Upfront

IT’S NOT AS though my friend thought he was The One, but at least The Spark was there. As long as I’ve known let’s-call-her-Cathy, she has been going on about The Spark. Cathy says anybody who starts a relationship in the absence of The Spark is only fooling themselves.

She might be 30-something, but she is not one for settling. “I’d rather grow old in a bedsit full of Siamese cats,” she says.

There has been a series of unfortunate incidents regarding men. Ones who never call. Ones who send drunken texts at 3am looking for company. Ones who have too much undeclared baggage.

Then she meets let’s-call-him-Matt, and never mind The Spark this is The Glow, The Simmer and The Smoulder all rolled into one. “Wait until you meet him,” she says. When I meet him, I know what she means. He ticks all of her boxes – as well as a few she doesn’t know she has. Good-looking, intelligent and fun: tick, tick, tick. He can even play the guitar and sing. Mostly Def Leppard, but still. Talented boy. Tick.

When I meet him I know he isn’t The One. Scratch the surface and his good looks and confident demeanour are only barely masking a crippling insecurity. There is too much eye contact, too much conversation and he makes too much effort to charm every single person in the room.

He can’t relax. Can’t stop talking. We try to have a sing-song, but when one of the group turns out to be a better singer than him he refuses to perform and goes into a school boy sulk, which Cathy, under the myopic influence of The Spark, considers “endearing”.

I say nothing. Well you don’t. Imagine it: “Er, Cathy, I know you have finally found someone you actually fancy, someone who returns your calls and takes you away for weekends and out for dinner – which he sometimes pays for – but it’s all going to end in tears, not sure whose as yet, just thought I’d mention it.”

What do you think, she asks. What do you think, more importantly, I answer. This buys me time and allows her to talk at length about The Spark and his eyes and the way he sings to her late at night, even if they are dodgy soft metal songs and even if he isn’t so much singing to her as to himself. And I go, “yes, that sounds great”, and then I wait for the phonecall, which comes a couple of months later.

She says when they go out he is always disappearing. Sometimes she finds him outside in the smoking area, even though he doesn’t smoke, just talking to random groups of strangers.

It’s as though she is never enough for him. He needs attention from everybody. Sometimes she thinks he won’t be satisfied until he has tried to make friends with the whole world. And sometimes he gets into terrible rows with his new friends. Or he goes off with them to parties, leaving her behind. One night, left to make her way home alone, she gives him the push. She says she doesn’t care how brightly The Spark burns. It is over. She is moving on.

The thing Cathy wants to know is: “What’s wrong with me?” She says it a few times; she says it after every eejit fella tells her he thinks her eyes are the most amazing things he has ever seen and then disappears into the ether, or blanks her in a nightclub. I tell her the truth – that there is nothing wrong with her. She is beautiful, smart, caring and fun. She is what I would call a catch. Maybe it’s the search for what I’ve taken to calling The Infernal Spark that is holding her back.

Those of us in long-term relationships know, although we don’t really like to admit, that The Infernal Spark doesn’t always last and often mutates into a Warm and Cosy Ember, which sounds a bit depressing and sexless but doesn’t have to be, not necessarily. Maybe The Warm and Cosy Ember can turn into The Spark. Cathy doesn’t buy it – and to be honest I’m not sure I do either.

There is some hope. Recently she encountered a nice policeman who helped her out at a time of need and she couldn’t help noticing The Spark between them. Cathy is conflicted. He could be The One, but she doesn’t have the nerve to call up to the station to find out if he feels the same. It’s a long shot, she says – but could I write about it here so that he might read about it and discover that the smart, caring, fun blonde with amazing eyes he helped out recently has a little crush on him?

And I’m happy to oblige, if not (sorry Cathy) hugely hopeful that we’ll get our man.

THIS WEEKEND Róisín will be checking out the new children’s market at Newmarket Square in Dublin 8, and the Mind Body Spirit Festival in the RDS