as though time stood still for a moment, as though the last decade hadn’t happened and we were standing by the River Cam, the centre of each other’s worlds again. As he kissed me, I wrapped my arms around his neck and pulled him close, kissing him back. It felt as though nothing had changed. I was kissing Rupert Tremayne and it was glorious.
… The summer after our GCSEs everything changed. When you came home that July you were taller again, nearly 6’3”, broader in the shoulders. You’d started shaving. You felt more man than boy. You felt as though you’d outgrown me, as though you’d left me behind. I didn’t understand why this new version of you suddenly made me feel so strange. It was as though I was scared of who you were becoming.
The Saturday evening after you got back from school, I found you waiting for me when I came home. You were sitting on the steps of my house reading a battered paperback, which you stuck in your pocket when I appeared.
We walked over the bridge towards the Common, towards the Fort St George, the pub we knew we’d get served in as long as we sat in the garden. You held my hand and asked me how I was. From the outside I don’t suppose we looked any different from the two kids who used to play football here before GCSEs and boarding schools. But from the inside everything felt so different. Your hand almost burned in mine and your eyes flicked towards me constantly, as though you were checking I was still there. You had always been so sure of yourself, but you weren’t that night.
I thought I’d worked out what was going on before you turned me away from the pub. A group of people we’d known our whole lives were sitting outside but as soon as you saw them you changed direction.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ you said. It wasn’t like you to put a walk before a pint.
We walked along the river by the side of the houseboats. We sat on the bench we used to sit on with my dad sometimes, the bench he always sat on when he let us swim in the river. You didn’t let go of my hand. Sometimes it felt as though you’d been holding my hand since my grandmother’s funeral. I never wanted to let you go but I was so sure that what you were going to say would mean that I would have to let go forever.
‘Everything feels different, doesn’t it?’ you asked. You didn’t look at me; you looked out across the river. ‘I think we’re growing up.’
‘I knew this would happen,’ I replied quietly. I wanted to take my hand away, but you were holding on too tightly.
You turned to look at me, your eyes meeting mine.
‘You knew what would happen?’ you asked. You looked panic-stricken. Part of me was glad that you were hurting too.
‘I knew you’d meet someone first. I knew you’d get a girlfriend.’ I looked away again, feeling childish. ‘You’re so good-looking and clever.’ I could hear the whine in my voice. I hated it. You still didn’t let go of my hand and when I looked at you again you were smiling. How could you smile when you knew my heart must be breaking?
‘Who is she?’ I demanded. ‘Do I know her?’ Please don’t let it be one of the girls from school. Please don’t let it be Camilla.
You touched my chin then, turning my head gently towards you. You’d stopped smiling.
‘She’s you,’ you said so quietly I could hardly hear you. ‘She’s you, I hope.’
It took me too long to realise what you meant. We sat there, on that bench, by that familiar stretch of river where we’d swum as children, by the stretch of Common where my dad taught us to fly a kite. I didn’t say anything. I knew it was my turn to speak but I felt as if the memories were falling in on me, weighing me down. I wanted to be a kid again. I wasn’t sure that I liked growing up after all.
‘I love you, Jessie,’ you said. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you. You’re my best friend, you always have been, but now we’re older it just feels different.’
‘You want me to be your girlfriend?’ I asked. It sounded such a childishly simple explanation for the complex emotions I was feeling at that moment. It felt like the time you asked me to marry you in the playground.
‘Yes,’ you said. ‘I want you to be my girlfriend. I’ve wanted nothing else for months. I was just waiting.’
‘Waiting for what?’
‘Until we were both sixteen,’ you said, blushing slightly. I suddenly realised how serious you were.
I felt as though I was at a crossroads. I didn’t feel ready to be anybody’s girlfriend yet. I was scared that this would change everything forever, and we would never get back what we used to have. But I also knew that we’d already outgrown what we used to have and that if I said ‘no’ now it would hurt you so much you’d walk away, and I’d never see you again. Looking back on that moment I never really felt as though I had a choice. That moment had been fated since we were born.
‘Jessie?’ you said, your face a question, and I nodded. I wanted to say yes, that it had always been yes, but all I could do was nod.
And then you kissed me. It was clumsy and awkward; there was too much tongue and you tasted of toothpaste and cigarettes, and something else that was almost animal. But it felt like the best thing that had ever happened. A wave of warmth washed over my body as you pulled away from me, smiling.
‘I think we need more practice,’ you said. You looked so happy and relaxed suddenly and I realised that I couldn’t remember the last time I saw you relax. I thought it was the pressure your parents put you under to achieve so highly, but suddenly I wondered if it was something else causing you so much distress. How long had you been holding all of this in? How long had you been waiting for me?
I don’t know how long we stayed there on that bench that evening practising kissing, finding the ways that we worked together. It didn’t take long to get the hang of it – we always knew how well we fitted, like jigsaw pieces clicking into place. We both lost track of time, and the next thing we knew was the thump of a pair of hands landing on our shoulders, the sound of your mates whistling at us.
‘So this is where you are,’ John said, grinning at us. ‘We’ve been waiting for you in the pub for ages.’ Nobody said anything about the kiss then. I knew though, that they’d wait until later, until I wasn’t there, to rib you about it. Everyone started to walk away from us except John.
‘Are you coming to this party then?’ he asked. I didn’t know anything about a party. I was always the last to find out anything. I suspected, since you hadn’t mentioned it, that you had no intention of going anyway. You hated parties.
You’d known John almost as long as you’d known me, and I saw a look pass between you, one of understanding, the conclusion to a conversation that I wasn’t party to. I had the feeling that you and he had already spoken about this, that finding us kissing hadn’t come as much of a surprise to him.
‘Maybe we’ll catch you up,’ you said. John, not usually so easily dissuaded, nodded and walked away, everybody else following.
