Here’s a horror story for Halloween. Having avoided the cafe for a week, I went back and found I was right behind Andrew in the queue. Nothing had changed. I felt the old unsolicited flip of the heart. “Hello!” he said, turning to me and beaming. “How are you? I’m only here for a takeaway coffee today, but let’s catch up soon.”
He looked at his watch. “I have a meeting in 20 minutes. Good to see you though, er …” And then it happened. “I’m really sorry – I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Don’t worry about it a bit, Adrian,” I said.
This man I had so obsessed over didn’t even know my name.
Things got weirder. Four days later, an email arrived. “Finding work dreary. There’s a lot of sighing and internet distraction. Coffee! Soon?”
“Name the day and the time and I’ll be there” I said. Andrew didn’t reply. I messaged him again. “That catch-up coffee: let’s have it today. Let’s have it right now if you’re free.”
So we met. He told me he’d been suffering a bad case of the blues. He’d been Googling cheap houses in the hills in south-east Spain. He’d decided to do it: he was going to up sticks and move overseas, country of residence to be determined. He could work anywhere there was internet provision. Perhaps he’d find someone, a woman, in the town he moved to, he said. It might turn out to be fate.
I told him about people I know who live abroad and my own period of living overseas, and how homesickness had been a huge, unanticipated problem. I explained how different my neighbours’ ways of thinking had proved to be, how unbridgeable the gap had seemed. I told him jokingly of all the things I thought he’d miss in his idyllic new life in the sun. He said all these problems were just what he needed to feel more alive.
I went home and began tidying old files off my laptop. There was a folder into which I’d copied and saved the profiles of men I’d messaged, so that I’d know what they said about themselves and what their interests were if we began talking to one another. They were all out of date, from last year, and it was time to bin them. As I was putting one of these into the trash, I realised that it was the profile of a man who looked rather like Andrew.
I read the profile I’d copied into my laptop folder. The man who looked like Andrew was 6ft 4in, ex-military, silver-haired, self-employed, single. He wrote that he was generous and considerate. He was looking for a woman he couldn’t help falling in love with. She would be optimistic, individualistic, good at conversation, perceptive and kind. He wanted someone to flirt with, to travel with, to have adventures with. He invited women to be bold and email him.
I’d made a note that I’d written to him and had also made a copy of the letter in case he wrote back. It was a warm and funny letter that he hadn’t bothered to reply to. This had all happened more than a year ago.
I remembered him now. I remembered the excitement when I found him and the instant attraction. I’d tried twice, sent a follow-up note and he’d ignored me. I went online, back to the site. There were new, better pictures. He didn’t just look like Andrew – it was Andrew. Andrew was one of the men I’d written to and who hadn’t replied. And I hadn’t realised all the time I was talking to him in the coffee shop. All those hours.
This grim news began to seem funny. I didn’t want a date with him any more. The infatuation had come to an end, as abruptly as it began. The next time I saw him at the cafe, I said: “Here’s something that’ll make you laugh. I’ve just realised that we’re on the same dating site and that I messaged you once, a long time ago.”
“Oh really?” he said, on alert.
“Yes! I messaged you and you didn’t reply. How hilarious is that?” He didn’t look amused. “How’s it going?” I asked him. “It’s going fine,” he said.
I don’t know you at all, do I, Andrew, I thought. I’m not sure I’d know you even if I knew you for a very long time.
• Stella Grey is a pseudonym
