I'm sure I have this written in a journal somewhere, but it's probably packed away in a box in Mom and Dad's attic back in England. I want to get my memories down somewhere, cos I know I've already forgotten some details and I'd love for our kids to know all about our early years when they're old enough to care :)
In January 2001 I was in my 2nd year of my degree and lived in the Pink House with 3 other Mormon girls: Niki, Anna and Jenette. The house was literally pink - painted salmon on the outside, and we loved that. We had a pink themed house warming party and stuck big sheets of pink tissue paper on the wall with blue tack. They stayed there the whole year.
Anna was going out with Matt, so he spent an awful lot of time at our house. One afternoon Matt was sitting in our living room when he got a call from a friend who'd just got back from his mission. They got to chatting about plans and girls when Matt pipes up with "Hey Becky's here, you should come take her out". I think at that point I avoided the embarrassing situation by escaping to the kitchen. Matt finished the call, determined to set me up on a blind date with his friend, Adam. I wasn't too bothered to be honest - I had only been single a few weeks, having broken up with my boyfriend when he went on his mission and I was still letting myself wallow in 19 yr old heartbreak and self pity ;) So I was willing to go along with the idea of a date for a bit of fun, but was quite certain I wasn't looking for anything serious. My plans were always that I would finish uni and qualify as a teacher and then get married.
Sometime during the next week we were walking into Leeds city centre - a whole group of us from the boys house and the girls house, and Matt got another call from Adam. A little while into the call Matt handed me the phone and Adam asked if he could take me out that weekend. We arranged for him to come over to Leeds and we'd go out on Friday night.
He actually came over late on Thursday night to stay at Matt's house. It was in the middle of my end of semester exams, I had an exam on Friday so I didn't make any plans to meet him late on the Thursday. I'd also been ill (Adam didn't actually hear what my real voice sounded like until 2 weeks later). So, I'd gone up to bed and then I heard a car pull up. I crept to my window to see if it was him and try and get a glimpse of my date for the next day. I knelt on my floor, pulled back a tiny bit of the curtain and peeked over the window sill, because I absolutely did not want him to see that I was looking. Matt got out of the car and so did someone else, but I couldn't see much because it was so dark and was too high up. I then spent the next half hour or so sitting silently in my bedroom trying to hear the conversation in the lounge directly below my room. At one point Niki came upstairs, when I quietly grabbed her to ask what he was like. She told me he seemed nice and was good looking. That was enough and I went off to sleep.
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