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Lucy has a date with Lewis, whom she first matched with on Tinder two years ago but has never met.

(To read from the beginning, click here)

Their first correspondence ended when Lewis cancelled their planned date just a few days before. But now, two years later, they have rematched on another dating app, and have arranged to meet. Lewis has jokingly suggested that since it's two years since they first spoke, this means they're celebrating their second anniversary.

Lucy thinks Lewis is hilarious and might just be her future husband.

They meet in a pub in Hammersmith. The CityMapper app tells her it will take 30 minutes to get there, but CityMapper is clearly aimed at old people and tourists and massively underestimates the speed and efficiency of a hardened Londoner like Lucy.

As a result, she's early.

Bollocks, she thinks. A lady should never be early. So what does she do? Walk around the block a couple of times and come back in ten minutes? Hide in the toilets and touch up her make-up? Nip down the high street to pick up a few essentials in Boots?

In the end she does none of these things. Instead, she heads for the bar and texts Lewis to ask him what he'd like to drink.

It's this kind of behaviour that may well be one of the reasons Lucy is still single. To the core she is practical and fair. If the guy gets to the bar before her, she would expect him to get the first round in, so since she is the first to arrive, she does the same.

It's this same attitude that means she always offers to buy alternate rounds and split the bill. It's the 21st century, after all. She has a job and plenty of disposable income. Nice as it is to be treated, she certainly doesn't expect the guy to pay. Especially not on the first date.

But Lucy has a sneaking suspicion that practical and fair are not actually sexy. The longer she is single, the more she becomes convinced that her brand of independent capability is not actually what guys are looking for. As much as they may complain about high-maintenance girls, and how the fight for equal rights is too one-sided, in reality they want to pay. They want to chase. They want women who seem aloof and unavailable.

Problem is, Lucy is far too impatient to wait for a guy to chase her. And when a guy spends money on her, she feels guilty.

Lucy needs to get a grip.

Five minutes later, Lewis arrives. He's exactly as expected: tall and handsome, with a full head of silvery hair, and actually wearing the red and white checked shirt from one of his photos. It's almost as if he's just stepped right off the screen.

The only downside is that he has something of a middle-aged paunch going on. A clear-as-day squidgy midriff, the product no doubt of too many beers and not nearly enough exercise. As someone who looks after herself and keeps in shape, this is a red flag for Lucy. She's not sure she could be with someone who didn't do regular exercise, and a spare tyre or two is a definite turnoff.

But still. Don't judge Lucy... don't judge.

Lucy hands him his pint and they settle at a nearby table.

"So we meet at last!" Lewis jokes. "Happy anniversary!"

They clink glasses.
"I was going to bring you a present actually," he adds.
"You were? Exciting! What?"
"Well I looked it up, and the official gift for a second anniversary is paper. So here you go..."
He solemnly hands her a paper napkin from off the table.
Lucy pretends to be delighted.

"Amazing! Thank you! But rather embarrassingly I got you the exact same thing! We're so in tune!"
A second paper napkin is handed over.
"So if we make it to three years, what's the next gift?"
Lewis reaches for his phone and looks online. "Let's see... according to Wikipedia there are old and modern ones. The old one for three is leather, the modern one is glass. If we make it to four, you can either have fruit (old) or an electrical item (modern)."
"Think it'd have to depend on what the electrical item was. If you're planning on buying me a washing machine for our fourth anniversary I'm dumping you right now."
Lewis laughs. "Fruit then. I'll get you a banana."
Lucy pulls a face. But she's having fun, and is relieved that the banter seems to be just as good IRL as it was over WhatsApp.

Over a second drink, they chat about their online dating experiences.
"So you were on Plenty of Fish?" Lucy asks. "What was that like?"
"Just an awful lot of boobs and bits," Lewis says with a grimace.
"Sounds right up every guy's street! But then I'm slightly offended that you thought that's where you'd matched with me. Clearly I'm far too classy for that sort of thing."
Lewis pretends to be disappointed.
"So what sort of girls did you meet on there?" Lucy asks. She always likes to hear guys' horror stories. It reassures her that she's still a catch. Comparatively, at least.

He tells her about his two worst online dates. The first was a girl who said she was 5'10 tall and had a pretty face but no full length photos. When she showed up, she was actually 5'5 and wider than she was tall.
"Not that I would have minded the height thing," he clarifies, "but the fact that she lied was a real turn-off."
Lucy wonders if that's really all there was to it.

The second bad date was with a woman who asked him whether he ever wanted to get married. When Lewis replied that he would consider it if he met the right person, she reached into her bag and produced her own wedding planning album - a collection of magazine clippings and fabric swatches that laid out in bonkers overthought detail how she wanted her own wedding to be. As Lewis was new to online dating at this point he didn't realise it was OK for him to leave, so he stayed for over an hour as she talked him through her plans in psychotic detail.

Hearing stories like these makes Lucy angry. If there are so many nutjobs out there, she rages, why the fuck can't I find a decent guy? I'm nice! I'm not psycho! I don't lie about my height or my weight. I don't have a wedding album. I don't send photos of my vagina or bring a friend to the date or throw a strop if something doesn't go my way or do any of the crazy things guys have told me about. Cute, interesting men should be queueing up to date me!

But there's also a little niggling fear in the back of her mind that maybe she's crazy in other ways, and just doesn't realise it. Wedding album girl probably doesn't think what she did was weird. Maybe Lucy too is the subject of some guy's dating horror story.

But at least for now, this date seems to be going OK. So OK, that when Lewis suggests they go for dinner, Lucy accepts. After two large glasses of wine she's a little tipsy, and needs to eat before she says or does something that would be truly worthy of a dating horror story.

They head to Hammersmith's branch of Bill's. Lewis orders something involving fish, and Lucy, who has alcohol munchies, orders a burger. Not the sort of girl to pick at her food in front of a man, that's for sure.

She regrets her choice when the burger arrives. It's huge and juicy, and she has absolutely no idea how she is going to get it into her mouth with any kind of dignity. Lewis laughs and watches intently, enjoying her discomfort.

There is only one thing she can do, and that is to go for it. Guys like girls who eat, right? And they like girls who put things in their mouths in a suggestive fashion? Is it possible to eat a massive burger in a sexy way? She'll just have to give it a go. Feeling totally self-conscious, she picks up the burger in both hands, locks eyes with Lewis, and then takes the biggest bite she can manage. Juice and ketchup ooze out the back of the bun and run down her hands, but Lewis appears to be captivated. Win!

"So where are you from?" Lucy inquires.
"I'm from Sunderland. I know, shocking, right? You can leave if you like, I'll understand. But before you do, please note that I managed to escape, and I now have a glamorous media job and wear Converse trainers and everything!"
"Is Sunderland so bad?" Lucy asks. "I've never been."
"Well put it this way, people from up there are usually born with six fingers. I only have five because I had the extra ones cut off at birth."
"That's a shame," Lucy laughs, "You'd have been excellent at playing the piano."

"Actually, I don't have a problem with Northern men," Lucy confesses. "My Ex was from Cumbria."
"My God!" Lewis pretends to be horrified. "Sounds like you had a lucky escape!"
"Well it wasn't so bad. And when he left I got to keep the TV, so that was nice."
"Is it a big TV?"
"Yeah, pretty big," says Lucy. He was into playing video games, so he chose quite a good one."
"I have a big one," says Lewis, cheekily. "It's huge. Massive, you might say."
"It is?" Lucy pretends not to know what he's implying. "How many inches?"
"Oh, many, many inches. It's huge."
"Alright, I get the picture!" Lucy laughs.
"Massive." Lewis adds with a wink.

Dinner over, Lucy pops to the loo. When she gets back, Lewis has paid the bill. Lucy thinks that's very charming and chivalrous, and she doesn't feel too guilty because she had no say in the matter, and because she thinks she'd like to see him again.

They walk back to the tube station together. Will there be a snog? Lewis is funny, and Lucy's had a good evening and several glasses of wine, but even so, she's not particularly feeling the urge to kiss him. Something's missing.

They say goodbye with a hug and a peck on the cheek. Still, if he asks, she'd have a second date. You know, just to see...

To be continued...?

Labels: anniversary, Lewis, London, Tinder

Now that things have gone tits up with Lucy's friend Amir, she's decided to dive back into the dating pool.

But wait. To understand this next story, we first need to go back, waaay, back, into the mists of time...

Well, by 'waaay back', I mean two years ago. And by 'mists of time', I mean that hazy period just after Lucy had been dumped by the ex when she was drinking a lot, not eating much, and wondering if she was doomed to be single for the rest of her life.

So actually, not much has changed. Apart from the not eating thing. Lucy's appetite is just fine these days, thank you very much. If never stopping eating and secretly bingeing on cake and chocolate counts as fine.

But anyway...

Newly-single Lucy has just joined Tinder, because she's heard that's what single people do these days, and because she hasn't yet discovered what a time-sucking, sanity-destroying cesspit of horrors it is.

And one of the first people she matches with is Lewis. Lewis is in his early 40s, a tall silver fox who works for Sky. He seems intelligent and funny, so when he asks for Lucy's number so they can chat on WhatsApp, she hands it over readily.

Lucy still has a lot to learn.

Unlike most of the swamp creatures that inhabit the dark Tinder underworld, Lewis actually seems normal, personable, and witty. So Lucy agrees to meet him for a drink. Maybe she isn't destined to die alone after all.

But before you get too excited, remember... this is Tinder. And once you remember that, I'm sure it will come as no surprise to you to learn that a couple of days before they are due to meet, Lewis cancels.

At this point Lucy is still fresh out of the box in the dating app hellworld, and hasn't yet learned to be bitter and jaded about the whole bastarding charade. She doesn't realise cancelling a date is typical of the male inhabitants of the Tindersphere, so she responds graciously. Even when Lewis basically ghosts her.

And that is that. Until now.

*swooshy timelapse effect*

It's two years later, and our heroine, fed up with the current crop of Peter Pans and narcissists on Bumble, decides to have a go at something different. She joins another dating app called Hinge.

On Hinge, you don't have to match with someone to see if they've liked you. You simply post your photos and text, and if someone likes what they see, they can comment.

And literally the very first person who likes a picture on Lucy's new Hinge profile, just a matter of a few hours after she's created it, is Lewis.

Perhaps the last two years have made Lewis more reliable, because as promised, exactly at 7.30, he does exactly that.

Lucy's phone has actually already made the connection - and even remembers Lewis's last name. That means she can now legitimately online stalk him and find out what he's been up to the last two years.

His messages make her smile. Lucy likes a man with a large... vocabulary, and the fact that Lewis uses words like 'ventured' and 'chum' is definitely encouraging.

To save having to spend time LinkedIn stalking, Lucy asks Lewis what he's been up to, and if he still works for Sky. He tells her he does, even though he sometimes feels guilty about indirectly helping to put money in the pockets of Sky's boss - evil media baron and arch-villain Rupert Murdoch.

Well this is all going rather well, Lucy observes with caution. He has an interesting job, and great banter. Maybe she will forgive him for cancelling on her two years ago. But that doesn't mean she's not going to give him at least a little bit of grief for it.

Lucy has a quick search into her WhatsApp archived chats, and luckily enough, the old conversation is still there - complete with his message cancelling the date and her gracious response - proving categorically that she's nice - or at least she was back then. She screen grabs it and triumphantly sends the image over.

The idea of a second anniversary with a man she has never actually met makes her chuckle. This is all very encouraging.

So this is pretty promising, she thinks. Lewis could have asked for anything for his fictitious anniversary gift: a fast car, a big house, a private island, a bathtub full of diamonds - but rather than request material items that would benefit himself, he went straight for things that would benefit humanity as a whole.

This shows he has Integrity. Could it be that Lewis is one of the Good Ones?

Lucy hasn't had such good banter with someone in ages. Now she just needs Lewis to actually ask her out for a drink. She can't possibly ask him, not after he cancelled on her last time. That would count as chasing, and Lucy now knows that when a girl chases a guy, it never ends well.

She just wishes he'd hurry the fuck up and ask. But he doesn't.

Then, a few days later, disaster strikes. On Friday afternoon a flaky friend cancels their plans for the next day, and Lucy suddenly finds herself face with the prospect of - horrors! - nothing to do on Saturday afternoon.

She needs a plan, and fast. Lucy goes through her dating app chats to see if there are any potentials in there whom she could possibly ask to be her short-notice Saturday stand-in. But there's no one suitable.

She faced with a choice: either a dateless Saturday, or risk appearing desperate and ask Lewis out after he cancelled on her last time.

Neither option particularly appeals. But in the end Lucy comes to the conclusion that putting herself out there is, by a slim margin, the lesser of the two evils. So she goes for it, in as 'playing-it-cool' a way as she can manage.

His reaction makes her laugh again. But to meet someone for the first time on a Saturday night means taking a huge risk. What if he doesn't live up to the banter? What if he doesn't look like his photos? What if, in person, he's creepy and weird? Then she'll be stuck out on a Saturday night without an early start for work the next day as a credible excuse to leave.

It's a mistake Lucy made once before. The guy was a lawyer, with great, laugh-out-loud banter and a handsome face. So when he suggested a Friday night date, she agreed. But what she had failed to notice was that all his photos were headshots - and it turned out there was a very good reason for that. In person, not only was he surprisingly awkward, he also had a giant investment beer gut, clearly the product of far too many boozy client lunches and three-course dinners. This enormous girth, attached to an imposing six-foot-four frame and pressed up against her in a crowded bar, made her feel panicked and claustrophobic. She managed one excruciatingly uncomfortable drink before making her embarrassed excuses and leaving her date bewildered at the bar, wondering what he'd said to upset her.

Lucy is determined not to go through that again. But what can she do? She has no Saturday plans, and Lewis is her only option. So she takes a deep breath, and agrees.

At least she's seen a full length photo this time, so at she knows he's definitely taller than he is wide.