I always thought of her and her pink-rimed glasses when I looked through my boxes of memories. She didn’t have precious baby photos or a tatty first teddy bear. No keepsakes. Nothing to help her piece her early life story together as she grew older.
After she’d joined her adoptive family, I would take a small gift whenever I visited to help her build her own collection of keepsakes. In my own way, I wanted to contribute to making new memories that would be bright, fresh and hopeful.
I understood that to the untrained eye, my room full of keepsakes could be mistaken for one tragic mess, but personally, I liked to label it organised chaos. Everything was in boxes, creating an office in the process of relocating feel. It was a highly ordered operation. If someone asked me to find the last birthday card signed by my granddad the day before my ninth birthday, the day he passed away from a short battle with lung cancer, I could find it in a heartbeat.
Memories. Keepsakes. All ordered and cherished.
I dragged my fingers through my hair and mentally patted myself on the back for making the first decision of the day regarding the need for caffeine. Why did I put myself through this every weekend? Maybe I needed to replace wild weekends with relaxing weekends at health spas. I knew which one would be far more beneficial for my mind and body, but not my purse strings. Mum’s loud knock on the door brought me back to reality.
‘So, tell me. Last night. Did you meet anyone?’ she asked, clearing her throat as she braced herself for my reply. But the questions were always the same. And so were the answers.
‘No one special.’
‘Not even a cheeky snog?’
‘Really? A cheeky snog?’ I rolled my eyes and fiddled with the buttons on my pyjama shorts. How I’d managed to change into my nightclothes when I got home, I would never know.
‘Elle, you know every time you come home, I pray that you’ve finally let your guard down and had a bit of fun.’ She followed me down the stairs, so I busied myself by setting some bread in the toaster and switching on the kettle. In reality, the thought of food entering my stomach made my throat spasm in readiness to empty the contents down the toilet bowl. My efforts were futile because she wasn’t buying my delaying tactics.
‘I know this is difficult for you to hear, but in my opinion, you’ll never lose your virginity if you won’t let someone in!’ she shrieked in the exact pitch a mother uses when exasperated with her offspring, and a little too high-pitched for my hangover.
‘Mum,’ I groaned, banging my mug down on the table, the sound ricocheting through my pounding head. ‘I’m not having this conversation with you. I’m fine. Really. I don’t need anyone. Stop worrying.’ My hands found their way to my face in a vain attempt to cover my humiliation.
When I mentioned I was very single, I should have added that I’d always been single.
My virginity was a keepsake of my awkward youth, my teenage self-loathing, and my adult embarrassment. We live in a world obsessed with chronicling every aspect of our lives on social media. Personally, I thanked my lucky stars every day that social media was only just finding its feet in my teenage years and wasn’t as well used as it is now. Mental images of a cyber-journal chronicling my cringeworthy years filled with fashion disasters made me want to emigrate to the Outer Hebrides.
‘I know you’ve been busy with your studies and that your career means everything to you, but I think the older you get, the more you use that as an excuse,’ she said. I nodded in the hope it would appease her, but Mum had a knack of always getting to the nub of the truth. I was sure she had mind reading superpowers. ‘You’re stuck now. Your embarrassment makes you a prisoner.’
‘I’m not embarrassed, Mum,’ I said, cringing at the lies that so easily escaped my mouth. She placed her hand on top of mine, bringing me back to reality as I tentatively met her eyes.
Mum was an attractive woman. She had short, strikingly grey hair, she looked much younger than her age, and she took great care of herself and her appearance. I was fortunate enough to inherit her blue eyes, but rather frustratingly, I didn’t inherit her cute button nose. She always looked put-together, and I secretly knew that she expected the same from me. I didn’t always meet those expectations. I liked sleep, so I chose an extra thirty minutes in bed over taking time with my hair and make-up, often just pulling my hair into a ponytail and applying a small amount of make-up in the car on the way to work. I had built skills in applying mascara whilst steering the car with my knees, and I could write a book on applying make-up whilst dodging potholes.
‘What are you waiting for?’ she asked.
‘I’m waiting for the best.’
She laughed. ‘You’re waiting for perfection, and it’s never going to happen. You need to drop your standards.’ Scrunching my forehead to clearly indicate that I thought she was talking rubbish didn’t work in stopping her incessant probing.
‘Elle, you’re looking for someone that doesn’t exist. Everyone has flaws. You’ve always been picky. Remember when you turned down that lovely guy because of his haircut?’
I laughed and covered my face in exasperation. She was referring to a man who worked as a delivery driver at our local Chinese takeaway. I was a regular visitor until the day a letter arrived through the post from the deliveryman declaring his undying love for me. His actions really messed up my favourite pastime of Friday night takeaway and movie night. I haven’t eaten Chinese food since.
‘He had a mullet and wore a battered brown leather jacket. He looked like some kind of eighties throwback.’
‘He was cute.’
‘He used his own car to deliver. He would have taken me on dates in that car. Did you really want me to permanently smell of Chinese takeaway? Or did you just want freebies and that’s why you were so upset that I turned him down? You wanted free spring rolls and a son-in-law.’ We both laughed, but I knew that behind the smiles, she wanted the fairy tale for her only daughter.
My mum and dad were still living the fairy tale. They had met in their teens and celebrated their silver wedding anniversary with a party at the local village hall last year. Their love had stood the test of time and was testament to how two people could really make it work, for better or for worse.
I knew I was super picky. My one and only teenage crush had been on my English teacher. No one had ever measured up to him. It was never going to happen, but realisation hit me in my early twenties. I could admire him from afar, but I knew deep down that we would never really fall in love. My crush was classified as safe because he was unobtainable, unreachable and off limits. I would, therefore, never have to experience the sting of rejection or nurse the pain of a broken heart.
I really should have taken psychology rather than social work.
As I contemplated this further, Dad breezed through to the kitchen. He was knowingly quiet, worldly wise, and usually kept his innermost thoughts and feelings to himself. He tapped my shoulder as he retreated from the lecture; his silent way of showing that he had my back. He knew the conversation was awkward for me, but it was easier to let Mum continue until she was ready to get off her soapbox. That right there was probably the secret to their lengthy marriage.
‘Listen, let’s be serious now. I love you, you know that, and I want the best for you. You’re a beautiful, caring, fantastic young woman. I’m biased, but it’s true. Even Julie at number twenty-seven agrees with me, and as far as I know, you’re not related,’ she said through bites of toast. ‘You have so much love to give. I want to see you sharing that love with someone.’
I often wished I could see myself through Mum’s eyes, but I had always struggled with self-doubt and low self-esteem. It was a major factor in why I was still a virgin. It was common for people to fear rejection, but I took it to the extreme. No amount of psychology classes would help me to understand why that was. I had a happy childhood, two parents who adored me, and no memorable childhood traumas. Well, apart from the day my mum sold my Barbie Dreamhouse complete with accessories to pay f
or my school trip to Anglesey when I was eight. I didn’t talk to my parents for two weeks. I was, of course, grateful to them eventually because the bloody thing would probably still be sitting in the corner of my bedroom collecting dust; another aspect of my childhood I couldn’t bring myself throw away. I would have needed to use it as a makeshift wardrobe or extra large make-up chest.
‘Just take on board what I’m saying. Perfection doesn’t really exist. No one in this world is perfect. If you’re waiting to find a man with the same temperament and interests as you, let me tell you, he won’t be a virgin.’
‘Mum, I know that. That’s not what I‘m waiting for,’ I snapped, exasperated at the verbal assault.
In my late teens, I’d held on to the charmingly naïve thought that it would be special to lose my virginity to a man who had also held on to his. In my early twenties, I replaced this naïvety with the stark reality that male virgins over the age of twenty-one were not the stuff of dreams. However, men who’d popped their cherries before the age of twenty-one, usually only wanted one thing. Drunken ramblings and wandering hands in nightclubs had helped me to join the dots to make that connection.
I knew I was facing the horrifying reality of telling men who were only interested in getting me into their beds for the night that I was a virgin in need of de-flowering.
God, I hated that term. Way to kill a hard-on. Or, alternatively, stoke a virgin fetish.
Now that I was pushing my mid-twenties, my virginity was becoming a serious burden.
Chapter Two
Rain sucks. Simple.
Rain is so inconsiderate to the thousands of women with naturally unruly hair. I cursed the hour I spent straightening it before leaving the house only to have those two minutes running from the car park to the café send it straight back to the curly mess it was when I stepped out of the shower. Sixty minutes of my life I would never get back.
Abi was already waiting for me at our favourite meeting spot. The dark glasses hiding her eyes told me her hangover was stubbornly lingering.
‘Hey, honey cheeks,’ she shouted as she waved to me across the café.
‘For my next birthday, buy me an umbrella. A woman inflicted with my hair should never be without one,’ I sighed as I ran my fingers through the knots.
‘Duly noted.’
‘I’ll have what you’re having. That looks so good.’ I placed my bag on the chair next to me and turned to head to the counter to order a hot chocolate with all the works.
‘Not so fast, Houdini,’ she said, blocking me. ‘What happened last night?’
I groaned inside before meeting her eyes as she lifted her glasses and perched them on top of her head, wincing at the light. Abi was the perfect mix of insanely feminine and beautifully strong. She had swimmers’ shoulders—broad, long and muscular. She lived for the water. It gave her peace to float through the pool.
Abi’s strong shoulders were framed with long, dark hair. Her style was never the same two days running. She had amazing fashion sense and didn’t follow the trends. Her dark colouring betrayed the natural bright green of her eyes. Men were drawn to her like moths to a flame, often using her eye colour as an excuse for a cheesy chat-up line. She would usually respond with a flick of her hair and a sassy comment about finding out if they were natural in the morning after spending the night in their bed.
Weekend catch-ups with the girls usually involved easy interactions, copious amounts of calories, dirty stories, and sharing the mutual feeling of dread that Monday morning was fast approaching. I wasn’t ready to add to the mix that my admission that last night had got to me. Abi had secured her prey for the night, leaving me to nurse my drink, standing alone on a sticky nightclub floor feeling vulnerable and exposed. I spent most of the night trying not to appear like Abi’s stalker as I stood watch while she grinded her arse into the man-boy she had just met. My favourite part of the whole night—insert sarcastic eye roll—was fighting off lecherous, heavily drunk men who were only after one thing.
‘I was in a bad mood. You left me for Casanova,’ I said.
She mouthed sorry and snagged her bottom lip between her teeth. ‘You know, if you were open to finding your own Casanova…’
Making a face, I grabbed my purse and ordered my own diabetes in a mug. Conversation successfully aborted.
After falling into a sugar coma, we finally worked on putting the ghosts of the previous evening to rest. Abi wasn’t going to see her playmate again—no surprises there. Despite everyone assuming I had the sex drive of a frigid nun, I secretly loved how open she was. She readily admitted that she had always enjoyed one-night stands and was completely at ease with her sexuality. I envied her. I could never see myself being that open.
Although a virgin, I still had sexual needs. Once a month, I became a hormonal mix of horny and bitchy. We had dubbed the term bitchhorny. I had discovered the wonder of orgasms completely by accident one rainy Sunday afternoon when my bitchhornyness got the better of me. Despite Abi’s desperation to buy me a vibrator, I didn’t own one. Mainly due to fear of my mum finding it.
Really.
I so needed to get my own place.
‘So, how was your week?’ she asked.
‘Great week, plain sailing, no emergencies at all,’ I replied sarcastically.
We often worked on the same cases and accompanied each other on visits. Her straight talking, no nonsense attitude rubbed people up the wrong way, but colleagues secretly fought over each other to co-work cases with her when they knew it was going to be a challenging visit.
Abi didn’t take any shit.
‘Well, Elle, my sweetness, my darling, my week was amazing. Amazing for you anyway. Guess who I bumped into?’
I didn’t know where she was going with the game she was playing, but from the look on her face, I knew it would involve a huge dollop of awkwardness with extra sprinkles for me.
‘Who?’
‘Mr Simms himself, and he was asking lots of questions about you.’
Luke Simms had been a colleague and a crush since I first started working at the local authority, but we hadn’t worked closely together for a while. He was my practice teacher during training. I secured my first job in his team, but he moved office after accepting a promotion. Colleagues would openly quiz us, suspicious that something was going on between us, but we always laughed it off.
Luke wasn’t my usual type. I always favoured the tall, dark and handsome stereotype, but Luke was all messy blond hair and blue eyes. If he were any taller, he would have suffered from constant nosebleeds. He had a presence. You just knew when he walked into a room. He commanded attention. Mainly from women.
Secretly, I had enjoyed the observations of colleagues questioning if something more was going on between us. I could pretend that he desired me, but never once believed that he wanted anything more. The attraction was left unspoken, but the knowledge of a girlfriend at home didn’t stop the flirting and obvious yet accidental touches and stares between us.
‘What did he say?’ I asked, trying to appear cool and non-committal as I stirred the cream into my hot chocolate.
‘He asked where you’re based now. He seemed very disappointed that he hadn’t seen your beautiful smile in a while,’ she said, pinching my cheeks annoyingly.
I hung my mouth open sarcastically in fake shock and amazement at the lack of juicy gossip. So typical. She really was clutching at straws.
‘He likes you.’
‘Oh yeah? How could you tell? When he asked where I was based now, or if I was interested in being the mother of his children?’
She let out a long breath and sat back in her chair, playing with the ends of her hair, her telltale nervous habit.
‘I asked him if he was seeing anyone.’ She smirked playfully, averting her eyes and running her fingernail across the chipped plastic of the table.
Abi could never be accused of being subtle. I was surprised that she had questioned him on his current romantic status. Abi an
d Luke hadn’t see eye to eye on a case a while back, which had created thick, palpable tension between them. He was never going to be her favourite person. Being able to tolerate him was the highest accolade she could offer.
‘Bloody hell! You’ve given him the wrong impression. He’ll think that I’m actually interested in him.’
‘You aren’t interested in anyone.’
That wasn’t strictly true. I could appreciate Luke’s good looks but didn’t openly do so for fear of rejection. That was my self-protection tactic—freeze them out with one icy stare. Luke was slightly different; icy stares had thawed into nervous glances that eventually developed into prize winning, flirty banter. For some reason, my flirting skills had improved the more time I spent with him. We had been friends and I liked his company. A lot.
Luke was seven years older and a triple threat: devastatingly handsome, exceptionally charming, and funny in a dry, sarcastic kind of way. Totally deadly. He was also kind and considerate and always looked out for the team. The girls in the office quickly fell for him. He could have been mistaken for a player if he hadn’t been in a long-term relationship. Although, Abi had heard a rumour that he’d been found in a compromising situation with a student social worker in the photocopy room, but the rumour had disappeared as quickly as it had surfaced. As did the student social worker.
‘Do you want to know what he said?’ she asked. I shrugged my shoulders, not wanting to offer a definitive answer either way. ‘Well, to be honest, he didn’t reply. He was called away to a meeting and I had a contact deadline biting my arse. He was definitely interested, though. I’m just leaving these tasty nuggets of information with you. I’m not going to influence you either way, but I know you like him. Always have. I won’t be giving advice, especially not about Luke Simms. Blimey, imagine if you two do end up together. I’m going to have to work on being pleasant to him,’ she said, a look of genuine horror spreading across her face as I kicked her under the table.
Let Me Be Your First (Music and Letters #1) Page 2
