Finding Mr Perfectly Fine

Chapter 11

‘Why do you look so depressed?’ Adam says, strolling over to me with the long sleeves of his T-shirt rolled up and his hands stuffed in his pockets. He is smiling in that cocky way of his and looks like relaxation personified. Unlike me. I was up super-early because I’ve been struggling to sleep the past few nights. I even got to the gym before it opened because I was already awake and I needed a distraction. I thought it would help me recover from my horrific meeting with Farook Fudging Chowdhury, but it didn’t. I get the feeling nothing will.

After I dragged my eyes away from his chest, we managed to have a conversation, but it was stilted and forced. He pretty much said that women who didn’t work full-time were lazy, and women who worked but didn’t do all the housework and child-rearing, were also lazy.

‘What’s the point of having a partner if you’re left to do it all alone?’ I said from between clenched teeth, the anger rising in me like hot lava about to erupt.

‘What’s the point of getting married if I’m expected to do housework?’ he retorted. We left soon after and I then spent the remainder of the weekend hiding under my duvet in between texting Hamza and WhatsApping Mo.

Today, I feel mentally and physically exhausted. It’s not Dr Farook’s shitty personality that has got to me, though (although that’s obviously a part of it). It’s more the fact that I wasted so much time on him; filling in that bloody questionnaire, fighting with my mum, enduring a long family meeting to discuss how to go about meeting him, dressing up, pretending to be something I’m not .?.?. I went through all that for a rude, arrogant, chauvinistic and stingy piece of shit who made me feel like something stuck to the bottom of his M&S loafers. The tight-arse even left us with the bill!

‘Just meet him again!’ Mum begged when we got home and Yasmin relayed the entire meeting to her, word for word. Including his very specific expectations of a woman and her place in a marriage.

‘He basically wants an unpaid servant who also works, Mum,’ Yasmin explained patiently as Mum desperately tried to make it out like his demands are normal.

‘All men want women who will take care of them!’ she insisted. ‘Look at your dad. Does he ever lift a finger around the house?’

‘But he doesn’t expect you to work and contribute financially, as well as do it all at home!’ Amina said indignantly, coming to the rescue. ‘This dentist sounds like a complete misogynist! There’s no way Zara can meet him again!’

‘And he was butters,’ Yasmin added. ‘A million times worse than his picture. And God, his voice!’

‘What was it like?’ Amina asked, eager to find out as much bad stuff as possible to add to her growing bag of ammunition.

‘Hoarse. Like he’d spent the morning screaming at underprivileged children in between fag breaks.’

‘You three are unbelievable,’ Mum interjected at that point. ‘He is a dentist and a Choudhury and you’re tearing him to pieces because of his voice? If Little Miss Twenty-nine thinks she can do better, then she’s completely deluded!’

With that parting compliment, she stormed out of the room and slammed the door shut behind her. Now I know where Amina gets her theatrics from.

‘Will a cuppa make you feel better?’ Adam asks, a look of concern on his face when he waits for more details that I don’t provide. I lived through Dr F once and relived it once already. I don’t have the strength to go through it all again.

‘Yes,’ I say in a small voice, still facing away from him. ‘With biscuits, too.’

‘Well tough, I don’t believe in indulging your wallowing,’ he replies, throwing himself into his chair in glee. I decide that ignoring him will be the correct response, so I turn my face away and continue to work. My event is only a fortnight away now, and I have too much to do without the likes of Adam Yazici disturbing me.

I’m in the middle of organising my paperwork – my least favourite part of my job – when a text pings through; a welcome distraction from the all the receipts I’ve been tallying up against an Excel spreadsheet. I take a moment before I check it, wondering if it’s Mo or Hamza and I realise that I’m not quite sure who I’d rather it was. Things have gotten a little repetitive with Mo. The flirting has become boring when it isn’t building up to anything, and he still hasn’t initiated a meeting. I’d rather stay single forever than make the first move with him. There’s something about his confidence that’s unsettling me and a part of me wonders if he’s dating loads of women and waiting to see how things pan out with them before taking the next step with me.

As for Hamza; although our last convo wasn’t exactly great, at least I know he’s interested and isn’t messing me around.

I finally check the text and it’s from Hamza, with a simple, Hey, Zara, what are you up to after work? Wanna go for a coffee? No beating around the bush, no innuendoes, just straight up – a vast contrast to the message I got from Mo last night, which went something like, What are you thinking about? The reply to which he probably assumed was him, but it wasn’t. At that precise moment, I was wondering if I could get away with having three donuts for dinner without Jordan realising.

I don’t reply to Hamza immediately. Instead, I decide to take a lunch break at my desk and reassess the situation once I’m less hangry. I unwrap my sandwich to find that Nani’s prepared me one of my fave Bengali sarnie combos; chilli omelette and ketchup. The omelette is made with eggs, onions, coriander, green chillies and salt and fried in a bit of ghee. The sweet ketchup is a welcome contrast to the spicy omelette and it tastes amazing in a sandwich. Trust me.

‘What are you eating?’ Adam asks, sidling over to me and sitting on my desk. I shove him off.

‘Nuffin’,’ I mumble, my mouth full of food.

‘It doesn’t look like nothing. It looks tasty. Smells it too.’ Then, before I can stop him, he grabs the other half of my sandwich and takes a massive bite out of it.

‘Oi!’ I moan, snatching it back and examining the teeth marks. ‘How am I going to eat the rest of that now that you’ve slobbered all over it? I was proper hungry as well.’

‘You’re always proper hungry.’ He shrugs. ‘And that was bangin’. I didn’t know you could cook.’

‘I can’t. My grandma made it for me.’

‘You having a laugh? Your little old grandma packs your lunch for you?’

‘So what? She likes doing it.’