Sneaky Valentine

Chapter 1: Anonymous Sender

I turn the card over, looking for any clues on the back but there is nothing there. I bite my lip, wondering.

For the third year in a row, a Valentine's Day card has found its way into my handbag somewhere between leaving home and arriving at work.

The first year had been a surprise and I wondered if my partner, Troy, had unexpectedly and uncharacteristically decided to put some effort into our almost non-existent love. However, when he again came home late, very late from work with no flowers, chocolates or even a kind word, I decided that the card sender wasn't him.

So, at thirty-two I had a secret admirer: how intriguing! At least, I hoped I had and that it wasn't a mistake and the card had been intended for someone else. The handwritten inscription read:

'To the darkly golden girlie

With the gorgeous dove grey eyes.

I see you each day early

But you do not know my sighs.'

The darkly golden girlie with the gorgeous dove grey eyes' seemed to fit me; my eyes were grey and my once golden blonde hair had darkened considerably since the birth of my twin girls, August and December, eight years earlier. Someone fancied me; what a thrill!

Last year I had wondered whether the same might happen again.

Okay, I'll be completely candid and honest: I hoped it would happen again. Things had really started to deteriorate between Troy and me, going from bad to worse and, while I had made some effort to maintain the relationship, I was getting to the point where I was beginning to feel it wasn't worth the effort and it was simply inertia keeping us living together; that and the iron chains of a shared mortgage.

My parents had never particularly liked him, not since the day we moved in together. That my parents had provided the deposit on the house and stood as guarantors for the mortgage probably didn't help us form an equal partnership in that first year, particularly as my parents made sure Troy knew how much we were beholden to them.

Letting myself become pregnant and the birth of our twin girls (not that twins were what I planned!) should have brought us closer, or so I'd thought, but the opposite had been true. I know many new parents fight: the combination of tiredness, stress and having your world turned upside down by one, or in our case, two tiny people taxes any relationship.

By the time the girls were in school our lives had settled into routines, with Mom picking up the childcare at each end of the day. However, no matter how settled and safe the routines seemed, Troy and I gradually drifted further apart. Worse still, Troy had less and less to do with the girls: out too early and home too late to see them during the week, golf and football on weekends... I was their only real parent, with the help of my own parents.

So on Valentine's Day last year I had resisted checking my handbag until I was in the office, my heart hammering as I opened the bag. Yes! A shiny red envelope, that had not been there when I left the house that morning, was tucked against one side where someone had slid it in.

With trembling fingers I took it out and opened the flap, glancing around to be sure no one was watching me. The card was a typical bright red with a cute cartoon teddy holding a heart on the front. The handwritten inscription inside was... unexpectedly intense:

'I don't know

if you feel a spark,

but I feel FIREWORKS

whenever I see you!'

The handwriting was the same as last year's I was certain; rounded and with only a few letters joined up, the dot on the letter 'i' was a tiny heart, also as last year. The effect was youthful and feminine, quite girlie actually, but it must be someone determined that the handwriting would give no clue as to their identity.

And now this year as I shake my head partly in amazement and partly in frustration; I had been keeping an eye out this time, tracking every bloke that came close enough to try to put the card into my bag, but the sneaky bugger had still managed it. I suppose, given the crush on the train and the jostling on the platform, it wouldn't have been impossible despite my vigilance; I had deliberately carried my bag as normally as I could, not wanting to scare the guy off attempting the card delivery.

I felt I needed the reassurance that I was still attractive after Roy had finally walked out at the beginning of January, having just managed to stick it out through Christmas and New Year "for the girls' sakes" apparently. They did miss him, a bit; I certainly didn't by then and in just six short weeks, even August and December seemed to be reasonably happy with just their Mom, Granny and Granddad as their family.

I look at the card once more. It is pink and red, unsurprisingly, with a Hello Kitty holding a heart on the front saying, 'Hey there Pretty Girl, Will you be my Valentine?' I open it and re-read the inscription inside for the twentieth time:

'My beautiful, curvaceous,

dark haired Ishtar,

Always so seductive

in the swaying railway car.

Each day you lift my spirit,

should you sit or stand;

Oh I wish that I could win

your love, your heart, your hand.'

I'd had to Google 'Ishtar' who, it turned out, was the Mesopotamian goddess of sexual love, fertility and, curiously, warfare.

My admirer was certainly ramping up the intensity and passion and had also told me that he was a fellow rail commuter... and one who saw me regularly... hmmm.