Lovers’leaf

So, I have this special tree. Doesn’t everyone? No? Just me? Well, anyway, I have this tree – it’s perched on top of a windswept hill near where I live, and if I was a clever person I could probably date it by counting the rings or something.

I’m not that clever, but I do know that it’s old. An ancient oak, with the kind of mighty boughs that seem to spread overhead for miles. Since I was little, I’ve been climbing this hill, visiting this tree. I’m not the only one. In the local area it’s known as Lovers’ Leaf, and its huge trunk is criss-crossed with carved love hearts.

Looking at it is like seeing a record of life in our small town, literally hundreds of initials twined together in bark. They go back for decades, even my parents’ names are there. It’s a rite of passage – finding someone you can go to Lovers’ Leaf with, making your mark as a couple. Maybe in olden days it was the equivalent of announcing you were in a relationship on Facebook.

For me, now, in my early thirties, it’s like staring into a pit of despair. I have rotten luck with men – or maybe I just make bad choices, who knows? Lots of my friends are settled – those Smug Marrieds that Bridget Jones nailed so well – and the ones who aren’t have amazing careers.

Me? Well, I’m terminally single and I work in a call centre at a tool-hire company. One day, if I’m very lucky, I might be manager in a call centre at a tool-hire company. If I ever need a good deal on a cement mixer, I’m sorted – but love? That’s harder to find, at least for keeps – I only ever seem to hire it.

I think I might have the most love hearts on the trunk of that tree. It started with SB hearts ND when I was 14. The SB is me – Sophie Baker – and the ND is Nathan Donovan. Nathan had cool trainers and floppy hair and I loved him. He loved me too, enough to carve our names up here just before he tried to stick his hand under my top. But then he dumped me for Alicia Craven at the Christmas disco, and that was heartbreak number one.

My next visit to the tree with a man was with JW. Joe Walker. I met Joe at college, and we were together for almost two years. We’d planned to go travelling in Asia together, and I’d bought myself some cool hats and got my yellow fever jab by the time he told me he wanted to go on his own instead, that he needed the freedom to be himself and not part of a unit. Last I heard, he was a tour guide in Bangkok, so good on him. I still have the hats, and used them on a girls’ trip to Lanzarote a few years ago. Also, to be fair, I have never caught yellow fever.

SB hearts OC is only done in the faintest of scratches. Owen was a man I met when my own mother set me up on a blind date. She knew him through her book club, and I have to accept the blame for this one ending. He was so boring I literally fell asleep during one of our dates. He was nice-looking, and had a good job in a bank, and played golf, and probably would have been happy to turn me into a Smug Married in time. I look back now, and wonder if I made a mistake when I ended it with him – but the fact that I couldn’t even be bothered to properly engrave our names on the tree says it all.

By the time I hit my late twenties, my friends were falling like dominoes – every weekend in summer seemed to have a wedding in it, and I was a bridesmaid four times in the space of 18 months. I was living on a diet of finger sandwiches and smoked salmon canapés, and every Saturday night seemed to involve drunkenly dancing to a covers band in a big tent.

It was during a particularly lively version of The Mavericks’ Dance The Night Away that I met Keiran – KF, Keiran Farrell. He was a friend of the groom, and we hit it off straight away. We started dating, and I thought things were going well – well enough for me to bring him here, to this special place, to Lovers’ Leaf. Well enough for me to be wondering whether I’d be having my own party in a big tent before too long. Except that Keiran had other ideas, and he now lives happily with his boyfriend

Matt and two French bulldogs. Yeah, I know – you couldn’t make it up.

Today, I am up here alone. It is a beautiful summer afternoon, the kind where even the air around your face feels warm and fuzzy. I am gratefully in the shade of Lovers’ Leaf, the sound of frolicking insects around me. It is beautiful, even if I feel sad.

I look at all those love hearts. All those hopes and dreams, generations’ worth of human connection. I look at the last one I carved there, run my fingertips over its rough edges. JH hearts SB.

JH. Jack Harper. The man I thought was the love of my life. I met him on a dating app, and he swept me off my feet in a way no other man ever had. His kisses literally made me weak at the knees, and when he held me in his arms, I felt like I’d come home. For the past two years, Jack has been the centre of my life. Even now, knowing the things I do about him, I still feel it – that sense of belonging, the yearning to be with him.

I can’t be with him, though. He’s already taken. Jack says he loves me, and maybe I even believe him – but discovering that the man of your dreams is already somebody else’s husband takes the shine off things. He broke my heart, and made me an unintentional accomplice in adultery, and for that

I can never forgive him. He wanted to carry on seeing me. He promised so much – that he would leave his wife for me, once the kids were older. Kids! Months later, it still makes me shudder.

I have spent these past few months trying to rebuild myself. Trying to find my way through this pain, this feeling that I will remain forever lonely and unloved. Facing my deeply rooted conviction that I will end up as one of those spinsters who collects pottery figurines.

I have come to the conclusion that maybe, just maybe, that might not be the worst thing in the world. I could be married to someone who bored me. I could be living with an eternal teenager in Bangkok. I could be with a man who shared my appreciation for Daniel Craig a bit too much. I could be the other woman, the mistress, the home-wrecker. Maybe, I have told myself, I should see all of these failures as lucky escapes.

So now, with this new mindset, I am here – feeling the dappled sunlight on my skin as it filters through the heavy branches of Lovers’ Leaf.

I get my phone out of my bag, and I determinedly go through it, deleting all the apps – saying goodbye to Bumble, to Match, to Hinge, to Tinder. One by one, I remove them from my phone – and from my life.

I have my nail file with me, and before I use it, I utter a quick apology to the tree. I look at all of the previous evidence of my failed relationships – or my lucky escapes – and I tell myself that this will be the last time. That this will be the final carving I make on this historic trunk.

I carve the initials, circle them in a love heart, sit back on the grass and smile. Yes. It’s absolutely perfect, and moving forward it needs to be absolutely true:

SB hearts SB.

Debbie Johnson’s latest novel, yours (orion, £7.99), is out now