Shades of yellow

Chapter one- What's colour?

"Mummy, what is colour?" I asked looking up from my heavy duvet snuggled just under my chin.

"Well, it's hard to explain. It's like what you see, but with more sparkle and deeper, more saturated, more... everything."
I furrowed my eyebrow for a second and had a think over what my mum just said. It was hard to imagine what colour would look like, because my world had always been in shades of black and white, occasionally a touch of grey.
"Why I can't see it yet? What's it like when you see colour?" I asked my mum, bombarding her with one question after another.
"Well... the reason you can't see it yet is because you haven't met your soulmate, when you meet them, the whole world seems to rearrange itself and everything just becomes so much more beautiful."
"Mummy, what's a soulmate?"
There was silence for a few seconds as my mum struggled to phrase this so that my five year-old mind could understand.

"It's when you meet someone, but not just anyone, it's almost like you've been empty and cold your whole life and you've only ever been half a person, but when you meet them, it's like your suddenly complete, and your whole world lights up. It's like a happily ever after in a fairytale." My mum said, as tears slowly appeared in the corner of her eyes. My dad had died when I was three, and I'm guessing he was my mums soulmate. I turned over and faced the pillow as I fell asleep, my head full of the idea of colour.

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18 years later:
Another Valentine's Day, another reminder of how alone I am. Everywhere I walk I see the people meeting the one, maybe suddenly as they're walking down the street, maybe when they see each other at the checkout. Not to mention all the couples snogging outside the cafés.
Throughout nursery, primary and high school, university to my job as an accountant, my world had only been in the full world of black and white.
Most of my friends had met 'the one' by the time they were at university. I don't know how, especially as there's 7 billion people in the world, you'd think they'd never find theirs. Maybe it's that soulmates are linked because they live near you or something. Well in that case my soulmate must live in Australia, on the other side of the bloody world.
I've given up on the idea I even have a soulmate at this point. I'm already 23 years old, I'll focus on my job and build my bank account first. Then I'll worry about love and children.
I finally arrived at the doors of the skyscraper that I worked in and swiped my card on the door before walking into the lift. When I reached the top floor, Matilda, my rather unpleasant co-worker was waiting for me.

"Morning Matilda." I said as I slipped around her.

"Morning Jean, does this blue bring out my figure, oh wait. I forgot, you can't see colours." She cackled. I rolled my eyes and threw my bag onto my desk before logging onto my computer and in my inbox I found an email from my boss, labelled 'SENT WITH HIGH IMPORTANCE'.
'Great, now I'm probably getting fired.' I thought to myself. I opened the email but the words inside couldn't be more different then the ones I imagined.