The Park Bench Test

Still here when you’re sixty…

“Still here when you’re sixty…”

You’re wasted here, lovey…

“You’re wasted here, lovey. Go and use that degree of yours.”

Chase your dreams…

“Chase your dreams, Becky.”

“Yeah, I will Fliss,” I say, getting the milk out of the fridge – another illegal appliance – “just as soon as we’ve changed these accounts over.” I grin at her and she shakes her head, resigned to the fact that she’s probably stuck with me.

I switch on my computer and wait for it to whir into action, Fliss’s words ringing in my ears.

It would be great to be that brave – to just chuck it all in and ‘chase your dreams’. People do it all the time, supposedly. You read about them in magazines, don’t you – people who pack in their high-powered city jobs to run a pig farm in the Yorkshire Dales, people who swap their laptops and Blackberries for packets of doilies and recipes for fruit scones and run their own tea rooms, people who give up their six-figure salaries to become aid workers in Rwanda? People who give up something safe and secure, to do something they actually want to do.

It happens.

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

Alex is out when I get home. He plays five-a-side football on a Monday night with the boys from work.

I unlock the door and trample on a pile of mail on the doormat.

There is more than usual and for a brief moment I imagine that the contents of one of these envelopes is about to change my life. A letter telling me I have been picked at random to win a year off work, for instance, notification that I have won the competition I entered for an all-expenses-paid trip to Australia, or a letter saying that I’ve been headhunted by Hello magazine.

As if…

But as I open the envelopes and stare at the property details for seven different houses for sale, I realise that one of the envelopes really could be about to change my life.

Do you think I should be considering buying my first house with a man I’m not sure is Mr Right?

Me neither.

I look at the details just long enough to come out in a cold sweat before putting them down on the coffee table. Upside down. Underneath the newspaper. If I can’t see them, I can pretend they are not there, that they don’t exist, that I’m not about to have to make one of the biggest decisions of my life.

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

When I get into the office the next morning I phone Katie.

“Hello, Books!, Katie Roberts speaking,” she answers.

Katie is a publicity manager for a big publishing company in London. She works in the entertainment section, which basically means she gets to swan about the country accompanying celebs on their book tours. Last year she met three film stars, two footballers and a well-known soap-star who has written her autobiography at the ripe old age of twenty four.

It’s her ideal job. Not just because she’s some maniac celebrity stalker, but because she loves books. When she and Matt started renovating their flat in London, Matt’s first job (he’s an architect) was to put in a wall-to-wall bookcase in their living room. It’s already half-full. It’s a wonder the floor hasn’t fallen into the flat below under the weight of it. And it’s going to get worse. Instead of the traditional wedding gift list of Egyptian cotton bath sheets and Jamie Oliver muffin moulds, they are asking their guests to buy them a copy of their own favourite books. Knowing Katie and Matt’s friends they’ll end up with eighty nine copies of the Karma Sutra and one copy of Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course Volumes 1-3 from Katie’s Great Auntie Rose.

“It’s me,” I say. “How’s things?”

“Good. You?”

“I’m bored.”

“I thought you might be. You don’t usually phone this early. Haven’t you got enough to do? I’ve got some press releases you can write if you like?”

“I’ve got plenty to do. I just can’t be bothered to do it!”

“I don’t know why you don’t just look for something else. You’ve hated that job for as long as I can remember.”

“Is it really that long? Hmm… Maybe I’ll just pack it in and move back home…”

“Really?” she asks, excited.

“No, not really,” I laugh, though I’m not entirely sure why.

The worst thing about staying up in Leeds with Alex is being away from my friends. Katie moved back to London as soon as we finished our finals and Emma has never been far from the south.

“Katie…”

“Yes?”

“If I ask you something, will you promise to forget all about it when everything’s okay again?”

“Yes.”

“What do you think about Alex? About him and me, I mean. Do you think Alex is right for me?”

She says nothing for a few seconds.

And then, “I don’t know.”

It’s not what I expected her to say. I mean, I didn’t expect her to say yes, or no even, but I guess I expected her to be a bit more surprised that I was asking – a bit more surprised that I am having doubts at all. I forget sometimes how well she knows me.

I take a slurp of lukewarm tea and wait for her to say something else. I know she will. Katie never finishes anything with ‘I don’t know’.

“Well, personally I think you are perfect for each other,” she says. “You have the same values. You find the same things funny. You are both incredibly gorgeous, obviously,” she laughs at this one. “You love each other. And you want the same things out of life.

“But whether you want those things with each other is a different matter altogether. And only you can answer that. Only you know if he’s the one for you, B.”

“Yeah, I know,” I sigh.

And I do. I know it’s up to me. I think I just want someone else to make the decision for me. But it doesn’t work like that, does it? I have to find that damn label myself.

“Let’s chat about it at the weekend,” Katie says. “Are you still coming? I’ve made an appointment for 12pm.”

“Yes. Alex is going to bring me to work in the morning and Fliss said she’ll drop me at the station.”

“Excellent. And Emma’s going to meet us at the shop. I’ve got a good feeling about this shop, B. I think it might be the one.”