It’s 1995. We are laying in a heap across a small airing cupboard and an elegant entrance hall. All we can do is pant and laugh and curse.
She is my best friend, someone who calls and then we talk hanging upside down from the bed, forever.
We are bang in the middle of the road from childhood to adulthood and can’t breathe! Because school sports day has just ended.
Their home is airy and bright. It seems even larger from floor level. It is also decidedly tidier than ours, which can also be distinguished upside down; and it’s all white inside! The only thing that doesn’t fit the sophisticated image is now us: a sweaty and foul-mouthed heap of two teenage girls on the doormat. I love her and I wipe my eyes.
It’s 1997. She is brave and she is confident, and so she is leaving for a whole school year. Now we are seventeen and things are moving so fast; I write her very long letters, dozens of pages I think, but she isn’t here. Others are, and we get ciders and sit on the hill in the afternoon while boats are swaying gently down in the harbour. I try, but cannot imagine her life over there.
It’s 2001. Everyone has left except for her, she missed a year. I have crashed into early adulthood like a drunk cyclist into a wall (just a metaphor for my part): it hurts everywhere!
My work friends party on Mondays. I have darker heartaches and well-deserved hangovers and suddenly I am feeling old, of all things! So I head out again.
It’s 2019. I sit at a restaurant by the bay, stunned. I listen and I do see her, so familiar, and behind her the water is shifting gently and calmly as ever.
This girl turned expatriate remembers whom I remember, days I remember – remembers me like even I don’t.
Darnest life! We walk our bikes slowly homewards in the dark and it’s summer and the town sounds just the same.
We say see you soon and I hug her tight.
Something to Write Home About 
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