The Last Year of Being Single Read Online Free

to show each other they need each other. However, it would appear that you feel you need reminding.
    Well, let me take this opportunity to make sure you realise that you are the most important thing in my life. You cause such extremes of emotion. I love you so much sometimes I need to come up to the surface to breathe before I can dive again to be surrounded by your love.
    My feelings for you go beyond just affection. I think abouteverything that affects you. Sometimes you catch me just staring at you—it’s as though I don’t even have to touch you. Just looking at you I feel our love. You are the only person I have ever met who in the same minute can drag me to the edge of despair and desperation and as I’m about to fall grab me and hold me close. You should always know that even when I’m not with you you are in my thoughts and that I can’t experience love unless I’m in your presence, because only then do you release my heart from the prison you’ve built for it, to let me really feel what love is.
    You must never doubt me—because through all that has happened to us in the last two and a half years I’ve never really doubted you.
    Together, Sarah, we will be something very special. Like everything that’s good in life it has to be worth waiting for. Trust in me as I’ve trusted you. Let me into your world as I’ve let you into my heart. Words can only say so much. Just believe.
    Love, your Paul. xxxxx
    I desperately wanted to believe. At the beginning we would write notes to each other—at least three a week. My feelings would inspire poetry. Sounds naff, but I sent love poems and letters. Do people do that any more? The old-fashioned way. Handwritten in cards. I was always getting the length wrong and having to use the back cover to complete my work. E-mail and text messaging are so deletable and lazy and quick. Not as clever. Writing takes longer. Means more. Mistakes, smudged by tears, crossings-out and all.
    To Paul…
    Your name means strength and valour
    You come from noble stock
    You’ll travel like your father
    To find what others mock
    You’re a leader and a driver
    Leaving passengers behind
    You act when others wonder
    How quickly works your mind
    You understand the Game of Life
    As though you’ve played it all before
    Aching as each new morning breaks
    To improve upon your score
    You have few faults in my eyes
    But my eyes are blind to see
    All the faults and contradictions
    That you often find in me.
    I’ve never felt this hurt before
    I’ve never known this joy
    Echoing through my heart and mind
    Becoming as fragile as a toy.
    Love Sarah xxx
    First Christmas I wanted to spend with him. But his father didn’t think it right.
    ‘You haven’t known this girl long.’
    ‘I’ve known her for four months.’
    ‘Not long enough. Just our family should be here, Paul. Can’t she go with her own family?’
    ‘She doesn’t want to.’
    I didn’t want to. Mum was driving me nuts.
    So I didn’t spend Christmas Day with my love. I spent it with my ex. With David.
    David had returned from one of his Saudi I-will-find-my-focus trips, to discover his long-suffering girlfriend had found a focus of her own and he wasn’t in it. After taking all his furniture from the flat we’d shared (i.e. three-quarters of it) when I was away and leaving me with minimalist decor—which had up sides (less to clean and I didn’t like his stuff anyway)—he calmed down. Realised he was a prat. And asked to see me. To have dinner. I declined. But he called after Paul told me we wouldn’t be spending Christmas together. I said I was fine. David said I couldn’t spend it by myself. He said he’d take me out to dinner.
    He took me to Paris. By Eurostar. First Class. Montmartre and Sacre Coeur on Christmas Eve and top of Eiffel Tower on Christmas Day. At the top he proposed.
    David—‘Sarah, I have something to ask you.’
    Sarah—‘What?’
    David—taking little black box from his pocket—‘Will