked, all out of questions. I sat back in my chair and mournfully nursed my food baby as Kekipi and the gang came to clear the table. There was still so much left, it was beyond wasteful. I wanted to parcel it all up and send it back to poor, jobless Amy. She would have decimated the leftovers in seconds. ‘I ask you, you ask me?’

      ‘This is what I do whenever I have to interview children,’ Nick replied. ‘Difficult children.’

      ‘Right,’ I nodded. Just when I’d been starting to warm to him. ‘Do a lot of that, do you?’

      ‘Nope.’

      ‘No.’ I shook my head. ‘Well, I don’t see what you managed to glean that would be interesting to anyone else by asking me if I consider myself to be a loyal person. Who would say no to that?’

      ‘This is the thing.’ Nick leaned back in his chair, his features almost vanishing into a silhouette as he pulled away from the candle. ‘I learned a lot more about you from your questions than you learned about me from my answers.’

      ‘Is that right?’

      ‘OK, here’s what I know.’ He took a deep drink of wine and then cleared his throat. ‘You grew up in a small village but you were desperate to get out. I know you aren’t close to your family because you value your friends much more highly than your relatives. You are single, which I would know even if you hadn’t mentioned the break-up earlier because you were so quick to tell me how proud you are of your professional achievements. If you were hopelessly in love, that would have come out in your answers, whether you wanted it to or not. Also, the only friend that you mentioned was Amy, which is very Sex and the City of you but it also tells me that you aren’t in love with anyone. Or at least you’re determined not to be. I’ve got to assume you’re unhappily single because so many of your questions to me were about my love life, and since you asked so many questions about my job and where I’d travelled to, I’ve got to assume that even though you use your job as your main source of validation, you haven’t travelled very much even though you’d like to. Which is weird for a photographer.’

      Disconcerting was not the word.

      ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ I needed more wine and I needed it immediately.

      ‘Probably go out on a limb and say you’re worrying about your age since you asked me mine,’ he shrugged. ‘And your questions were a bit banal and depressingly literal but somewhat creatively grounded, what with the favourite colour and everything, so I’d say you’re someone who likes to solve problems but in a creative way. That makes more sense for a photographer, I suppose.’

      Or for a creative director in an advertising firm, I thought to myself. He was quite possibly the best professional question asker I’d ever come across.

      ‘You’ve gone a bit quiet,’ Nick noted as Kekipi re-appeared with half of his gang and several platters of dessert. Thank God this dress had plenty of eating room. I was going to go back to England the size of a cow. Two cows, at this rate. ‘I’m right?’

      ‘About some of it,’ I admitted. ‘But it’s not like I didn’t learn anything about you.’

      ‘Go on then,’ he said as one of the waiters poured out two coffees. I hoped they were decaf. ‘Stun me with your insight.’

      ‘I suppose what I noticed most was that you were just really vague.’ I added cream to my coffee and tried not to look at Nick while I was talking to him. Too distracting. ‘Favourite colour, driving licence, yes and no questions, all really easy, but the rest of it … I don’t think you like people knowing too much about you.’

      ‘Interesting theory,’ he commented. ‘Go on.’

      And so I did. ‘I don’t know. I mean, I’m not the journalist, obviously, but just all of it – the quick comebacks, the bare feet, the black coffee. Single at thirty-six, can’t commit to a city, nowhere you call home. Maybe you can’t commit to anything?’

      ‘I don’t think you’re breaking any new ground suggesting a single man in his thirties might have commitment issues,’ Nick said with forced boredom. I glanced up from my coffee cup. He might have sounded bored, but he looked really annoyed. Amazing. ‘Although you realize commitment issues were invented by women? No man has commitment issues. When a woman says that, what they really mean is, “He doesn’t want to commit to me,” It’s a little bit sad.’

      ‘Wow,’ I replied, leaning towards the candles to get a better look at him. ‘Are you angry at all women, or is there just one who really pissed you off?’

      ‘Oh, that would be original, wouldn’t it?’ He moved back out of the light and I couldn’t quite see his face. ‘Wounded, damaged and heartbroken, I spend my days writing the stories of others so I never have to think about my own. Constantly trying to outrun my feelings until one day I meet the woman who changes everything?’

      ‘I never said heartbroken,’ I said quietly.

      ‘Well.’ Nick tapped his fingers on the table and smiled down at the tablecloth. ‘Well, no, I suppose you didn’t.’

      The pretty evening breeze rustled the palm trees overhead and I busied myself by concentrating on the lights inside the main house and pushed a stray wisp of hair out of my eyes. I wondered how many people lived in there. It couldn’t possibly just be Bertie Bennett – it was far too big.

      ‘So

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