How to Find Your (First) Husband

by Rosie Blake

  Mum placed a flat palm down on the table and in her dangerous voice said, ‘She will not be returning to LA.’

  ‘Well not this second,’ I started.

  ‘Not until you have found him,’ she cut in. ‘You wanted an adventure, now this is just that.’

  ‘Mum…he’s in Malaysia. The country. I checked and it is still next door to Thailand aka MILES away.’

  Mum waved a hand. ‘A trifle. You need a holiday and we haven’t given you a proper Christmas present in years.’

  ‘Er, that is not true. You have sent me a necklace, boxsets, that cashmere cardigan and I treasure the photo of Polzeath you got printed on that T-shirt with your faces interposed over it.’

  Dad shivered. ‘Bad year.’

  ‘Well we haven’t been on a family holiday of sorts…’

  ‘Sending me somewhere alone doesn’t qualify,’ I pointed out.

  ‘I’m serious, Isobel, we think you should go,’ she said, spelling it out. ‘You need to do something drastic, you need a break from it all. We really want you to go.’

  I looked at Dad who nodded at me. ‘We do. We’ve been…well…we thought you needed some time to think about things and know more about what you want…’ He tugged at his collar looking at Mum, who picked up his thread.

  ‘This isn’t all about Andrew is it, darling? This is about you and you need to do this. So,’ she said with a decisive clap, ‘it’s settled.’

  So it seemed I was off to Malaysia.

  Moregran,

  Sitting at the airport about to get on a flight to Singapore! I tracked down Andrew; he’s a teacher at a school in Somerset, but he goes to Malaysia for his summer to volunteer. Eco-warrior alert, I bet he has an amazing bouffant beard and can fish using just a spear! So I am going to go and find him. Wish me luck! I am posting this from the airport. They are doing a deal in duty-free now where I can buy my bodyweight in Toblerone for about 10p, so have to run…

  Love you,

  Isobel x x

  Chapter 13

  Singapore

  Why do they make you walk through First Class when you board a flight? Is this for the satisfaction of those in First Class – we shall throw you some mere mortals to sniff at – to really make the extra money seem worth it or perhaps a complicated plot by the airlines to bring about class warfare? Either way, there is nothing more galling than seeing someone lying prostrate, plump little pillow under their head, blanket made from cashmere/spun GOLD, sipping at a nightcap of pink champagne as you bustle through to the back of the plane, the section reserved for the unlucky thousand, who are about to spend ten hours squashed up against each other, swapping their germs across the pungent air and praying for the flight to end.

  ‘’Scuse me, ’scuse me, sorry, can I just…?’ I was sweating by the time I was sat in my upright seat, belt fixed, sweets crushed next to the sick bag in the pouch in front of me. Kindle in my lap, despair in my heart, I looked about. Children were standing on seats, a baby was already crying, a large lady opposite had found peanuts from about her person and was religiously loading them into her mouth one by one. Frazzled air hostesses with stick-on smiles skirted their way down the aisle and around passengers. I waited for the pilot’s voice. I always wanted confident, experienced professional. He sounded nasal but bored, like he had done this before, so I relaxed and looked out at the wing on the runway, trying to block out the crush.

  The moment we were in the air, turbulence seemed to hit and the cabin was filled with chatter, children squealing and that baby who might be going for some kind of Crying World Record. There was one guy, however, who seemed totally nonplussed by the flying experience. He was across the way from me, one long leg stretched out into the aisle, one eye open to move it for the trolley. Headphones on and what looked suspiciously like Disney’s Frozen playing out on the screen in front of him. I surreptitiously stared at his profile from behind my book. He had dark hair the colour of an espresso coffee, tanned cheeks, a spattering of stubble and thick eyelashes that seemed to fringe his blue eyes so that they seemed almost turquoise.

  ‘You know I can see you,’ he said, his eyes ahead, still on Frozen.

  I froze myself, unsure if he was talking to me or not. Surely n…

  ‘I’m talking to you,’ he said, turning his head to the left, tilting one headphone away from his ear and looking at me.

  ‘Oh, I…’ I shifted in my seat, my knees bumping the magazine pouch in front, no room to manoeuvre. I noticed the picture of the woman being sick into a bag.

  ‘Wondering how a strapping man like me can take pleasure from an in-flight cartoon, eh?’ He smiled.

  ‘I…’ I spluttered.

  He put up a hand. ‘It’s okay, I am happy to be judged. Please feel free to continue.’ He readjusted his headphone and went back to staring.

  ‘No, I…’

  He couldn’t hear me. He was tapping one finger on his thigh in time to the song the main lady was singing. I wasn’t judging him, I thought silently. I was just bored and looking around the plane and I didn’t mind that he watches cartoons. It’s fine, each to their own; live and let live. I have never been one to cast aspersions. I turned my head to look at him again, mouth half-open, ready with my spiel, but he was having none of it. I sat there, tried to read, words swimming in front of me. He was very cheeky to assume all that about me. I was the innocent party here, how dare he project his insecurities onto me? It was outrageous. I was a warm person who has been brought up well. Ooh, my mother would have a word with him over this. She would defend me to the hilt.

  I could feel myself getting hotter with every thought so I took the inflight manual out of the pouch and wafted it in front of my face to cool down. Eyes flicked to the right again. Why would he think that?

  Before I could think, I had reached across the aisle and had tapped him on his one long, outstretched leg. His eyes opened so that the sharp blue was now entirely encircled by white. He took off both headphones.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Well I wanted to say, that, well I wasn’t judging, you know, you, because of…’ What had I begun? Iz, what are you blathering about? ‘You know,’ I jerked my head at his screen, ‘it’s a free country! I was just looking around at the…scenery.’ I came to a stop.

  He followed my gaze around the carriage, a smug half-smile playing on his lips. A dribbling teenage girl slept soundly, a toddler was pushing polo mints into his mother’s handbag while she slept. The baby was still crying.

  ‘Ah, well thank you for clearing that up,’ he said, return­ing to the headphones and the screen.

  I sat back in my seat stiffly, Kindle forgotten. Then I leaned over again and prodded him. I didn’t give him time to react. ‘Look, sorry, I just think I need this cleared up: I was just looking about the plane being entirely non-judgmental. I am a very laid-back person.’ I smiled and could feel my face all taut. Laidback and chilled, that’s me!

  He raised one eyebrow at me and spoke slowly, ‘Okey-doke.’ Headphones back on.

  For the next hour I sat there, pretending to read but really trying to focus on looking super-free and easy. If I glanced around I was careful to keep my expression neutral. Ha! That would show him.

  *

  The air hostess appeared at his side, giggling as she handed him a Coke and miniature bottle of rum. Oh I am the King of the Aeroplane, All the Airhostesses Love Me, I thought, making a face.

  ‘You know I can see you in the reflection of my screen,’ he said, tipping the Coke into a plastic glass.

  ‘Well that’s nice,’ I sniffed.

  ‘You were gurning,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Well the character in my book is annoying,’ I explained, holding up my Kindle and then trying to turn it the right way up before he noticed.

  I could see his eyes watching me in the screen and, sticking on headphones, I dec
ided to immerse myself in a movie too. Something serious and sensible, an adult’s movie. A drama.

  Oh man. Two hours later, all other passengers forgotten, I was a total wreck. Snot and tears merged on my face hopelessly as I tried not to cry aloud. Why had I picked this movie? This destroyer of all good emotions? Oh I felt drained and useless. The credits rolled and I couldn’t stop thinking back to the main character and all that she’d gone through, and for what?

  A tissue was proffered in the aisle by a hand and I took it, dragged back to the aeroplane and Mr Smug sitting in front of me. I could tell he was looking at my leaky red eyes and I dabbed hopelessly, wishing I had my compact mirror which was nestled somewhere above my head in the locker.

  ‘Thanks,’ I muttered, not wanting to seem ungrateful for the tissue.

  ‘Not to worry – Frozen gets me every time,’ he said, a solemn look on his face.

  ‘I wasn’t watc…oh a joke. Ha,’ I said in a deadpan voice, still back in the drama on screen.

  Coiled, waiting for more, I was surprised to see his head loll to the side and his eyes flutter close. The air hostess moved past, looking at him, blushing when I caught her eye.

  ‘Anything from the trolley?’ she asked.

  Shaking my head I turned the screen off, took off my headphones and tried to sleep too.

  Waiting for our plane to refuel in Dubai airport, I had managed to escape the man’s amused smirk and hurtle out into the airy concourse and the lines of shops. Sitting eating a frozen yoghurt, bits of strawberry and crushed nuts stuck to my lips, I sighed. It felt slightly bizarre travelling alone, bizarre but freeing. LA had been so crammed, dirty and busy, so completely different to my gentle Cornish upbringing: the fields, the space, the people private and unobtrusive. I stretched out my legs, licking my lips slowly over the spoon. Man, frozen yoghurt was delicious.

  The man from the airport was waiting at the gate, one eye looking at me over the tattered pages of his thriller. He gave me a warm smile and, perhaps it was memory of the yoghurt, I grinned right back. It lasted a second before I lost myself in my Kindle once more and then moved through to the second flight of the day, one step closer to finding Andrew Parker.

  Groggy and dry-mouthed, I moved through Passport Control at Singapore airport in a fug. My skin felt patchy and dry and my teeth seemed to be coated in sugar and aeroplane hideousness. I wanted a shower, a bath, some kind of water anyway and a change of clothes. As I waited for my suitcase, smiling weakly at a child who was sitting on it, cross-legged, being chased by his mother round the edge, I thought of the next few days and the plan that I had come up with. I only had one night in Singapore and then tomorrow I would be off to the tiny drop in the South China Sea that was Tioman Island where I would find my love! This thought made my face stretch into a grin and I tugged my suitcase off the carousel as it came my way, standing it upright and tipping it forward before wheeling away.

  Before I could make it too far, a hand shot out and I yelped, turning quickly, my hair snapping around with me.

  ‘Gah, wha.’

  ‘Sorry, sorry,’ he panted. It was the man from the aeroplane.

  I narrowed my eyes in suspicion, holding my handbag to my chest as if to provide some kind of protection.

  ‘I didn’t want you to be wandering the streets of Singapore without knowing my name,’ he said, going for a charming smile which sort of worked as his dark hair stuck up in places as if he had just woken up, his shirt crumpled, hints of chest hair peeking through the top. He stuck out a hand. ‘Zeb, nice to meet you.’

  I took his hand. ‘Zeb,’ I repeated slowly.

  He started laughing. ‘Mum had a thing for The Magic Roundabout and it sort of stuck.’ He dragged a hand through his hair.

  ‘Well nice to meet you,’ I said, clamping my mouth closed halfway through speaking, unsure of my breath at this point. I really needed to splash my face and clean

  my teeth.

  He seemed to be waiting for more and I hastily gushed my own name at him. ‘Isobel, my mum, well it’s just Isobel.’

  ‘Great. Well I might see you round.’

  ‘Yep.’ I nodded once, pursing my lips.

  ‘Look, I’m heading to the Marine Bay Sands Hotel tonight if you’re free – it’s pretty awesome, actually, if you were at a loose end.’

  I looked down and fiddled with the in-flight label on my suitcase, tearing it off so that the elastic band pinged back and bit me on the finger.

  ‘Ow, oh I’m um…’

  Why was he inviting me out? He was waiting, all expectant with those turquoise eyes.

  ‘I’m not sure. I’m seeing, seeing about some things.’

  ‘Sounds important.’ He nodded solemnly.

  Was he taking the piss? It’s your fault if he was, Isobel Graves. You should have said seeing FRIENDS, Iz, FRIENDS not things, he would have thought you had mates, now he knows you are a saddo. A saddo loser with no friends just hanging out in Singapore for no good reason.

  I hated it when the voice in my head got really judgy.

  ‘Yes, well best get on,’ I said, taking off with my trolley in the first direction to hand and then having to make an embarrassing loop back to the taxi queue behind him.

  What was it about this man that turned me into a com­plete idiot?

  I thought he was laughing into his hand as I passed. Tilting my chin up, I walked on, trying not to look at him. Maybe it had been a cough.

  Chapter 14

  Leaning back in the air-conditioned taxi, I felt the smooth leather on my bare legs and breathed a sigh of relief. Citing the name of the hotel I’d booked, we moved away from the rank and along the manicured roads around Singapore. The buildings along the edge of the harbour soared upwards, practically lost in the folds of the clouds that had descended like a fog over the city as we sped across the flyover. The radio seemed to be running through a list of nineties disco classics and I was impressed by the taxi driver’s ability to recollect most of the words to Step’s ‘5,6,7,8’. I nodded along, our eyes briefly meeting in mutual appreciation in the driving mirror.

  Pulling up outside one of the saddest buildings I’d ever seen, my heart sank on reading the peeling painted sign: ‘Hotel’. The ‘o’ and ‘t’ were so badly faded it simply read ‘Hel’ which, from my vantage point, didn’t seem far off. Tipping the taxi driver after he’d put his back out unloading my suitcase from the boot, I felt a wash of warm air encircle me. Rolling my belongings up a little ramp, I noticed with some relief a small bar area to the left of Reception. There were unoccupied faded velvet stools and low scattered tables waiting for paying guests. Me! I checked in quickly, trying not to take in too many details from the narrow lilac room, a tiny window covered in bars making it look exactly like a cell. Heading back downstairs to the bar, I headed over and ordered a Singapore Sling, earning myself a barely perceptible eye-roll from the waiter.

  Moving across to a booth by the window, I got out my guide, purchased at the last moment at the airport, and looked at Malaysia; focusing on the tiny spot that was Tioman Island off its eastern coast. Tomorrow I would be flying there, tomorrow I would truly start the search for Andrew Parker. I momentarily wondered what he might think of me sitting alone in the bar of a Singapore hotel, having spent my life savings on a trip spanning the globe to find him. But then I remembered the sunny boy he had been, the tree-climbing adventurer who would only admire my spirit and intrepid nature. The Singapore Sling arrived and I took a deep gulp, the cherry brandy and gin warming my insides. This was an evening to explore a new location and drink to the old life I was leaving behind and the new life I was embracing. The trouble was, there was no one to share it with and after my second Singapore Sling I found myself wandering back to the hotel reception and booking a taxi to the Marine Bay Sands Hotel.

  The taxi was completely dwarfed by the first of the three towers. I craned my neck to
try to see the top, a large deck that looked like a ship resting on top of three columns. It was an extraordinary building and, as I tumbled through its revolving doors, I tried not to gape at the huge chandeliers dripping from the ceiling, the polished marble-clad space, airy and inviting. A queue of people being stamped and welcomed stood to my right and I automatically joined the back, assuming it would lead me to a bar and to people.

  A guy in front of me, wobbly and smiling, raised his trilby hat at me.

  ‘Hey,’ I responded, nodding to an unheard beat and then looking back around the lobby.

  ‘Barney.’ He thrust his hand out and I took it. ‘You heading up to the top?’ he asked.

  ‘Isobel…oh, um, yeah, I think so,’ I said, trying to look like I knew what I was up to. ‘What’s um…what’s up there?’

  ‘Pumping nightclub, one of three, are you a Marine Sands Virgin?’ he asked, pursing his mouth in shock.

  ‘Yup,’ I said, noting his accent. ‘And you’re English,’ I said.

  ‘Manchester. But I work out here. You?’

  ‘LA, well Cornwall, well, sort of,’ I babbled, realising I didn’t need to make things so complicated.

  ‘You work here?’

  ‘No I’m um…’

  ‘Hand,’ said the bouncer, holding a stamp threateningly.

  ‘Sorry,’ I gushed quickly, producing a hand.

  ‘I’m going to find someone,’ I announced as Barney walked into a lift to our left.

  ‘Cool,’ he said, readjusting his hat in the mirrored walls of the lift.

  Tottering into the lift after him, I felt a thrill of excitement. As we climbed fifty-six floors, my head felt tight and as I stepped out onto the top floor, my ears popped. We had emerged on a terrace crammed with people. The balmy air of a Singapore evening meant that there was no need for a cardigan or a jumper and I gasped at the night sky resplendent above me; stars and clouds reflected off the buildings across the still water of the harbour below.