They used to sit on pavements in the rain reading about Ronnie Kray. They liked Nirvana and bunking off. There was a spot behind his ear that she used to like to touch. She sometimes felt like his mother and sometimes he acted like her son. But on the back of the bus, laughing at nothing, he was The One.
It is never an exact science. She never knew when or where she was going to meet The One but she knew it was vital to be alert to every possibility. People write books like The Rules but it's a waste of time because there are no rules, only opportunities not to be missed.
She had just walked into the pub and he was sitting there behind the sound desk, looking straight at her, curious but non-committal. His eyes were so dark they looked like tiny nuggets of coal framed by eyelashes almost as long as her own. She sat at a safe distance but stared at him in between songs so that he'd know. "Know what?" he asked her later when they were painting the walls of her bedroom. She just smiled and finished the song lyric she was painting above the door which read: "no need for fame, nothing physical, no violence, just your good thoughts and love and silence".
She had found The One but the next thing she needed to do was create the right conditions for him to find her. She made a compilation cassette tape for a party and at this party he would kiss her and from that moment on they would swallow popping candy and eat chips with mint sauce from the Asian chip-shop down the road. The track listing included U2, The Clash, Donovan and Dolly Parton so that he would take her for an eclectic mystery and not for the crowd-follower she really was. Her favourite song on the tape was Train in Vain by The Clash: "You didn't stand by me. No, not at all. You didn't stand by me. No way."
The song spoke of her past but not her future with The One, who kissed her in the kitchen for the first time at that carefully contrived party. He was 17. She was 21.
This is how it went. She got obsessed and began writing him too many tear-stained letters just because he didn't phone one day. And then not long afterwards, taking his cue from her, he met her in the coffee shop of a department store with his own letter.
That letter said: "You want different things to me. You should go and find someone else and marry them." He let her walk him to the bus stop which was kind but also humiliating, especially when she tried to stop him getting on the bus. Afterwards people said: "But you only knew him four weeks."
She did what he said. She got married. Divorced. Years passed before the notion crept in, niggling at her. Maybe he really had been The One. If their romance was a sponge cake that went flat then perhaps it was the timing that had been wrong, not the ingredients. So in between relationships she thought she'd try to find him, which proved quite easy because it was a small town.
She was hopeful of a reconciliation. These days she was (slightly) less intense and maybe he'd be a bit more mature and that would be a good combination for the future. They'd laugh and tell their children about the time they lost and then found each other again. The lesson would be: never give up, when you find The One, make sure you never let them out of your sight . . .
She did some research. Found out he went to Gran Canaria and became a Blue Coat. She found this news deeply unsettling. She wondered did he still like Nirvana. According to all sources, he now led groups of singles on 18-30 holidays and his party-piece was Rick Astley. She thought even his voice sounded different down the phone but she couldn't figure out why. She tried to picture him in a blue coat, hair neatly trimmed, encouraging girls in hotpants to join in Agadoo, but she could only see his scruffy jacket and the way his hair used to flop over the collar of his faded T-shirts.
She thought of The Clash: "All the times when we were close. I'll remember these things the most. I've seen all my dreams come tumbling down. I won't be happy without you around. So alone I keep the wolves at bay. And there is only thing I can say. You didn't stand by me."
But now he is a Blue Coat. An expert in lurid-coloured shot drinks. The king of Happy Hour. Not, as it turned out, The One.
