Bitter Sweet

Bitter Sweet

  Robert Young has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

  Chapter 1

  It's a Thursday, about eight in the evening, I'm a twenty-seven year old single man and I work in the City. From this information you may have reasonably deduced that I have also had a couple of drinks already. Four actually. Pints. Well done you.

  This particular evening I am feeling particularly good. The boss has been dropping hints about my bonus being decent this year, I've had a disaster-free day in the office, which counts for a lot at the moment, and I've managed to drag my sorry carcass out of the pub by 8 o'clock instead of propping up the bar until kicking-out. All in all, pretty good going. Well done me.

  I'm walking along through the cold evening, crowds thinner now but still plenty of people about. I'm smiling to myself, humming a tune and considering whether to call a mate and go and meet him for a drink or whether to make the most of my rare good sense and go home, leaving me hangover free for a Friday morning. The change might do me good after all.

  Past McDonalds without a flicker, past KFC with just a minor internal conflict but I keep on walking and now I'm even more pleased with myself.

  On occasion you see policemen and policewomen standing around train stations and other public places. More visible in one of those Government initiatives to combat terror. With bright yellow reflective vests. On this occasion I see a policewoman standing on the concourse at King's Cross as I change trains on the second and final leg of my triumphant early and not-completely-whammed trip home. She's pretty. Stand-out-in-a-crowd-pretty too. I mean, she's already standing out what with the anti-terror bright yellow reflective vest and the uniform and all that. But you know what I mean.

  So I look at her longer than I should do or normally would do and of course, of course, she clocks me. Looks right back at me with a look that tells me she knows that I'm staring. I keep staring of course. I'm not pissed, like I said. But I am four-pints cocky.

  Eye contact. This is new. Never eyed up a copper before. She maintains the eye contact too. This is also new. Never been eyed up by a copper before. She is isn't she?

  Let's face it, it’s doubtful but I smile at her anyway.

  She smiles back. It's a nice smile. A really nice smile and she really is really very pretty now that she's smiling that really nice smile at me. So when I draw level with her I step up from the smile to a very friendly and personable 'Hi,' which is just the right side of polite that I can pass it off as merely being friendly to a copper rather than a bit cheeky should she decide to exercise her right to stop smiling at any point.

  'Hello sir,' she says.

  And then, with no plan, no forethought, no inkling of a clue what I'm going to do next, I stop. I really don't know why I've decided to stop here, about a two feet away from where she's standing looking up at me from underneath the hat and not smiling anymore. Except I do know of course and it has everything to do with why my bladder is so full.

  I look momentarily like I'm about to say something, as if something important has occurred to me that I consider it my civic duty to inform the police about. But then I stop, pausing in what I consider to be an enigmatic moment of reflection, although it may well just look like I'm drunk and I have forgotten what I was going to say. I haven't. Mainly because I have no idea what it is I was going to say in the first place.

  With any luck, the rising sense of embarrassment and mild panic is hidden deep beneath my calm, suave exterior. Maybe, she'll be fooled by the suit and my shiny shoes. Hang on a sec, they look filthy.

  'Having a pleasant evening sir?' she asks and I get more than a little self conscious that she has done so not out of a burning attraction to me, but more a sense of condescension and pity. But, you know, four pints.

  'Picking up,' I say, just the hint of a smile tugging playfully at the corners of my mouth. 'Picking up.'

  Could that be just the hint of a smile tugging playfully at the corners of her mouth? Four pints says yes.

  'Nice night to be out,' I say to her, instantly and expertly demonstrating my effortless command of both irony and sarcasm. She can't fail to have been impressed by that.

  'Perks of the job,' she says with the smile returning. Half the smile anyway. That's encouraging. I really shouldn't be encouraged though. I really should know better. But I don't so I grin back at her. Roguish, boyish charm and a generous dash of self-assurance. Of course. Four pints cocky.

  Another pause here. I am struggling with the next thing to say. In fact, if I'm honest, I haven't exactly set the world alight so far so I need to make the next thing I say really good, a tiny bit playful and, ideally, very funny. I'm aware that asking her how she is, or how long she's been a policewoman, or venturing down some similar conversational cul de sac will do nothing but mark me down as a dullard and a boor and a drunk. God knows right now I need to hide the real me.

  She must be in a charitable mood though, or perhaps she's just a good professional, because she says 'Can I... help with anything sir?'

  She could think I'm a nutter, a pisshead, scary or just lonely. Or a nasty combination of the four. Four-pints cocky; she loves it. She just wants to keep me talking. Course she does.

  'I'm really not sure that I should be saying this to a policewoman... but,' and I let it hang there for a bit, cunningly baiting my hook. Clever eh?

  'But?' she says back to me. I knew she was interested. I've played it just right. God I'm good. Now, careful not to slur.

  'Well,' I begin, that smile back again. 'I was going to say, what time do you get off.' Her expression betrays nothing of the excitement that she is undoubtedly feeling right now but I don't mind if she wants to play hard to get. Then the expression falls a little and she looks like she isn't having fun anymore. I notice the radio, the expression on her face, the look in her eyes. I have a fleeting moment of realisation that this is a POLICEWOMAN and it suddenly feels more like two pints instead of four.

  But I'm here now and I'm stupid enough not to be put off by silly little things like signals and body language.

  I really should explain before we press on with this that I really do not do this sort of thing very often. And I mean ever. I don't normally even make an approach to a drunk woman in a nightclub when she's been looking at me across the room so this is really quite out of character for me. I'm usually such a nice lad.

  'But I realised that you must get asked that all the time so I thought maybe I better not say that.' I'm backpedalling a bit here of course, giving myself a get-out clause. You know, so I don't look stupid.

  She does a sort of sideways tilt / nod thing with her head, which seems to say many things but I'm not too well-equipped to interpret any of them at the moment. 'OK,' she says and I think for a minute that I might be able to interpret this as 'Please shut up and leave me alone.' So perhaps I'm not too pissed after all. A thought which buoys me up a little, or at any rate, enough to carry on talking to the poor woman.

  'But then I wondered if I could use what might be the corniest line I've ever come up with and not get arrested for it... So what's a nice girl like you doing in a uniform like this?'

  You will be forgiven for thinking less of me at this point. Not my finest work.

  Who am I kidding? It was eighteen hundred thousand carat gold and she knew it. What you might fail to appreciate - a restriction of the medium perhaps - is the combination of good looks, winning (slightly drunk) confidence and a knowing smile that tells her that I am actually taking the piss out of myself and not her (indeed, any references I might make to my good looks, charm and wit, are served up here with a generous seasoning of irony. I'm not that full of myself).

  She breaks eye contact with
me and looks at the floor but it’s no good because I can see the smile breaking out on her face, no matter how much she might be trying to fight it. Then she laughs. A proper laugh too. Not a giggle, or a snicker, or a chuckle. A laugh. The type you can't control properly, in the same way that you can't control a sneeze. A mouth-open, eyes closed sort of laugh, hand to her face, slightly coy.

  'Seriously though,' I continue, grasping the moment like the shameless opportunist I so demonstrably am. 'When do you get off?'

  The laughing subsides but not suddenly. Gently and with a smile and a look of mild reproach. She sweeps her eyelids up, huge hazel eyes almost knocking me backwards. I'm four-pints in love.

  'Seriously,' I say again in order to reiterate that I might just be serious. 'What do you do when you aren't being an officer of the law?'

  'Are you asking me out?' she says and there's no avoiding the note of incredulity in her voice.

  'Well that was probably going to be my next question so you've kind of stolen my thunder there.'

  Somehow, somewhere along the line, I'd slipped easily and comfortably into a tone of calm assurance, which almost conveyed the sense that this was a perfectly normal thing to be doing.

  'Come on. Off duty, what do you like doing? Quiet cocktail or two in a sophisticated bar? Coffee, Danish and a stroll round a gallery? Nice dinner and a glass of wine with a pleasant and well meaning young gentleman?' I'm still smiling at her too, still that same playful little grin that is at once both confident and self-effacing.

  'I don't even know you,' she replies but then, as a rejection, it lacked conviction.

  'OK,' I say. 'Have it your way. Give me your number and I'll call you sometime. Tom by the way,' and my hand is out to be shaken.

  She shakes it and does the eyelash sweep again. When I was at school doing my GCSE Biology, one teacher told us that there was some human physiological response to intense attraction where your pupils dilate. At this point, after the second eyelash sweep, mine did that.

  'Sally,' she tells me and I decide that Sally is definitely my favourite girls name. 'I don't think anyone's ever asked me out like this before. Aren't you put off by the uniform?'

  I raise an eyebrow, four-pints cocky, and I say 'Au contraire.' Four-pints stupid.

  Before she can respond to this I laugh and apologise effusively and in my most sincere, most non-threatening, most charming, most I'm-not-a-pisshead-or-a-nutter voice I ask her out properly. 'Honestly though,' I say - that's the sincere bit sorted - 'would you like to go out with me sometime? Drink, dinner, whatever you like. I'll even give you my number in case you're not comfortable giving yours out to strange men on railway platforms. Then you can think about it for a few minutes and call me to say yes.' I finish with a grin which I'm hoping nails down the charming and non-threatening bit.

  And then amazingly, shockingly, startlingly, the gorgeous WPC with the eyelashes only goes and gives me her fucking number. I mean, you know, Christ.

  I buy myself a Large Cornish Pasty to celebrate. I think I've earned it.

  Anyway. That's how I met Sally. Beautiful, sweet, kind, giving, funny, clever, patient, laid back, sexy Sally.

  Want to know how I lost her?

  Chapter 2