* * *
The rest of the day went… well… better than I’d feared. After breakfast in the B & B dining room, where I broke my golden liquid-only-breakfast rule as Ben hovered surreptitiously in the background, Cooper drove Ben’s car up to the farmhouse in the Peak District that he’d hired for the next three days (again, Ben in the back seat, camera on: ‘Pretend I’m not here!’) We went on what should have been a three-hour hike, but turned into nearly twice that long due to mostly consisting of trying not to slip over in the drizzle, interspersed with half-conversations that never went on long enough to get anywhere. It was memorable, though, trudging through the terrible weather. And making some memories felt almost as important as getting to know each other. Wasn’t that what a marriage was – thousands of shared experiences, all adding up to a life together?
Once warm, dry and clean again, we wandered down a country lane to the enticing lights of an old pub, where we found perfect, cosy seats in front of a crackling fire. While Cooper went to fetch us drinks from the crowded bar, I insisted Ben put down his camera and join us.
‘Come on, you’ve got more than enough footage for one day.’
‘It’s the crucial first date. There’s a lot to capture.’
I stepped right up to him, close enough to press my hand over the camera lens, and pulled my fiercest face. ‘You’ve trailed behind us up and down miles of massive hills in the rain. I think not giving you a dinner break would be in breach of employment law.’
‘I’m not about to double gooseberry. Me and my zoom lens are sitting right over there.’
‘Double gooseberry?’
‘The guy who years later becomes a dinner-party story about how he gate-crashed your first date and honeymoon in one. I’m already wandering dangerously close to my moral boundaries, just by taking this job.’
‘Okay, how about I swear never to twist this into anything other than me badgering you into eating with us?’ I took my hand off the lens, but leant closer so I could keep my voice down. Not that Cooper could hear me while trapped in the bar crush. ‘I’ve spent a whole day with a stranger who I’m now linked to for life. Spending this much time with someone I don’t know is probably a record for me, and would be intense enough whoever it was. But this is Cooper. You’ve probably gathered that I’m about as easy-breezy as he is. Please sit with us and make light-hearted conversation peppered with stupid jokes and amusing anecdotes and whatever other magic photographer tricks you’ve mastered which can make even oddly intense people like me feel relaxed and comfortable.’
‘I make you feel relaxed and comfortable?’ Ben lowered the camera and raised one eyebrow.
Woah.I pulled my eyes away from Ben’s enquiring gaze and fixed them firmly on my 94-per-cent-compatible partner-for-life.
Thirty-seven first dates had proved that a zip of chemistry was next to nowhere on my list of priorities. A man who had chosen to commit himself to me? A good, kind, very nice-looking man?
‘Yeah, on second thoughts, that table in the corner looks perfect for you.’
‘The one covered in dirty plates?’ Ben grinned.
‘Yes. That one.’
‘Well, I’ll take a seat, then. Enjoy your dinner.’
‘I will!’
I turned away, brusquely. Ben was arogue. And I was done with rogues. Along with charmers and smooth-talkers and anyone who thought marriage was a noose for two.
Right.
Here was Cooper with my craft gin and organic tonic. Perfect timing. I gave him a peck on the cheek, and sat down, turning my seat firmly away from the poky corner table covered in dirty plates.
‘Okay?’ my gorgeous husband asked, eyes full of nervous hope.
‘Yes.’ I smiled back, reaching out and brazenly squeezing his hand for a brief second. ‘I’m very okay.’
I remained that way for most of the evening. The more Cooper and I talked, the more I was able to ignore Ben’s camera prickling the centre of my back.
And we really talked, this time. The kind of conversations I had always dreamt of having on a first date, without any of the fear of seeming too keen or too much of an organisational control-freak who had succeeded in planning out her whole life while simultaneously failing to achieve most of it.
We covered our romantic history (in the few short minutes before ordering food), our work, my time in Ireland and Cooper’s sad, lonely existence in Cardiff. He listened with furrowed brow as I told him about Dad, trying to describe the anguish of seeing my larger-than-life father withering away before our eyes. The stress of dealing with a bureaucracy that seemed stacked against the most vulnerable in society at every turn.
And when I’d finished wiping my eyes, and ordered another drink plus mango sorbet for dessert and decided that it was probably time to change the subject to something not quite so heartbreakingly depressing, given the occasion, and given how I was trying to make a good impression, Cooper then started talking about his own family.
Nowthatwas heartbreakingly depressing.
My dad was ill, and had been forced to give up running the business he loved about two decades earlier than planned. He wasn’t able to romance his wife, dance with his daughters or kick a football with his grandchildren.
But he was there.
