The Different Paths To Love
I suspect that many people reading this story have had several relationships before finding their perfect partner. It is very romantic to believe that there is only one perfect partner for each one of us. This would appear rather unlikely, and given the number of potential matches we have to choose from, if it were true, what is the chance of any one of us ever meeting our unique Mr or Mrs Right? I am sure that there are many good matches out there for all of us and the partner we each finally settle for is governed by chance events as much as anything else. Choices we make in life, both big and small, will have significant effects on whom we finally meet and possibly spend our lives with.
This story explores the potential different paths our lives may take under the influence of tiny changes in events.
Introduction
It was at an office Christmas party in 1977 that I met two women who would be my lovers and one who would be my future wife.
I was newly employed at a large multinational pharmaceutical company and was a research biochemist with a doctorate in Biochemistry. I had received my Ph.D. from a red brick university in the north of England the previous summer and had moved to London a couple of months earlier. I was twenty-seven years old, single, and horny.
I had gone to the party because I had nothing better to do. That year Christmas Day fell on a Sunday and the last workday of the festive period was the previous Friday after which there was a four-day holiday break.
I had been planning to drive to Wales to meet my girlfriend for the holidays until she rang me on Thursday evening to inform me that she wasn't sure "our relationship had a future" and "maybe we should have a trial break." This was of course shorthand for "I'm finishing with you." We hadn't seen each other for about a month and I found out later that shortly after we had said our last goodbyes she had started fucking an old boyfriend.
I have to say I wasn't that concerned. I didn't think our relationship had much future either and, even If I had been inclined to make a fuss, her boyfriend was a Welsh rugby international who was six feet six inches tall, weighed two hundred and fifty pounds, and had hands the size of shovels.
I, by comparison, am a diminutive six feet tall and weigh one hundred and ninety pounds, unlike her paramour to whom she is now married. I am considered good-looking with blond hair and blue eyes. For the record, he is bald with cauliflower ears and a repeatedly broken nose but is universally considered a bloody good bloke by the millions who watch him on television in his new role as a rugby pundit.
That Friday evening I was at a loose end. My parents had gone to their villa in Portugal, and I had few friends in London and none I could intrude on that Friday before Christmas.
And so I went to the party. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if my parents hadn't decided to leave Liverpool for the Algarve and broken their long tradition of hosting the entire family for Christmas lunch. Maybe I would have gone north that Friday and avoided that first meeting.
The Christmas Party 1977
The party was held in a large London hotel, and the ballroom and an adjoining reception room had been hired for the evening. The reception was at eight pm with dinner at half past. This was to be served at tables set out in the ballroom and there was a live jazz band and then a disco to follow. There were several hundred people present and I knew very few of them having only met the laboratory personnel with whom I worked daily.
I stood quietly at the reception with a tonic water in my hand and surveyed the crowd. It was a wide and varied group of individuals with only one thing in common; like me, they all worked for the same large multinational corporation. There were senior executives and scientists, laboratory workers, young secretarial and personnel staff, drug representatives, accountants, medical artists, and just about anybody else you can think of. There were males and females ranging in age from their early twenties to their mid-sixties.
I couldn't see anybody from the laboratory in which I worked but as I scanned the crowd I saw a striking red-haired woman in a white evening dress watching me, but when I looked at her she quickly looked away
I was beginning to regret coming to the party and wondered with whom I might be sitting. I hoped I would not be sat with people with whom I had little in common and be forced to spend a boring evening listening to shop talk. I crossed the room to the board with the seating plan. It sat on an easel at the entrance to the ballroom and, as yet, only a few people were examining it. I found my name. I was sitting at table thirty-two at the back of the ballroom away from the dance floor. A Miss Mona O'Leary was sat on my right and a Miss Valeria Perez on my left.
I started to wonder whether the evening might turn out all right after all. I much prefer to sit at a table away from the dance floor. It is quieter and talk is easier, and I often wonder why the good and the great like to sit at the front. To be in the limelight I suppose. And I wondered who the unmarried ladies I had been sat next to might be,
Precisely at eight, the doors to the ballroom were flung open and we were ushered inside as the strains of Bing Crosby's White Christmas rang out. In the far corner, there was a large Christmas tree maybe thirty feet high. It was decorated with scores of beautifully wrapped parcels and red lights and had a huge star at the top.
Each of the round tables had settings for eight people and in the centre of each one, sitting on a crisp white tablecloth was a large, multicoloured, enamelled centrepiece. Some were in the form of Santa Claus either standing or sitting in a sleigh and some were of a carousel or a snowman. Also on the table were two bottles of red wine and two bottles of white sitting on ice.
I found my seat at the table, marked by a handwritten card, and introduced myself to a couple already sitting side by side. They were Bill and Mary a married couple who worked in administration. Then John and James, both from marketing, sat down, and then a rather serious-looking young lady called Alice arrived and took her seat. She had short black hair and sad brown eyes and was primly dressed in an old-fashioned red collared dress. Lastly, Valeria and then Mona arrived, and I thanked the anonymous administrator who had made the seating plan. Mona was the "lady in white." She was beautiful with wavy flame red hair and green eyes with a curvy ample body with a big bum and boobs. Valeria was the "lady in black." She was shorter and slimmer than Mona but was a Latin beauty with a taut and muscled body, jet-black hair, soft brown eyes, and cherry-red lips. I estimated them both to be around my age or possibly a little older. I was spoiled for choice.
We had just had time to introduce ourselves to the others around the table when we heard the ring of a metal spoon being banged on glass and slowly the hubbub of conversation reduced to a murmur and then to silence. The managing director for the UK was standing holding a microphone. First, he welcomed everyone to the party and wished us a merry Christmas and a happy New Year and then he thanked everyone for their efforts over the previous year.
"In a few minutes, each of you will receive an envelope containing your Christmas bonus. This is one and a half months' salary averaged out over the last year and is more than was planned. We thought it only fair that after the launch of E........., our new treatment for Type 2 diabetes, all company employees should share in our success."
He sat whilst we quietly applauded and then half a dozen elves wearing green and red costumes and hats entered the room and delivered the envelopes to each table in turn. The envelopes were white with red edging and delivered on a silver salver which was placed in the centre of each table.
Bill and Mary were the first to react and took the salver, and after taking the envelopes with their names on them, passed the tray to Alice who wordlessly put the envelope in her handbag without opening it. I did not look at my cheque either. I knew I would receive a quarter of my monthly salary because I had only been employed for two months. It was better than nothing but nothing to write home about.
Mona made the biggest fuss. She opened her envelope and smiled and then announced excitedly to the table, "I'm going to buy myself a Gucci handbag for Christmas. There's one I've had my eye on for absolutely ages."
Next, she turned to me, looked at my name card, and spoke quietly to me. "Where have you sprung from Dr West."
"Will," I said. "I work in pre-clinical research. In vitro testing to be precise. I'm a biochemist."
"I'm a hospital rep," she said.
Valeria had been listening and now she spoke. "How long have you been working for the company?" Her English was accented and sounded to be spoken by a Spanish speaker. It was very different from the East Coast American accent of Mona.
"Two months."
"Ahh... That's why I've not seen you about..... I would have remembered."
And Mona murmured, "Wouldn't we all."
As this was happening the food arrived. For a change it wasn't the standard mass-produced Christmas dinner churned out by pubs and hotels across the county; slices of turkey so thin you can see through them with rock-hard roast potatoes, soggy sprouts, and soft carrots washed in watery gravy or a vegetarian option of nut-roast, the same vegetables, and no gravy.
I had opted for a salmon terrine as a starter and a main of roast duck with cheese to follow.
