Claire Battershill - Circus

HENRY BOTTLESWORTH HAS GIVEN HIMSELF thirty-one days to find love on the Internet. For the past ten years, his friends and relations have been setting him up with their co-workers, friends of friends, sisters friends, former schoolmates, and second cousins. Henry has dutifully attended every date and allowed himself a carefully measured dose of optimism each time. He always takes note of buffed fingernails, a well-loved purse, or a hand-knit scarf and saves these details for later, just in case. Too polite to refuse his friends matchmaking efforts, he has sat through more silences punctuated by bouts of awkward eating than he cares to count.

Henry has, with time and experience, learned a thing or two about the culinary ins and outs of first dates. Sushi, for instance, invites a rice explosion. Ordering a saucy noodle dish or a dressing-laden salad is asking for a spill, and Chinese broccoli is impossible to eat all in one bite without losing ones dignity. In his own way, Henry has become an expert in the etiquette of courtship:

Never wear a white shirt.

Never arrive early.

Never arrive late.

Never ask about previous relationships.

Never forget to bring your wallet.

Always keep mints or gum in your pocket.

These are common-sense rules, and most people seem to emerge from the womb knowing them. Henry, however, has educated himself solely through trial and error, with a heavy emphasis on error. Sometimes, though, he learned more than one lesson on a single date. Sushi, therefore, is forever associated with the memory of spending an entire evening attempting to conceal a soy sauce stain on the breast pocket of his white button-down by crossing his arms in an uncomfortably lofty position over his chest, followed by the shame of reaching into his back pocket to find it empty of both wallet and gum. Not that minty-fresh breath would have really been necessary at that point. The Age of Matchmaking, hes decided, has now come to an end.

On one particularly embarrassing occasion Henrys younger brother Charles was careless in his role as Cupid, and forgot to tell both Henry and Bachelorette #1 Penelope, who had just moved to London from Minneapolis to begin her degree in anthropology that they had been invited to his flat in order to be set up. Henry spent most of the evening in the kitchen, occupying himself by sipping gin from a plastic cup, nibbling on cheese-and-onion-flavoured crisps, and pouring drinks for first-year students who assumed he was a hired bartender, rather than dancing in sock feet in his brothers living room with a rabble of sweaty eighteen-year-old strangers. Penelope, on the other hand, had literally let her hair down, and was bouncing up and down in the middle of the crowd of bodies, whipping her long, messy curls about to the rhythm of Common People as if she were in an advert for volumizing shampoo. Charles would not give up on the idea of pairing them, however, and kept physically pushing the two together until Penelope and Henry finally bumped foreheads in the kitchen doorway, leaving him with an unsightly goose egg above his left eyebrow and her with a mild concussion. Accidental head-butts do not often lead to intimacy, but in the decade since that party, Penelope and Henry have become the kind of friends whose hearts leap for each other, so that they just have to sit close together, Pennys head resting on Henrys shoulder, to be perfectly content.

That first night, he had fetched some ice and wrapped it up in a tea towel to apply to her forehead, and theyd sat on the stairs leading out of Charless flat. Penelope leaned on his shoulder and twirled her index finger around a strand of her hair, and told him over and over again that she would probably leave soon, but made no motions to go until he stood up himself. Henry had liked her from the start, and for whatever reason she was fond of him, too, even if it was somehow clear to both of them from their first meeting that romance was not a possibility.

Since blind dates failed to lead to actual amorousness, Henry finally swore off them. For a time, he had given up on love altogether in pursuit of other fine things in life. He homebrewed beer in his bathtub, obsessively cultivated a small lemon tree that he impulse-purchased at a street market, took daytrips to stately homes operated by the National Trust on weekends, and pondered the minor everyday concerns of his job a reasonably respectable position in the Foreign Office. Its not that hes discontented being on his own the hobbies are certainly fulfilling its simply that he has now decided to try his hand at Internet dating, within sensible limits.

One month is the free-trial period for the matchmaking website run by a London newspaper. While Henry has unshakeable faith in his new quest for love, he doesnt want it to become an unhealthy preoccupation, nor does he wish to pay the absurd fee of twenty-five pounds and sixty pence per month for the privilege of using a website. He chose the month of October, with its thirty-one full days, in order to get the most out of his free trial. Even in a leap year, February is not a good choice. Then theres the additional minefield of Valentines Day, to be avoided on first dates and in the delicate early days of a relationship. No indeed. October is optimal. There is the added bonus that, this being London, it will probably rain every single day in October, so Henry hopes to have the opportunity to perform some act of gallantry by sharing his jacket or umbrella, or carrying his date across a puddle to save her shoes.

On the last day of September, Henry asks Penny to meet for coffee so he can tell her all about his scheme. She is one friend who has never played the matchmaking game with him. Her first question is a surprise. It turns out that just as in the early days of his dating education he hadnt anticipated the perils of soggy salad and unruly noodles, he also hasnt considered some of the basic principles of Internet-dating strategy.

What are you going to do about a photo?

A photo?

You need a picture, right? A thin moustache made of milk appears briefly on her upper lip before she licks it off.

Oh, I hadnt really given it any thought.

The photo is the heart of the dating profile, Henry. She pauses to drink her latte and tries not to giggle. With the right photo you can say it all: are you fun, are you serious, are you handsome, are you thin, are you fat, are you nerdy, are you carefree, are you charming, are you quirky? What are you? It can give you everything or take it all away.

Is that not a bit superficial? There are loads of questions, and one even receives compatibility scores. Surely, those are the answers that matter?

Not if the photo sucks.

In the ensuing silence, Henry tries to think of the most flattering camera angles and finds he is unfailingly picturing himself in a trilby hat, although he has never worn one in his life. He takes a slow bite of his croissant and gazes at Penny as pleadingly as he can. She taps his shin under the table with the toe of her boot.

You know, some people have professional consultations about this stuff. There are services for that now.

Honestly?

Not that Im suggesting you need to do that. Im just saying that its a big deal, and what you definitely cant do, though I can tell that youre thinking about it, is leave out the photo. Anything theyre left to imagine will be more horrifying than you could possibly ever look in a photograph.