The Park Bench Test

About HarperImpulse (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Sarah Lefebve (#u1d9f1cbe-faa7-5737-bbf0-df3cb6fdfa4f)

There is one word to sum up my life – chaotic! I have two small children who, though I love more than life itself, have an amazing capacity to create untold mess, laundry and general havoc. I have a very untidy self-employed husband whose ability to leave stuff literally all over the house knows no bounds. I have two step-sons whose love of lego has left me many a time nursing bruised feet and cursing those little plastic bricks and I have a love of both red wine and Cadbury’s milk chocolate – frequent large helpings of which force me to the gym on a regular basis.

I also obviously have a passion for writing – so when I am not tidying up after my family or dashing to the gym that’s what you’ll find me doing. I just wish there were more hours in a day!

For Ruth, my oldest friend, who found her Mr Right.

And for Tom, my brother-in-law, who always wanted to know when this book would be published.

Well here it is!

AUTHOR NOTE (#u1d9f1cbe-faa7-5737-bbf0-df3cb6fdfa4f)

In The Park Bench Test the heroine Becky needs to find out how you know you’ve met Mr Right. As I was single when I first started writing the novel (I am now married with two small children!) I was blissfully unaware how you knew when you’d found “the one”! To give the story a bit of authenticity, therefore, I interviewed my own friends, family members and colleagues on this issue. In other words, the interviews in The Park Bench Test are genuine – and not a figment of my imagination! Names have been changed to protect the innocent!

PROLOGUE (#u1d9f1cbe-faa7-5737-bbf0-df3cb6fdfa4f)

Love flies, runs and rejoices; it is free and nothing can hold it back.

Thomas À Kempis (1379-1471)

When I was eight years old Ken asked Barbie to marry him.

Barbie said yes.

I wanted to know why.

I wanted to know everything when I was eight. I wanted to know why I had two eyes and two ears, but only one nose and only one mouth. I wanted to know why grass was green and why sky was blue. I wanted to know why my eyebrows didn’t grow to be as long as my hair.

And I wanted to know why Barbie loved Ken.

It was the first day of the summer holidays and my best friend Emma and I had laid on a lavish wedding for our bride and groom – in a marquee made out of four plastic tent poles and a pink lacy pillowcase from Laura Ashley. It was the place to be that Saturday afternoon, with an enviable guest list that included four other Barbie dolls, My Little Pony – who’d plaited her mane for the occasion, Paddington Bear – minus one wellington boot which Emma had dropped out of the window while she was showing my mum the flower we’d forced into his buttonhole, and a naked Tiny Tears, all of whom were treated to a wedding breakfast of chocolate digestives and Love Heart sweets.

It wasn’t the first time they‘d got married but it was the first time we ever questioned why Barbie wanted to marry Ken. Not that we thought there was anything wrong with Ken – he was quite cool really, particularly in the white sparkly trousers we had made for him out of one of my dad’s old handkerchiefs, some Pritt Stick glue and a pot of blue glitter.

My mum was helping out at the village plant sale, so it was my dad who had drawn the short straw.

“Daddy,” I said, my tone giving away the fact that I was about to ask a question he’d rather I had saved for my mum.

“Yes Rebs,” he replied hesitantly, over the top of his newspaper. My dad still calls me Rebs. Everyone else calls me Becky – or B. He likes to be different.

“Barbie loves Ken, doesn’t she?” I asked, pulling off the bride’s luminous green swimsuit, which probably convinced my dad he was about to have to deliver his “birds and bees” speech a little earlier than expected.

“Yes that’s right, love.”

“Why does she?”

“Why does she what, love?” he said, half listening, half reading his newspaper.

“Why does she love Ken? Why does she want to marry him?”

Of course, the answer was obvious – Barbie was marrying Ken so that Emma and I could get our hands on enough chocolate digestives and Love Heart sweets to make ourselves sick. But my dad chose to overlook this minor detail.

“What makes you ask that sweetheart?” he asked instead, buying himself a bit of time to come up with a plausible answer, no doubt, while simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief that he wasn’t going to have to explain where babies came from.

“I just wondered.”

“Well,” he ventured, both Emma and I now hanging off his every word.

“Well…he’s her Mr Right, I suppose.”

Hello?

We were only eight years old, dad.

“What’s a misterite?” Emma asked, trying to flick a bit of glitter off her finger.

My dad thought about it for a moment.

“Mr Right is the man a lady loves and wants to spend the rest of her life with. He’s the man she wants to marry. Because he makes her happy. Because they’re sort of meant to be together, sort of, I guess…”

You had to hand it to him – it was a damn good try.

“Does that mean you’re mummy’s misterite, then daddy?” I asked, still intrigued, while Emma, clearly less than impressed with this explanation, had returned to the task of making Ken a sparkly vest to go with his trousers.

“That’s right darling,” dad said, beaming – maybe because he was my mum’s Mr Right, maybe because he’d managed to answer the question without her help, probably a bit of both.

I may have only been eight years old, but I am pretty sure that was the very moment I decided I believed in Mr Right. And that one day I would find him.

I suspect it was also the moment that Emma decided it was absolute bollocks. That there was no such thing as Mr Right. And that the best she could ever hope for was to find someone who’d stick around longer than her dad did.

“But why?” I asked my dad for the third time, buttoning up Barbie’s wedding dress while Ken waited nervously in the marquee. “Why are you mummy’s misterite?”

My dad looked up from his newspaper and pondered the question for a second.

“Because, Rebs. Just because.”

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

Somewhere there waiteth in this world of ours

For one lone soul another lonely soul,