POLLY VERNON
I ONCE READ SOMETHING which said that, of all the precious life events we commit to social media – the engagements, hen dos, weddings and gender reveals, first dances, rapturous first skin-on-skin contacts, anniversaries, Valentine’s – the thing that never makes it is the moment one person tells another they love them for the first time.
It’s true, isn’t it? That gorgeous, soul shaking incidence of romcom-worthy wonder is somehow never turned into content. Maybe it’s too private. Or too spontaneous in nature: an unintended bursting forth of a feeling that has been taking root, unfurling, growing and growing in a dark, secret place within one or other or (hopefully) both of you, and which quite suddenly, without planning or engineering or a brother hiding in a bush to capture it on their iPhone for future posting, took its chance and got itself said. I love that about it, that it’s social media-proof, that it never gets cheapened on Main Grid.
My bloke took a year to tell me. He eventually did it on a Sunday of no significance. He hid his head under the duvet, which almost muffled his words, but not quite. ‘I’m in love with you,’ he said. I hit him, cried, told him I did, too, and anyway, I already knew. I’d caught him looking at me, months earlier, as I messed about with a mate in the pub, and his face had been incandescently delighted to see me like that: having a good time, being happy. ‘Bloody hell! He loves me!’, I’d thought. Even then – I’d already known.
The knowledge you are loved, and that you love back, accumulates slowly. It’s in a hundred acts of quiet care, and the unconscious, casual expression of long-term inte
