Have you ever wanted to kill someone?

I expect you have. Someone that has done you some serious wrong. Maybe you were bullied at school, maybe someone stole your girlfriend or boyfriend, maybe somebody cheated you out of a lot of money. Maybe anything.

But you never did it. It remained merely a malicious thought.

Well, one difference though between you and me is that I went that one step further, I crossed the line and did it. Where is the dividing line drawn in the sand?

I didn't plan it. It wasn't murder in the normal sense of the word, it was just that an opportunity arose and I took it.

Oh it was a long time ago now. A very long time. I was only a kid, fifteen years old. Funnily enough, many decades later I still think about it often. In fact the whole incident appears clearer to me now in my mind, then it did then, shortly after.

This is what happened.

I was still in school and was one of the class wimps who used to get picked on, and regularly had the shit kicked out of me. In those days teachers didn't care about bullying and turned a blind eye to it. A kid getting the rough end of this never told the teachers anyway, that was the code, but one reason is that they would never do anything about in any event. Bastards.

In these times schools take it more seriously I understand, but back then you were on your own. You just had to survive the best you could.

There was one boy in the class who made it his life's work to make my time in the school complete hell. Much tougher than me of course, I was totally afraid of him, there was no way I could fight him and of course I wasn't the fighting type anyway, that's why I was the class wimp, even though the word wimp was not in use then.

Now I could swim, not tremendously well or competitively, but I could swim. Interestingly this other kid could not. I knew this because in the summer term we would go to the local open air swimming pool once a week as part of the PE lessons. The school arranged a coach to travel the couple of miles or so, taking all the kids in my year. Freezing cold of course, Britain is hardly the country for open air swimming pools, I am not sure they exist any more, but they did then.

At the pool they would then separate us into those who could swim and those who could not, and one teacher would try and assist the non swimmers to learn. The rest of us, those who could swim, would have quite a good time. And of course from the first time we went it was obvious that my enemy was lumped in firmly with the non swimmers. In fact he was quite afraid of the water.

Don't think that this helped me at all. In fact it worsened my situation because upon noticing that I could swim and he could not, he merely stepped up his campaign against me, jealous of course of my superiority over him in that regard.

A school trip was arranged at half term in that summer. Near the end of May I recall. Not compulsory, only for those interested, but I decided to go along, as did my enemy. About thirty of us went, for a few days walking the hills and mountains in Wales, staying at youth hostels. I remember getting myself a rucksack and some walking boots. The geography teacher was in charge and he advised me to wear them for a time before the trip so as to break them in.

Anyway off we go on the train, my enemy not relenting with his taunts as usual. We get to the first hostel that evening and naturally he starts on me, taking my rucksack and going through it, throwing my gear all over the dormitory, totally according to form.

The next day we set off for the first serious walk. We come to a stone bridge over a river and my enemy starts messing about, walking on the wall of the bridge, calling out, dancing and showing off to the rest of us. One of the teachers shouts at him to get down but he doesn't, starts running along the wall. Then he slips, he falls in.

At this point I am still on the road just before the bridge, near to the bank, I watch him running up and down the bridge wall, and I think "go on you bastard, fall in."

And he does. Slips on the low bridge wall and in he goes.

But the river is not shallow, it is deep, he is out of his depth and he can't swim. Immediately I see him screaming, choking, in blind panic as he bobs up and down in the water flailing his arms hopelessly, rucksack still on his back, dragging him under. Most of the other kids are still on the bridge looking on in horror. The teachers are running to help him, but I am nearest.

I drop my rucksack, quickly yank off my boots and I jump in to help him. I do this without thinking. If I had thought about it I would probably never have done it. I hated him.

It is extremely hard to life-save someone from drowning if you have no experience and in addition the person is not co-operating because of their panic. But it so happens that we had been doing a life saving course as part of our swimming sessions at school and I had enjoyed that.

He is about twenty or thirty yards from me as I strike out and I cover the distance in a few seconds. He is still panicking but losing fast as he keeps going under. I come from behind him and unbuckle his rucksack, keeping myself afloat whilst trying to help him. "You've gotta stop struggling" I shout at him as the rucksack sinks away from us to the bottom. He seems to react, either because he acknowledges what I have said or maybe more likely because he is losing consciousness from being half drowned by now.

I put one arm around his neck from behind and start to swim with my free arm and legs, life-saver style. Deadly calm now, unacceptable thoughts race through my mind. What if?

His head is tilted back to me from my grip round his neck. My face upside down to his, I look into his half conscious but still open eyes. I see him silently begging me not to let him go. I don't speak but telepath thoughts to him, "do you remember what you have done to me?"

I make up my mind, it must have all been in a fraction of a second, but it seems now like I deliberated with myself for some time.

I let him go and he slips under. He is struggling no more. I pretend to try and bring him up again, but to those watching from the bank, I appear to fail.

By now a teacher and a couple of other kids are swimming towards us to help and they reach us very quickly. I pretend to be exhausted as they dive, grab his body and bring it to the surface. They pull him to the shore, start the artificial respiration. Too late, he is dead.

Later, back at school I am treated like a hero for trying to save him. I get my picture in the paper: "Schoolboy Hero Tries To Save Drowning Friend!" Even his parents, who probably never knew what he had done to me, thanked me for my efforts.

What a joke. Friend! I hated him more than I have ever hated anyone in my whole life. And I am not the hating type, although there are the occasional people with whom I may not get on, I don't hate, never before or since I have felt that way about anybody else.

I killed him, or I let him die anyway, under the circumstances much the same thing. I could have saved him, no doubt about that.

Do I regret it or feel remorse? No. Even after all these years I am glad about it.

I have though sometimes wondered whether, if I had saved him, he would have changed his attitude to me, stopped the bullying. It is possible, perhaps even probable, that he might have done so. I'll never know of course, and I wasn't going to give him the chance so that I might find out.