A Faithful Companion

(Part One)

Scott Sanderson had spent years looking for “the one” but consistently failed to locate her.
Even years of running the gauntlet of well-meaning friends, throwing what they considered to be suitable candidates in his path, had not paid dividends.
The problem was that he was too fussy, apart from her needing to be a petite brunette “the one” needed to meet his usual criteria, attractive, kind, loving and have a true of heart.
But in addition he was searching for someone with a moral compass, a practicing Christian preferably, a church goer at least, though not someone permanently on their knees, a devout girl but not a pious one.
He wanted a girl who was sexy but not tarty, attractive but not vain, feminine but possessed of modesty.
A girl with good dress sense, free of tattoos and body piercings, well mannered, and lady like, definitely not someone who drank from a bottle.
However with every passing day Scott had become convinced he was looking for someone who didn’t really exist.

Philippa Pullinger met most, if not all, of Scott’s criteria, she was blessed with great kindness, a quality in his opinion unfailingly underappreciated in the modern world.
She was a shining girl, intelligent but not academically bright, but inclined towards an unquenchable work ethic.
Attractive but not showily so, Philippa was certainly feminine, brunette and petite.
But there was something else in her nature, just simple goodness perhaps.
Which was a quality that Scott had not bargained for.
Philippa believed in goodness and everlasting life and of course good and evil.
Philippa too was searching, she was searching for a man who shared her faith and who put others before himself, a good man.
And she had sought him all of her life.

So you would think that, considering they were in reality searching for each other, and that they were actually perfect for each other, they might have realised by that point that the other actually existed.
The fact that they didn’t was all the more surprising when you consider that they worked in the same building for the same company.

Scott had worked for Davis and Cooper in Abbottsford, since he left school aged sixteen.
He started in the yard, fetching and carrying, loading and unloading, but that was almost 20 years ago.
Now he was a project manager and ordered others to fetch and carry, leading him ultimately to spend more and more time behind a desk.
He was more accustomed to working on construction sites amongst hard working, hard living, and hard talking men and was all too familiar with their baser natures.
But somehow he had always managed to raise himself above the mire and walked the Christian path.
Yet he had always had to walk the righteous path alone.

Philippa also joined Davis and Cooper straight from school but she spent the first ten years of her working life in the smaller Abbeyvale office.
But when the recession hit, the company had to rationalise and the Abbeyvale office closed.
There were redundancies as well, in both towns but Philippa was one of the lucky ones and was transferred to the head office.

(Part Two)

The recession also hit Scott pretty badly, he had to let a lot of good people go, and his workload had to increase to make up the short fall in manpower.
This also meant that what little free time he had previously was as a result greatly reduced.

Philippa was not wholly happy with her situation either, when it first happened she was sad because she had lost a lot of good friends in Abbeyvale, and she’d had to uproot herself from her home and move to a town where she knew nobody.
She was an orphan and had no family and even her adoptive parents were gone.
After selling her house in Abbeyvale and moving to the more expensive Abbottsford she had no money left and she had ended up with a more modest home.
But all of that she could easily have coped with but that wasn’t the worst of it.
She was placed in a busy office on the Finance and Admin floor, among a gaggle of chattering young girls, she thought they were girls even though they were in their mid-twenties.
She thought they were girls compared to her as she was thirty two and they were younger and very immature.
Philippa was instantly unpopular with them, firstly because she was replacing someone they liked, someone nearer their own age, someone equally vacuous and loose moraled who let them skive and secondly because she was a grownup who was good at her job.
Philippa was instantly at odds with the silly tarty girls in their short skirts and low cut tops, loudly sharing the intimate details of their latest indiscretions with anyone in earshot.
“Look at me, look at me” they seemed to scream “everybody look at me”
She thought they were the type of girls who ended up drunk in the gutter showing the world their manicured intimate parts.
They despised her for her quiet efficiency and mocked her for her diligence.
In fact they openly mocked her to her face.
They also called her names behind her back, steel draws, the nun, little miss cherry and Mary, as in the Virgin Mary.
However all of this was water off a ducks back to her, she just ignored them and got on with her job, and her diligence didn’t go unnoticed.
She was always the go to girl when there was overtime available and it was her work ethic that was recognised by the managers when pay raises and bonuses were in the offing.
Philippa didn’t mind being the odd one out or being the butt of her colleagues jokes, she was happy with her life choices and the brash tarty girls came and went over the six years she was in Abbottsford, where she was a constant and she now had the experience and the qualifications and just looked forward to a time when she would share her work place with people of like mind and her life choices would be the norm.
As for the men in the building they all seemed perfectly happy with empty headed tarts, in fact the tartier the better seemed to make them most content.

(Part Three)

Scott worked on the fifth floor in the projects department but he occasionally had to go down to Finance and Admin on three, to discuss budgets but he only ever noticed the tarty girls he never saw Philippa working diligently at her desk, head down.
He treated all the women on the third floor with equal contempt and he tarred them all with the same brush.

For six years Scott Sanderson and Philippa Pullinger worked in the same building and never met until one Friday evening in October.
Scott had been working late again and got in the lift on the fifth floor at 7.55pm.
He was not in the best of moods as he had not intended to work that late, he had somewhere to be, and he didn’t want to be late.
Philippa had worked later than planned as well, as it was Friday. The lazy little princesses had all finished early in order to go out and get drunk to point of unconsciousness, or shit faced to use the modern parlance, before having a knee trembler in a bus shelter, or behind the bins.
But whatever state they would end up in they had left her to do all the reports.
She stayed as late as possible but then she had to go, so she packed up and grabbed some folders and headed towards the lift.
Philippa would ordinarily take the stairs but with her arms full of homework for the weekend she decided to take the lift.
She pressed the button and a moment later the doors opened and she stepped in.
The lift wasn’t empty, a man that she vaguely recognised was in there already and he had a bundle of files under his arm too, she gave him a cursory glance, he definitely wasn’t one of the dogs that sniffed around her office but she must have seen him somewhere.

When the doors opened and Philippa stepped in, his heart sank but then on closer inspection he thought that she wasn’t dressed like one of the third floor sluts and she didn’t smell like a tarts handbag so he thought he could cope.
It was a shame really because physically she ticked all his boxes, it was just a shame she was from the 3rd floor.
“At least there’s only one of them” he thought to himself “and its only three floors”
The doors closed and the lift started to descend, but after a few seconds the car came to a juddering halt.

(Part Four)

The doors closed and the lift started to descend, but after a few seconds the car came to a juddering halt.
“Oh no” Philippa said “Why today?”
She said it without anger or fear and that impressed Scott it was said more out of exasperation.
“Somewhere to be?” Scott asked and pressed the alarm
“Yes” she replied and put her things on the floor but didn’t elaborate.
He supposed she was going clubbing or something equally frivolous.
“How many of you are there?” A voice asked
“Two” Scott replied
“Ok, we’ll have you out as soon as”
It was Scott’s turn to put his things on the floor and then he sat down beside them.
“I hope it won’t be too long” he said
“Why? Do you have somewhere to be?” she asked and also sat down
“Yes I do” he replied “and I particularly wanted to be there on time”
“Oh yes? What is it a new restaurant?” she asked
“Of a sort” he replied
“What about you?” Scott asked “are you off clubbing?”
“Certainly not” she said with disgust “I have more important things to do with my time”
Scott was just digesting her answer and considering his next question when the lift came to life again and continued its descent.
“Excellent” He said and stood up, then he offered his hand to Philippa
“Quite so” she agreed and took his hand “Thank you”
“My pleasure” he said
And by the time they had gathered their things together the lift had reached the ground floor and the door opened.
Scott stood aside and let her exit first which he thought she would probably consider an act of sexism.
“Thank you” she said appreciating the gentlemanly gesture and added
“I hope you make it on time”
“You too” he replied

They quickly got to their respective cars and headed in opposite directions to their homes.
Philippa lived the closest and she was fed, showered, changed and on her way out the door before Scott had even reached his front door.
When he did, he closed the door behind him and went straight to the kitchen and made himself a sandwich.
He ate it far too quickly to be healthy and was still chewing as he stepped into the shower and he would have heartburn for the rest of the night.
He dried himself and dressed in warm clothes and was then on his way.
Scott parked the car in Church Street and checked his watch as he hurriedly walked toward his destination, he was twenty minutes late.
He looked through the window and saw it was quite busy and a queue had formed.
Scott walked around to the side door and walked in and undid his coat as he did so
“I’m terribly sorry I’m so late” he said “I got stuck in a lift”
“Well they all say that” she said as she turned around and Scott saw that it was the girl from the lift.
And that was how their mutual life long search came to an end at the South Abbottsford soup kitchen.