Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to come shopping, but I thought that it was about time I updated my image, bought a few new clothes. I needed to make an effort. It was when I got to the men’s underwear department that I started to feel my age. There were rows and rows of them in every colour and design. I’d always been a boxer man but I’m told that’s old fashioned now, bit like my worn and weary body. My knees creak. My back goes if I exert myself too much. Will Bea find me attractive – sexy, even? Good sense of humour, that’s what women like. Getting my kit off, that might give her a laugh. Not that I’m overweight or unfit … It’s not just women who worry about their looks. A haircut? Some new aftershave? I feel like a teenager again, unsure what to wear, what to say, how to approach a girl I have a crush on.

Recent events have been a wake-up call, that’s for sure. Life is short, as they say, nothing lasts forever, and it’s time to make some changes to the script and the characters within it. Now I’m truly a single man again, it’s time to say goodbye to many elements of my old life and really think about where I want to be and who with. Time to live life to the fullest, hopefully with Bea Brooks. Time to declare my feelings for her, but not just yet; I don’t want her to find me with a suitcase full of old moth-eaten clothes and a bad haircut. But, in the meantime, I could let her know that someone’s out here, thinking of her. I shall send her something. A gift? Flowers? Poetry? What? A grand gesture from a man presently in need of a makeover. I’ll rack my slightly befuddled brain for something that Bea would like. Will I say who it’s from? Not yet. I need to check out if I have competition, so I shall be her mystery man for a while yet.

29

Five minutes after I’d got home later that evening, the doorbell rang. I opened it to see a delivery man with a bunch of white flowers.

‘Someone’s thinking of you,’ he said as he handed them over, then took off back down the steps. Twenty gardenias. The scent was stunning. I closed the door and looked for a card. Thinking of you, it said. No name. Who could they be from? I looked for the number of the florist’s on the card and called them.

‘Your company just delivered some flowers to me. There was no name,’ I said.

The woman at the other end took my details. ‘No. No name.’

‘Please could you tell me who sent them?’