3rd December 2007
Dear Emma,
If it were up to me we’d celebrate our anniversary on the day of our first date. But of course, you want to mark it today. You love telling people this story.
Did you know I actually spotted you first on that crammed tube? I remember seeing you in your black turtleneck, the now-familiar red lipstick, your raven hair tied up into that twisty thing you do. But I glanced away because a) I didn’t want to be Creepy Tube Guy and b) I was dressed as an extra in The Sound of Music.
I was so aware of you as the tube rumbled on. Jules said something funny and you did this incredible soft laugh. I couldn’t help peeking up again. When you met my look, I remember the shock of feeling that ran down my spine.
I tried to concentrate on something else, cursing work’s Fancy Dress Friday and feeling so wrong-footed in my lederhosen and Tyrolean hat. Not that I’d have been brave enough to do anything. And anyway I was sure you’d be with someone already. A man equally chic—who’d wear perfectly cut suits, speak three languages, be great with kids, love animals, and have a massive knob.
But fate intervened when the train jerked and I stumbled, missing the pole with my hand. My Tyrolean hat fell off and rolled to a stop by your shiny, brown laced boots. I was gushing sorry and kneeling in front of you in lederhosen with Jules laughing and saying, “Guten tag,” when you gave me that first smile: pity obviously, because I was a man who couldn’t even stand normally in a tube. Your boyfriend would stand really straight and still in a tube.
“It’s a nice hat.” The first words you said to me. Your voice was confident, smooth, and I found myself worrying if my hair was flat as I placed it back on my head. I’d never worried if my hair was flat before. Speak, man, I thought. Speak. I wished I’d plumped for something other than “Thanks”.
I remember feeling sad I’d missed my chance, that my exit was two stops away and now I would leave and you’d disappear on the Central Line out of my life. I’d never know what you were like, whether this electric feeling I had was a real one. But then you looked across at me and asked if I knew any good German markets. If I could write one down. The woman two seats down from you smiled into her book.
And I thought YES—I think this intriguing woman wants my number (or she thinks I’m actually German and genuinely wants to know about German markets). I felt flustered as I patted my pockets for my pen and my A6 notebook (and, no, I don’t think it’s that weird a thing to carry around—but I do wish Hattie hadn’t told you I used to record bird species in it. Thanks for that, sis). But I didn’t have it, only a pen, a 50p piece, a crumpled receipt, and my house keys.
I smoothed out the back of the receipt from Boots and quickly scrawled my number. Then I went over it twice which I worried made me look a bit psycho but I thought I’d made the seven look like a one.
The row of pastel-colored terraced houses that signaled we’d soon be slowing to a stop at my station flashed past the window behind you. I went a fraction too early, clumsily thrusting the Boots receipt in front of you. “If you want to go to a market,” I said. Your mouth broke into a smile and I felt a glow in my chest. I was about to return the smile when I froze, suddenly remembering the last time I’d been to Boots.
But it was too late. You’d taken it. It was now in your hand. You were still smiling like it was a Good Thing. Jules was smiling like it was a Good Thing. The woman two seats down was smiling like it was a Good Thing.
Holy shit.
I wanted to snatch it straight back. Your purple nail varnish swam in front of me as I panicked. My mum had asked me to pick up some more Anusol for her piles. Oh my God. I’d written my number on the back of a receipt for Anusol.
Numbness spread down my body as I wondered whether to say something about the Anusol, that it wasn’t for me.
I was frantically casting about for something to say, anything to distract. Your boots. I’d liked your lace-up boots. THAT WAS WHAT I WANTED TO SAY, your BOOTS. I OBVIOUSLY DIDN’T MEAN TO SAY ALOUD “I LIKE YOUR BOOBS.”
Oh God, the sheer fucking horror of that moment. The little widening of your eyes before I started stammering “YOUR BOOTS, YOUR BOOTS,” like I had shoe-based Tourette’s. I’d never blushed in my life but I could feel my face burning up like I had LAVA inside of me. And you were amazing when you laughed and tried to defuse my embarrassment.
BUT OF COURSE the tube decided THAT was the moment to squeal to a random halt. I could literally SEE the end of the platform out of the window. Freedom from this nightmare I was stuck in.
“My stop,” I squeaked. An actual squeak. A sound I wasn’t even sure I could make. “Home,” I said. Because apparently I didn’t talk in sentences anymore. Maybe I could smash my way out with the little hammer?
Jules and the woman two seats down were openly laughing at me.
My face reflected in the glass was a wide-eyed ghost even as you were thanking me for the receipt.
I just nodded, so grateful to you for trying to be nice, trying to be normal: it made me like you even more. Not that I said that because I was mute now: it was unlikely I would ever be able to speak to a woman again.
The tube juddered and the next moment it had stopped at the platform, the doors slid open, and I practically dived through them.
As the carriage moved away, I glanced back and, just before you were lost to my sight, you craned your neck round and grinned at me.
God, I remember that whole evening being torturous, pretending to Dave I was cool if you didn’t call but constantly checking my phone like I was fourteen years old again, checking my pager. That smile, that amused sparkle in your eyes. And you did message me, late, just before bed, the screen lighting up my bedroom, hope a shade of ghostly blue.
“How normal are you compared to today? 1 being completely normal, BORINGLY so; 10 being, well, like you were today?”
I laughed, and we swapped messages and, when you’d established I might not want to pickle you and keep you in a jar, we arranged to meet and God you were sensational and I literally haven’t looked back.
It’s completely typical of you that you want to force me to remember that day. Hattie said she peed herself a little when you recounted it to her a few months later.
So, despite regular winking and sheep-throwing on Facebook, you wanted us to be romantic and the idea for these letters was born. I can’t wait to read yours.
Right, what has been awesome about the year and being with you?
Our nights out in Camden, obviously—comedy nights, plays, dancing, sawdust, sweat, red wine.
The way you continue to thrust books on me because you don’t trust people that don’t read.
The way my friends love you too (and my parents—although my mum told me after you’d first met that she liked you more than me which is Too Far).
The surprise Eurostar picnic.
That Suffolk coastal walk in torrential rain (we were so brave).
I keep waiting for it to go wrong. For you to expose yourself as a closet racist or a hoarder of weird junk. But, although you surprise me all the time (who knew you loved darts and collected shitloads of shells?), I’m always hit over the head again by my sheer luck in meeting you.
You said I love you on 17th August (See? We could make THAT our Dateversary) and I still attest I said it first and you didn’t hear me. Your hearing is actually one of the things I’d criticize about you. Sometimes it’s like you’re dragging yourself back from another place entirely.
I do love you though, Emma, you’re amazing. I’ve never been more glad of a decision in my whole life, horrifying though the memory is. Thank God for that Boots receipt.
Here’s to one year together.
Dan x x
P.S. OK, this was a really cool idea.