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“We should go on a double date,” Courfeyrac had said.
“It’ll be fun,” he had said.
“Trust me,” he had also said.
Marius would not be trusting Courfeyrac again for a very long time.
It had seemed a pretty harmless idea in the beginning. Courfeyrac had been going on about his mysterious new girlfriend for weeks: apparently, she was a seamstress, very beautiful, and what Courfeyrac called ‘mature’. Naturally, Marius had been curious to meet her. Being Courfeyrac’s best friend, he was always privy to the sequence of people of various genders whom Courfeyrac dated, and frankly it was unusual for Courfeyrac to withhold someone for so long.
“Why a double date?” Marius had asked.
“She’s rather shy,” Courfeyrac explained. “I think it’ll be less intimidating for her if there’s another woman there. Besides, I still don’t know Cosette very well. And I reckon they’ll get on; they’re quite similar, now that I think of it.”
Well, Cosette had been saying that she wanted to get to know Marius’ friends… So he had agreed.
The date location that Courfeyrac picked out was a chain pizza restaurant: a nice chain pizza restaurant, but still a chain pizza restaurant. Courfeyrac claimed that it was “upmarket” and “sophisticated”, and proved him to be a “classy motherfucker”, but Marius wasn’t so sure. Nevertheless, as his bank balance was not currently on the correct side of zero, Marius was forced to agree that it was better than an actual restaurant.
When Marius arrived, Courfeyrac was already there, sitting alone at a central table.
“No Cosette?” asked Courfeyrac, as Marius approached.
“She’s coming straight from work, she’ll be here soon. And your date?”
“Just powdering her nose,” Courfeyrac said. “Come on, sit down next to your bestie.”
The chair to one side of Courfeyrac was already taken by a pink coat, so Marius was forced to sit on the other side, facing the door. He never liked facing the door: you ended up making awkward eye contact with everyone who came in.
He was just about to launch into small talk when Courfeyrac perked up, and said, “Here she is!”
The woman who appeared really was ‘mature’ in comparison; Marius estimated that she had to be at least thirty or so. It was a bit weird, but it was far from the weirdest thing that Marius had seen from Courfeyrac’s love life.
Despite her age, her hair was still beautifully golden, and she wore it in a flawlessly braided up-do.
“This is Marius,” Courfeyrac told her, “and Marius, this is Tine.”
Tine smiled a pleasant smile. Her teeth were very straight and white, like something from a magazine.
The three of them ordered some drinks, and Marius soon received a text from Cosette, letting him know she was just around the corner.
“Cosette will be here in a sec,” he told the others.
“Cosette?” asked Tine. “Now there’s a funny coincidence!”
“You know a Cosette?” asked Marius.
“Her daughter’s called Cosette,” Courfeyrac told him.
“Oh,” said Marius, trying to look politely interested, rather than horrified at the thought of Courfeyrac as a step-father. “You have a daughter?”
“Yes, I do,” said Tine, smiling again. The corners of her eyes crinkled in what Marius assumed was motherly affection.
“I’ve not met her yet, though,” said Courfeyrac. “Tine’s too worried I’ll embarrass her!”
“You?” asked Marius.
“I know, it doesn’t sound like me, does it?”
Tine was just opening her mouth, probably to reassure Courfeyrac that of course he wasn’t an embarrassment, when Marius spotted Cosette at the door. He waved to catch her attention, and she hurried over.
However, as she drew nearer to the table, her steps began to slow. She ground to a halt besides the empty chair.
Courfeyrac, evidently noticing Marius’ distraction, looked up. “Cosette!” he said.
Tine also looked up, and then immediately frowned. “Cosette?” she echoed.
“Tine, this is –” Courfeyrac began.
“Cosette,” interrupted Tine.
Cosette’s eyes were fixed on Tine’s face. Her lips wobbled, as if words were trying unsuccessfully to escape them. “M-mum?” she said eventually. “What are you doing here?”
There were several protracted moments of silence, in which everyone looked at everyone else; in which the gears of their brains set to work; in which Marius realised that ‘Tine’ was a nickname, and that ‘Cosette’ was too rare a name for coincidences to happen.
“Well then, Cosette,” said Courfeyrac, finally breaking the silence. “I suppose you had better start calling me ‘Daddy’.”