Slouching Towards Bethnal Green

Slouching Towards Bethnal Green

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Slouching Towards Bethnal Green
Slouching Towards Bethnal Green
Was it fate that I met my husband?

Was it fate that I met my husband?

Ahead of Valentine's Day, some thoughts on how we tell love stories

Gillian Orr's avatar
Gillian Orr
Feb 09, 2024
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Slouching Towards Bethnal Green
Slouching Towards Bethnal Green
Was it fate that I met my husband?
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Tom and me in New York six weeks after meeting

I was enjoying a few days in Deià, Mallorca when my own ‘sliding doors’ moment happened. It was August 2019, and I was staying in a small hotel, while some friends had booked out a rather extravagant villa down the road. We had pals dotted all over the village, which sits among the Tramuntana mountains, and everyone was coming and going at all times. One of the rooms in the villa was becoming free as someone had to get back home for work and they invited me to stay on in the newly available room for the duration of their time there. It would just mean rebooking my plane ticket back to London for a few days later and calling work to request some extra days off.

I remember the decision about whether to stay or go weighing heavily on me, too heavily for what seemed like a pretty commonplace decision. “If I stay,” I thought to myself, “either something really, really good is going to happen, or something really, really bad is going to happen”. 

I chose to stay. And something really, really good happened. 

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