Anyway, even if they don’t, I don’t want him.

So, there are a lot of don’ts, and I am normally more of a do person. But I just want a date with a normal guy.

My big problem is I don’t know: a. where to find him, or b. what to say if I do, or c. how to tell if he’s interested (as D. B. Tricket will confirm).

So, finding a date online had seemed like a good idea. I thought I would have some control, and also wouldn’t have to rely on my dodgy ability to read body language. Normally I don’t have an issue with this. I can tell if somebody wants me to piss off, sit down, leave them alone or help – which is why I love working in a shop so much. But my wires just seem to get crossed, or totally fused together, in a potential-attraction situation. Or, well, any one-on-one with a man in a social situation. I get flustered, I panic, I lose my ability to string together sentences, I cannot act like a normal human being.

It is beginning to annoy me.

Using an app, though, I thought I could check for compatibility at least, get the basic niceties out of the way, and we’d both turn up for our first date because we wanted to be there.

Seems I was wrong.

I am now even more annoyed.

***

This bar is a bit like a hotel, with a steady trickle of customers coming and going – but not staying for long. Which leaves me feeling even worse. It isn’t the type of place I’d normally come on my own (to be honest I don’t do bars on my own), it isn’t even the type of bar I’d come to with Robbie, or Bea. It’s a bit brash, loud, trying a bit too hard to impress.

Trendy shiny stools and uncomfortable seats that don’t let you slump, carefully dimmed lights that are supposed to create ambience but just feel false. Not me at all. I’m more a chilled, take me as you find me type of person.

My prosecco, like me, has lost its bubbles. I knock back what is left, and stare at Gabe’s profile and have to admit it feels a bit like I’ve been kicked in the gut. He’s not shown up for our date. Our first date.

Second date I might have been able to stomach (unless I’d really been into him), but first date? Really? He hasn’t even given me a chance.

Bastard.

It’s that feeling you get when you’re six years old and can’t see your mum in the audience at the school Nativity.

He has ruined my master plan. He has let me down, just when I thought I was about to make some progress and come out of what Bea calls my ‘hermit shell home’. I’ve been trying, I really have, and I thought this was it.

Gabe Stevenson. Blue eyes, dark hair. Age 32 and ¾ (I’d thought that was cute; who doesn’t like a guy with a sense of humour?).