It started, as all good stories do, in a dive bar on a bank holiday Sunday.
Lucie was out in London Bridge celebrating her friend Cynthia’s birthday. Simon was out with his friends on an increasingly desperate hunt for a bar showing the NBA Finals. Neither plan involved the other — until Simon’s friend Neill spotted a girl across the room and swore he knew her. Simon suggested he’d probably had too much to drink. Neill was undeterred, walked over, and asked: “Lucie… from Bermuda?”
It was, indeed, Lucie from Bermuda — and that was also Neill from Bermuda. Some things are just meant to be.
A few months later, Lucie and her friends Shani and George joined Simon and Neill for drinks. Lucie and Simon discovered they both lived in south-east London, shared the journey home, and simply… kept going from there. Drinks, dinners, and everything in between.
They went to New York as friends.
They came back as considerably more.
Both had been meaning to visit friends there, so they coordinated the trip together. Whatever happened between the flights out and back, it worked: since then it’s been one long run of adventures. Lucie joined Simon for a month of his sabbatical through Malaysia and Australia; there have been trips across Europe, out to the Middle East, Africa and Asia — and, of course, back to New York. More than once.
Which brings us back to New York —
Lucie’s birthday, three years on.
In true Lucie-and-Simon fashion, the day began with a pub crawl around Brooklyn, ending — not by accident — at the very bar where Simon had first asked Lucie out. Then a sauna, a hot tub, and getting dressed up for dinner.
As the sun set over Manhattan, Simon asked Lucie to step onto the balcony and turn around so he could take some photos of her against the view. When she turned back, he was on one knee.
It was past midnight back in the UK, so there was no one to call. Instead they did the only sensible thing: dinner at Kelang, a brand-new Malaysian restaurant in Brooklyn — champagne, a few beers, and a very good beef rendang.
The next morning, over bagels, they rang and messaged everyone they loved. Three years after arriving in New York as friends, they left it engaged.
Next stop: Honley, 26 June 2027.