And so, in a ten-point list, he did. His first
point was about my writing style. He had
clearly spent hours reading my work online.
It was his sixth point that touched me most.
“I think you have had hardship in your life,
and are brave in the way that you have dealt
with it.” His seventh point made me feel as
if I had just sunk into a warm bath after a
long, long walk. “I think”, he wrote, “I can
offer you a lot of unconditional support.”
We met again that night. We kissed at
the bus stop and his lips were so soft I was
reminded of my first ever kiss, and of the
electric jolt when skin first meets skin.
On the bus on the way home I looked out
of the window and had a feeling that felt
like a fact: I will never meet anyone who is
capable of loving me as much as this man.
And I had a feeling I had never felt before.
It wasn’t just that he was handsome and
charming and, as his profile said, “lovely”.
The feeling I had when I was with him was
that everything was right.
We met two days later at a party.
Afterwards, we went out to dinner and I felt
his arm round my waist and couldn’t believe
it felt so natural to have fingers resting on
the curve of my hip as I walked.
That weekend we took a train to a village
in Hertfordshire. We set off down a footpath
winding through woods full of wild garlic
and a sprinkling of bluebells. At one point,
in a clearing, we passed a child’s trampoline
and I could not stop myself from climbing
on it. As I bounced up and down, in the
fresh, clear air, my heart was bouncing too.
In a sunlit field we lay on the grass and
kissed. That night we danced in my sitting
room to Madeleine Peyroux singing Dance
Me to the End of Love.
We went for a weekend in the Cotswolds
and held hands in a courtyard as we listened
to a blackbird’s song. We went for a day trip
to Whitstable and ate fish and chips on the
beach. Since childhood I had only ever been
able to do these things with friends.
That summer we went to Italy, to the tiny
flat in Tuscany that I had remortgaged my
own flat to buy when I was 43. For eight
years I had rented it out to couples —
sometimes honeymooning couples. I had,
I realised, created a love nest, but I was the
only one who had been staying there alone.
On the first evening we sat by the well
and gazed out at the olive groves and the
cypresses. In the soft, pink light I felt
something wash over me. It was a feeling
of joy but also deep calm. I always thought
love was about thunderclaps but the love
I have found feels more like the roots of
a tree. It makes me think of a painting
I bought with one of my first pay cheques.
It’s of two reclining figures wrapped in
each other’s arms. It’s called Peaceful.
Meeting Anthony was almost as much
of a relief for my friends as it was for me.
“You’ve struck gold,” whispered one. And
when my mother met him I thought she
was actually going to clap. She shookI wanted what my friends had: babies
to cuddle, a man to snuggle up with,
the sense of being a grown-up. Yes, my
work mattered to me, but not at the
cost of everything else
been a start. That phrase had rarely been
tested, since it suggested something that
lasted more than a few weeks.
I
decided to join an (offline) dating
agency called Drawing Down the
Moon. I didn’t draw down the
moon, or a husband, or a father to
my children, or even a boyfriend.
I did have a few brief liaisons but the truth
was, they made my heart sink. The men
who made my heart beat faster were the
charmers, the men with big plans and
weak wills. I let them reel me in and then
watched them run away.
The nice men seemed dull but then
they rarely asked me out on a second date.
Friends sometimes told me that my shyness
came across as fierceness. I discovered that
some of my former male colleagues had
referred to me as the “ice maiden” behind
my back. Nice men don’t often go for ice.
In the years that followed, my romantic life
continued to offer bursts of excitement, but
mostly for my friends. Dating had switched
online and turned into a giant marketplace
where the rules had changed. It was like an
Amazon warehouse, one where everyone
was wandering around, pausing to unwrap
a few parcels, chuck out the cardboard and
then get back to their quest. People rarely
looked like their photos. They blew hot —
very, very hot — and then vanished.
There was the Egyptian with the white
leather sofa and giant TV who wooed me
with chocolates and roses and then ran
away. A year later I let him do the whole
thing all over again. There was the chef
who told me, just after we’d had sex, that he
was “determined to hold out for something
good”. There was rejection, there was
humiliation, there was ennui. But if you
want to meet someone in the age of the
internet, what other choice have you got?
Sometimes I thought I was perfectly
happy without a man. Sometimes I’d think:
OK, time to try again. At the age of 51,
after a long dating hiatus, I decided to have
another go. I could imagine a future on my
own that was fine. I never wanted to feel
that I was “settling”. But in my heart of
hearts I still wanted a future filled with
love. I joined this newspaper’s Encounters
dating site. “Lovely man seeks lovely
woman”, read the profile that popped up in
my inbox. Admiring his picture, I thought
he looked, well, lovely.
“Lovely woman seeks lovely bloke” was
the strapline I had chosen for my profile.
And here he was. He had a lovely face,
I thought. Handsome, yes, with sculpted
cheeks and a James Bond jaw, but he also
looked thoughtful and kind. And when I
met him, he was. He spoke in a quiet voice.
He had a gentle manner. Over lobster
linguine and Chilean sauvignon, he talked
about his work as an architect and I talked
about mine as a writer and broadcaster.
I told him about how I had been
diagnosed with breast cancer at 39. I told
him how, ten years later, I had been made
redundant from my job just before being
shortlisted for a writing prize. I told him
that the job had meant almost everything
to me and how I had tried so hard to pick
myself up. He explained that he had been
married for 30 years but was now separated
and was hoping to make a new start.
I had to dash off after a couple of hours
because I had a deadline. At 6.30 the next
morning he sent me an email. When he
first saw my photo, he told me later, he
recognised me from my newspaper byline
photo and from arts and news programmes
on TV. When I read his email I realised he
must have found my website with links
to some of my journalism. “Your website”,
he said, “says ‘let me know what you think’.
I always try to rise to a challenge ...”Patterson aged 15 in Trafalgar Square, 1979The Sunday Times Magazine • 37