It was only the second time since I had got my first pair of glasses some twelve or thirteen years earlier that I put them on before getting up. I well remembered the first time. I had been getting a number of headaches, so my mother took me off to the doctor’s. Instead of prescribing me any special medicine, he had given me a referral note to the optician’s. I think it surprised all of us when I was told that I needed glasses. Neither of my parents wore them, and nor did either of my older siblings, Michael and Jenny. I had been told that I needed them for reading, but if I wanted to wear them more often, it would not do me any harm. I had got out of bed, got dressed and then looked at my new image in the mirror. It may just have been that I was not used to seeing myself in glasses, but to me, they looked a bit odd. There was nothing special about the frames – brown plastic NHS glasses were extremely common in 1983. Perhaps that was just it. They were so common that I could name a dozen people in my classes at school who either wore them or their black counterparts. And overnight, I had become one of them. If I’m honest, the frames looked quite good on me, and I liked the way they made my eyes look a little larger, but when it came to putting on some eye-liner and mascara, I had to take them off. When I put them back on again, I realised that they magnified the make-up as well as my eyes. I didn’t really want to get in trouble for it, so the glasses went back into their case, and into my school bag. I seldom wore my glasses in school. Once or twice, when I felt a headache coming on, I put them on in lessons, and I also used them when we were all sitting in a hall doing exams. More often than not, they stayed in my bag all day. I did wear them almost every evening while I did my homework. Michael, Jenny and I were made to sit in the kitchen and do our school work every evening, so it was easier to wear them than face an argument about them. And if ever I complained about a headache, I was made to put my glasses on, and was only allowed any aspirin or paracetamol if I still had it an hour later. A year after getting my first pair of glasses, I got my second pair. They were slightly stronger than the first pair, and again, I was told that I could wear them more often than just for doing homework. As I hadn’t realised that there was anything wrong with the first pair, I didn’t see any real need to change my wearing habits. I left the old pair in my school bag, so that I knew where they were, and wore the newer ones for doing my homework. My eyes seemed to settle down after that, and I had that second pair all through the rest of my time at school. I had got a new pair when I started college. They weren’t NHS glasses by this point, as they had stopped making them a few years earlier, but I had stuck with a similar style. The brown tortoise-shell went well with my brown eyes and dark brown hair, so there seemed little reason to change. A year after starting secretarial work in the city of London, I moved out of my parents’ house and into a flat above a row of shops in Shoeburyness. It wasn’t the most glamourous of locations, but I didn’t feel like I was having my every move scrutinised by my parents. If I did get back late, I didn’t have to explain myself to them. If I wanted to have a lie-in, I wasn’t being woken up by my mother wanting to check that I was alright. If I wanted to bring a boy back home, he didn’t get a grilling from my father, either. I have been living in the same flat for four years. Costs of living have risen steadily, but I’ve had a couple of promotions at work, so I have been saving the extra money in the hope of putting down a deposit on my own place in a few years’ time. I’ve had a number of boyfriends. Some of those relationships have lasted longer than others. A few of them have stayed overnight in my flat without comment from my parents – what they don’t know cannot harm them. For the moment, though, I’m still single… I think. Or maybe not. - - - Friday, June 16th 1995 started off like pretty much any other. I had got up, had a shower, got dressed, eaten breakfast, made my lunch and got ready for work in much the same way as I had almost every day for the last four years. I made sure that I had some money in my purse as Friday is always Cake Day, and from time to time we’d also go to the pub for a drink on a Friday lunchtime. When I reached the station, I could see the 7.32 just pulling into the platform. There were still ten minutes until it was due to leave, so I walked right to the front of the train, chose my favourite seat and sat down. I always liked this particular seat as you got a good view of the sea, and you could be first out of the station when the train arrived at Fenchurch Street. Also, it was never quite as busy, as people getting on further up the line tended to head more for the middle, where it was usually standing room only after Chalkwell. I got my magazine out to have a go at some of the puzzles. The journey up to Town was pretty uneventful. The usual two men and one lady got on at Thorpe Bay, no-one at Southend East or Southend Central and then one more at Westcliff. Even as the train left Basildon, there were still two empty seats that I could see in our carriage. As we arrived at Fenchurch Street, the young man from Thorpe Bay let me off the train before him – as he usually did, and I made my way down the stairs and off to the office a couple of hundred yards away. A quick toilet stop on the ground floor, then up two flights of stairs to my desk. I turned the word-processor on, put my glasses on, and started to type up the couple of letters which I knew had been there from last night. I had to have them down to the mailing office by 9.15, but made the deadline with about five minutes to spare. It was just another Friday in the office. Outside, it was warm and sunny, so we opened the windows to try and get some fresh air in. It didn’t really work, but at least it wasn’t stifling hot. The cakes came round as usual at quarter past eleven, but there was no pub visit at lunchtime. I had cleared my desk by ten to five, but had to wait around for another few minutes, just in case someone brought me a letter to type before five o’clock. Fortunately, no-one did, so by 5.02 I was on my way back to Fenchurch Street. The train must have arrived a minute or so early, as I found myself following a crowd of people onto platform 1. I walked purposefully the whole way down the platform to the very front of the train. I wasn’t quick enough, and someone had already occupied my favourite seat, but I got in anyway. When you commute to London every day, you get to know the various trains, and this was one of the really old ones, with the individual compartments and bench seats. There were only a handful of them left on the line. Still, as long as it got me home for the weekend, I was too tired to care much. By the time our train pulled out, all twelve seats were occupied, and I found myself sitting next to the young man from Thorpe Bay. As I stopped to think about it, I realised that I had been seeing him fairly frequently of late – most mornings, and almost every other evening as well. Our train was fast to Basildon. The air in the compartment was very warm, and I soon felt myself nodding off. I was rather embarrassed when I realised that my head had slipped to rest on the shoulder of the man next to me. I woke up when people started to get off the train. When I realised what had happened, I apologised profusely, and moved to sit in my usual seat. However, the ice had been broken, and we started to talk. He introduced himself as John and told me that he was an accountant in the City. I told him that my name was Denise, but that my friends all called me Dee. By the time the train pulled out of Southend Central, there were just the two of us left in the compartment. We had discovered that we had a couple of mutual friends, although in my case, they were more like acquaintances. Talking to John also gave me a good excuse to get a better look at him. I already knew he was about four inches taller than me. He had medium-brown short hair and brown eyes. The more I looked at him, the more I liked what I saw, so when he asked me whether I had plans for the weekend, my heart skipped a beat. “Not yet. I need to do some shopping tomorrow if I want to eat next week, but that’s about all.” “If you haven’t got any food in, how do you fancy dinner tonight? There’s a new restaurant that has just opened up in the Broadway that I’d like to try. We could both nip home and get changed, and I could meet you there in an hour or so, or we could go straight there?” “That sounds great to me. Do you mind if we go straight there – I was going to get fish and chips on my way from the station to my flat as I’m starving?” So we did. The restaurant itself was Italian-themed. I ordered spaghetti Bolognese. It wasn’t because I was feeling unadventurous, but my eyes were too tired to focus on the menu. I didn’t want to appear like an old lady and put my reading glasses on so I could see what the alternatives were. It didn’t feel like the done thing on a first date – even if I was getting a little ahead of myself in thinking of our meal in those terms. John had a massive pizza with all sorts of interesting toppings, and we shared a bottle of wine as well. Like the wine, our conversation continued to flow. I learned all sorts of interesting things about John. He was three years older than me. He had been to boarding school. He enjoyed being out in the open air, and was planning a fortnight’s hiking in the Cairngorms for early September. He had his own house – or at least, he was in the process of buying his late grandparents’ house from their estate. He talked about wanting to put his own stamp on the place, and how he had kept most of their furniture as he couldn’t afford to replace it at this stage. In turn, I told him about my planned holiday to Malta with a couple of girlfriends, and my flat in Shoebury. My limited budget meant that any IKEA-afficionados would easily be able to spot where most of my furniture had come from. All too soon, our meal was over. I had had a wonderful time. John was such an easy person to talk to, and he had a great sense of humour as well. I needed to find a way to prolong the evening. Fortunately, it appeared he was thinking much the same as me. “Would you like me to walk you to the station, or all the way home?” he offered. I didn’t really have the right shoes on for a two-mile walk, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from spending more time with him. “I’m up for the walk,” I said, “but can we go along the seafront? It’s more interesting, and the tide should be in.” “That sounds good to me. If we go this way, I can show you where I live on the way past.” “Lead on!” It really was only a three minute walk to his house. Probably a bit less, but I couldn’t walk as quickly in my work shoes as I could if I had been wearing trainers. As we stood outside his house, he was talking about what we could see from the front. I got the impression that he might have liked to invite me inside, but was hesitating for some reason. I decided to make it a bit easier for him. “Do you mind if I nip in and use your toilet? I know there are some on the seafront, but I don’t know if they’ll be open when we get to them.” “Sure,” he said. “Come on in…” After I had been to the toilet, rather cheekily, I asked him whether he was going to give me a tour of the house. The tour took about a quarter of an hour. It wasn’t a massive property, but he kept on pointing out to me what he liked and wanted to keep, and what he wanted to change. I couldn’t help but spot the double bed in the main bedroom. It was the one thing which he had already changed since his grandparents’ deaths, and the room was decorated in a much more modern way than the rest of the house. When he offered me something to drink, I felt that I ought to choose coffee, but the wine had gone slightly to my head. “What have you got?” I asked. “I’d quite like another glass of wine, if you have any.” “Red or white?” “White, please.” “I think I’ve got a bottle in the garage. It’s not chilled, but it should be drinkable.” “That would be great.” “I’m sorry about the glass, but my grandparents weren’t big wine drinkers,” he explained, as he gave me a squash glass about two-thirds full. “It was either this, a pint glass or a small sherry glass. My nan used to like sherry and my grandad preferred his beer. If you’ll excuse me for a moment, but I’m going to go and take my contacts out. Before I do, though, I must warn you that my glasses are very strong. Back in a minute…” I sat at one end of the sofa, sipping my wine. I had kicked my shoes off to give my feet a bit of a rest. When John came back into the room, I could see that he had not been lying about his glasses. His eyes looked very small behind the two rather thick-looking lenses. “That’s much better,” he said. “I usually take them out when I get home from work because my eyes need a rest by that point.” “They suit you,” I said, to reassure him. “Thank you. I don’t really have any choice about wearing them.” He sat down at the opposite end of the sofa to me and picked up his half-pint glass which he had half-filled with wine. “Does bad eyesight run in your family?” “Sort of. I’m an only child. Both of my parents are a bit short-sighted, but nothing like me.” “How come your eyes are so much worse than theirs?” “I’m pretty sure that that’s my fault.” “How do you mean?” “It’s a long story.” “The night is yet young. Go on. I’m listening.” “Well, like I said earlier, I went to boarding school. Every year, they gave us all a basic medical check-over. Height, weight, blood pressure, and so on. As part of the medical, we had a simple sight test. Anyone who failed this was taken by Matron to have their eyes tested properly and found themselves wearing glasses a couple of weeks later. I only know this as it happened to one of the boys in my dorm in the first year. I passed the sight test easily that year, but in my second year, I misread one of the letters under the green line with each eye, and there were two or three letters above the red line that I couldn’t read at all.” “Did you get sent to get glasses like your friend the year before?” “No. The doctor reviewed the results, and said that it might be a good idea to get my eyes tested over Christmas. There were people who couldn’t read as much as I could and yet didn’t need glasses. The only reason he knew that my sight had changed a bit was because he had the results from the previous year. “Every term, the school sent home a list of the scores we had achieved in the various tests that term. I was usually about tenth in a class of twenty, so nothing to worry about, but four boys were always in the top six every term, and they all had glasses. In fact, they all had those brown NHS specs that everyone wore back then. Somewhere in my mind, the idea that glasses equalled intelligence which meant better grades started to form, and I toyed with the idea of telling my parents what the doctor had said about getting my eyes tested. It was only the thought that I, too, would end up with NHS glasses that put me off. “A couple of weeks later, we were tidying up at the end of the afternoon, when the fire alarm went off. The boys who had already packed their bags left first and made their way outside to the field. In my haste, I knocked my bag off the table, and half of my equipment scattered onto the floor. I had to leave it all there as the alarm was unexpected, and the teacher was keen to ensure that we all got out quickly and safely. It turned out that there had been a bit of a problem in one of the chemistry labs which had caused the alarm to go off. By the time I got back to the classroom, the whole building seemed deserted. I picked up my books and pens, but while I was doing so, I spotted a glasses case under the radiator. Inside, there was a pair of brown NHS glasses. The glasses themselves looked like they might be fairly new, but I put them in my bag as there was no way I could tell who they belonged to. If anyone in my class was missing their glasses on Monday morning, I could give them back. If nobody was, well, I could cross that bridge if and when I came to it.” “If it had been me, I’d have been tempted to try them on.” “I was, and I did. The trouble with being a boarder, though, was that there was only one place you could guarantee any peace and quiet – and that was in the toilet cubicle. That’s exactly where I went when I got back to the boarding house. The glasses seemed rather strong when I tried them on, but as I didn’t dare be seen in them, I couldn’t really test them out to see whether they helped or not. They certainly made everything up close quite blurry, but the limit of my distance vision was the door of the cubicle some three feet away. I still didn’t know what difference they made for things further than three feet. “Every weekend, we had to write a letter home to our parents. Among my other news, I told them about not being able to read every letter on the eye chart, and gave them the impression that the school might be taking me to the optician’s to get my eyes tested properly. “On the Monday morning, I left the glasses in the dormitory. It was partly an accident. I could have gone back to get them when I thought about it, but decided to see whether any of the boys in my class was not wearing glasses. They all were – or at least, the ones I expected to be wearing them were. This meant that they either belonged to someone in my class who had never worn them, or to someone in a completely different class. I could hand them in to Lost Property, or I could keep them. Finders keepers, as they say. “That weekend, I wrote and told my parents that I had been to get my eyes tested, and that I was going to have to wear glasses like they did. I lied and told them that I should get them a couple of days before the holidays, so I would probably be wearing them when they next saw me.” “Wouldn’t that be rather awkward, as you couldn’t suddenly put them on when they came to pick you up? Some of the other boys might have seen you.” “They didn’t pick me up. I had to go back to the boarding house after school to pick up a suitcase with some clothes in it for the Christmas holidays, and then caught the train up to London. I put the glasses on once the train had started moving. It was only then that I realised quite how strong they were. Even distant objects were hard to focus on. I was tempted to take them back off and put them in their case. I could tell my parents that they hadn’t arrived as expected. Either way, though, I was going to have to wear them at some point, so I might as well get any awkward conversations out of the way sooner rather than later. “After the customary hug and kiss from my mother, she held me at arm’s length, and told me how much I had grown in the last couple of months. And also, how my glasses made me look more like a young adult. When she also remarked that they looked like they were quite strong, I found myself saying that I had been told I needed to wear them all the time. With hindsight, that might have been a bit of a mistake. They took a lot of getting used-to, and on those occasions where my Mum spotted me giving my eyes a rest, I was made to go and put the glasses back on. She was of the belief that if my eyes had got that bad when I didn’t have glasses, I needed to keep wearing them, so that they didn’t get any worse. And when my parents were out of the house, I took the chance to try on their old glasses. I was pretty sure that mine were stronger than any of theirs. “I got a few more comments when we returned to school in January, but not many. I was just another boy who had just got his first pair of NHS glasses. However, I did find out who their original owner had been. I was one of two boys in my class who now wore glasses, taking the total to six. One of the others had managed to persuade his parents to let him have a silver metal pair. His parents had been cross that he had lost his glasses in school somewhere. He had promised them that he would wear his new glasses all the time if he did not have to wear an NHS pair, and he was being true to his word. Apparently, he had had glasses for more than three years before but had hardly ever worn them. When he asked me about mine, I told him that I had started wearing them over Christmas after I had nearly failed the sight test in the medical. I said that I didn’t need them all of the time, but I was wearing them so that I didn’t lose them. “That term, my grades started to improve. I was probably working harder than I had done since I started the school, and before I knew it, Easter had come and gone. My parents were pleased with the progress I was making, and that encouraged me to work all the harder. I didn’t make it into the top five by the end of the Summer term, but there were now five boys in the top seven in the class who all wore NHS glasses. “It was mid-August that my mother announced that she had arranged a sight test for me. Suddenly, I felt a sense of panic. I was going to have to walk into a room wearing a pair of glasses which weren’t mine, and was worried that I was going to get caught out. I could see very well with them on, but over the last few months, I had become increasingly aware that I was wearing them to see, rather than just for the look of it. I felt a sense of dread that last time I had had my eyes tested – before I went to boarding school – my vision had been perfect. Now, it clearly wasn’t. “The feeling grew worse when the optician commented that I hadn’t needed glasses when he had last seen me, and he asked where and when I had got my glasses. I explained about the medical at school, and lied about how I had been taken off to get the glasses that I was wearing. I was so nervous that I was struggling to speak. He then took the glasses off me, and asked me how much of the chart I could read. If I had been honest, the answer was none of it, but I had taken the opportunity to memorise the first three letters, so I was able to recite those back to him. He then took my glasses out of the room for a couple of minutes before he came back with them to do the sight test. By the time he had finished, I was able to read every letter on the chart. He took the trial frame off me and then did all of the other tests which involved looking at the backs of my eyes. I waited wait nervously for a couple of minutes for the verdict, while he updated my notes. Finally, he gave my glasses back to me, and held a couple of lenses in front of them to show me how well I would be able to see with my new pair. I remember asking him whether my eyes had improved. He had smiled at that, and explained that no, they hadn’t. My first pair of glasses had been very strong for a first pair, but my new prescription was only a little stronger. Nothing to worry about, but I needed to come back again in six months. “I was quite relieved when I got the new glasses, as I knew they were mine, and I no longer had any awkward explaining to do. I hadn’t realised that I had gone from a pair which was much too strong to them being too weak in the space of eight or nine months, but that is what had happened, so, like I said, it is partly my fault.” “But the glasses you’re wearing now aren’t the NHS ones? You must have had a few more pairs since then?” I was enjoying listening to John’s story, and didn’t want him to stop. I was able to get a good, close look at him while he talked, and I liked what I saw. John took another sip of his wine, before he continued. “Like I said, I had to go back for a six-monthly check-up. Every time I went, I came out with new glasses, and always a bit stronger than before. I wasn’t as nervous the next time, as I knew that the glasses I was wearing were the same ones I had been prescribed on my previous visit. I was also concentrating harder on what was happening during the test. When I could read the whole chart, he held another lens in front of the trial frame and asked me whether it made things any clearer or just smaller and blacker. The truthful answer was probably the latter, but I wanted to see what happened if I said things were clearer. He took the two lenses out of the trial frame and replaced them with one new one. I didn’t want to overdo it, so when he held the next lens there and asked whether it was better or worse with it, I said it was worse. The next lens, he again asked whether my vision was better or just smaller and blacker. When I said it was better, he put the lens into the trial frame as well. After that, I decided I had better not get carried away, so when he tried new lenses, I made a point of saying it was better without them all. I did the same sort of thing when he did my left eye as well. “He made a point of saying that my new prescription was quite a lot stronger than the old one, and when I got that next pair of glasses, I knew it the moment I put them on. My vision was extra sharp, which I liked, although the lenses were noticeably thicker and heavier than my previous pair. I only stopped having six-monthly checks when I turned 21, but right up until last year, I’ve always needed new glasses every time I went.” By the time he had finished his tale, I realised that I was down to the bottom of my glass. I think it was starting to go to my head. I know that I should have declined when he fetched the bottle from the kitchen and refilled it, but I was far too comfortable sitting on the sofa with my legs curled up underneath me, listening to John’s story. “How strong are they? How much can you see without them?” I asked him. Rather than trying to explain, he took them off and handed them to me. “Try them. Without them, I can probably see as well as you can with them.” I put them on. Everything became one massive blur. I had tried on other people’s glasses before, mostly when I was at school, but I had never worn a pair of glasses as strong as John’s. It didn’t help that I was slightly longsighted while he was very shortsighted, and I told him so. “You wear glasses, too?” He sounded surprised. “I’ve never seen you in them. What are they like?” If I had not been drinking, I would have given John’s glasses back to him while I went to the hall to get mine out of my bag. As it was, I kept them on and made my way to where I remembered leaving the bag. “Here they are,” I said as I sat myself a little closer to John than I had been earlier. He put the glasses on. “This is weird,” was his comment. “They don’t seem to make much difference, but then, my vision is awful anyway.” “I use them to help me see things close up,” I explained. “They make everything look a bit bigger and clearer when I have them on.” “I have to hold things really close to me if I want to see them without my glasses.” “How close is that?” He took my glasses off and started to move towards me. “I’ll tell you when I can see your face clearly.” He was less than ten centimetres away when he announced that I was now in focus. “What about when you have my glasses on?” I asked him. The act of moving closer towards me again caused him to lose his balance. He put a hand out to try to stop himself from falling into me, but ended up with his hand on my left breast. “That’s very close,” I remarked, holding his hand right where it had landed. “I’m sor…” he began. He failed to finish his sentence as I pressed my lips against his. After a slight movement of surprise, he responded in kind. A couple of minutes later, I stopped to take his glasses off as they were doing nothing for me, and we resumed where we had left off. I don’t know quite how long our moment of passion lasted. I was still sober enough to realise that we needed to restrain ourselves before we went too far. It was my turn to apologise now. Whether it was the amount I had drunk, or the position in which we found ourselves, I don’ know, but I needed the toilet. “Is that coffee still on offer?” I asked, as I got up. “Yes, but only if I can have my glasses back. I need to be able to see what I’m doing.” We swapped glasses, and I put my own back on. I took a few extra moments in the bathroom to compose my thoughts before returning to the kitchen. “You look really good in your glasses, Dee. You should wear them more often. They really suit you.” I thanked John for the compliment. I knew he was right. Usually, I only wore them at work, but the last few months had seen me putting them back on after I had reached my flat, and whilst I might not need them for catching a train, they did help me to see everything a little more clearly. Rather than walk all the way home, I asked John to walk me back to the station. He kindly waited with me for the train to arrive, and then kissed me goodnight. By that time, we’d already made plans to meet again at the station the following afternoon. When I got home, I was very tired and very happy, which is probably why I had overslept the following morning. - - - I was probably an hour later than usual by the time I set out to do the shopping. There were a number of essentials that I knew I needed, and I had to work out what I was going to eat for the week. I wanted something I could cook fairly easily if John came round (memo to self: when John came round, if I had any say in the matter), but also enough food so that I wouldn’t have to go out again if things didn’t work out. I had added a couple of extra items to the list: one was to book a sight test; the other was in case I decided to spend the night with him. When I got into town, the first thing I did was to go and book the sight test. They didn’t have any Saturday appointments for another three weeks, unless I could make 3.45 that day. I weighed the options up in my mind, and took the afternoon slot. John would have to help me choose a new frame. After that, I went and bought the food and other items that I needed. I phoned John from home to tell him what I had done. He didn’t seem to mind, as we hadn’t got any particular plans. He did suggest that I pack my swimming costume and a towel, as we could then walk back along the seafront, and have a swim if the mood took us. The weather was set fair, so I went along with the plan. A “slight change” in my left eye was the verdict. I hadn’t bought new glasses three years earlier when both eyes had had a “slight change,” so I was happy to order a pair now. I had to make a fairly quick choice of frame if I wanted to take advantage of their one-hour service at the end of a Saturday afternoon, but having John with me to give an immediate yes or no also helped. Rather than waiting around while they fitted my new +2.25 lenses into the brown plastic frames that I had selected, we went off for a quick bite to eat and a drink at the Golden Arches just along the road. I was amazed how much clearer everything looked when I put them on for the first time, especially with things near my face. I took them off for our swim later on, but they remained firmly in place for the rest of the evening’s activities, both outside John’s bedroom and in. I decided against actually spending the night there. I would happily have done so, but I didn’t really want to spend two whole days in the same set of clothes. “Do you know something?” John said to me, as we waited for my train. “What?” “Your new pair of glasses looks just like those NHS specs we were both complaining about yesterday.” “You’re right, but not everyone wears them these days, which makes them acceptable. Maybe whoever designed the first pair really did know what they were doing?” “They really suit you.” “Thank you.” When I got home about ten minutes later, I took a good, long look at myself in the mirror. Between us, John and I had chosen well. He had been right about choosing the brown pair over the black one, and right to order in some pizzas for dinner, so that we didn’t have to stop what we were doing together. Hopefully, now that I could see clearly, I had found my Mr. Right.