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  “Mom, I'm standin' outside, I don't have a pen, and anyway I have her number, on my mobile—”

  But all to no avail. His mother reeled off the numbers and Rob repeated them back to her, one by one, consigning each one directly and uselessly to the void.

  “You have it now Robert?”

  “Yeah, I got it. Cheers.”

  “Good then. Well, I won't keep you, you're probably out living it up somewhere.”

  That was abrupt, her finishing up so quickly like that. A possible reason for that occurred to him. She must have found out that calling to a mobile in another country cost a fair bit more than calling a landline. A handy loophole, if ever he needed it. Onto the “remember” list it went, right beside denim jacket lady.

  “Absolutely, I'll call her before Monday, ye can count on it!”

  She put the phone down at her end and Rob stared at the glowing end of his cigarette. Karen was coming here already? He hadn't even started looking for a place to put her! Well, to be honest, he never thought she'd make it this far, but now that she'd packed actual suitcases, it looked like this whole thing might happen. Rob knew there was a spare mattress in the basement, and a place for her to put her toothbrush, but those were the full extent of his preparations.

  It was terrible timing though, right when he needed to work on the website. He'd never get a thing done with her around, and he had to, he just had to, if he wanted to avoid being a bloody code-monkey for the rest of his days.

  Feeling he had to do something, he sent her a quick text message.

  So you're packed, on your way? What's the story? When you arriving?

  That would have to do for the moment. He stubbed out his cigarette on the wall and straightened his belt. Now it was time to procure that pint and see if the denim lady was still there, and still in the mood for smiling at him. Possibly, if things went well, from underneath. Or even above. Rob wasn’t fussy.

  Before putting the mobile away he scanned the screen, but saw no missed calls or new messages. Not from Eoin, or Andy, or Karen, and most definitely not from Kajsa. He shoved the mobile into his back pocket and headed back into the warmth and buzz of the bar.

  No messages, that was fine. Just how he liked it. It sure bloody well was.

  Rob's phone beeped as he was heading up the stairs to his apartment at two-twenty in the morning. It was from Karen. As he read it he came to a full stop with his feet on two different steps. He shook his head, not sure if his confusion was due to his current state, or to the contents of the message. So he read it again, slowly, muttering the words to himself.

  Be seeing me in few weeks. Mother might have different ideas. Play along? If she asks about me, put a cork in it, not lie, just play along. Please? Promise? All fine. Cya soon!

  He pressed his free hand against the wall. Play along? How so, and with what? What “different ideas” did she mean? And what was all that about lying to the mother, she who should on no account be lied to?

  He pulled out a cigarette and staggered on to the door of his flat, wondering just what his distracted sister was playing at, and how he'd manage to stay out of the firing line if the mother found out about it.

  Or, more precisely, when.

  Chapter 13

  Eoin sat out the last Friday of June in the office and watched the desperate women swarming on Diamond Date. They were really biting and Eoin had rarely felt so popular. In a few short hours it would be the weekend and they were all trying their best to fix a Friday evening date, just so they could all avoid feeling like complete losers.

  The Friday Frenzy was what Andy called it. Standards were being dropped right across the board and Eoin suddenly found himself running three simultaneous conversations with women who all looked pretty good. It was unprecedented, and as he worked on another mail to Majblomman02 he wondered what they saw in him specifically to warrant this sudden burst of pre-weekend attention.

  He clicked up his profile photo and stared at it. Staring back at him was an average-sized, black-haired, brown-eyed Irishman sporting a prominent nose and a forced smile. Alice always said his nose gave him distinction but Eoin just thought it looked big. Other than that, he thought he looked pretty average.

  Thinking of Alice, he glanced down at Skype and saw she was still offline, and that was very unusual. She was home today with a sick kid (he had been informed after a wander up to Human Resources) but even then she was generally online at some stage. It just didn't feel right and Eoin didn't like it when things didn't feel right with Alice.

  She had been his sole support throughout his separation from Jenny, and possibly the only person in Sweden he would classify as a close friend. He understood if she needed some space to ponder this thing about Andy, but he missed her exuberance and smutty sense of humour and even her incessant badgering about him calling Anja.

  He hadn't called Anja. He'd definitely do it later.

  Majblomman02 replied and Eoin read it with a smile.

  Nothing, just ironing my underwear, playing with the cat. You have plans for the weekend?

  Eoin wrestled with the idea of doing a daring joke involving the word “pussy”. His fingers hovered over the keys but then his smile faded. What would be the point in adding another woman to his current mix? It would short-circuit his brain entirely.

  I'm off now to pick up my son, it'll be ice-cream and kids films for me this weekend. Have a good one!

  It was only two in the afternoon but the office was dead, and it wouldn't get any less dead from him staring at it. So he shut down his computer, grabbed his things and headed off. Ice-cream and a kid's film sounded just the ticket.

  “Pappa!” Damien waved his plastic spade in the air until one of the day-care staff gently reminded him to put it down before somebody lost an eye. The yard blazed with sunlight and the kids were dashing about as always in a crazy blur of noise and colour. The staff were standing in the midst of all that chaos with that look of preternatural calm that only people who work with small children can pull off.

  It was a lovely scene and Eoin found himself itching to take some photos. Unfortunately the only camera he had on him was the terrible one in his mobile. In fact, he didn’t actually have a good camera at all any more. Jenny had kept the nice Nikon they'd bought together, despite him being the only one who'd ever used it.

  She had also kept his best photos from Damien’s first two years of life, which he'd stupidly forgotten to take down from the living room wall or even copy from their computer before he left. He thought about them on occasion and felt annoyed and frustrated, but had decided there was little he could do about it now. He didn’t need yet another thing to fight about with Jenny.

  He had a quick chat with two of the staff and they marked Damien off their list. The boy himself was holding onto his hand and bouncing up and down, possibly aware this was his last day before his four weeks (or was it five) of summer holidays. There were no cute moms to look at but Eoin was glad of that as he wasn't in the mood for flirting. This was Friday with Damien and there were traditions to be followed and drooling over cute moms wasn't one of them.

  They went inside to get Damien’s little rucksack, packed with a few essential knick-knacks for his weekend stay with his dad. The very fact that this little travel bag existed at all was sad. What a strange and splintered way to grow up, for Damien and all those other kids in Sweden who were bounced from one parent to another like letters with the wrong address on them.

  Damien continued to babble as they left the day-care—these days he rarely stopped talking except to sleep—and he swung his dad's arm as they proceeded to their first stop, the Filmland video store.

  Damien knew the routine and he ran in and positioned himself in front of the kid's films with a contemplative frown. He pulled out four or five DVDs that he liked the look of and sat on the floor to study the back of each one. Eoin's job was to stand behind him, shove him out of the way if somebody wanted to pass, and gently point out which ones he'd seen before,
which Damien would then fervently deny.

  The next stop was the little shop around the corner from their tunnelbana station. Here they bought some sweets and a small bag of crisps each, saying goodbye to the owner's ancient Labrador as they left. After that they hurried home, strolling past lightly-dressed youngsters who were on their way to some sunny spot with pizzas and bags of beer-cans to celebrate the weekend.

  Eoin glanced at them and wondered if they realised they were enjoying the most carefree days of their lives. Did they know that in a year or three or five it would all be over and would never return? Or perhaps they were completely right not to think about it. Maybe it was best to just enjoy the moment while it lasted.

  They reached the flat where Damien kicked off his shoes and charged straight for the bed. It was a compact apartment and when Damien was staying Eoin gave the boy his own bed while he slept on the fold-out sofa. There wasn't really space for any other solution.

  Damien hauled out the plastic box of toys from underneath the bed and started tossing them around while Eoin went off to the kitchen to plan dinner. Dinner when Damien was around had to be something that Damien approved of. There had been great plans when he'd been little to serve him casseroles and quiches and home-made bread. Those plans had collapsed in fatigue and endless moaning so now most dinners involving Damien tended to be a mix of things he liked, things he possibly liked, and things he might be bribed into trying with chocolate.

  Eoin took out the things for dinner and arranged them on the counter-top—a few pork hot dogs, pasta, cream, tinned corn, carrots, garlic and parsley. Then he sat down by his laptop and had a quick look at Diamond Date.

  There was one new mail, but not from a very interesting person. He read through it quickly and decided it wasn’t worth replying so he closed the laptop. He poured a glass of wine and sipped at it while he stared out the window, lost in erotic daydreams.

  This took him nicely to six, at which time he got up and turned on the children's TV programs. Damien abandoned his Lego robot and positioned himself cross-legged in front of the television with his mouth hanging open. There he would remain, essentially not moving, for a glorious forty-five minutes.

  Eoin pictured every child in the country doing the same, while their parents slipped discretely into the bedroom. There was even a phrase in Sweden—Bolibompa sex—for quick and silent sex enjoyed while children’s TV was keeping the wee ones amused. Eoin had only recently realised that the word Bolibompa referred to a children’s TV program and not to the sound the parents were causing their bed to make.

  There would be no secret sex for Eoin. Instead he wondered if now would be the time to send a text to Alice. No, he decided, it was probably better to wait until later, until after she had put her kids to bed. No point in pressuring her, not with a sick kid in the house.

  Around seven (two glasses of wine later) Eoin switched off the box and ushered Damien into the kitchen. Damien climbed onto his chair and gave the food a suspicious once-over. “Wha's this.”

  “It's a hotdog, Damien. With pasta. You like hotdogs.”

  “No ah don't.” He poked it and wrinkled his nose. “Where's bread.”

  Eoin sighed. “There's no bread—”

  “I wan bread,” he said. “Otdog an bread.”

  Eoin managed to reach a compromise whereby the hotdog would be eaten without bread, but only if he cut it into small pieces first (and also covered it in ketchup). Once this had been agreed by all parties, Damien picked up a fork and dinner officially got underway.

  After dinner came the film, concerning animated animals who felt compelled to shriek at each other every three seconds. Damien sat snuggled up against his father and rummaged in his bag of sweets as he watched, somehow managing to be sweet-smelling after a whole day of charging around the dusty yard of the day-care. Eoin sat contented beside him, taking the occasional sweet, and couldn't help nodding off as the film progressed. It kept spinning in his head that maybe he should probably call Alice, text Alice, text Anja, call Alanja…

  That took them neatly to Damien's bedtime and Eoin was anxious to get the boy in there so he could have a few quiet hours before his own bed-time rolled around. He ran through the night time routine in a blaze—clothes, teeth, toilet, book, kiss—and lay in Damien's bed while the boy drifted off, entwined in the skinny green limbs of Frankie the floppy frog.

  When his breath was deep and regular Eoin rose carefully from the bed and padded to the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of water and rubbed his wet fingertips across his eyes. He sat down in front of his laptop with a fresh glass of wine, cracked his fingers and opened Diamond Date.

  There was nothing in his inbox—the Friday Frenzy was officially over. Back to the drawing board then. He went to the search page and specified age, height, online status, kids or no kids. The list of matches came up, arranged alphabetically in a tidy row. He skimmed the profiles, glancing only at the photos for now, and anything of interest he opened in a new tab for later perusal.

  That gave him about twenty ladies to consider. He looked through their profiles more carefully, discarding any who were too serious, too dull, too upbeat, too downbeat, too badly written, or too fond of clichés. That left only three profiles, an attrition rate of fully eighty-five percent.

  Eoin realised his selection rules were possibly a bit harsh but he saw no reason to let his standards slide right at the beginning. He'd been known to relax those rules if a lady mailed him first, as then she clearly possessed a quality he found very endearing in a woman—namely, an interest in him. Still though, listing “war” or “child pornography” without irony in the “things you don't like” column meant that person was out too, regardless of how interested she seemed or how many exclamation marks she had pressed in after the word “sex”.

  Eoin leaned back in the creaky kitchen chair. He stretched his arms and checked the kitchen clock. Twenty past nine, still lots of time to check up on Alice and call Anja. No hurry, he had the whole night ahead of him. He refilled his wine glass (aware he had already consumed slightly more wine that necessary) and opened the first of his three profiles, Mymosa79, for proper, serious study.

  Turn-offs: “Filling in this form”. Well that was vaguely amusing at least. Her perfect holiday was “on a beach somewhere”, her favourite film was “The Shawshank Redemption” and her height was…

  Ah. 175 centimetres. A giantess, in other words, compared to Eoin. Wearing heels that would make her at least 178, towering over any average-sized Irishman and his delicate ego. No, that wouldn't do at all. Next one please.

  The next one, astralla, had a fuzzy photograph showing she was blonde and thin but little else. Eoin gazed at the thumbnail, realising as he did so that she looked familiar. He reached for the wine glass with his left hand and took a mouthful, before moving the pointer over the little image with the right. He clicked on it and as it zoomed up he spluttered into his wine.

  It was Anja, in all her coy and smiling glory.

  Eoin's mind spun until it smoked, analysing and plotting and fretting. Okay, he thought, don't panic, it's not the end of the world. You've found Anja's dating profile, that's all. She's single, she's out there, it's all fine and normal. Nothing to worry about, nothing that a jury of your peers would lock you away for.

  Then it occurred to him that Anja could see the people who'd viewed her profile recently, and therefore see that he'd found her. Still, what was wrong with that? He was also single, so there was nothing for him to feel bad or guilty about. Was there?

  He drank some more wine. Wine would help make sense of things.

  Of course, then Anja would wonder, if Eoin had the time and inclination to be browsing dating sites, why he hadn't yet called her? Wasn't he interested, or was he a creep, and then why shouldn't she tell her hot friend that he was a creep?

  On the other hand, if he mailed her now she'd know he'd only done it because he had been shamed into it, and that was almost as bad.

  It was all t
oo complicated, a moral and ethical cesspool. “Piss,” Eoin said. “Piss, piss, piss.” The contents of his wine glass went down in short order. If only he could ask Alice what to do. But no, Alice was temporarily out of the picture, and he would just have to fix it himself. He nodded with determination. Yes, he would fix it himself, that's exactly what would happen.

  First of all, he needed to look at Anja's profile, so he started with her photo album. There was one photo showing her wearing sunglasses and a cute blue summer dress, and three others showing her on various holidays. There was nothing much on the actual profile, just the usual vapid and non-threatening stuff that many women thought men wanted to read, although with a hint of edgy humour.

  Her guest book was no different than any woman's guest book, sprinkled with comments from men such as “Hi Baby, how are you?” and “You're hot” and even “Let's fuck”. Eoin was embarrassed that there were men out there who were so unbelievably dim. Although, it did make him look like a charming genius in comparison, so it wasn't all bad.

  He checked page two of the guest book, just in case, and suddenly yelped as if he'd been stung by a wasp. Right there, sandwiched between “Nice ass” and “What's up honey?” was a comment from none other than Middle Mum. Eoin pressed his face against the laptop screen until there was no doubt. It was definitely her.

  Middle Mum called herself RosieCotton and in the tiny photograph she was holding what looked like a badminton racket. He saw too that it was a recent comment, from only a few days ago. He leaned back in his chair and tried to focus, realising that this opened up all kinds of new and tangled possibilities.

  So Middle Mum was single and dating, or else in a very complicated relationship. And soon she'd know that Eoin was also active on Diamond Date and had stumbled upon Anja's profile, since Anja would tell her all about it.