The day began very
early for Jerry as he reluctantly prepared to leave the arms of his lover, it
was first light and the dawn chorus was in full voice.
His real name was
Julius Jeremiah Damien Quinton-Snape, which he always thought was like
something out of Charles Dickens novel with a hint of Hogwarts thrown in for
good measure, he thought he would probably be a villain though knowing his
luck.
He hated his name,
Julius was so old fashioned, and he also hated Damien because of its
association with the antichrist, so he used his middle name Jeremiah which he
didn’t like very much better but he shortened it to Jerry and everyone assumed
falsely that it was short for Jeremy, but he didn’t enlighten them.
As he prepared to slip
out of her bed she rolled over and put her arm across his chest.
“Don’t go Jez” she
implored
“I have to Marti” he
replied “I’ve got a long drive ahead of me”
They were in her room
at the Seaview Hotel in Sharpington-By-Sea where she was staying for the Easter
Weekend with a group of friends.
“Oh stay a bit longer”
she begged and she kissed his chest
“I wish I could honey”
he said as he kissed her on the forehead.
He really did want to
stay with her but he had a wedding to go to in Abbottsford, a family wedding to
boot, that required his attendance, on pain of death according to his mother.
He picked up her phone
from the bedside table and tapped in his own number, and sent a text to himself
so they then both had each other’s numbers.
Although he had to
leave she and her friend’s weren’t leaving until Monday.
He had only met her
the day before and he’d fallen head over heels for her at first sight.
Jerry arrived in
Sharpington-By-Sea on Thursday for a stag do and he had met Marti, the girl in
the poppy print dress on Friday morning at a coffee shop on the pier.
He was preparing for
the long drive home with an Americana to go and she was in front of him
ordering a Macchiato but they got talking and sat and drank their coffees at a
table outside and ended up spending the whole day together, and the night.
They hit it off
immediately and it was like they’d known each other all their lives.
It was funny how thing
worked out he hadn’t gone to Sharpington to meet someone, in fact if truth be
told he hadn’t really wanted to go at all, he wasn’t particularly close to the
groom, but he was family and according to his mother that was what counted.
But having met
someone, which was unexpected in itself, everything that followed was not only
unexpected in was completely out of character.
He was not the sort of
person to do things on a whim, he was an accountant and therefore by definition
a planner.
Very definitely not a
make it up as you go along kind of guy.
Nor was he the sleep
with the first girl you meet type of guy so the event’s in Sharpington on the
Good Friday were quite significant for him, and he hoped for her also.
On the long drive home
Jerry couldn’t get Marti out of his thoughts and by the time he reached his
flat in Abbottsford he was convinced that she was the one, she fitted the
template perfectly, so logically she had to be the one.
He had carried the
“template” with him, etched into his brain almost since the moment of his
sexual awakening.
Long brown hair
falling across her shoulders in generous waves, hazel eyes, intelligent, warm
and full of familiarity that screwed tight shut when she laughed.
A pretty face, which
hers was, pretty but at the same time full of imperfections, an aquiline nose,
a small scar above her right eye, a lopsided smile and freckled cheeks.
An exquisitely defined
jawline as if chiseled from marble and a strong and resolute chin.
She was also very
tall, as tall as him in her heels and he was six-foot two, and slim as a willow
and lithe as a dancer.
But all of that was
purely superficial, just an accident of heritage, what made Marti special and
by extension “the one” was that she was funny, intelligent, insightful, caring,
romantic and grounded.
In fact she was so
obviously the one because she ticked every single box, plus numerous other
boxes that he hadn’t even known existed until he met her.
Jerry wasn’t exactly
sure where that template came from but he had always had it and he had begun in
recent years to wonder if he would ever meet the girl to fit it or if indeed
such a girl even existed but that was before he met the girl in the poppy print
dress.
He got back to his
flat in plenty of time to change for the wedding and drive to Childean to pick
up his mum who was wearing a spectacularly ridiculous hat.
The wedding at St
Andrew’s Church passed off without a hitch and the reception at the Dancingdean
Spa Hotel was very lavish but he spent much of that happy day in Childean
wishing he was somewhere else and he cursed his luck at having to be there.
“Why did I have to
meet her this weekend of all weekends” he pondered, but then if it hadn’t been
that weekend he wouldn’t have been in Sharpington in the first place.
“Why didn’t I invite
her to the wedding?” he asked himself
“No that wouldn’t have
worked” he concluded “He wasn’t ready to introduce her to his mum, that would
just frighten her away”
He decided to just
feel grateful that he had met her and to look forward to the moment he would
see her again.
However there was a
fly in the ointment because although the wedding all went off according to plan
there was from his point of view a distinct downside on the whole day and that
was that he couldn’t get a phone signal which drove him crazy so he wasn’t able
to get through to Marti at all.
On Sunday and Monday
there were a succession of family farewells and hug fests as Jerry waved
goodbye to three generations of his extended family and after the four day
weekend was over it was back to work in the thrilling world of accountancy.
It seemed especially
tedious on that particular Tuesday because his mind was elsewhere.
He began the day by
trying to get hold of Marti on the phone again but he had no more good fortune
than he done at the weekend.
All week long they
kept missing each other on the phone and for the first half of it they
communicated solely by voice mail if you can call it communication.
Marti was in lectures
at Abbottsford University all week and had several approaching deadlines and
for Jerry it was the financial year end for the company he worked for so Jerry
was having to work late every night and spend a disproportionate amount of time
in meetings with department managers, accountants and auditors.
He was reassured
however that she seemed to be every bit as anxious to talk to him as he was to
talk to her.
If it hadn’t been such
a hellish week at work he would have driven back down to Sharpington to see
her, but that wasn’t an option, firstly because he was just too busy but the
main reason was because she wasn’t there.
Unfortunately he
didn’t know where she was living in Abbottsford so he couldn’t go and see her
there.
So they both kept
ringing one another and they both kept missing each other so by Thursday he was
getting increasingly frustrated by his failure to make contact with her and he
could tell by her tone that she was too.
Then he had a brain
wave and he texted her his email address and then he cursed himself and his
stupidity for not thinking of it earlier.
He just hoped she
would see it in the same light as he did and they could finally converse and makes
plans that didn’t consist of talking to each other’s voice mail.
Luckily he needn’t
have worried, Marti thought it was a great idea and wished that she had thought
of it and then the email traffic flowed between them and the volume and content
was quite epic and were tantamount to love letters and woven amongst the
sentimental words of love were the minutiae of the everyday, the mundane and
the ordinary that would make up the fabric of their budding relationship.
But despite the
fluidity of the email traffic they were still no nearer actually seeing each
other face to face.
On Saturday Jerry had
to work a 12 hour day to put the finishing touches to the yearend accounts and
on Sunday it was his mum’s birthday so he had planned to spend the whole day
with her.
However he had at
least finally succeeded in talking to Marti and it turned out that she was tied
up all weekend as well.
But they were both
hopeful that the following week would offer an opportunity for them to actually
get together.
Jerry picked his mum
up from Childean on Sunday morning and took her to St Andrew’s Church and
afterwards out for lunch to The Huntsman’s Lodge restaurant and from there he
drove her home and then went inside to have tea with her.
“Put the kettle on
Julius” she said and he winced at the sound of his name said out loud but he
duly obliged and while he was in the kitchen there was a knock at the door.
His mum answered the
knock and an exchange of exited chatter ensued.
He recognized the
other voice to be that of Aunty Erin, she wasn’t really an auntie just a long
standing family friend who was particularly close to his mum.
Jerry hadn’t seen her
since he was at school, but throughout his childhood she and her family had
featured extensively in his life.
“I thought I would
just pop in and wish you a happy birthday dear” Erin said
“And I brought Sonja
along to say hello, she’s just back from University for the weekend”
Jerry’s heart sank, he
remembered Sonja very well, she was younger than him by about 4 years and she
was a clumsy gawky girl who used to trail around after him.
She was a blight on
his childhood summer holidays.
“Oh it’s so lovely to
see you Sonja” his mum said
“Julius is in the
kitchen”
He winced again at the
use of his name and a moment later Jerry got his first sight of the young woman
called Sonja, narrow hipped, round pert buttocks, small breasts, firm to the
touch and soft-silky skin.
And that last part
wasn’t wishful thinking either, he knew this to be true and not merely a
fanciful notion, because it was her bed he had reluctantly vacated the previous
weekend and as if to dispel any doubts she was wearing the same poppy print
dress she wore when they first met.
“I thought it would be
nice for them to see each other again” Erin said
It was nice to see
her, he thought but not as nice as it was the last time they met.
So Marti was actually
Sonja Martl, he didn’t realize the clumsy gawky girl Sonja of his childhood as
the same girl who called herself Marti who he’d made love to in Sharpington.
She went by the name
of Marti because so many people misread or misspoke her surname and so that
name stuck.
So it turned out they
really had known each other for ever, that’s why she seemed to fit the
template, because she was the template.
“So you’re Julius”
Marti said
“And you’re Sonja”
Jerry responded
“It’s nice to see you
again” she said formally “After all these years”
“Yes, perhaps we might
go out while you’re home and catch up” he replied and then he whispered
“Did you know?”
Marti just shook her
head in the negative and said
“Yes that would be
nice”
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