I met Alan at Fareham Civic Hall on Friday, 17 October 1980.
Denise had asked me to go with her. We were seeing less of each other by then. She had started work in Portsmouth, I was at Wessex Marine Supplies, and meeting after work required more organisation than friendship had needed at school.
The event was called a social evening. This covered music, dancing, a licensed bar and rows of chairs around the edge for people who had paid to stand near other people.
Mum watched me get ready and asked whether my skirt was meant to be that length. I said yes. She looked at it again and decided that intention had not improved it.
Dad drove us into Fareham. He said he would collect us at half past eleven and expected us to be outside. Denise waited until he had pulled away before saying that half past eleven was an ambitious time for a social evening at a civic hall.
Inside, the lights were brighter than I had hoped. The floor had been polished, and several people were already dancing with the concentration of those who had practised elsewhere. Denise saw somebody she knew from work. Within ten minutes, I was holding both handbags while she went to speak to him.
Alan was standing beside the chairs with another man. I noticed him because he looked as though he had been left there for the same reason.
He asked whether the chair beside me was free.
‘It is now,’ I said. ‘There was a handbag on it.’
He looked at the two bags on my lap.
‘Both yours?’
‘No. I am providing a temporary service.’
He sat down.
He was twenty, tall without seeming aware of it, and wearing a brown jacket that he later admitted belonged to his older cousin. His hair had been cut recently. There was a pale line above one ear where the barber had gone higher than intended.
We watched the dancers for a while.
‘Do you dance?’ he asked.
‘Sometimes.’
‘Do you know this one?’
‘It is not a set of instructions.’
He considered that.
‘I prefer instructions.’
That was Alan. He liked knowing what a thing was for and what was expected next. Dancing offered neither.
Denise returned, took her handbag and looked at Alan. I introduced them, though I did not yet know his surname.
‘Alan works with telephones,’ I said.
He had told me this while she was away.
‘For the Post Office,’ he added.
Denise asked whether that meant he worked in a post office.
‘No.’
‘Then they have named it badly.’
Alan agreed. He was an apprentice technician with Post Office Telecommunications. He worked on exchanges and lines and could explain what he did in enough detail to end most conversations. I listened because I was interested, though I understood only some of it.
When the next record started, Denise told us to dance. Alan said he did not dance.
‘Neither does Margaret,’ she said. ‘She moves carefully near music.’
I told her this was untrue. She had already gone.
Alan stood up.
‘We could move carefully,’ he said.
So we did.
He counted at first. I heard him under the music.
‘Are you counting?’
‘No.’
‘You said four.’
‘I was checking.’
‘Checking what?’
He looked down at our feet.
‘Whether I was about to stand on you.’
He did once. I told him. He apologised and moved farther away, which made the dancing worse. After that, we stopped trying to look as if we knew what we were doing.
We danced twice and sat down three times. He bought me a lemonade and himself a bitter. He asked where I worked. When I told him, he knew the firm because one of their vans had delayed traffic near his depot the week before.
This was not the response I had expected, but it was specific.
I told him about the evening typing class. He said he had to attend training courses and disliked the rooms more than the subjects. We discussed buses, supervisors and the civic hall music. None of this was remarkable. I remember most of it.
At eleven twenty, Denise reminded me about Dad.
Alan walked with us to the entrance. He asked whether he could see me again.
I said yes too quickly, then tried to make it sound considered.
‘Yes. I should think so.’
He asked for our telephone number. I gave it to him and said he should ring after seven because we ate at six and the telephone was in the hall.
‘Sunday?’
‘All right.’
‘After seven.’
‘Yes.’
He repeated the number once. I corrected the final digit.
Dad was already outside. Denise got into the back and left the front passenger seat for me, which was unusual enough to be deliberate.
‘Good evening?’ Dad asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Who was that?’
‘Alan.’
Dad waited.
‘He works with telephones.’
This appeared to satisfy him. Employment was useful information.
Mum was still awake when I got home. She asked whether I had danced, whether Denise had enjoyed herself and whether I had met anyone.
‘A man called Alan.’
‘What sort of man?’
‘I have only met him once.’
She said this had not prevented me noticing.
On Sunday, the telephone rang at twenty to seven. Mum answered it.
She called up the stairs. ‘Margaret. A young man who says he is Alan.’
He had rung early because he did not want somebody else to use the line at seven. He explained this when I came down.
I sat on the hall chair with Mum moving between the kitchen and sitting room and Dad passing twice for no reason I could see.
Alan asked if I would go to the pictures with him the following Friday.
I said yes.
Then I repeated the time, the cinema and where we would meet. I had spent a year in an office by then. Details mattered.