a-typical love story

They met in an All Bar One. Office girls in push up bras. Nylon ties on seat backs. Carbonated comfort in pints and possibility on tap. C'mon let's race. It was Thursday night.

He was standing by the games machine. Trying to become a Millionaire in a crowd of credit drinkers. Question five was Henry VII's second wife. The answer, draped on his console, was no Anne Boleyn. She breathed Baileys and her bra strap had slipped. Still, through the Stella, a little something stirred. They flirted, she smoked, he drank, he scrolled ahead to hungry fumblings and a quick extraction. Both tonight and tomorrow morning. Sometimes he doubted his commitment. And then he saw Her.

They spoke by the toilets. That fact alone She regretted. They deserved something finer. New vocab please dealer. To compensate they ditched the small-talk. He wanted something unused. Unsullied. He didn't ask what she did. She didn't ask what he earned. They talked about the South Bank and old vinyl. She heard about the powerful Catholic women of his youth. When she left they kissed.

They decided to keep their veils lowered. For now. They didn't want labels - she florist, he accountant- didn't want the tired conversational ruts they implied. They endeavoured to learn more by knowing less.

For their first date she is a teacher. Primary aged kids in Holloway, she says. Last term was a project on chickens but the eggs didn't hatch and her jaunty little life lesson became a sermon on death to a class of under-fives. 'You don't know how hard it is' she says, 'to cover birth, death, the rudiments of reincarnation and then break for fingerpainting.' He didn't. Nor did she. But through her fiction he got her kindness.

He could relate, he said, being a hairdresser. In the chair people loose their inhibitions. They tell you all sorts. Lost lovers, shelved ambitions, then leave their problems with their split ends on the floor. He reckoned the government should fund salons not surgeries. Would save them a packet. Later that evening, at her house she goes into the bathroom. Comes out with her long, brown tresses damp and a pair of kitchen scissors. 'Go on' she says. Her faith strikes him dumb. He's only ever cut paper. But he does her proud. A gamine bob, cut on the bias. They both learn about trust.

One date she'd planned to be a legal secretary. She goes to an open court case in Holloway and is an hour late for work after sitting, rapt, behind the court illustrator. Later, she tells him of her daily bind as a court artist. Of making the morally bankrupt look picturesque as they slouch in the dock. The real verdict's in the details, she says, in the quick-bitten nails and the frayed cuffs if only the prosecuter would stop his bullying for a while. Her naievity troubles him. But that's her job, she says, to see the beauty in people. And he knows, she's only half joking.

Of course there are slip ups. Half a bottle of Merlot monkeys with the tautest of fictions. Her oral hygienist would have had the watchdogs round. His horticultural bloomer 'hydrangeas instead of hibiscus - had her biting her tongue. But then he had brought her a bouquet he made; all foliage, no flowers, with a fan of banana leaf like a great cleft halo. In seven years of being a florist she hadn't dared make anything as brave, and she spent the night struck at his boldness.

Date ten is a welter of nerves. He comes as himself, as an accountant. Unsure. Worried she'll clock. But she never does. Over chips on a windswept beach he warms to his theme, explaining how the same numbers can decipher genomes, drive subs and change flight-paths over Heathrow. She doesn't seem bored in the slightest. And he, refracted through her, dares agree.

They marry in the autumn. A few friends, close family, lowish key. Friends marvel at their quick courtship, but they'd disagree. Six weeks, twenty-two nights and a hundred colourful, conflicting fictions with a rock steady baseline. As he lifts the veil she shrugs off her last white lie. But for old times sake, under occupation on the register, they both leave a blank.