Share your story with best

Do you have a story you’d like to share with our amazing army of best readers? We’re looking for real-life stories from women just like you and your friends – and will pay up to £250 for all those that make it into these pages. Stories can be funny, sad, emotional, inspirational – just like some of the examples on this page. The only rule: they must be true.

Have you been on a diet that changed your life? Have you battled against tough times and come out fighting? Have you found love or happiness against the odds?

If you – or a friend – have a story to share, whatever the subject, do drop us a line, with your contact details, a photo and a brief outline of your story – ideally no more than 100 words.

Email us at louise.bulgin @hearst.co.uk

Between last breaths my wife Ruth told me how another man led her to me. A wife can only admit such a thing when her husband is weak from counting pills and changing bedsheets. And a husband can only pat his wife’s hand and say he always knew.

Now I’m here, in the cabin she occupied when we met. There’s a crab towel on the pillow. Ruth always folded towels into animal shapes and left them on our guest bed for friends. I’ve never undone the last two she made.

Ruth never thought she’d marry. At thirty-nine she accepted spinsterhood and booked a cruise. Brazen for a single woman, it was met with reproach. ‘ Won’t you be lonely?’ friends said. ‘ Won’t you get lost?’

In a simple cabin on the Norway-bound MS Freedom, she dressed up and went to the piano bar. Silver-haired men in white suits courted women. Ruth noted that these older gentlemen wore name badges and were experienced dancers. One came over and asked if she’d like to dance. ‘Oh, no,’ Ruth said, flustered, and he apologised. Though he didn’t glance her way again, she felt foolish and left.

A towel cat awaited Ruth in the cabin. She touched its leg, curious, and asked the room attendant if he’d made it. In broken English, he said they were taught the ancient art of towel-folding and she could purchase a book at the front desk. ‘I imagine in night,’ he said, ‘they come alive and dance in piano bar.’

Each evening Ruth found herself back there, watching the dancers. One man never danced. Though he wore the same white suit as the others, he stood apart. Younger, dark and tanned, he never approached women. Ruth found his nightly presence comforting – the dancer who didn’t dance.

On the fifth night they sailed out of Bergen and Ruth asked if he’d light her cigarette. ‘I no smoke, señorita,’ he said. Ruth put it away and said she’d never seen him dance. His name badge said Andreas.

‘My favourite partner,’ he said, ‘is not flashy woman but lady whose eyes mist with memory of long-ago dance.’ Ruth asked why he wore the same uniform each evening. He was a Gentleman Host, he explained, or a Ghost as they were nicknamed, paid to dance with lonely women.

Ruth stood, told him he’d find himself unemployed if he didn’t start dancing soon and returned to her cabin. A peacock waited there, moulded from different-sized towels. In the ship’s watery wake, she heard questions – won’t you be lonely, won’t you get lost – and tore it apart and wept into the smallest towel.

Ruth stayed in her room all day. She ordered food she didn’t eat and watched the TV’s ship channels. At nine a light tapping woke her and she opened the door to Andreas.

‘I not supposed to come to room,’ he said, ‘ but worried. You not appear. You always come, sit by piano.’

Ruth wondered whether it was decent to invite a strange man into her cabin, but let the door swing open. Of the towel swan on the bed Andreas said, ‘At first made just for kids, but staff realise adults find comfort

Ruth found the dancer’s nightly presence comforting

in these towel companions too.’ Ruth remained standing, asked, ‘How long have you been a Gentleman Host?’

Andreas told her about his home in Barcelona, the evening smell of jasmine, his ex-wife Connie, a childhood as the only boy and having to learn all the