I was talking to a friend earlier about her valentine experiences and  remembered an incident from about thirty years ago…

It was a cold, clear Valentines day morning. I’d got up to go to work, and as I stepped outside I found a red rose on my doorstep. It wasn’t wrapped in cellophane or paper. It was a long stemmed rose. Deep scarlet. Beautiful, slightly starting to wilt. I looked up and down the street, no one around. We were in a terraced house, so the door opened down a step straight onto the pavement. Anyone could have left it there.

I went inside and asked my then boyfriend, later to be hubby, if he had put it on the step. But he said no. I quizzed him, but no it was not him. To be honest it wasn’t his style, he rarely knows when it’s valentines day and usually only gets me a card if I get him one. He was as surprised as I was but said I should take it as a compliment!

So I had this beautiful rose. I cut the stem at an angle and it in a pint glass while I went out to do my shift at work.

But I couldn’t concentrate. All morning I thought about who could have left it? It might have been a neighbour. It might have been a friend, but I had no idea that anyone had romantic thoughts about me. My inner Miss Marple told me that it couldn’t have been there long and that it must have been bought from the nearby florists as no roses were in flower at that time of year. There are roses growing on the factory opposite our house, but they were bare stems.

Who? That was my thought. Whoever it was must have known I was in a long term relationship? Why? Did they think I was looking for someone new? The answer to that was no….

Eventually I decided that the rose must have been for someone else. Perhaps the anonymous person had mistaken my doorstep for someone else’s?

I will never know. It never happened again. The next year I felt disappointed. Since then I have rarely remembered it. Only today’s chat reawakened the memory for me.

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