by Calvin Wade
“Oh my God, what’s going on? Simon!”
Richard was still holding up his sign. Nicky nodded. He put that card to the back of his pack. The one below simply said ‘Good!’ but then that was quickly put to the back too. The third card had much smaller writing and had on it,
‘Simon says you ask lots of questions but he has one for you.’
By now, Nicky had twigged what was going on. She began trembling. Richard brought out the fourth and final card, which simply said,
‘Will you marry me, Nicky Moyes?’
Although I say it myself, I crept into Nicky’s focus at perfectly the right time, rose up on to one knee and took her hand,
“So how about it, Nicky Moyes,” I asked presenting a box with a diamond engagement ring in, “will you marry me?”
Nicky looked at the ring in the box. My Mum described it as a ‘solitaire diamond engagement ring with a double halo setting’. Rather than just being teary eyed now, the tears were flowing.
“Is that my Mum’s engagement ring?”
“Yes.”
“How did you get it?”
“I asked your Dad’s permission to marry you and the following day, he called round with it. Nicky, you haven’t answered my question yet?”
“Oh, right, I thought it was that scuba diver that wanted to marry me!” Nicky teased.
“He probably does too, but I had the idea first. Come on, Nicky, I am the luckiest man alive anyway, make me even luckier.”
“Of course I will marry you!”
I came up off my knee and gave Richard a thumbs up, before slipping the engagement ring on to Nicky’s finger. Arthur thought Nicky’s finger would be a similar size to her mother’s and he was right, it was a perfect fit. Richard clapped his hands in the water before swimming off. I gave Nicky a hug, a kiss and a tissue whilst the fascinated eyewitnesses clapped. Once she had dried her eyes, Nicky stretched up to give me another kiss.
“I love you Simon Strong and if my Mum had ever met you, I am sure she would have loved you too.”
Part Eight
The Return Of The Penny Pinchers
FLO – April 2012
Zara was in full flow.
“...so this lad comes up to Lucy. Lucy said he was really full of himself. He smiles at Lucy and says, ‘put your coat on love, you’ve pulled!’ Lucy just looked him up and down, she said if he had been a real looker then something may have happened but he was just average, so she said to him, in her real cockney accent, ‘it’s not me who needs a coat, you need a windcheater, darlin’, ‘cos you’ve just been blown out!’ You’ll love her when you get to meet her, Flo. She’s like the funniest person ever.”
I already knew, even before meeting the infamous Lucy, that I would hate her. Zara had spent the last six weeks, ever since she had started working for Chorley Borough Council, telling me how wonderful Lucy was, but nothing about her sounded wonderful to me.
Lucy was not a cockney, she was an Essex girl. She was a place called Great Dunmow. I’ve looked it up on the map and it’s in Essex not London. I don’t know why Zara keeps calling her a cockney, because she isn’t one. What she is though, what she definitely is, is a stealer of best friends, she’s doing everything she can to steal mine.
I had heard Lucy’s life story about a thousand times over. She had moved up North after meeting a lad called Chris, a hod carrier from Leyland, in Torremolinos in 2009. They had bonked on the beach within ten minutes of meeting each other (classy) and according to Zara, their animal instincts had then taken over. They had spent most of the rest of their holiday in bed. Lucy had only gone on that holiday with one other mate, Candice, who ended up returning home with a real deep tan whilst Lucy got off the plane as white as the North Pole in December. Zara thought that was hilarious, but what sort of mate did that make Lucy, abandoning Candice for the whole holiday? Not a very good one. I wouldn’t even dream of doing something like to Zara, no proper friend would.
The story goes that once they were back in England, it only took Lucy forty eight hours to decide that sex that good could not go to waste, so she packed her job in, packed her bags and moved up here. Poor Candice was abandoned once more. Within a week, Chris and Lucy were renting a place on Buckshaw Village, within a month she had a job at the council and within three months they had split up! Zara says they had both started cheating on each other, but I bet it was Lucy who did the dirty, because everything I’ve heard about that girl gives me the impression that she is a right dirty cow with no morals. Four years on, she’s still up here and getting through more Northern lads than a whippet convention. To be honest, I don’t even know what a whippet is, but I’ve heard on the TV that Southerners think we all live on cobbled streets up here and all the guys have flat caps and whippets. Is it a ferret or something like that? Anyway, the point is, she’s a bit of a tart, she wants my best friend to be her best friend and although I haven’t met her yet, I am bored of her and hate her in equal measure.
I don’t see Zara on Fridays or Saturdays any more because of Lucy. Well, because of Lucy and also Martin, the gym instructor. When Zara worked at Penny Pinchers, she never used to go clubbing on a Friday night, because she had to go to work on Saturdays, but as she is now working Monday to Friday, nine to five, at the council, her and Lucy go clubbing on Friday nights. Saturday evenings she spends with Martin. I still see her a few times in the week, but nothing like as much as I used to. I’ve missed her. I don’t really have any other friends. Over the last six weeks, I’ve started to feel isolated and a bit lonely. Penny Pinchers was always a crap job, but at least Zara used to be there to help me get through the days. I don’t even have that luxury now.
I suppose the main reason I am telling you all this, is to justify what why I have done what I have done. On Wednesday night, I signed up to an internet dating site. I used to think only really desperate people and weirdos signed up to those things, but they seem to have become a bit more socially acceptable these days, not that I have ever worried before about being socially acceptable. Anyway, the site I have joined was a www.largerladylove.com and it links you up with appropriate males who have registered on their sister site, www.largerladslove.com I was thinking that no male in his right mind is going to fall head over heels in love with me based on my looks alone, so perhaps, if they got to know me a bit first, already knowing I was on the heavy side (and they were too), then I may stand more of a chance. I’ve chatted on-line with a couple of blokes already. One of the two, Kelvin, just seemed like a dirty old man that enjoys having something to grab hold of, but the other bloke, Fran, a farmer from Hoghton, seems genuinely friendly. I’ll keep chatting to him to see if it might go anywhere. If it does go somewhere, then that’s great, if it doesn’t, at least it will have stopped me from dying of boredom in the mean time.
“So, will you come?” Zara suddenly asked.
We were around at her flat, on Tuesday after work, having coffee and lemon drizzle cake. I suppose, because she kept rabbiting on about Lucy, my mind must have wandered and I just must have been nodding whilst filling my face with cake and thinking about Fran the farmer.
“Where to?”
“Candice’s Hen do!” Zara stated in a loud and exasperated way.
“Who’s Candice?”
“Lucy’s mate from back home.”
“Oh, yeh,” I said whilst reaching over and grabbing the largest slice of lemon drizzle cake left, “the girl she abandoned in Benidorm. She’s getting married, is she?”
Zara looked at me with a horrified look on her face.
“Torremolinos and have you not been listening to a word I’ve just been saying? I’ve just told you, she’s marrying Jeremy, a trader in the City, whatever one of them is. Candice thought it would be a real laugh to have her hen party in Blackpool. Do you fancy coming?”
“When is it?” I asked through a mouthful of lemon drizzle cake.
“Two weeks on Friday.”
“Can’t,” I said spitting a bit of the ca
ke out as I said it.
“Why not?”
“I work at Penny Pinchers on Saturdays,” I was relieved I had a good excuse. I didn’t fancy a Hen party with Lucy and her cronies one bit.
“Of course, what a shame!” Zara said with genuine disappointment, “I forgot about that.”
“Would have been good that too,” I said in my ‘lying convincingly’ tone.
“You could still come over on the Saturday!” Zara suggested with the usual excitement back in her voice.
“Why, what’s happening on Saturday? You just said it was Friday.”
“It’s a weekend Hen party. We would all be there on Friday and Saturday night, but you could just come over and meet us for the Saturday night.”
“Who’s going?” I queried.
“Me, you if you can make it, Lucy, Candice obviously. I haven’t met her yet but she’s meant to be lovely...”
“She must be lovely if she put up with Lucy sniding off on her for a week in Torremolinos. If you ever did that to me, I’d never speak to you again!”
“Anyway,” Zara said, ignoring my criticism of Lucy, as she always did, “that’s me, Lucy, Candice, a mini bus of girls from London and then hopefully you.”
“When is it again?” I asked, stalling, whilst I made up an excuse.
“Two weeks on Saturday.”
“Oh, I can’t that night,” I said, hoping for inspiration.
“Why not?”
“I’ve got a date!” I blurted out. This was a complete lie, but worth it if it was going to get me out of a Hen party with Lucy.
“A date!” Zara was bubbling over with excitement now, “you dark horse! I’m all ears, Flo. Tell me everything. First things first, who’s it with?”
So, I told Zara everything. Well, nearly everything I didn’t tell her I had made up the date itself as I didn’t want to go on a Hen do with Lucy and her friends. I told her all about www.largerladylove.com and www.largerladslove.com and about the dirty weirdo bloke and the farmer. Zara was surprised, but supportive.
“Wow, good for you, Flo! That’s brilliant. It really is. So, I take it your date is with Fran the farmer? It can’t be with creepy Kelvin, can it?”
“No, you’re right,” I said, “it’s with Fran the farmer. I’m really looking forward to it. It’s going to be great. He seems really nice.”
“I can’t wait to meet him!” Zara announced.
“I can’t either,” I replied, then realised that everything I had told Zara, other than the fictitious date, was completely true. I began to wonder if I could really set up a date with Fran the farmer for two weeks on Saturday. I wouldn’t even have to deal with the guilt of lying to Zara then. Maybe I should ask him. He could only say, ‘No’, in fact he probably would say ‘No’, but I’d only find out if I asked.
That Thursday evening, when I got back home, I went back on-line and re-connected with Fran. I asked him tactfully about meeting face to face.
‘With you being local,’ I typed, ‘maybe we could meet up some time for a drink?’
I pressed enter and watched my message being sent into cyberspace. I pulled a face and awaited a polite rejection, in response. My pessimism was unfounded.
‘Absolutely,’ was the reply, ‘as long as you aren’t expecting Justin Timberlake’.
My fingers and the palms of my hands started to sweat.
‘Nope, as long as you’re friendly, that’d be great. I’m no Britney Spears either, by the way.’
I figured he would have known that anyway. Members of largerladylove.com and largerladslove.com did not have profile photos, probably because they would need to be taken from a distance away with a wide angled lens. I was just reminding him.
‘Good,’ Fran typed back, almost immediately, ‘I don’t give two hoots what you look like, Flo. Only your personality is important to me.’
My heart started beating faster when I read that. I was normally the hardened, cynical type, but I could feel myself getting weak at the knees at the thought of a long awaited romantic opportunity. Soppy cow!
‘When can we meet up then?’ a second message from Fran came through asking.
‘Two weeks on Saturday?’ I suggested.
‘Can it not be sooner?’ was the instant response.
‘Good things come to those that wait, Francis!’ I jokily typed. After I sent it, I worried about whether that sounded too cocky and whether his name was actually Francis.
‘OK. Can we keep on touch on-line though, over the next two weeks and perhaps even exchange mobile numbers?’ Fran’s response queried.
‘Of course we can,’ I typed, becoming increasingly excited about the way things were going, ‘I’d be disappointed if we didn’t.’
I couldn’t sleep that night. Everything was working out too well so far. I reasoned that I was probably fooling myself, getting my expectations up. I didn’t care what Fran looked like, I just hoped there wasn’t some unexpected baggage that would ruin everything, like a wife or an unhealthy obsession with Friesian cows. Some women want everything in a man, good looks, money, sense of humour, pert bottom, six pack. Surely fat, ugly, friendly and normal wasn’t setting my sights too high.
ZARA – May 2012
I am starting to think it is not me after all. The plain fact is that all men are bastards! If I was picking a chocolate from a box of Cadbury’s Dairy Box and nearly every single one in the box was a coffee cream, which I absolutely hate, then it would not be my fault if I kept picking horrible ones, it would be the manufacturers. It seems to me that it is not my fault that every man I have ever been out with is a prat. That is also the manufacturers fault. There are just too many horrible ones around. It didn’t seem to be like this in the olden days, when men used to be gentlemen. Maybe men have gone beyond their sell by dates. God has let his standards slip!
As you have probably guessed, I have been dumped yet again. Martin, the ‘fit’ fitness coach at David Lloyd’s gym had broken all my previous relationship records, but after just over a year as my boyfriend, he has decided to join a long list of exes. In the last few years I’ve been dumped because I am ‘too thick’, ‘wear too much make-up’, ‘not really the type of girl I would take home to my Mum’, ‘too easy’, ‘too keen’, ‘not keen enough to do that thing I like’, ‘too tacky’ and now tonight ‘too possessive’ has been added to the list. Perhaps I am seen more as more mistress material than Mrs. material.
In the whole history of my break-ups, tonight’s has to have been the biggest disaster ever. A disaster from my perspective anyway. If you were one of the two sixteen year old lads who were having a fag by the entrance to Botany Bay, you probably thought the evening turned out pretty well.
Everything between Martin and me had been going well. Our relationship was not a crazy, mad, passionate one, but we saw each other a couple of times a week and always had a nice time when we did. I was starting to worry that was not enough for me though, especially because Lucy at work always seemed to be having so much fun being single. I was even tempted to finish a relationship for the first time ever, but back in March, Martin began discussing moving in together. I suppose it was this point that I started to imagine that we were going to end up married. I started to subscribe to a few bridal and wedding magazines and also attending some bridal fairs. I didn’t tell Martin I was going, in case that freaked him out, but I became more and more excited by the prospect of marriage. Martin would have looked great on my photos.
I suppose, looking back, our relationship hadn’t really gathered pace as much as I thought. At first, I thought Martin had discussed moving in together because his love for me had deepened but it could also have been because he had nowhere else to live. He had told me that he was a few months behind on his rent in his flat and the landlord was hassling him. Perhaps I made a mistake last week when I spent an hour showing him pictures from a wedding magazine and was asking him to mark each wedding dress out of ten. I thought at the time he didn’t seem to be interested.
Martin’s shift at David Lloyd’s gym finished at seven o’clock and I normally finished mine at the council about quarter past five, so once I finished work I had time to kill. As I was impatient to see Martin and discover whether I would be ending the day as his fiancée, the time seemed to drag. I went for a coffee in town, but I was on my own as Flo was on a stock take day at Penny Pinchers so was in work until late and Lucy had booked to have her nails done at 5:30, one of several beauty appointments she had booked prior to Candice’s Hen do. I tried to make my coffee last as long as I could, but I was bored sitting there, so at half past six, I drove over to the gym, which is only five minutes from town.
David Lloyd’s is a great gym. It has a lovely pool inside and a heated one outside, indoor and outdoor tennis courts, squash courts, a massive gymnasium, loads of different fitness and aerobic classes and a really nice coffee lounge which is enormous. I knew Martin wouldn’t be out from the gym until after seven, so I went to the coffee lounge for a half hour chill. Not being able to face another coffee, I bought a flavoured water and a banana, then headed over to the comfy leather sofas to veg out for a while until Martin arrived. I text him to say I was in there.
I took a sip of my water and then rested my head back on the sofa. I closed my eyes, I was always knackered after work because I woke up early every morning to get myself spruced up, but usually had a second wind after my tea. I was worried I might doze off and Martin might find me slobbering and with ruffled hair, not the image you want to see if you are set to propose. To keep awake, I started earwigging on the conversation between two lads who were on the sofa behind my back. At one stage, whilst picking up my drink, I twisted around to have a look at them, they were a similar age to me, possibly a little younger, late teens or early twenties. They must have been regulars at the gym, as they were gossiping about various members of staff. Men say women are bad for gossiping, but these two were doing their best to highlight that men were even worse.