Cleo

Cleo and I embarked on a serious battle of wills. She detested that collar with more focus than she’d ever hated anything, including non–cat people. Every waking hour was devoted to scratching and gnawing at it. Three fake diamonds fell out. The sumptuous pink strap faded and was reduced to a stringy neck brace. Cleo fixed me with a hooded look that said it all: How dare you try and brand me with this degrading object! What makes you assume you have the right? Do you think you own me?

“Is that your new boyfriend?” Mum stage-whispered in the kitchen. “I thought he was a policeman when I opened the door. His hair’s so short and he’s so clean-cut. Hardly your type, is he?”

I never enjoyed her reviewing my personal affairs. Her observation skills were astringent enough to qualify as an ingredient for aftershave. Philip’s appearance in our lives provided her with a wealth of new material.

“Just out of the army, is he? Oh well, you were married to a sailor. I suppose it’ll be the air force next.”

Life at work was no easier. When the cat got out of the bag that I was still seeing Philip with one l there were enough arched eyebrows to form a Gothic cathedral. Toy-boy jokes echoed from one end of the newsroom to the other. Journalists pride themselves on being broad-minded, but I was learning they’re broad-minded only in certain ways. If I’d taken to booze and boogied till dawn with an elderly drug addict they’d hardly have noticed. Movies were (and still are) full of old men as ugly as bulldogs slurping over models twenty-five years their junior. It hardly seemed fair that a woman going out with a short-haired, younger bloke in a suit was regarded as an act of indecency. I tried to retaliate with quips to assure them it was merely a fling. Except the fling was lasting a month or two longer than expected.

Things weren’t straightforward for Philip, either. His circle of bright young things couldn’t believe he was in such a whacky relationship. He continued to be inundated with invitations to lunches and parties by ticks-in-the-right-boxes girls. The town was packed with highly qualified wrinkle-free beauties all desperate for a man, and Philip in particular.

Falling in love with my one-night stand was the most pleasant surprise that ever happened to me. Getting to know him was like exploring an underground cave, dark and deceptively shallow at first. Yet dig a little deeper, turn a few corners, and there was a cavern full of rare and magnificent crystals. Not only was he handsome, great company and wonderful to the kids, he had a strong spiritual curiosity. He was the first man I’d ever met who seemed genuinely interested in my weird dreams and occasional off-the-planet psychic experiences. We were destined to be together, I thought, encircling him with an invisible version of Cleo’s pink collar (camouflage pattern, perhaps; definitely no bell).

“It doesn’t matter what wrapping people are in,” I said to anyone who questioned our unlikely union. “It’s what’s inside that counts.”

I even loved the aspects of him that had stopped me taking him seriously at the beginning. The age difference between us was fun and interesting (apart from the time he asked, “Who’s Shirley Bassey?”). His conservative manner wasn’t so deep-set that I couldn’t joke him out of it sometimes. And I had a lot to learn about military life and banks. Our relationship was astoundingly close to perfect.

One of the many aspects of Philip I adored was the way he kept a perfectly ironed handkerchief in his pocket. The hand kerchief was flourished whenever required to wipe a woman’s tears or, occasionally by very special request, less glamorous outpourings from her nostrils. Even more impressive, he insisted on being on the outside whenever we were walking along a footpath. The only other man I knew who performed this ancient act of chivalry designed to protect a woman from oncoming horses as well as mud flying from carriage wheels was my father. The first time Philip gently took my arm, moved slowly behind me and slid my hand into the crook of his other elbow so I was closest to the shop windows and he was nearest the gutter I knew this was a man I’d willingly spend the rest of my life with.

But then…why does there always have to be a “but then”? Why can’t the sad solo mother queen just meet her prince, fall in love, stroll down the aisle in a tactfully off-white suit and live happily ever after? Because life isn’t written by Rodgers and Hammerstein. Real people have histories, hang-ups, phobias, anxieties, egos, ambitions, not to mention opinionated friends and family just waiting to pass judgment.