Bad Date

by Ellery Lloyd

Even if someone at the next table vaguely recognises her, they probably won’t be able to place her, because nobody expects to see Fay Roper in muddy boots and jeans, sharing dough balls in deepest suburbia. She’ll also be entirely makeup-free, with a blond wig on. This date needs to never have happened, as far as anyone else is concerned.

I take a moment to appreciate how good I look—I’ve grown stubble, got coloured contact lenses in, and am wearing a pink T-shirt from a brand called Prada, a surprisingly good colour on me. Then—ignoring the blisters on my heels from my new, 10slightly too-tight Veja trainers—I

I’ve always believed in love at first sight, but I’ve never actually experienced it until now. The only way to describe it is a serene certainty, your soul saying: There you are, at last.

“Where do you live, Francesca?” I ask, as apropos of nothing she smiles sweetly at me again. I pretend not to notice that she has a little fleck of green something on one of her front teeth, just as I pretend I do not already know the answer to the question I have just asked. Just as, all evening, I have been pretending not to know that it is Fay Roper who is sitting across the table from me.

She has always said that fame is the price she’s prepared to pay for doing what she loves, but her son doesn’t owe the world shit.

I don’t like other people seeing the things I write. They get the wrong idea. The police are especially bad for that.

A no will always turn into a yes if you only persist—that’s what my mother always said.

I wonder if Fay even knows that her son has his own YouTube channel. They really should teach kids more in school about online safety, make them aware that any old weirdo could be out there, talking to them.

They’re never subtle, these guys. Not very bright either, most of them. Some even use their own names, or at least reuse the same fake name across accounts—podcast reviews, social media, one-star fake vet reviews. Online Mortal Kombat. That’s how I identified Oliver Sharpe.