It’s like confidence and that innit? You don’t mind people looking and that. I like my women a bit more quiet.

Right. I’m too confident?

A bit, yeah. Sorry if I’m affending you or whatever but you asked!

How could Penny be ‘accused’ of being ‘too confident’ when literally her lack of confidence is what meant she was asking this man for feedback about herself in the first place? She started to type a response. At first she tried to make a joke about it, but then she hit the delete button and re-typed outrage at such blatant misogyny instead. She deleted that, too. Penny sat and stared at her phone and tried to reason with what she’d advise anyone else to do. If a friend told her they’d texted a date that didn’t work out to ask for ‘feedback’ what would she say?

She took a breath.

‘Bollocks to this,’ she declared, and swiped left on the message thread to hit ‘delete’. Then she went to contacts and hit the ‘i’ by Cristian’s name, scrolling down to block his number.

‘That’s better!’ she avowed out loud, a feeling of relief washing over her that she might have lost perspective for a moment, but she’d pulled it back from the brink. She certainly wouldn’t be telling Clementine about this slip in judgement. There was nothing wrong with her. If Cristian didn’t fancy her that was, like Stuart had pointed out, Cristian’s problem.

Admittedly, it was a shame that Cristian’s problem left Penny as the one on her own.

She put her phone back into her trouser pocket and stood to go back inside. She wasn’t going to worry about Cristian, and she certainly wasn’t going to get her knickers in a twist over the delivery man from this morning, either, who’d no doubt be yet another in a long string of anticlimaxes. No. It was better to swear off men altogether for a bit. She could always go on another wellness retreat, or buy a new vibrator, instead. Perhaps she’d finally join the Netball team at the leisure centre. Anything but men. Just for a little while. Maybe what she’d said to Stuart was right – that she’d plough on with her life single, and truly start preparing to find a surrogate. At least that way she’d be protected from dating disappointment. Trying to stay hopeful was costing her emotional wellbeing way too much. Couldn’t there be more to life than trying to find a bloody man?

2

‘Well hello, you,’ Penny’s best friend Sharon said in her thick Irish accent as Penny climbed into the backseat of their Uber. ‘Who are you out to impress tonight? You look – well, there’s no other word for it – sensational.’