You Can't Hurry Love

Chapter Two

One Month Earlier

DECEMBER 1st

The thing with me is, I can't let go of the past. I clutch onto the things that bring me any form of happiness and revel in them long after I should. Which is why at the tender age of twenty-three I'm sat on the edge of my bed, grasping my advent calendar with euphoric joy, reminiscing to a time when I was young and care-free and my only worry was whether to watch Art Attack or Blue Peter on the telly when I got home from school, glad that my mum was never concerned about it rotting my brain like Bethany's mum was.

'Go out and play, girls,' she would say whenever I slept over. 'You'll get square eyes if you sit in front of that thing all day.'

It was easier for them though, they had a garden. All mum and I had growing up was a tiny patio out the front of our top floor flat in Islington, which we shared with the neighbours below. And Mr Bellamew would never let me play out there anyway because he would chain his bicycle to the fence when he wasn't at work, and he didn't want me breaking it. I was happy watching T.V., square eyes or not.

Times were simpler back then. Yes, maybe mum was always a bit battier than the other parents, and maybe once or twice I did notice the strange looks she got when she stood waving frenziedly to me at the school gates in a vintage chiffon dress, but I didn't care. She was just my mum, and it was all I ever knew.

She loved all that old Hollywood glamour you see. Which is where my name came from.

Dorothy.

Although no one ever calls me that. It's always Dottie, or in mum's case, Dotsy. She is a huge Judy Garland fan so I've been brought up on everything that comes with the era, and I couldn't help but fall in love with it too. It's ingrained within me. We would spend hours every evening dancing around the kitchen to Etta James and Doris Day and then curl up on the sofa together to watch classic movies with the likes of Clark Gable and Cary Grant.

I think this is where my high expectations of men come from. I'll admit it, I'm extremely fussy and I don't care if my friends think so too. I don't want to settle down with the first guy who smiles at me on the street. My perfect gentleman is out there somewhere, and I'll be damned if I waste my time dating a bunch of misfits until I find him.

And believe me, I have been looking for him.

Everywhere.

This year I attended every single wedding I was invited to in the hopes of snagging a handsome singleton but the men my age were either drunk and handsy or taken. I borrowed a friend's dog and took her to the park but not one man stopped to comment on how super cute she was and then invite me out for a coffee. (I'm guessing that only happens in the movies.) I even managed to snag a couple of tickets from work to this speakeasy pop-up party that hosts Gatsby themed evenings but most of the men there seemed more interested in the scantily clad dancers than the sultry glances I was giving them from across the bar.

It was just no use.

'Your standards are too high,' my flatmate Ben would tell me if he ever caught me moping. 'That's your problem. And if you're not careful you're going to end up as one of those greying spinsters who knits covers to put on lampposts for fun.'

'Hey, that is not true. And what would you have me do then? Date any old guy who thinks it's acceptable to walk around scratching his bits in public?'

'You're being unreasonable, Dottie-O.' (Again, with the "unreasonable". I'm starting to get sick of that word.) 'What if your perfect man doesn't fit your criteria exactly and you end up missing out on happiness because . . . well, maybe he doesn't like jazz music, or he doesn't walk around with a pocket watch tucked into his suit lapel. If you want to grow old surrounded by a hoard of cats and paintings of dead flowers in vases all over your home then be my guest, but you could be missing out on a whooole lot of fun if you catch my drift.'