Owen looks at Bryn, questioningly.

  ‘I’m talking about war, Owen. Are you in?’

  Owen lies on his back on his single bed. He stares upwards at the ceiling, eight feet overhead. Strands of cobweb dance about up there, blown by the draught from the window. It is midnight. He is tired, but he cannot sleep.

  Every moment of his night out with Bryn is playing and replaying through his thoughts. Bryn’s words roll about his mind like an upended bucket of marbles, skittering about deafeningly.

  Even now, two hours after getting home, an hour after getting into bed, Owen cannot quite fathom the meaning behind Bryn’s words. Bryn was unclear, his thought processes didn’t seem to keep pace with his words, he seemed a bubbling geyser of ideas and anger and excitement and purpose, without any clear focus or intent. The one key thing he kept coming back to was the idea of a revolution.

  Eventually he’d passed Owen a small pot of pills, with the words, ‘If you can’t get it legally, then just fucking take it. While they’re sleeping.’

  Owen had looked back at Bryn. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you do understand,’ said Bryn. ‘You totally understand.’

  He sat back, his arms folded across his chest. He eyed Owen triumphantly for a second and then leaned in again. ‘Imagine,’ he said, ‘a whole army of us lot doing this. Hundreds of us. Do you see? Do you see?’

  Owen felt his lunch rising gently up the back of his throat.

  Bryn leaned in even closer and looked at him urgently. ‘This isn’t about sex, you know that, don’t you? This is about us. Fuck, if we were an endangered animal there’d be a charity out there doing everything they could to keep us alive. They’d be sending us every fucking fertile female animal they could throw our way to preserve our species. So why should we be any different? Why should we get a worse deal than a fucking animal, Owen?’

  He steepled his fingers and looked at Owen across the tips.

  They’d left the pub a minute or two later. ‘Think about it,’ had been Bryn’s parting words. Owen had watched him leaping up the steps to Euston station, two at a time, quite nimble, his crazy curls bouncing up and down, the worn-down backs of his shoes flashing in and out of sight.

  Owen sits up now, and logs into one of the incel chat rooms that he’s been frequenting since he started following Bryn’s blog.

  He found these forums reassuring at first. There has not been one day of Owen’s life when he has woken up and felt OK about his aloneness. Not one day when he hasn’t glanced at a couple on the street and wanted to scream in their faces about the unjustness of it all. And he was so relieved to find that he wasn’t the only man in the world who felt the way he did.

  But now Owen thinks of the stain on Bryn’s coat, juxtaposed against the arrogance of what he thinks the world owes him and he looks again at the forum and imagines, hiding behind the avatars and grandiose user names, a sea of Bryns with stained jackets and unkempt hair and ridiculous rape fantasies, and he finds himself feeling sorry for these men; maybe, he thinks, they simply don’t deserve nice women.

  And now he wonders if maybe there’s not anything wrong with him after all. That maybe he’s just been in the wrong headspace, that he’s just been overthinking it all these years. The answer, he suddenly realises, is not Bryn’s pathetic war against the world, the answer is making peace with himself.

  He reaches down to the floor by his bed for his phone. He switches it on and swipes the screen, looking for the little red flame logo of the Tinder app.

  18

  It’s 7 p.m. on Valentine’s Day and Owen puts on a dark navy crew-neck jumper with a white shirt underneath. He can’t quite get the collar to sit right and it looks a little scruffy, but he’s running out of time so it will have to do. His hair is all wrong, but that’s par for the course. He wears a smart blazer over his sweater and chinos, mainly to try to camouflage his wide hips.

  Owen is taking a woman out for dinner. A woman he met on Tinder three nights ago. He’s tried the Tinder approach to meeting women before but it never worked out for him, nothing more than a run of excruciating exchanges with women who weren’t even particularly good-looking, and which he handled, he felt in retrospect, quite badly.

  But he was a different person then, more brittle, less world-weary. He’d pinned too much on each encounter, set his hopes way too high. If his weird interlude with Bryn had done one thing for him, it was to reset his idea of romance. Anything that wasn’t date-rape now seemed like a good thing.

  The woman is called Deanna. She’s thirty-eight, lives in Colindale and works in marketing for a direct-mail company. She has a ten-year-old son and a face like a sincere apology for something that really isn’t her fault. None of her photos show her body from the shoulders down which suggests that she might be overweight. But that’s fine. Owen doesn’t mind.

  He crosses paths with one of Tessie’s friends as he exits his bedroom, a man called Barry who sometimes stays the night, but often doesn’t. Barry reeks of very strong aftershave and is wearing a handkerchief in the top pocket of an expensive-looking grey woollen jacket.

  ‘Good evening, Owen,’ he says gruffly.

  ‘Hello, Barry,’ he replies.

  Tessie appears from the sitting room and looks strangely at Owen. ‘You look very smart,’ she says suspiciously. ‘Where are you off to?’

  Owen reaches for his coat and pushes his arms into the sleeves. ‘I’m going to meet a friend.’

  Tessie pulls a mustard-coloured scarf from the hook in the hallway and starts wrapping it around her neck. Her demeanour softens. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘A friend. A red roses and chocolates kind of a friend?’

  ‘No,’ he says firmly, not wanting to give anything of his private life to Tessie that she might one day throw back at him. ‘Nothing like that. Just a friend.’

  She sighs. Then she says, ‘Owen. Are you … well, do you have any interest in women? Or men? I mean, I’m sorry if that seems intrusive, but you’re – what are you now? Thirty-five?’

  ‘I’m thirty-three.’

  ‘You’re thirty-three. You’ve lived here since you were eighteen. And in all that time …’ She leaves the end of the thought hanging, like a loose thread.

  Owen decides to pretend that it wasn’t said. He picks up an umbrella and says, ‘You going out too?’

  ‘Yes, Barry’s taking me to Villa Bianca. Have fun with your friend.’

  She pulls a lipstick from a drawer in the console, twists it up and puckers in the mirror. He hears the lipstick smack of her lips as he pulls the door closed behind him.

  On the Tube Owen tries to stifle his nerves. He can feel damp patches developing in the armpits of his shirt, his forehead feels clammy and he suspects he looks quite shiny. He exits the Tube at Covent Garden and greedily breathes in the cold, damp night air. Glancing at his phone he sees a message from Deanna.

  It says: Here early! At a table near the back!

  Owen gulps.

  Why is she early? Who on earth turns up early for a date with someone they met on Tinder? He picks up his pace, annoyed that now he is going to get even hotter and arrive even more flustered and unkempt than he already feels. People get in his way as he tries to negotiate his way up Neal Street and he tuts at them and shoulders past them.

  Then he is there: a jolly Italian restaurant, lots of red and white, walls hung with black and white photos of dead Italian film stars eating spaghetti. It’s full. The woman at the desk says, ‘Have you made a reservation?’ and he says, ‘Yes, Pick, eight p.m.’

  ‘Ah yes, your companion is already here.’

  Owen clears his throat, touches his hair again, straightens his jacket, follows the woman through the winding path between the tables until he is there. In front of her.

  Owen says, ‘Hi. Deanna?’

  And she immediately says, ‘It’s De-ahna. Not De-anna.’

  He says, ‘Oh. Sorry.’ Then he says, ‘I’m Owen.’

  ‘I guessed,’ she says. She’s smiling but Owen can’t work out if she’s being facetious or not.

  ‘Shall I sit down?’ he asks.

  She nods and rubs awkwardly at the tips of her elbows.

  He realises he should have kissed her, or shaken hands with her, or something like that, but she threw him off completely with her correction of the pronunciation of her name and now he feels as though he’s fallen off the tracks and can’t get back on them. It has been at least ten seconds since either he or Deanna said something and he sees Deanna staring at him, strangely.

  ‘Are you OK,’ she says, ‘or …?’

  Her eyes go to the door and he thinks that she is suggesting that they should maybe cut the date short, that it has already gone so wrong, in under a minute, that they should end it now. He sighs and lets his shoulders drop. And then he does something quite out of character, because he feels so very much like he has nothing left to lose.

  From a soft, open part of his psyche that he barely knew existed, he says, ‘I’m really sorry. I’m a bit … nervous.’

  She smiles encouragingly.

  He says, ‘In fact, I’m very nervous. Unbelievably nervous.’

  Her face softens completely now and she says, ‘Well, then, that makes two of us.’

  And now Owen looks at her, properly, for the first time since he walked into the restaurant and he sees a pleasant-looking woman, possibly not as smooth-skinned as the woman in the photographs on the screen of his phone, eyes possibly not as bright or quite as blue, jawline a little less sculpted. But it is her, recognisably her, and she is looking at him playfully, as though wanting him to say something else. His mind immediately empties and he blanches but she laughs and it’s not a laugh of derision or humiliation, it’s a laugh of kindness, a laugh that says, ‘Look at us, on a Tinder date, isn’t this nuts?’

  A waiter arrives to take an order for drinks.

  Owen thinks of the money sitting in his bank account, the money he never spends, and while Deanna peruses the wine list he looks at her and says, ‘Champagne?’

  He sees immediately that he has hit a jackpot of some description, that Deanna is the type of woman to respond very positively to the suggestion of champagne. She opens her mouth to say something and he opens his mouth and finds himself saying, ‘My treat.’

  She smiles and says, ‘Well, in that case then,’ and closes her wine list.

  They spend some time discussing what to eat and then Deanna looks up at Owen and says, ‘You know, you look better in real life than you do in your online pics.’

  Owen smiles, almost laughs, and says, ‘Wow, thank you. That photo was probably the best photo I’ve ever seen of myself, so …’

  There’s a short silence and Owen realises what he’s supposed to do. He clears his throat and he says, ‘You look much prettier, too.’

  It’s not entirely true; she doesn’t. But she’s certainly far from ugly. Her photos were not dishonest.

  ‘Thank you,’ she says.

  ‘Your hair is a lovely colour.’

  It is a lovely colour, a kind of brittle toffee shade, with blonder bits at the ends.

  ‘Takes three hours in the salon,’ she says, touching the tips. ‘I’m naturally mousey.’

  ‘Mice are good, too,’ he says. And she tips her head back and laughs.

  A waiter appears with their champagne and makes them feel suitably special as he arranges an ice bucket and chilled, misted glasses in front of them. He shows Owen the bottle and Owen knows that he is to nod, just once and say, ‘That’s good,’ even though he can’t remember the last time he had champagne.

  When the champagne is poured, they touch their glasses together and Deanna says, ‘Cheers. Here’s to Tinder sometimes getting it right.’

  Owen blinks. Then he smiles. ‘To Tinder, sometimes getting it right.’

  He glances about himself, briefly. All around are couples. He wonders how many are on first dates. He wonders how many met on Tinder. He wonders how many are virgins. She sees him looking and says, ‘Nice restaurant. Well chosen.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he says. ‘It’s just a chain, but you know, Valentine’s night, beggars can’t be …’

  ‘… choosers.’ She completes his sentence for him and they catch each other’s eyes and smile again.

  ‘So,’ she says, ‘how’s your day been?’

  ‘Oh, pretty boring really. Got up late. Mooched about. I’m just kind of enjoying my freedom for now.’

  He explained his current work situation to Deanna during one of their online chats, veering away from the aspects that reflect badly on him and playing up the aspects that made her say, Oh honestly, you can’t say anything these days, can you?

  ‘I don’t blame you,’ says Deanna, now. ‘That’s exactly what I’d be doing in your position. I am so tightly strapped to the treadmill that it’s not even funny. Up at six every day, on the bus with Sam to breakfast club – he’s usually the first one there, poor soul – another bus to the Tube station, desk by eight thirty, eight hours of utter tedium, Tube, bus, collect Sam from after-school club, bus home, cook dinner, homework, housework, bed. Every single day. I would give anything for a break. For a chance to jump off the treadmill for a while. See what else life might be able to offer me. I mean, I know it’s shitty that your employers have let you go without a fight, but wow, just some time to breathe, some time to be yourself.’

  Owen says, ‘What about your son’s father? Does he never help out?’

  ‘He’s dead,’ she says, her voice catching.

  Owen gulps. Not the feckless undeserving bastard he’d assumed but a dead man. ‘I’m really sorry,’ he says. ‘Really, really sorry.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you know. It’s been way longer that he’s been dead than that I knew him. We were only together for a couple of years. He died nine years ago. It’s a strange statistic. Hard to know how to feel about it really. And what about you? Have you ever been married? Anything like that?’

  He shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘Nothing like that.’

  She smiles at him, knowingly, as though she sees him and his loneliness and his desperation but is not put off by it. As though she has met someone like him before.

  Their food arrives: tagliatelle al ragù for Owen, a seafood risotto for Deanna.

  ‘I’m having a really nice time,’ she says.

  Owen pauses, his fork halfway to his mouth. He puts down the fork and he looks at Deanna, and with a hint of wonder in his voice, he says, ‘Yes. Me too.’

  19

  On the Tube on the way home, Owen feels a plume of pleasure rising through his physiology; he pictures it as pink ink blooming over wet cartridge paper. He is being reconstituted somehow, and all because a nice, slightly overweight lady from Colindale talked to him as though he was a human being for an evening.

  He’s a little drunk too, which is adding to his sense of well-being. Deanna, it transpired, was a fast drinker, faster than him, and he’d had to race to keep up with her. The champagne had disappeared in under forty minutes, after which they’d shared a bottle of wine and when that had gone, before their desserts arrived, they’d each ordered a cocktail. Owen can’t remember now what his was called, but it had tequila in it and tasted like smoke.

  He’s drunk enough and happy enough not to feel other people’s eyes upon him on the strip-lit Tube carriage. He doesn’t feel jealous of the loved-up couples clutching single red roses swarming the streets. He doesn’t feel angry when people walk across him or fail to let him through. He doesn’t care if they can see him or not, because, for a full three hours this evening, he has been seen.

  Owen replays the night over and over in his mind’s eye: the easy exchanges, the kind look in Deanna’s eye, the way she kept touching her hair, nodding encouragingly at him when he was talking about himself, the slowness at the end of the night, as though she was trying to delay its finale.

  As he climbs the hill back to his house the air is icy sharp. A couple pass by, holding hands, the woman clutching a posy of red flowers. They smell of wine. Owen almost says something to them, something like ‘Happy Valentine’s, fellow lovers!’ but thinks better of it and stops himself with just a second to spare.

  Owen stifles a laugh and turns left. He passes a man walking a small white dog. The man says, ‘Good evening,’ making Owen jump slightly.

  ‘Oh,’ he manages to toss over his shoulder, just a beat too slow, ‘evening.’ He’s walked past this man and his dog a hundred times over the years and this is the first time he’s ever said hello. Owen smiles to himself.

  Around the next corner he sees a woman. She has hair the colour of sand and wears a brown coat that ties up at the waist. She’s looking at her phone. As he gets closer, he can see that she’s pretty, very, very pretty. Probably pretty enough to be a model. Owen’s defences automatically go up, as they always do when he is confronted with extreme female beauty. He averts his gaze and veers across the pavement, trying to clear her a path, but she is too busy looking at her phone to notice and wanders straight towards him. He tries to make room for her by moving the other way, but she moves too and suddenly they are standing face-to-face only a foot or so apart and she looks up from her phone and straight at him and he sees it there, utter, utter fear.