Fifty Dates // Calum Hood

Prologue

                                              26th February 2055

                                                            Rae

     “What’s all of this?” I question, yawning as I stagger into the living room, rubbing the sleep from my eyes using the back of my hand.

     I eye up Calum who's sat in the armchair, TV remote in his left hand, flicking through the different daytime TV programmes and mumbling a complaint underneath his breath when he finds nothing interesting. My eyes skim over our teenage daughter standing in the corner of the room in her pyjamas, Canon camera held tightly in her small hands and pointing in the direction of Calum.

     “You’re not filming another music video are you?” I joke and playfully shove Calum in the shoulder as I perch myself on the arm of the armchair. The only response I get from him is a quiet grunt.

     “No mum, just a film for my film studies exam,” Bailey tells me, clicking some buttons on her camera. “I’m making a film about yours and dads love story but dad isn’t being very cooperative, maybe you can tell me. I have a set of questions to ask and I have the film all pl-“

     “Wow Bailey, slow down a minute. A movie?” I ask stunned, staring wide eyed at the young girl.

     She nods her head eagerly and twists her camera lens, both zooming it in and focusing it on me and Calum.

     “Please, I’d most likely get an A for it. I need to pass and plus, neither of you have ever told me and Ethan how you both met,” She exclaims, clearly desperate for us to help her out. “I’ve promised everyone at school that you’d do this film and I told Ethan I’d send him a copy of it to his university.”

     “Bailey, we’re fifty-nine years old, I can barely hear you speaking. What makes you think I’m suitable to be part of a movie? Can’t you get a fake me?” Calum now speaks, looking directly at her.

     “Calum we can give it a go, it’ll be a fun experience,” I encourage him, taking hold of his hand and rubbing my thumb across his knuckles. “She’s already filming us anyway.”

     He glares over at her as she grins back at him, poking her tongue out. His face softens and he rolls his eyes, his head drooping down to look at his lap as he backs down knowing he’s going to lose against the both of us.

     “I’ll take that as a ‘you can go ahead and start the real filming process now.’ Thanks dad,” Bailey cheers and disappears for a minute to grab one of the pine wood chairs from the dining room, running back into the living room and setting it down in front of us, plopping herself down onto it and pointing the camera at us again.

     “Where do we begin?” Calum grumbles and squeezes my hand tightly.

     “Well, the same way that every love story begins, meeting one another. How did you meet?”

     Me and Calum turn to look at one another straight away, smirks creeping to both of our faces as we chirp back the words, “a funfair,” as a reply.

     “I guess that’s OK for now. How did your romance blossom from there then?” Bailey questions next, refocusing her camera on our faces as we turn our heads to look back at her.

     “Fifty dates is what happened after that,” Calum answers with a chuckle, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me from the arm of the armchair, onto his lap.

     “Are you going to explain this from the very start? I need details,” Bailey grumbles, not yet having any success with our story.

     “OK,” I sigh, shifting and squirming on Calums lap as he holds me even tighter than before. “It began on the seventeenth of June, two-thousand and thirteen…”