Page 1 of Love at First Sight

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Sunday. I’ve forced myself to get up at a reasonable hour, even though I haven’t got anything to be up for. I can hear the couple upstairs listening to Radio 2’sSunday Love Songs, shuffling about their kitchen laughing, and, depressingly, at one point, even indulging in a quickie. I miss that. I miss slobbing about and suddenly ending up on the living room floor. I find myself looking forward to tomorrow, which ispathetic. Wishing away the weekend because I feel lonely? I don’t think I could admit that even to India, and she knows everything about me.

Stoke Newington is a hive of couple activity at weekends, so I don’t want to go to Clissold Park to see everyone holding hands and sipping takeaway coffees. Nor do I fancy brunch for one surrounded by loved-up pairs with sex hair reading the Sunday supplements. After showering and getting ready, I look at myself in the mirror: my messy bronde bob and dark eyes could do with a little TLC – it wouldn’t kill me to get the GHDs out and pop on some mascara – but instead I flop down on my bed and stare at the ceiling. What have I got to get ready for? Holding hands with myself?

It’s a bright, sunny morning, so I positivelyforcemyselfto lace up my trainers and walk. Headphones in, podcast on, I’ll go and practise some gratitude. Acknowledge being able to pick and choose what I want to do, bask in the sun, give thanks for my friends, and family, and my job and the gym and …

Oh, who am I kidding? This allsucks.

The most I can muster enthusiasm for is buying the ingredients for a lemon and orzo chicken dish I’ve seen on Pinterest. I like Pinterest. I like how you can curate a magazine for yourself of all these calming, organised images so that a sleek wardrobe and sunny holiday destination feels within reach. Sometimes it’s almost like watching a video of a girl with nice hair and sensational eyebrows making an adrenal-soothing smoothie or evening meal for less than five hundred calories but with thirty-eight grams of protein is the same as doing it yourself. But on this occasion I won’t just think about making something tasty and then order Uber Eats. I’ll actually do it. I need to accomplishsomethingtoday.

I make my grocery list, walk through the sun to Whole Foods, and try to enjoy the experience of selecting the best organic poultry and largest citrus fruit possible. It becomes meditative, taking my time and looking at the elderflower cordials and weird face creams. By the time I get to the checkout I’ve almost forgotten to be miserable. But then the fire alarm sounds. It’s a deafening screech that I hear over my podcast and feel in my bones. I pull out my AirPods.

‘Dear shoppers,’ somebody announces over the tannoy. ‘Please be advised that this is not a drill. Exit the building at your nearest opportunity, and meet at the fire assembly point. I repeat, this is not a drill, please leave your shopping where it is and meet at the fire assembly point.’

I’m next in line to pay, but the person serving closes down the till and steps away from the checkout.

‘Can I just grab these?’ I say to their back, even though I know they won’t help me. It’s not like flames are licking at our toes; the oven in the bakery probably just got too hot, something like that. But there’ll be a ‘procedure’ in place, no doubt, and ‘rules’. My dinner plans are ruined without this chicken breast.

‘I feel the same way,’ a low, smooth-as-silk voice behind me says. ‘All I want is some apples and this quinoa.’

I go to answer, to say something glib and self-effacing to this stranger about my happiness resting on what I eat for supper. But as I turn around and make eye contact, I’m stunned into silence, swallowing my words. I don’t know what to say at all. The comment has come from a dark-haired, stubbled man, with these kind, crinkle-at-the-corners, somebody-just-told-him-a-joke eyes. He’s in gym shorts and Nikes, socks pulled up to his calves. His shoulders make suggestive waves out of his sleeveless workout top and I just … well, feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach. He issensational. I’m sure that I know him, that we’ve met before. The way he cocks his head and issues half a smile, as if he can’t place me either … it’s crazy. I know him, but then also, I definitely do not know him. Ifwe’d met before I’d remember him. I’d know his name, and be able to actually speak instead of thinking, on a loop,fuckmeheisgorgeous fuckmeheisgorgeous fuckmeheisgorgeous.

I pull awhat can you doface, because it’s all I’m capable of. It makes him smile fully, with a breathless exhale of a laugh, and I can’t help but smile too, as if an understanding passes between us. Everyone around us is filtering out, but the two of us? We stand looking at each other so long it’s stupid.

I see our whole lives at that checkout. I swear to god, I really do. I see us buying groceries together. I see us barefoot and dancing in the kitchen, cooking something on the stove that burns as we distract each other with kisses. I see him making my friends laugh. This man with the silky voice and massive biceps has me thinking how I’ll charm his mother, how he’ll get on with my dad. We could work out together, be the kind of couple that runs a 5k before Saturday brunch, takes the Eurostar to Paris for a casual half marathon before a shag-fest in some bijou little B&B. Life will be easy for us, because we have each other, and it will all have started here, in my local shop, just like that.This is the moment, I think.Pay attention.

‘I think we go that way,’ I croak, eventually, pointing to the back of the store. My seduction game is on point, as ever.

‘Yeah,’ he says, looking at where I’ve gestured to and then down at my basket. ‘What are you going to do with your shopping?’

It’s a relief that his chat-up lines aren’t any better than mine. It’s a relief that it doesn’t even matter.

It’s my turn to look around. ‘Abandon it?’ I suggest, unsure. ‘I mean … what else can we do? I don’t think there’s time to put it back …’

The man nods, running his tongue over his thin but perfect lips as he considers this, then he holds out a paper bag. ‘Granny Smith?’

I look at the bag, and then at him.

‘That’s stealing,’ I say, surprised. It’s only apples, but still. The man of my life should be no thief.

He reaches into the hidden pocket meant for your house key in the waistband of his shorts, and pulls out some money, presenting it to me with a flourish.

‘My emergency two-pound coin,’ he announces, placing it on the till. When he’s done, he holds a hand over his heart and says earnestly: ‘I’m a law-abiding citizen, after all.’

‘All right then,’ I counter, loosening up. ‘In that case …’ I put down my shopping on the conveyer belt to take an apple, and he nods, satisfied. ‘The superior apple genre,’ he comments, gesturing for me to go ahead and eat. I take a big bite whilst holding his eye, and it occurs to me that the fire alarm is still blasting. I’d stopped noticing. This whole time we’ve been conducting a conversation with sirens blaring, acting like it’s totally normal. Have we been shouting? I honestly hadn’t realised.

‘Come on,’ he says, grabbing my hand and tugging me towards the exit. ‘I don’t want to be responsible for getting you into any trouble.’

My hand fits in his perfectly.

At the empty expanse of uncovered asphalt at the back of the store, the twenty or so of us who were shopping are gathered, as well as a handful of employees in fire safety vests, one with a mullet and a megaphone.

‘Please wait here until we can verify everyone’s safety,’ they say, clearly relishing this moment of power, the moment their entire half-day’s fire safety training was leading up to. ‘We will try not to keep you long, but it is of great importance that you stay here, at least for the time being.’

‘I should have stolen more snacks,’ Apple guy says. He is beside me, finishing off what is, admittedly, a very tasty apple. I’m already down to the core of mine. The man is tall – imposingly and commandingly so. Lean. And he’s also no longer holding my hand, now we’re out in the open. I flex it at my hip, running my fingertips over my palm like I miss him already. If I sound absolutely bonkers, that’s because in this moment, I am. I can’t explain my magnetic pull towards him, except to say it’s there, and killing me. I’m so aware of the nearness of him, of this crackle of electricity spanning the distance between his arm and mine.

‘But you didn’t steal them. You paid for them,’ I find myself saying, because it is either that orI think I love you, shall we get married?He gives me a look that makes it clear I’ve been duped. ‘… didn’t you?’ I clarify.

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