Chapter One

 

 

Not everyone is looking for someone, not on a permanent basis anyway. I wasn’t. What I’d had with James suited me. We fitted the model of friends with benefits to a T. We shared similar tastes in films, books and politics. He was tall, handsome in an understated way and almost eleven years older than me.

On the whole I prefer dating older men, not because I’m looking for a father figure or a sugar daddy to cosset and spoil me. I don’t need any of that. I’m an independent guy. I look after myself. My preference for older men is because they tend to be uncomplicated. They know who they are and what they want from life. They’re also less emotionally demanding than men my own age or younger. I don’t need a Daddy and I don’t want to be one.

James and I didn’t live in each other’s pockets. We met up once or twice a week, occasionally more, work schedules permitting, and enjoyed each other’s company. We talked and broke bread together, and yeah, we had sex, plenty of hot no strings attached sex. It was a great arrangement, if slightly unconventional, but perhaps that’s what made it so good.

Then James met Kye and fell in love with him, just like that, in the snap of a finger and thumb. It didn’t break my heart, but it did break our arrangement. James wanted to commit to Kye lock stock and barrel. It astonished me. He’d always said he didn’t want or need the complications of a permanent relationship. Cosy domesticity with a single clingy mate was not for him. For some reason Kye changed his mind. James described it as ‘clicking.’ Something clicked and fell into place from the moment they met.

At twenty-five Kye was the same age as me. The similarities ended there. He was needy in a way I wasn’t. He wanted all of James’s time and attention. He demanded cosseting and compliments and wanted to be constantly pampered, petted and reassured. James seemed to lap it up. He and I reverted to being friends without benefits.

I didn’t resent Kye. He was sweet in his way and it was obvious he made James happy. I was more than pleased to be best man at their Civil Partnership Ceremony. I considered it an honour to be asked. They both had plenty of other friends who could have fulfilled the role.

As I watched them cutting their celebration cake at the reception afterwards I was surprised when I experienced a stirring of something I couldn’t define. Perhaps I’d been more emotionally attached to James than I’d thought? No. I dismissed the idea as soon as it arose. The feeling wasn’t envy, and it wasn’t sadness or regret. It was just - something. I was, I searched to find words to fit the feeling, but the only thing that came to mind was ‘puzzled.’

The love thing between the two of them puzzled me. I hadn’t been in love with James. I had never been in love with anyone. I loved my family, my mum and sister anyway, but I had never been in love with another man in a romantic sense. What did love have to do with anything? I understood friendship. I understood sex. I didn’t get ‘romantic love.’ It seemed an unnecessary and complicated emotion. What made James suddenly fall in love with Kye and want to spend a conventional lifetime with him and only him? It was a conundrum to me.

We all stayed friends, to a degree. I suddenly realised Kye wasn’t entirely comfortable when I was around. A shade of anxiety clouded his large Bambi eyes whenever I came on the scene. I think he’d guessed about the benefits I’d once shared with James and feared they might rekindle. There wasn’t a chance of it happening, but in respect of his feelings I distanced myself from them, literally. I moved to another town.

Ever since qualifying as a teacher and getting my first permanent job I’d lived in a rented flat in the same locale as James. I decided it was time to put a foot on the property ladder and began looking around for a suitable place to buy. I looked at scores of houses and flats and even considered a houseboat, but none of them appealed to me, none of them clicked.

I ended up moving into a bakery, or to be accurate a luxury apartment in what had once been the administrative building of a bakery. I was perusing a property brokers window one Saturday morning when I saw the photo. It grabbed my attention. It was advertised as a rare opportunity to purchase property in a coveted location.

I was intrigued and went inside to find out more. The estate agent was enthusiastic and also something of a local historian. He gave me a full run down on the property that had caught my eye.

Despite the lettering on the front of the building it was no longer a bakery in the working commercial sense. It had long since passed out of productive being. ‘Arthur’s Daylight Bakery’ as it was once known, was founded in the mid nineteen-twenties. It went from strength to strength reaching its peak in the sixties. It was famed in the area for its bread, pastries and confectionery. It churned out millions of sausage rolls, pasties, crusty cobs, doughnuts, vanilla slices, éclairs, peach melbas and gooey calorific artery clogging cream cakes that probably helped shorten the lifespan of an entire post war generation.

The name ‘Arthur’s’ was also synonymous with a string of shops and cafes. They sold the goods the bakery made. It was an institution; an empire folk believed would last forever. Only it didn’t. It went into decline during the late seventies and was out of business before Thatcher’s Ghost Town eighties got properly underway. Its demise left an unemployed workforce and a collection of empty buildings, along with a faint sad smell of bread dough in the air.

The bakery buildings were emptied of their machinery and quickly fell into a state of disrepair, becoming a target for vandals who delighted in smashing and wrecking. Calls were made to demolish them as they became more and more unsafe. They were eventually cleared to leave the land free to be sold for redevelopment.

The office building, which fronted the factory buildings, was a rather splendid Art Deco affair of cream and green glazed Italian tiles. The factory founder, Mr Ralph Arthur, believed his workforce would work harder if their place of employment had an air of elegance and grand refinement about it. His vision created a local landmark. Architect enthusiasts made sure it became a listed building, grade two. It couldn’t be demolished, so hence it was converted into luxury apartments, leaving the Art Deco exterior intact.

It looked even better in the flesh, so to speak, than it did on the estate agent photograph. It was a handsome masculine two-storey building with a recessed central clock tower. Well-kept grounds and gardens surrounded it. Something clicked as I observed it. Arthur’s Bakery called to me before I even viewed the apartment inside. I wanted to make my home beneath its roof.

There were eight large apartments in total, four on the ground floor and four on the top floor. The apartment for sale was on the top floor. It had a living room with large windows and high ceilings. There was a separate kitchen, a bathroom, a master bedroom with an en-suite shower room and a second bedroom. It was light, spacious and exactly what I was looking for. I set in motion the process of acquiring what I desired and looked forward to starting a new chapter in my life as a homeowner.