The Park Bench Test

A soul mate is someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys that fit our locks.

Excerpt from ‘The Bridge Across Forever’, Richard Bach

I’ve thought more than once since that little ‘chat’ with my dad that I might have found Mr Right.

When I was nine I thought it might be Jonathan Jamieson because he gave me a bit of his Sherbet Dib Dab after I fell over in the school playground and grazed my knee.

When I was thirteen I thought it might be Andrew Bradley. We ‘went out’ for two whole weeks, which basically means we held hands on the school bus and passed love letters to each other during maths classes when we were supposed to be working out simultaneous equations.

And when I was sixteen I thought it might be Stephen Clarkson – my first proper boyfriend. But that didn’t mean anything because at sixteen I was also convinced that Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp could all be Mr Right.

I’m not sure I’ve ever thought Alex is Mr Right.

Alex is there to meet me when I arrive back in Leeds station on Sunday night. I have been instructed to warn him that weekends in London are the norm from now on. “We have a wedding to prepare for,” I keep being told. I’m not sure who this ‘we’ is she’s talking about. I was under the impression it was Matt she was marrying.

He takes it well, and rather than moaning about how we’ll hardly see each other, points out that it will mean more time for football and nights out with the lads without having to feel guilty. There’s nothing quite like feeling appreciated, is there? But Alex’s easy-going nature is one of the things I love about him – that and his lovely bum.

“I thought we’d pick up a bottle of wine and a DVD on the way home,” he says.

“Lovely,” I say, squeezing his thigh appreciatively as he changes gear.

All you really need to know about Alex is this – he’s lovely.

But to elaborate – he’s gorgeous, he’s funny, he’s incredibly generous, he can cook – and bake – which is a definite bonus since I can do neither. He makes the best banoffee pie I’ve ever tasted, which just happens to be my all-time favourite dessert. And he has the best bum in the world. No, really, he does. It’s perfect. Dead pert, but soft as a baby’s bum. I can’t keep my hands off it. Well, I didn’t use to be able to anyway. Alex used to joke that if we ever split up I’d want custody of his bum. He’s right, I would.

So why haven’t I ever thought Alex is Mr Right – especially after all those lovely things I’ve told you about him (did I mention his lovely bum)?

I wish I could tell you. I really do.

But I don’t know.

I love him, of course I do. I love him a lot. But if he was Mr Right I wouldn’t question it, would I? Just like you wouldn’t question whether a banana was a banana, or whether a bowl of cornflakes was a bowl of cornflakes. You know it’s a bowl of cornflakes, so you don’t need to ask.

So if Alex was Mr Right, I wouldn’t need to ask myself the question, right?

But I do need to ask.

I am asking.

I met Alex in my final year at university, at the Student Union Christmas ball. He was stood next to me at the bar, but despite looking particularly scrummy in his tuxedo and bow tie, he couldn’t get himself noticed by the male bar staff who were more interested in serving all the gorgeous girls in their skimpy dresses. I like to include myself among their number but I suspect my being served was more down to the fact that I was leaning so far over the bar I was practically poking one of the barmen in the eye with my reindeer antlers.

Out of pity I offered to get Alex’s drink for him and, well, to cut a short story even shorter, we basically spent the rest of the evening snogging in a corner. Admittedly, pity no longer played any role. I can only blame my actions on a combination of seven gin and tonics and Alex’s gorgeousness, which – by sheer luck rather than good judgement I’m sure – still existed the following night when I left my beer goggles at home for the evening and met him for a post-snog drink.

Fast forward six years and here we are, both still in Leeds, nothing much changed except for the fact that it’s now our jobs that are paying for the drinks and not our overdrafts/student loans/parents. That, and the fact that we now live together – in a rented house for now, but we are saving for our own place. Well, strictly speaking, it’s Alex who is doing the bulk of the saving, earning, as he does, almost twice as much as I do and having considerably fewer pairs of shoes to buy each month.

And I love him.

I absolutely do.

But…

But what?

I don’t know.

But isn’t the very existence of a ‘but’ enough? And now I’m not talking about his lovely bum.

How do you know? If someone is the one, I mean? How do any of us know? It was easy for Barbie – Emma and I decided for her that Ken was Mr Right. But who decides for the rest of us? We have to do that for ourselves, which hardly seems fair. It would be so much easier if we all came with a label saying who we belong to.

Maybe Alex is my Mr Right. Maybe I just haven’t found his label yet?

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

Had I the heaven’s embroidered cloths,

Enwrought with golden and silver light,

The blue and the dim and the dark cloths

Of night and light and the half-light,

I would spread the cloths under my feet;

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;

I have spread my dreams under your feet;

Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

‘He wishes for the cloths of heaven', W.B. Yeats

Bollocks.

It’s Monday morning. Quite how it can be is beyond me. It only feels like five minutes since I switched off my computer and dumped my dirty mug in the office sink.

I contemplate phoning in sick. This is not a first. I contemplate phoning in sick every Monday morning. The possibilities are endless – I could put a peg on my nose and pretend I have the flu. I could tie a scarf tightly around my neck, cut the air supply to my vocal chords and pretend I have tonsillitis. I could come out with complete gibberish and pretend I’m hallucinating – though I tend to come out with complete gibberish a lot of the time, so this probably wouldn’t be terribly convincing.

I never actually do phone in sick. Not because my excuses are not entirely plausible, but because I like to think of myself as a conscientious employee, persevering with the rest of the rat race in the face of sheer boredom.

I used to be depressed when I woke up on a Sunday morning because I knew I was going back to work the next day. Now I’m depressed when I wake up on a Saturday morning, because I know that the next time I wake up I will be going back to work the next day. I spend Monday to Friday wishing my life away for the weekend, and Saturday and Sunday depressed that the weekend is almost over. Which, if you think about it, leaves only Friday available for not being miserable, when I’m too stressed out after a whole week in the office to really appreciate it.

I must get out more.

I love my job, I love my job, I love my job.

This is not a statement of fact, by the way, merely a mantra I am trying out.

I’m saying it to myself every morning as I make my way into Penand Inc’s head office in the misguided hope that it might eventually come true.