Page 5 of Rock Paper Scissors
Dear Adam,
It was something at first sight when we met.
I wasn’t sure what, but I know you felt it too.
The Electric Cinema was a first date with a difference. We’d both gone to see a film alone but I sat in your seat by mistake, we got talking, and left together after the movie. Everyone thought we were crazy and that the whirlwind romance wouldn’t last, but I’ve always got great satisfactionfrom proving people wrong. As have you. It’s one of the many things we have in common.
I confess that moving in together wasn’t exactly how I imagined. It’s harder to hide thedarker sidereal you from someone you live with, and you did a better job of concealing all the clutter when I only came to visit. I have renamed the hallway Story Street, because it is lined with so many teetering piles of manuscripts and books, we have to sidestep to pass through it. I knew that reading and writing were a big part of your life, but we might need to find something bigger than a basement studio in an old Notting Hill town house now that I live here too. I am so happy though. I’ve gotten used to playing second fiddle in the orchestra of us, and I accept that there will always be three of us in this relationship: you, me, and your writing.
It was the cause of our first big argument, do you remember? I suppose I should have known better than to search through the drawers in your desk, but I was only looking for matches. That’s when I found the manuscript forRock Paper Scissors, with your name neatly typed in Times New Roman on the front page. I had the flat to myself, and a decent bottle of wine, so I read the whole thing that night. From the look on your face when you came home, anyone would have thought I’d read your diary.
But I think I understand now. That manuscript wasn’t just an unsold story; it was like an abandoned child.Rock Paper Scissorswas your first ever screenplay but it’s never made it to screen. You’ve collaborated with three producers, two directors, and one A-list actor. You spent so many years writing draft after draft, but it still never got beyond development. It must be upsetting that your favorite story has been forgotten about, left to die in a desk drawer, but I’m sure it won’t stay that way forever. I’ve become your official first reader sincethen—a role I am very proud of—and your writing just gets better and better.
I know you’d rather see your own tales turned into films, but for now it’s all about other people’s. I still haven’t quite gotten used to the amount of time you spend reading their novels, because someone somewhere thinks they might work on screen. But I’ve watched you disappear inside a book like a rabbit inside a magician’s hat, and I’ve learned to accept that sometimes youare a bit self-involveddon’t resurface for days.
Luckily, books are something else we have in common, though I think it’s fair to say we have different taste. You like horror stories, thrillers, and crime novels, which are not my cup of tea at all. I’ve always thought there must be something seriously wrong with people who write dark and twisted fiction. I prefer a good love story. But I’ve tried to be understanding about your work—even though it sometimes hurts when you choose to spend your time in a world of fantasy, instead of here in the real one, with me.
I think that’s why I got so upset when you said we couldn’t get a dog. I’ve been nothing but supportive of you and your career since we met, but sometimes I worried that our future was really only about yours. I know working for Battersea Dogs Home isn’t as glamorous as being a screenwriter, but I like my job, it makes me happy. Your reasons for not getting a dog were rational (you always are). The flat is ridiculously small, and we do both work long hours, but I’d always said I could take the dog to work with me. You bring your work home after all.
I see abandoned puppies every day, but this one was different. As soon as I saw that beautiful ball of black fur, I knew he was the one. What kind of monster puts a tiny Labrador puppy in a shoe box, throws him in a dumpster, and leaves him there to die? The vet said he was no more than six weeksold, and the rage I felt was all-consuming. I know what it is like to be abandoned by someone who is supposed to love you. There is nothing worse.
I wanted to bring the puppy home the next day, but you said no, and I was heartbroken for the first time since we met. I thought I still had time to persuade you, but the following afternoon, one of the receptionists at Battersea came into my office and said that someone had come to adopt the dog. It’s my job to assess all would-be pet owners, so as I walked down the corridor to meet them, I secretly hoped they would be unsuitable. Nobody goes to a home where they won’t really be loved on my watch.
The first thing I saw when I stepped into the waiting room was the puppy. All alone, sitting in the middle of the cold stone floor. He was such a tiny smudge of a thing. Then I noticed the little red collar he was wearing, and the silver, bone-shaped name tag. It didn’t make sense. I hadn’t even met the prospective owners yet, so they had no business behaving as though the dog was theirs already. I scooped the puppy up off the floor to take a closer look at the inscription on the shiny metal:
WILL YOU MARRY ME?
I nearly dropped him.
I don’t know what my face did when you stepped out from behind the door. I know I cried. I remember half my team seemed to be watching us through the observation window. They had tears in their eyes too, and big smiles on their faces. Everyone was in on it apart from me! Who knew you were so good at keeping secrets?
I’m sorry I didn’t say yes straight away. I think I went into shock when you went down on one knee. When I saw the sapphire engagement ring—which I knew had been your mother’s—I was overcome with a wave of emotions that Icouldn’t quite process. And with everyone staring at us, I felt completely overwhelmed.
“I think it’s best to make all important life decisions with a game of rock paper scissors,” I teased, because I believe in your writing just as much as I believe in us, and I don’t think we should ever give up on either.
You smiled. “So, just to clarify, if I lose, it’s a yes?”
I nodded and formed a fist.
My scissors cut your paper, just like they always do when we play that game, so it wasn’t really that much of a gamble. Whenever I win at anything you always like to think you let me.
For the first few months of our relationship, I mocked you for using too many long words, and you teased me back for not knowing what they meant.
“I don’t know whether this is limerence or love,” is what you said after kissing me for the first time. I had to look it up when I got home. The odd things you sometimes came out with, along with the disparity in our vocabulary, started our tradition of “word of the day” before bedtime. Yours are often better than mine because I let you win too sometimes. Perhaps we could start having a word of the year? This year’s should be “limerence,” I still have a soft spot for that one.
I know you think words are important—which makes sense given your chosen career—but I have realized recently that words are just words, a series of letters, arranged in a certain order, most likely in the language we were assigned at birth. People are careless with their words nowadays. They throw them away in a text or a tweet, they write them, pretend to read them, twist them, misquote them, lie with, without, and about them. They steal them, then they give them away. Worst of all, they forget them. Words are only of value if we remember how to feel what they mean. We won’tforget, will we? I like to think that what we have is more than just words.
I’m glad I found your secret screenplay hidden away in your desk, and I understand why it means more to you than anything else you have written. ReadingRock Paper Scissorswas like getting a little glimpse of your soul; a part of you that you weren’t quite ready to show me, but we shouldn’t hide secrets from each other or ourselves. Your dark and twisted love story, about a man who writes a letter to his wife every year on their anniversary, even after she dies, has inspired me to start writing some letters of my own. To you. Once a year. I don’t know whether I’ll share them with you yet, but maybe one day our children can read how we wrote our own love story, and lived happily ever after.
Your future wife
xx
ADAM
I slammed the chapel doors closed. I didn’t mean to do it that hard, or realize it was going to make such a loud bang. And I don’t know why I didn’t just confess to it rather than blaming the wind. Maybe because I’m tired of being told off by my wife every five minutes.
There is another door in the boot room, right in the middle of the wall of miniature mirrors. Bob starts scratching at it, leaving marks on the wood. Along with the growling earlier, it’s something else he’s never done before.
