The Girl Who's Never Had a Valentine by Elizabeth Player

Chapter One
    Thank God for Saturday mornings. No work and a lie-in, what could be better? As I sat in my small kitchen, sipping tea and flicking through missed calls on my mobile, I heard the letterbox rattle and the post dropping to the mat with a thud. In amongst the unwanted junk mail and brown envelopes one item in particular caught my eye; pale lilac and the fancy handwriting was not one I recognised. They’d used proper jet-black ink too, not Biro. Intrigued, I fought the urge to rip open the envelope. Instead, I carefully examined the smudged postmark and noted it was local and the stamp was first class. Eventually the penny dropped. Valentine’s Day! Of course, today was fourteenth February. Now I was wide awake, my stomach clenching in anticipation. This could be my first, genuine Valentine’s Day card – ever. How silly to forget! Extracting the sharpest knife I owned from the kitchen drawer, I sliced open the envelope, making sure not to damage the contents. Decent-quality paper, no scrimping on cost, surely that was a good sign? Smaller than A4 but bigger than A5. Slowly, I pulled the card from its lilac sheath. Talk about gaudy! A kaleidoscope of purple and cerise leapt out at me. Dead centre, a fluffy kitten climbed into a champagne glass and the gold italic writing swirling about the stem read:
    Â 
    Â Â Â Â Â Be my Valentine
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    Gingerly, I opened the card, hoping against hope that there might be more, and there was. Again, in the same distinctive gold script:
    You set my heart on fire,
    Â Â Â Â Â You are the object of my desire
    Good God! It was so cheesy I thought I’d have to hide it from the cat. So smarmy! Such a cliché! But it was wonderful. The handwritten part read:
    Â 
    I’ll love you for ever
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    It was in the same distinctive handwriting as on the envelope. I moved into the lounge and flopped onto the sofa, reading the card over again and again. Who on earth was my secret admirer? Did I know anyone that sentimental, so utterly love-struck? It was shocking and I felt responsible, well, just a bit. With my mind racing I thought, I hope it’s not that creepy guy from Accounts with the comb-over. I’d never given him any encouragement. Who could it be? I considered phoning my best friend Lucy and together we could chew over all the possibilities. The guy from the garage with the Alfred Hitchcock silhouette? He’d seemed overly attentive when I’d had my car serviced recently. I noted that my secret admirer had addressed the envelope: ‘To the ocupant’. Oh dear, he couldn’t spell. Perhaps he was dyslexic? That wasn’t a problem. What if someone had sent it for a joke? That would be cruel beyond words.
    Â Â Â Â Â I’d often wondered why I’d never had a Valentine’s Day card and now here I was, worrying why I’d actually received one. My initial feeling had been one of enormous flattery and it was thrilling. But, at the same time, I felt a tad nervous not knowing the identity of said sender and he didn’t seem to know my name. What if this person was a stalker? At twenty-eight years old, I was beyond wishing for Valentine’s Day cards. My teenage years had come and gone and I’d never had one, not even from geeky Will, my brother’s best mate and my one and only long-time admirer. I’d asked him once why he’d never sent me a card and he’d shrugged saying, ‘I didn’t think you were “that type”.’ Of course I was ‘that type’. I was a girl. Every girl wishes for that one card at some point in her life, the one that says ‘you’ are desirable, alluring, sexy, wanted. What girl didn’t want that confirmation? The card my mother sent to me when I was seventeen didn’t count, such badly disguised handwriting! If truth be told, it was worse than not getting a card at all. Back in the day, one of my good friends always