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 and 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.
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 duck’s 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.
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 wrongly 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.
“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 lifelong searches came to an end at the
South Abbottsford soup kitchen.
