The Park Bench Test

Fliss and Derek have offered me their spare room while I sort my life out. It’s quiet where they live. You can hear the slightest noise. The pipes creaking as the central heating cools down. An insect hitting the window outside. My own heart beating.

I can’t sleep. I’m not used to being alone in bed. I’ve spent nights away from Alex, of course, but it’s been a long time since I’ve slept alone because I am alone.

I haven’t told anyone yet – apart from Katie. I can’t face the questions. People who believe in Mr Right will be surprised because they thought I was happy and because they thought Alex was Mr Right. And people who don’t believe in Mr Right will just think I’m bonkers. And everyone will want to know why. But even I don’t know that.

At 4.30am, after waking on and off all night, I give up trying to sleep and go in search of the kettle.

I’m pouring water into a mug when Fliss walks into the kitchen.

“Oh I’m sorry Fliss, did I wake you?”

“No, no, I’m not a good sleeper these days,” she says. I look at the ungodly time on the clock on the oven.

“It’s my age,” she laughs. “I always wake up early.”

I hold up the hot chocolate. “I hope you don’t mind?”

“Don’t be silly. You must help yourself to anything you want while you’re here, lovey.”

“Do you want one?”

“That would be lovely.”

We take the drinks through to the living room and Fliss turns on a lamp.

Sitting on the sofa I pull my knees up to my chest and balance my drink on them in my hand, blowing on it gently.

A painting on the wall above the television catches my eye. It’s a woman sitting on a deckchair, holding a parasol. I lean forward to confirm what it is I think I’m seeing. The woman in the picture is Fliss, only much younger – about my age.

“Who painted that picture of you in the deckchair, Fliss?” I ask.

“It’s one of Derek’s” she says. “He did it on our honeymoon. We had such a wonderful time,” she smiles, remembering. “We went to Cornwall for the week. Had sunshine the whole time. It was perfect. He painted that picture on our last day. We didn’t want to forget.”

“I didn’t know he could paint. It’s fantastic. It looks just like you.”

I blow on my drink again and sip it tentatively.

“How are you doing, lovey?” Fliss asks. “Are you okay?”

“Not really,” I admit. “But I know it’s for the best.”

“Are you sure? Is there no way you and Alex can work things out?”

“There isn’t really anything to work out – that’s the problem. It’s not like one of us has cheated or anything – you know, something you can get over if you both really want to. It’s more than that.”

“Hmm.” She sips her drink. She probably doesn’t understand. Fliss is of the generation where a guy met a girl, they went out and then they got married. And they stayed together forever – for better or for worse.

I, on the other hand, am from the generation where one in three couples give up on a marriage. Which kind of makes you think twice about doing it in the first place, doesn’t it? Or at the very least it makes you more determined to find the right person in the first place – because surely then it can’t possibly fail – not if you’ve found that one person you are meant to be with.

Or maybe it doesn’t really work like that at all. Maybe there are lots of people out there we could make it work with. But we’re so busy looking for that one person that we can’t see all the other possibilities.

“I do understand, you know,” Fliss says, breaking my thoughts, reading my mind.

“If something isn’t meant to be, you won’t ever make it work. No matter how much you might want to.”

I sip my drink. It’s cooling down.

“Fliss…,” I say.

“Yes, lovey?”

“How did you know Derek was the one for you? How will I know when I have met the right person?”

“Honestly?”

“Yes.”

“When you don’t need to ask that question.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN (#u1d9f1cbe-faa7-5737-bbf0-df3cb6fdfa4f)

“Jim’s split up with me,” Emma tells me the next day, when I phone her during my lunch break.

“He doesn’t love me,” she sobs down the phone. “He says he thinks the world of me, that I’m one of the loveliest people he’s ever met, and that he wishes he could fall in love with me. But that he just hasn’t and doesn’t think he ever will.”

Ouch.

“He says it’s not me, it’s him,” she says, her tone revealing exactly what she thinks of this particular explanation. “He says I am fabulous and that any man would be lucky to have me. Just not him, obviously. Oh B, what am I going to do?”

“You’ll meet someone else,” I reassure her. “You always do.”

“But I don’t want anybody else. I want Jim. I love him.”

“Really?” I ask. She said she really liked him but she’s never mentioned love. “Do you really love him, Em?”

“Yes. No. Oh, I don’t know,” she says. “I guess I just hoped he was Mr Right.”

But Emma doesn’t believe in Mr Right…

“But you don’t believe in Mr Right…”

“Maybe I do. Oh I don’t know. I just really liked him, B. He’s lovely. He makes me laugh. He makes me smile. Made me smile. And he was so bloody good in bed,” she adds, an afterthought that is followed by a fresh wave of sobs.

“Anyway, you rang me,” she says, composing herself with a big snort. “Was there a reason or did you just phone for a chat?”

“Alex asked me to marry him,” I tell her. “And I said no,” I add quickly, before she rushes to congratulate me.

Silence. And then…