For my band boy

       Chapter One

      The Fairy Tale

      I wonder who started the bloody ridiculous rumour that women can multi-task effortlessly. I’d love to know so that I can send them a photograph of me right now (obviously someone else would have to take it for me) epic-failing my way to the office.

      It’s 11 a.m. on an exceptionally cold Monday morning and I’m late for work. Again, and as always. Currently dodging my way through the busy streets of Leeds, I’m desperately trying not to drop anything. In my right hand I have four take-away cups of coffee – in a holder obviously, I’m good but I’m not that good – my massive Mary Poppins-style handbag hooked on my left arm and my mobile phone in my left hand. It’s still in my hand because, as I was leaving Starbucks, I received a call from work and without a free hand to put my phone back in my bag, that’s where it’s going to have to stay.

      Thankfully work is just around the corner from my flat, although I was supposed to be at the office by 10 a.m. Stopping at Starbucks has only made me even later but I’m hoping the coffees will score me some brownie points with the staff. If you can’t be on time, the least you can do is suck up to people.

      Just one more road to cross and I’ll be there. Balancing on the edge of the curb in my silly yet beautiful shoes, I feel like the slightest breeze could knock me off my feet. As the green man appears, I step off the pavement with the rest of the sheep. Eyeballing the window of my office for angry faces, I make it half way across the road when something hits me – literally hits me. As I fall to the ground in what feels like super-slow, Matrix-esque motion (although it probably doesn’t look quite so graceful to the people around me), my impressive coffee-handbag-phone balancing act comes to an abrupt end. Landing flat on my back, right there in the middle of the road, I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus. Was I hit by a bus? I can hear people fussing around me and the impatient blaring of car horns. They can piss off, I could be dead...although if I’m thinking that, chances are I’m probably still alive, right?

      As I run my hands down my body to check for major injuries, I feel that my skirt is up around my waist. I have never been happier to be wearing such thick tights, God bless the crappy, cold weather we have up north.

      There’s a strong smell of coffee coming from the double-digits’-worth of Starbucks puddle on the road next to me, which thankfully hasn’t trickled towards me, although I am tempted to roll over and lap it up.

      Despite having the wind knocked out of me, I think I’m going to make it.

      ‘I am so sorry, let me help you up,’ I hear a deep, apologetic voice insist as a hand reaches for mine.

      Flat on my back and in the middle of the road, with my skirt hitched up around my waist, I am in no position to be declining help, so I grab the stranger’s hand and let him yank me to my feet.

      ‘Here’s your phone, I hope it isn’t broken. Shit, there are a couple of scratches on it,’ the stranger informs me as he hands me my fairly battered-looking phone. My phone is noticeably scratched, but I don’t tell him that most of the damage probably occurred the time my phone took a tumble down the stairs, bashed against something in my handbag, magically escaped my grasp, etc. In fact, my phone has been dropped so many times it’s a miracle that it still works. I prod a button on the front with a very shaky finger and my trusty phone springs to life as usual. What a trooper. Only after making sure my phone is OK do I actually look the only person who stopped to help me in the eye. Ushering me back across the road (the side I don’t want to be on) is an absolutely gorgeous man. Shit, I can’t believe he saw me lying in the road like that. He’s wearing a very flashy suit and clutching a fat, important-looking file stuffed with papers. Oh, and he has one of my shoes tucked under his arm, which explains why I’m limping – I thought I’d snapped my ankle or something.

      ‘Thanks for helping me. I’m not sure what happened, I was crossing the road and—’ I stop mid-sentence. The truth is, I have no idea what happened.

      The good-looking stranger sits me down on the nearest bench.