even flirted with in a mild kind of way, during the party, it was my bed he was curled up in that night, and my breasts that were squashed, snugly and sweatily, against his skin.
I think that was the night I decided I would marry him. Not that he’d asked me yet, despite his mumblings on the train, but it was coming. I knew it was. I could feel it. And big happy dreams of our future life together filled my head as I slept, my head resting on his bare chest as it rose and fell, and the gentle contented sounds of his snoring filled the room.
Ollie, 2017
Ollie put his glass down and reached for another handful of crisps. He really mustn’t drink too much tonight. He needed to keep his wits about him and create a good impression if he could.
He took a deep breath, feeling the familiar tightness that he often felt in stressful situations, wished he had thought to bring his inhaler, and turned his attention back to the girl sitting in front of him. She was small and pretty, with a rather chubby but cheeky face surrounded by an unruly mane of dark curly hair. In the brief silence that fell while they were both thinking of something to talk about next, she was toying nervously with the stem of her wine glass. Her fingernails were painted in a shiny shade of pale pink with a strange darker pink band sweeping across the tip of each, and he wondered how long it must have taken her to do that, and why she would even want to.
The bell rang and she stood up. ‘Well, it’s been nice meeting you, Ollie.’
He took her hand and half rose from his chair to lean forward and kiss her on the cheek. Were you allowed to do that? Probably not. Still, she didn’t seem to object. ‘You too …’ Oh, no. His mind had gone blank and he had no idea of her name. ‘Yeah, you too!’
Within seconds another girl arrived to take her place across the table. ‘Hi, I’m Caroline.’
‘Ollie.’
He could already tell that this one was not his type at all. Too tall, too loud, too heavily made up. Still, he only had to be polite to her for three minutes. How hard could that be? He reached for his drink, took a swig and started counting the seconds off, one by one, in his head.
He hadn’t told anyone he was coming here tonight. He wasn’t really sure why he had come, except that there had to be more to life than sitting alone most evenings and feeling sorry for himself. He missed female company, someone to have a laugh with, to chat to, someone to share a bottle of wine with, to stop him drinking it all himself. And, yes, he missed the sex. Of course he did. He was a young man, a man on his own, and it had been a while.
He should have been at the chess club tonight, silently gazing at a wooden board, the clock counting down beside him as he pondered his next move. He hadn’t played much chess since he was a child but he’d come back to it recently, finding it somehow therapeutic, something to focus the mind.
He smiled to himself. The chess club wasn’t actually all that dissimilar to where he’d ended up, was it? In the back room of the Crown and Treaty, a very plain and ordinary West London pub, facing a series of strangers over a small table, with only minutes to decide when and if to make his move. Winners and losers, and not hard to guess which he was likely to be.
There were a lot more girls here than guys, which struck him as odd but, in theory, should work in his favour. Not bad looking most of them, which made him wonder why they were here at all, why they were finding it hard – perhaps as hard as he was – to meet someone in a more conventional way, or pluck up the courage to do something about their lives. It was probably all just a bit of fun for most of them, though, groups of girls giggling together at the bar afterwards as they compared notes and decided whether to put ticks or crosses against the names on their little slips of paper.
Nobody would choose him, of course. He’d not taken the trouble even to try to impress, either in what he was wearing (old jeans, frayed at the hem, and his favourite comfy grey jumper that hadn’t seen a washing machine in weeks) or in what he’d said. In fact, he’d sat back and let each of them do most of the talking and just added the occasional nod or grunt when it seemed expected. Was that because he couldn’t be bothered, or had he lost the art of conversation? Forgotten how to chat up women? It all seemed like such a lot of effort for so little reward. He was hardly going to find the love of his life tonight, was he? Not when he already knew exactly who she was, and where. Not here, that was where. Hundreds of miles away, probably, and not coming back.
The last girl stood up and moved away. He didn’t kiss this one. Didn’t feel the urge to. Looking down at the slip in front of him, he realised he’d stopped making any sort of mark on it three girls ago, when he’d rather rashly put a tick against the busty one. Julie. Not that he could remember much about her face, but he did like a good pair of tits, and you never knew, she just might let him have a feel later, if he bought her a few drinks and offered to share a taxi home. The drivers didn’t usually care what went on in the back, so long as you tipped well and kept bare flesh and bodily fluids off the seats.
Oh, God! He was starting to think like some kind of perv. Perhaps it was time to slip away before having to face the embarrassment of finding himself without a single match. He glanced at his watch. The chess would still be on down at the Scout hut. A bit late to get a game, maybe, but he could sit and watch, and have a quiet drink or two while he did. He pulled his coat off the back of his chair and put it on, crumpled up his voting slip (and with it any chance of becoming better acquainted with Julie’s cleavage) and dropped it onto the table, then went out into the street before anyone could call him back. The sounds of laughter dimmed as the heavy wooden door swung shut behind him. The offie should still be open on the high street, and it was a lot cheaper option than buying drinks here in the pub, that was for sure. He pulled his collar up against the rain and quickly walked away.
Kate, 1978
I’ll never know for sure why Dan proposed when he did. Perhaps he’d been thinking about it for a while, just as I had. Perhaps he had already chosen the ring, and the place, and the date. Love and marriage, going together like the inevitable horse and carriage. The traditional route through life. Our life. Perhaps it would always have been our next step. Or perhaps it was simply because of the baby.
We hadn’t planned on me getting pregnant. In fact, like most couples our age, still building our careers, still enjoying a life that revolved around pubs and music and each other, we were pretty active in trying to prevent it at all costs. And the pill was almost fool proof, wasn’t it? All you had to do was remember to swallow it and the rest just took care of itself. So, when my period failed to arrive on time, I didn’t worry. In fact, I didn’t even notice at first, and when I did, about a week later, I was quick to put its absence down to just about everything but the obvious. I must have marked the wrong date on the calendar. It must be some kind of hormone thing. I must be stressed or overdoing things at work or coming down with a cold.
I put off buying a test for as long as I could, wearing a sanitary towel in bed every night, expecting every morning to find it soaked, or at least trickled, in blood. Waiting for the inevitable crippling cramps, that would probably be worse than usual, what with being so late in coming, so I might even need a day off work, curled up with a hot water bottle on the sofa. I couldn’t see my boss being too pleased, could already imagine the muttered tut-tuts that signalled his utter inability to comprehend the inner workings of the female reproductive system but, if the bloody (ha, ha!) thing would just hurry up and come, then putting up with all that would be worth it in reassurance levels alone.
It didn’t come. I re-checked the calendar and decided to wait. Just one more day. And then another. I was in denial, pushing the thought of what it might mean out of my head, telling no one. Burying my head in the sand doesn’t even come close to covering it. Of course I was