For those of you following these sagas...

I thought my dad had been made redundant when he came home from work early and sobbing on the twenty-fourth of April 1992. 

It was the final Friday of that eventful Easter break, ten days since ‘the Karl incident.’  I was in my room, contemplating my by now healthy collection of dresses, which were strewn neurotically across my bed.  It had only just gone two, and I wasn’t going out until seven, but was already in a quietly clueless state of panic over what to wear.  Any minute now, I might just have to try the old ‘eeny meeny miney mo’ approach.

I was preparing for an evening out with Ben.

He made no contact for over a week after that pivotal Tuesday, which had become the most surreal day of my life.  I remember drooping about the kitchen for hours, numbly reheating sloshy spaghetti for the family’s tea (the old ‘waste not want not’ maxim still applied, even in times of distress), and reeling from his cruel parting shot.

I was a bitch and I was dumped.

I was a bitch, I was dumped.

My parents were a tad curious about why I wasn’t seeing Ben over the bank holiday weekend, but I fobbed them off with grand talk about how we were ‘cooling things a little while I revised for my lower sixth exams,’ which was inevitably pleasing to their ears.  I would not, though, grant them the satisfaction of knowing they had ‘got their wish,’ for my life to be Ben-free.  I was a proud mare at times.

Had Ben meant more to me, I might well have forsaken pride in favour of a good old blub in Mom’s arms.  As it was, the abrupt collapse of my first romance left me astoundingly un-heartbroken.  In fact, beneath the layers of loneliness, melancholy and ‘how dare he speak to me like that’ outrage, was a serene sense of release.

The knowledge that Karl liked me thrilled me more than it ought to have thrilled a girl who had a glamorous older lover.  But the prospect of an old pal like him never speaking to me again after the abuse said glamorous older lover had hurled at him was more dreadful than the actual loss of Ben.  This spoke volumes about my feelings – or the lack of them – for Ben.

Going out with him, I could admit now, was about as fun and breezy as a spell in Winson Green.  With him, I went through tears and traumas more synonymous with middle-aged matrimony than teenage amour. 

Was I truly free of all that now?

Was I allowed to speak of school – not ‘college’ – again without fear of censure? 

Allowed to drink Babycham if I wanted to? 

Allowed to be seventeen?

I felt like a Winson Green lifer who had been promised parole…but hadn’t got it yet.  For I sensed – despite the finality of his malevolent words – that I had not heard quite the last of Ben.  He was smitten with me (or his image of me at least), overbearingly attentive, and the type who would suddenly wake up lonely one morning and decide he wanted me back.  I sensed that taking no for an answer would be at odds with his need to be in charge; that Ben’s relationships tended to endure for as long as he desired them to.

Had I been equally smitten, I’d have called him immediately on that Tuesday – or chased, soap opera fashion, after his fleeing car – to explain Karl was just a mate, a classmate; that I would sooner die than be anything other than faithful and committed to my lovely Ben. 

It was Easter Monday before my conscience half-heartedly suggested I ought perhaps to phone Ben.  His answer machine kicked in straight away but I left no message: wary of what wrath the sound of my recorded voice might provoke.  I was, it must be admitted, more than a tad scared of him.  His reactions could be unpredictable.

I yearned to call Karl – a far worthier candidate for my apologies – but what could I conceivably say to him?  ‘I’m  sorry you got rejected by me then screeched at by my ultra-possessive boyfriend the other day.  He’s now dumped me, by the way, so I’m available if you still want to go out with me and fancy totally pulverising your pride.’

The thought of Karl slamming the phone down on me was more awful than any backlash from Ben.

Then in Wednesday’s post had come a goofy chocolate rabbit and a belated Easter card inscribed with a mawkishly apologetic message and the disconcerting postscript ‘Speak to you soon.’  True to his word,  Ben followed it up with a phone call that same evening.

‘I’ve been missing you so bad, babe,’ he gushed, ‘I just needed some time away from you, to think.  I got so mad when that – boy – phoned you up.’

‘Nothing’s ever happened between Karl and me,’ I protested grumpily.  More’s the pity, I wished I’d added.

‘But I don’t know that, do I?’ he persisted, in his little-boy whine.  ‘For all I knew when I walked into your house last week, you could have been conducting a sleazy little affair with him for months.  I’d have been devastated if that has been the case, Zoe.  Devastated.  It’s what I’ve always said – my jealousy proves I love you.  And when you love someone, you fight for them with all you’ve got.  I’d like to meet up with you again, give you the opportunity to explain yourself.  Are you doing anything Friday?’

My lips flared into a silent snort.  Typical Ben – no suggestion of him apologising for jumping to conclusions, insulting me, slandering a good friend of mine or, whilst we’re at it, condemning my cookery as ‘demeaning.’  No, everything had to be my fault.

‘I’m not sure yet,’ I lied, in the most offhand, ‘I’m weighing up lots of offers’ tone I could manage.  The effect was utterly wasted on him, though, since he wasn’t listening.

‘We could go to the Penn Cottage if you like, just outside Wolverhampton.  They do nice bar meals there.’

‘Yeah, whatever.’

‘Come on, my little Zo, you owe me this at least.’

Did I?  Had I been indiscreet?  Was it in fact natural Ben had not so much jumped to as vaulted to conclusions?

How might I have reacted had I interrupted, for example, a compromising conversation between him and the mythical Mandy?

‘I really have missed you.’  His voice was persuasive and unctuous.  Despite all my good intentions, my brain had to issue insistent DO NOT DISSOLVE commands to my heart.  It was rather nice to be missed.  And, if I was honest, I’d missed having a man around too.  ‘Making love with you was the most beautiful experience of my life.  I’d like to make lots more love to you, my darling.’ 

Mmm.  Being with Ben gave me a taste of what it was like to snog, fondle and share a bed.  My sex life – such as it was – had been tauntingly brief.  In the ensuing week, I’d woken up in the middle of the night a couple of times, desperate to be touched, caressed or just cuddled.  I’d even hug myself, just to remind myself what the feel of hands on my body was like.  Despite it making me sore, I wouldn’t have minded another stab – so to speak – at this thing they called intercourse.

Moreover, since Karl was lost to me for good and would probably cross roads in future to avoid me, did I have anything to lose by meeting Ben for a simple drink?  He’d probably be my only ally once term resumed and Karl regaled the common room with juicy anecdotes about nasty Zoe and her psycho cradle-snatcher.  Then it really would be Ben and me versus the world.

I clamped my eyes shut and cringed.

‘All right then.’

Ben exhaled a noisy sigh, as though relieved to have assumed the upper hand again.

‘That makes me such a happy man, Zoe!  Do you want me to come and pick you up?’

‘No, it’s all right,’ I found myself saying, ‘I’ll ask my dad to drop me off.’  For some reason, I wanted to make my own way this time; assert my independence and avoid being in Ben’s debt.

‘Seven-thirty OK?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can’t wait!’

Hence Friday afternoon found me – for all my contrived indifference – in a twitter over what dress to wear for Ben. 

He’d seen me in just about everything now, so the ‘wow’ novelty impact of previous dates would be absent.  I was frantically looking for something that said ‘I’m independent – you can’t crap on me,’ with a dash of ‘I am repentant, I promise to be good from now on’ thrown in, when my attention was caught by the incongruous sight of Dad’s car slithering on to our drive in mid-afternoon.

When he drooped out of the driver’s seat, my lovely dad looked horrifyingly grey and tired, as though since departing for work that morning he had drunk a fast-acting ageing potion.  I had never even noticed he had any grey hairs. 

And he was crying!

Cliff Taylor never cried.  He was demonstrating decidedly un-Dad-like body language too: defeated shoulders, downcast eyes; pacing the driveway trancelike, clearly reluctant to enter the house.

As I say, my first thought – for some reason – was that he had been laid off from Goodyear.  The family would starve and be forced into the workhouse.  I would be sent down the pit or on the game to scrape together a few extra groats.

But why would Dad’s redundancy necessitate Mom’s early arrival home?  For within minutes of Dad, she was pulling up outside too, even her little car managing to mirror the universal air of sorrow.  No, this wasn’t redundancy-induced grief.  Something else had happened.

Dad must have been waiting for her; he now solemnly followed her into the house. 

‘What is it?’  I pelted down the stairs, forgetting in an instant Ben, the Penn Cottage and the chaos of dresses on my bed.  ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Granny died this morning,’ sobbed Mom.

At quarter-to-nine, I was hunched in the same armchair I’d occupied for the best part of six hours.  Where Mom had sat me, squeezed my hand and explained gently how Granny had collapsed with a heart attack during her shift in the charity shop; how her workmate Sheila called the ambulance – and then called Mom.

‘They took her off to hospital, but it was too late.  Too late.’

She’d suffered with angina for several months, unbeknown to me.  My feisty, immortal granny, whom I’d never known suffer so much as a cold; whom I’d imagined would easily make it to her centenary.  But she was just seventy-three – that was no age nowadays.

‘We’re trying to arrange the funeral for next Saturday, at Gornal Wood Crem.’

Her funeral!  How sick and ghostly that sounded.  Words like ‘funeral’ should not belong in the same sentence as Marjorie Danks.  I simply could not acquaint death with that fit little lady who never sat still.

The phone’s harsh peal stirred me.  I don’t think I had cried yet.  Or even said very much.  I was still in that dazed stage of grief where you just sit like a waxwork and stare unseeingly into the middle distance.

‘Here we go.’  Mom took a deep breath and went to answer it, bracing herself for the inevitable, well-meant but painful condolences.

Within a minute, she was back.

‘Ben for you.’

Ben!

I was supposed to be meeting him tonight!

That’s what I’d been doing before my parents came home; before my world blew apart – I’d been selecting a dress for our ‘reunion’ date.  Amazing to think that six hours ago, that was all I had to worry about.

‘Ben, I am so – ’

‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at, bitch?  Arrange to meet a man, get his hopes up, the humiliate him in front of a pub full of people!  You left me standing there like a fucking lemon, Zoe.  I gave you an hour then had to give up and come home.  I’ll never be able to show my face in the Penn Cottage again now.  How dare you show me up like that!’

‘Ben, my granny’s died.  I’m in a complete state of shock at the moment, and I lost all track of time.  I’m sorry.  I was so close to her, and – ’

‘Yes, yes, your mother told me all that,’ he snapped as though it wasn’t important, ‘you still might have phoned, to say you couldn’t meet me, or left a message on my answer machine, you know, save me sitting in a pub like some sort of – ’

‘You knew?  My mom’s just told you about my granny dying, and yet you’ve still come on the phone shouting abuse at me because I didn’t come and meet you on some poxy date?’

‘Is that all it was to you – some poxy date?  Well I wish I’d known that before I completely wasted a Friday night waiting for you when I had so many better things I could have been doing.’

‘Well go and do them then!  Oh Ben, you’re so bloody cruel!’  I was panting and choking, caring nothing of the scalding tears that were fouling up my foundation and splashing down into furious puddles on my jeans.  My body was white-hot with hurt and rage at Ben’s utter lack of sympathy.  ‘If you truly cared about me, Ben Washington, you’d drop everything to come and see me, you’d hug me and let me grieve.  But even at a time like this, all you care about is yourself and your precious image.’

A gratifying silence greeted this outburst.  I pictured Ben in his flat, with those moody lips agape like a gormless guppy, staggered that his wet little girlfriend was finally fighting back.  I had put up with a whole batch of crap from him in the last two months, and it was time for the diffident doormat to be killed off. 

My fury was empowering; it gave me the upper hand for once.  It was only sad it took dear Granny’s death to give my assertive side a voice.

‘I’ll come round now then!  I’ll wrap you in my arms, we’ll talk, you can tell me all about your nan if you want to.’  But the effort was too desperate, too pathetic, too late.

‘You bloody won’t!  I don’t want you near me or my house ever again.  You can sod off and be with Mandy, or one of these other gorgeous wenches who you say are dying to get into your Y-fronts.’

‘Zoe – my angel – ’

‘Oh save it, Ben.  You can, as of now, consider yourself dumped!’

When the doorbell rang on the afternoon of Granny’s cremation, I felt the vomit rise.  This had better not be Ben, was my instinctive thought.  I couldn’t cope with him today, not after experiencing the most traumatic morning of my life at that stark Black Country crematorium.

All through that bleak service, that sombre crawl in the hearse, I’d been a robot, solemn and cold in my black dress, suppressing my bile.  But now, in my protocol-free home environment, it gurgled up, thick and greasy, from stomach to throat, ready to be spewed, on cue, all over Ben’s shoes.

It had to be him!  Partly because it was like him to pick an insensitive moment; partly because he’d sent a card that morning.  The most maudlin, insincere ‘With Deepest Sympathy’ card I had ever seen, in which he’d claimed to be ‘truly sorry’ about my grandmother’s passing, and for mouthing off at me over the phone – he’d just seen red when I failed to show up, that was all. 

That was all?

You know me, sweetheart, he’d scrawled crassly, in his unconvincing attempt at self-effacing ‘humour,’ I’ve always been a right old stickler for punctuality!  Had I known you had such a good reason for not making it, I’d never have flown off the handle as I did.  Please give me another chance.  I won’t hurt you again, I promise.  You can’t simply turn your back on our love.  What we have is special.  We made a commitment, remember? 

I could remember no such thing.  Even in apparent apology,  Ben’s words were always chillingly loaded.  On that saddest of days, I took morbid pleasure in tearing his card to scraps and consigning it to the wheelie bin.

‘Zoe, go for the door will you, love,’ Mom called from the sitting room where she was doling biscuits out to relations whom we hardly knew and to this day continue meet only at funerals.

The sensation that overwhelmed me as I wobbled to the door was identical to that when I passed out in a second-year science lesson, during a rather vivid video about anaemia – the only time I had ever fainted.  That same swell of revulsion in my stomach, the disturbing acceleration of my heartbeat, the piercing coldness, and those all-over pins and needles which seemed to sheathe me up and elevate me right out of reality.

I could have been twelve again, slumped over my desk and awaking to the bleary vision of twenty anxious and amused classmates encircling my inert body. 

I shakily wedged the security chain on to make slamming the door in Ben’s face an easier task – but it was Karl’s concerned green eyes that stared back at me through the slit.

I immediately released the chain, going so giddy with relief that I had to clutch the doorframe for support.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Mmh.’

‘I – er – brought this for you, Zo.  Just to let you know I am – well, my whole family are – thinking of you, like.’  He sounded all shy again, like on the phone last week, as he almost apologetically handed me a card. 

‘Thanks, Karl.  That’s much appreciated.’

‘I’ve just noticed the cars, though – I can go away – sorry – didn’t realise it was – is it the – er – funeral today?’

‘Do you fancy going for a walk?’  The air wisping in through the open door felt so beautiful after that stuffy morning.  I had an impetuous urge to reach out and embrace it.  ‘I could do with getting out of the house for a while, to be honest.  It’s been a difficult day.’

‘Sure – I mean, if that’s OK with your folks, like.’

Dad popped through at that point, bearing a bottle of Scotch.  Uncle Brian was starting early!  Yes, now was a good time to flee for a while.

‘I’m just slipping out with Karl for a bit of fresh air, Dad, all right?’

‘Yes, do you good.  You’ve been ever so brave, love.  Hiya, son, haven’t seen you round for a bit.’

We strolled to the junction of my road in silence: a relaxed, congenial silence, not one of the atmosphere-pregnated huffs I grew so used to with Ben. 

‘I really am sorry about your gran, Zo,’ Karl commiserated as we settled on to a bench, ‘she was a great lady.’

‘She sure was.’

‘Hey, I bet you think I’m saft, but I’ve never forgotten that day – we must have been about eight – when Felix and his brothers were breakdancing in the market place and you wandered off from your granny.’

‘I remember that well too.  I’ve got so many lovely and silly memories of her.  But I thought I was going to get a right good hiding off her that day.’

‘I felt so bad after – she was ever so upset, and it was all my fault for calling you over.’

‘It wasn’t really.  Granny was won over by you anyway.  She was dead fond of you.’

‘Was she?’

‘Yeah, she was always asking after you.’

‘I never knew that.’

‘Oh Karl, I can’t believe she’s gone.  I’m going to miss her so much.  It feels like there’s a great gaping hole in my life now.  Today will haunt me forever.  Seeing that – that – wooden box – made me feel so cold and spooked inside.’

And then the tears came.  Waily, uncontrollable, cathartic tears.

Karl’s arms were around me, rocking me.  Safe, tender, so cosy compared with the tiresomely gropey hugs Ben used to give me.  I bet that even had Ben cared enough to hold me on this distressing day, he’d have had one hand slithering over my bum or inside my top.  He possessed an uncanny ability to do this while gripping me at sufficient distance to protect his precious shirts from make-up smears.

Despite my severe grief, I couldn’t deny it was heaven to rest and cry against that rigid, rugby-player chest.

I pulled reluctantly away after what felt like an immodest length of time.

‘You’ve got mascara all down you, Karl.  I’m ever so sorry.’

 ‘Don’t worry.  It wants washing anyway.’

‘Ben would have gone ballistic had that been his shirt,’ I said without thinking.

‘I am so sorry I made him go ballistic last week.  I really put my foot in it.  I didn’t know you were seeing anyone – honest.  I overheard Andie mention something a while ago about you talking to some chap at a concert, but I heard nothing said after that so I never thought you were still – you know – ’

‘It’s OK, Karl.  Andie hated Ben.  I used to get annoyed when she made little jibs about him, so I didn’t talk about him much at school.  Now I can see she was so right about him.  I should have listened to her.’

‘I can’t believe I phoned you when he was there with you.  Talk about crap timing!’  He slapped his forehead in a mock ‘Duh’ gesture.  ‘I’m such a pleb sometimes.’

‘No, Ben’s the pleb.  You saved my bacon.  At least that little episode showed me his true colours.  I chucked him, as you might well have gathered.  Last Friday, the day Granny died.’

As I related the contents of our final discourse, Karl shook his head in pleasing dismay.  ‘What a prat!  You’re well shot of him, mate.’

Karl was the best friend a girl could wish for over the ensuing year.  Attentive, generous, letting me cry for Granny (and, for that matter, about pettier woes, such as frustrating essays and period pains) where Ben would have just been bored.  We nattered in the common room, tested one another for exams and were the closest we’d been since childhood – albeit platonically close at this stage.

Every day, I saw new and even more endearing sides to my infant class groom.  The self-confident playground comedian was also highly intelligent and driven.  Karl was one of those people who could get away with being intelligent and escape the ‘geek’ tag synonymous with the likes of Simon Floyd.  As a girl who still had only nebulous career plans, I so admired his dogged focus on achieving top science grades and getting into Bristol Vet School.

My first few boyfriend-free weeks were a tiny bit lonely, yet after two trapped, helpless months with Ben they were also gloriously liberating.  Candi Staton’s disco hit Young Hearts Run Free (bit before my time, but then I’d always been a retro addict), with its lyrics that advocated the ‘young, free and single’ lifestyle was my new anthem.

Ben and I were together a derisorily short time, he didn’t propose and we weren’t engaged, yet with all his talk of ‘forever,’ I’d resigned myself to my frightful fate as the future Mrs Washington. 

There was a certain sense of security about having my life mapped out for me.  I’d no longer needed to worry about whether I would be left on the shelf, or who I would marry, or whether I would have kids.  The weak like being told what to do; it saves them the trouble of having to make their own decisions.

Ben made everything sound so final.  He’d told me I would never need to look for another man as long as I lived (indeed implied he was the only man I would ever attract anyway) – but half the fun of teenage girlhood was being free to indulge in commitmentless flirting and trouser-chasing.  My life was just starting; I might daydream about settling down with some hunk, but hadn’t planned on actually doing it until mid-twenties at the earliest.

‘I was only in love with the superficial idea of having a boyfriend,’ I confided to Andie, who was ever perplexed about what the hell I’d seen in Ben, ‘not in love with Ben himself.  I was blinded by flattery.  My self-esteem was so low after hearing for years about how ugly and fat and boring I was – then suddenly this gorgeous older man comes along and tells me I’m beautiful and sexy.  I’m sorry, Andie, but of course I was going to respond!  I bet you’d have done the same in my shoes.’

‘Not with creepy Ben, I wouldn’t,’ she said decisively.  ‘His pal Adam wasn’t exactly hard to resist either!’

‘You must be a stronger person than me then.  I thought, at seventeen, I was too old to have never had a boyfriend.  I was desperate for some love and sex – and here they were being handed to me on a plate.  I was only human at the end of the day.  Besides, I genuinely thought that was the only chance I was ever going to get.’

‘But that’s ludicrous.  There are hundreds of boys out there that are yours for the taking.’

‘But I never thought any of them would actually want to go out with me.  I had this kind of Jane Austen mentality where I genuinely believed I was too plain to ever make a good marriage, didn’t deserve nice boyfriends and had to just take what I could get.  More to the point, I thought Karl was lost to me forever.’

‘He’s not, though, is he!’

Indeed he was not.

Yet he made no further overtures, despite our burgeoning friendship and collective single status. 

‘You should flirt more,’ Andie recited from Cosmopolitan.  This was our new bible, now we were discerning young ladies and Jackie graduates.  ‘Try a little touchy-feely body language – nudging him, “accidentally” brushing against his hand, that sort of thing.  Let him know you like him.’

‘I’m too shy, And!  I’m worried he might think it a bit of a cheek if I came on to him after the way I rebuffed him before.’

‘Ah, but you were with Ben then.  You were misguided.  You’re free now – free as the proverbial bird.’

‘I’ve come to the conclusion that it simply isn’t meant to be with Karl.  We’re destined to remain just great mates, and I guess I ought to settle for that.  It’s better than nothing.  Better than being enemies.’

Our workload, in any case, as we advanced from lower to upper sixth was overwhelming, with no windows for romance.  With our A-levels half a year away, and coursework deadlines ever urgent, every night and ‘free’ period was eaten up with homework.

My final Capewell year was a total drag.  I began to see what Ben meant when he said school demeaned me.  I’d long loathed the place, but now I was almost an adult and no longer had to be there, it was downright galling having to abide by childish rules and mix with little eleven-year-olds!  I wished I’d gone to a sixth form college.

On the eighth of October 1992, I did, remarkably, find a spare hour in which to pass my driving test at the first attempt.

Like most local learners, I took it in Lower Gornal, a Black Country village not known for being the most driver-friendly in the world.  Its roads are punctuated by frequent islands (that’s roundabouts to non-speakers of Black Country) and slopes.

All was progressing serenely, though, until my examiner asked me to demonstrate the reverse park manoeuvre.  A milk float materialised – apparently out of the ether – and chugged past as I was mid-reverse.  Too late!  I should, strictly speaking, have stopped before the milkman drew level, but I hadn’t even seen him.

Resigned to my inevitable failure on the grounds of carelessness, I continued the test with an almost indifferent air.  It was not so bad, I told myself.  There was no great shame in failing; others in my class had.  It just meant Dad having to fork out for a re-test. 

I answered the Highway Code questions easily and flippantly, then braced myself for the examiner’s commiserations.  When he instead smiled and said, in his dry, almost doctorly manner, ‘I’m glad to tell you, Miss Taylor, that you’ve passed,’ I think my response was ‘Yow what?’

I was ecstatic to pass – but I was twenty-one and working before I could afford a car.  All through upper sixth and uni, I was frustratedly reliant on either my parents or the West Midlands’ erratic public transport network.  It was mega infuriating.  Driving lessons were, theoretically, a stepping stone towards independence – yet now I’d acquired my damn licence, this independence was impeded by my lack of riches.

‘Excuse…do you wanna….would you like to…come and have…fancy a dance?  Do you fancy a dance?  With me, I mean.  Yes, I know it’s a slowie.  I like slowies.  They suit my purpose.’

I swished joyously in front of the mirror, enjoying the sensual feel of my silky silver dress against my cold skin, striking camp poses with my new green feather boa and racking my brains for killer chat-up lines that I might use on Karl.

Something was going to happen between us tonight – I could feel it in my water.  My seven-year crush was about to be requited.  I was going to wangle a slow dance, which would lead to a smooch, which would lead to love, which would lead to marriage and that love-nest filled with injured kittens and soufflés.

‘He’ll be putty in your palms by midnight, girl!’ I smouldered at my reflection, sounding far sassier than I felt.

I wasn’t usually this brazen – but then not every day was my birthday.

It was the nineteenth of February 1993, a Friday, half-term week.  I was eighteen today.  From eight o’clock, the British Legion hall in Sedgley would quiver to the beat of the party that for six months I had been arranging with military precision: booking caterers; listing DJ song requests; selecting a suitably funky shade of nail varnish; ticking off the weeks on my Garfield calendar.

I glammed up in clinging sci-fi silver, and for once looked and felt smashing.  Seeing myself like that was a humbling reminder of how my body had changed.  Two years ago, such a dress would never have made it south of my flabby shoulders.  I doubted I’d have had the nerve to hold a party, let alone entertain the audacious thought that a boy might wish to dance with me.

I had Granny Danks to thank for setting me on the road to svelteness.  I sorely wished she could see me now.  Not only would she have been beaming and proud, she also adored a good old knees-up.

By ten-past-eight, I’d had a kiss and a gift from Karl and was already feeling utterly jubilant.  True, it was a brotherly cheek-peck rather than the tonsil-teasing snog of my dreams, but it was a kiss nonetheless.  I somehow maintained a placid façade, though I tingled from hairline to heels and felt like turning a backflip while simultaneously hollering out the chorus of some vivacious party song – possibly The Shoop Shoop Song (It’s In His Kiss) by Cher.

He – or rather, the Corbett family, for all were in attendance – had bought me a very elegant Royal Brierley glass atomiser which I, in my infatuated state, deemed the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, let alone owned.  I loved pouring perfume into it and pretending to be some Edwardian duchess, squirting the scent at one’s aristocratic neck with its little tasselled puffer.

It was a fantastic party.  But as I chucked my little body across the dancefloor, I agonisingly rehearsed my flirtatious gambit.  I needn’t have bothered, as I was ultimately spared the squirminess of a ladies’ excuse me.

‘Take your partners, ladies and gentlemen,’ oozed the DJ, ‘cos we’re gunna slow things right down!’  Aaarggh!  ‘This one’s for the birthday girl, Zoe – I hear she’s something of a Madonna fan!’

As Crazy for You seeped across the hall, I commanded my legs to advance in a Karl-ward direction as they had so many times in my mental rehearsals, but the floor was suddenly made of syrup.  I couldn’t lift my feet.  Help!

‘Come on Zo – time for us to dance.’

This wasn’t in the script!  Him asking me, proffering his hand and smiling in a way that showed the request was definitely not an empty act of politeness to the birthday girl.  Oh, oh, ohhh!

Time to tear up the script, methinks!

The whole dazed scene moved in seductive slow motion, like a soft metal band promo video. Karl eased me into his arms beneath the rather askew mirrorball which cast its snowflakey light patterns upon the necking couples.  We made natural dance partners: swaying in time to the slinky beat, arms roped around each other, wholly lost in the moment.

We flowed very fluidly into our kiss.  Whereas snogs with Ben were entirely devoid of spontaneity and passion, as though they had to be started deliberately, this one was everything the Just Seventeen problem page had told me kissing ought to be like.  Not so much as a clanking nose or set of teeth to jar the proceedings.  It was bliss.

When Karl said goodbye at the end of the do, he enveloped me in a loving hug, which must have appeared utterly innocent and platonic from the front, but behind he was squeezing my bum through the close-fitting dress.  It was a naughty gesture, one which said this is our little secret.  This was not goodbye at all; just the start of things to come.

Not being the types to hang about, our first official date was the following night.  Karl took me clubbing.  And got me inebriated for the first time – such a corruptive influence, that boy!

‘What’s that you’re drinking, Karl?’ I bellowed over the full-blast Two Unlimited that was juddering the rafters of a studenty dive in darkest Wolverhampton.

 ‘It’s 20/20.  Have you never tried it?’  I shook my head, speech pointless in that ear-splitting disco.  ‘Have a try.  It’s kiwi flavour.’

I took a cautious sip of the intriguing green potion.  Boy, was it nice!

‘I’ll buy you one next round.’

‘Mmmm.’

And another, and another…

This rather lethal fruity alcopop was, like Babycham, a beverage favoured by teenagers of my era who were either not quite or only just old enough to drink alcohol.  The cause of many of my contemporaries’ first hangovers, as well as my two a.m. vomit fest in our bathroom.

I gave Karl a twenty-four-hour-anniversary kiss goodnight on the doorstep, then tumbled into the hallway, and, convinced I was about to hurl, rocketed upstairs, swaying wildly off course and bouncing into walls and furniture along the way due to the landing floor’s maddening refusal to remain horizontal beneath my feet.

My intoxicated logic told me the basin would be too small a receptacle for my stomach’s sloshy contents.  So I crouched over the bath and did a vivid impression of Linda Blair in The Exorcist.  The neon green geyser contained an alarming amount of what appeared to be raisins.  Its ascent through my throat chafed and tore at the skin.  I’d never known spew like it!

Obviously, this chundering chorus woke my parents.  Mom got me undressed and into bed.  I clung frantically to her and to the mattress as my room whirled around me.

Sunday was torment.  With a headache to end all headaches and a throat that burned as painfully as if my tipple of choice had been weedkiller, I felt like death defrosted. 

Well happy birthday Zoe!  If this was adulthood, I’d have happily traded places with any toddler.

But did the incident put me off alcohol?  Er…no!

Do I regret it?  Not for a second.

Getting bladdered was a splendid feeling.  It transformed self-conscious little me into the goddess of confidence.  Hangovers barely lasted a day – less as I grew acclimatised to booze – and were forgotten in time for the next night out. 

I had tremendous fun with Karl – in spite of what was to later happen.  I look back with profound fondness upon those reckless days when I was learning about being an adult and yearning for adventure, whatever its queasy consequences. 

Hail to the hangover, that’s what I say!

And so Karl and I were in love.  It was official.  He loved me – I knew he did, for he had uttered those three magic words to me on the morning of Sunday the second of May 1993, in Sedgley, in the county of the West Midlands – and I assured him the sentiment was more than reciprocated. 

We were lovers; an item; a ménage à deux. 

We were, as they say, in love.

Yeeeesssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We’d slept together for the first time, in his room.  Avril and Roger were on holiday, so he asked me ‘back to his place’ after a night out at the local.

I remembered how I’d shuddered a year ago when Ben issued the same invitation; how I’d looked for excuses to say no.  But Karl made it sound so romantic and safe. 

He may have been far younger and possessed less hair than Ben, with only a jumbled boxroom in which to seduce me, but he had none of Ben’s swarthy danger and edginess.  I was glad to have grown out of my brief ‘older man’ phase.  Temperamental twenty-seven-year-olds were most definitely not for me!

‘You know the last time I was in here must be about seven or eight years ago,’ I giggled.  ‘It was full of comics and games then.  Now it’s all sensible stuff.’  I grimaced, flipping open a clear-as-mud physics textbook that lay on his desk.

Karl levered off his shoes and lay back on the bed with a delicious smile on his face.  ‘Well I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like being very sensible tonight!’

My first time with him was completely gorgeous, and fell asleep encircled in his warm arms, which was achingly idyllic.  In the morning he brought me a cup of tea in bed and said ‘I love you.’  Just like that.  Down-to-earth and sincere, not laying the sentiment on with a shovel à la Ben. 

‘And you,’ I replied, almost without thinking.  It was an instinctive response, but a sincere one.  I knew – unlike with Ben – that I wasn’t saying it through a sense of duty to return the compliment. 

We had been going steady for over two months, and I was even daring to entertain thoughts of it developing into something more serious and permanent.  We were very close now, and getting to know each other inside out.  The fact we’d been friends first – and for nearly a lifetime – definitely helped. 

I was never friends with Ben.  I’d plunged headlong into an ill-fated affair, half convincing myself I was in love with him, when I in fact barely knew him and didn’t even like him a great deal.  If I was entirely honest with myself, the main attraction was the fact he fancied me. 

I’d met him at a concert, then wham bam – suddenly we were lovers.  Our second meeting was on our date to Rollo’s, so we were in a boyfriend/girlfriend set-up before we’d exchanged more than a few sentences.  I only ever really knew Ben on a sexual level; he demonstrated precious little interest in the contents of my mind and had tried to turn me into something I wasn’t.  I felt I disappointed him because he built up such unrealistically high expectations of me.

Karl and I laughed over the same silly things; shared the same sense of humour and the same taste in so many things.  Nobody else had ever stirred up such genuine happy warmth within me.  Just thinking of him brought me out in a daft grin. 

He liked me for me; asked me questions about myself and actually took an interest in my responses.  There was no acting: I never felt obliged to lie or pretend to be something I wasn’t because the real me did not quite suit his tastes. 

Our adolescent passion was frustrated – though quite possibly heightened also – by the limits imposed by our weighty workload.  With exams now weeks away, we’d have been morons to abandon our revision and jeopardise university places for the sake of some nookie. 

Karl needed As and Bs for vet school; I had my work cut out if I was to achieve the requisite B for the UCE’s English Lang and Lit course.  Every night and weekend during May and June, our only assignations were with text books and course notes. 

‘It won’t be forever, it won’t be forever,’ became my new mantra during that solitary confinement in my bedroom with Messrs Shakespeare and Blake – though this was quickly replaced by Relaxation Tape Man’s ‘I am calm and peaceful’ when the cramming became just a little too gruelling.

I bolstered myself with thoughts of spending hot, indolent days with Karl during the protracted summer break, but I was still heartily irked with revision, having now reached a point where getting these damn examinations out the way was of greater importance than passing the things. 

Our final proper day at school was in mid-May.  This was the day I had looked forward to since – well, since I started school, yet it came as an almighty anti-climax.  There was a universal feeling of droopiness and apathy, tempered with relief that we were finally escaping Capewell.  I shared that feeling.  I’d outgrown school.  I wanted a life!

We spent June in and out of exam rooms.  It’s odd how my memory has almost photographic clarity where certain events are concerned, yet mists over when it comes to exams.  Within those three-hour sweat sessions, I was focused and intense, scribbling answers – but the minute I handed my paper in my mind drained like an Etch-a-Sketch.

‘How did it go this morning?’ Karl would ask.

‘I can’t remember!’

‘What topics came up?’

‘I can’t remember!’

Karl and I spent a delightful summer together, doing clichéd, coupley activities that were the stuff of romantic comedies, such as eating picnics in Baggeridge Park.  We were barf-makingly happy and in love.

In August, we marched hand-in-hand to school to collect our A-level results.  I was elated with my much hoped-for B in English and Cs in home ec and general studies.  Karl got an A two Bs.  Our respective university places were thus guaranteed. 

Funnily enough, we celebrated by getting drunk that night.

In our elation, however, we failed to account for the emotional consequences of

our academic success.  Six weeks later, I was sobbing dramatically on Karl's

shoulder, cursing higher education and the parting it was enforcing.

We were in the Corbett family front room.  His folks had granted us some ‘goodbye time’ alone before driving him down to Bristol.  Roger's car was crammed and ready to depart, just as later that day my dad’s car would be similarly loaded and Birmingham-bound. 

‘Oh, why did we have to fall in love at this late stage in our education?’ I wailed.  ‘I’ll miss you so much.’

‘And you, babes, but Christmas isn’t that far away.  I’ll write, and you could come down some weekends.  And I’ll come up to you.  It won’t be so bad.  No-one’s making us go to uni after all.  It’s what we both want, isn’t it?’

I nodded mournfully.  Karl could be so maddeningly rational at times!  ‘Right now, though, I’d happily give it all up to spend time with you!’

‘Now that’s saft talk, our Zo.  You’re gunna go to uni and get a first class honours degree and land some fabulous job writing about restaurants.  And when you’re the next Egon Ronay, I’ll pass the Good Food Guide round my surgery and say “Hey look – my girlfriend wrote that!” and the other vets’ll all be dead impressed.’

‘If we’re still together by then.’

‘It’d be nice if we were, wouldn’t it?’

‘I’m frightened you might meet someone else.’

‘So might you.’

‘Never!  I’m a one boy girl, me.’

I was insulted.  How could Karl underestimate my raw feelings?  He was not a mere passing phase, something to keep me warm, wet and occupied over the summer; he was my one true love!  To ditch him for some Birmingham college boy would be lunacy.  I only hoped Karl would remain similarly devoted.

Roger dipped his head around the sitting room door.  ‘We’d better get going, Karl.’

‘OK, Dad.  This is it then, Zo.’

Our embrace on the driveway was almost laughably agonised.  When I recall it now, I’m half filling up at the sorrow of it all and half sniggering about the silly mess my globby tears were making of my face.  It was not an attractive look.

I can still picture the way we stood, both draped inside his black denim jacket with our hands in each other’s jean pockets, exchanging our final sweet nothings.  A storm was stirring: the sky was like a sheet of foil, and the October wind was freezing my briny teardrops to my cheeks.  My heart, I sincerely believed, was on the brink of breakage.

Karl inched reluctantly towards his dad’s car.  ‘I’m really gunna have to go now.’ 

I bawled harder and grasped the poor lad dramatically, as though I could somehow root him to the spot and prevent him leaving.  I have to hand it to Karl – he had saintly patience.

‘Chin up, our kid.’  He gently kissed me and brushed away a hair strand that had blown into my sticky eyes.  ‘I love you, babes.  I’ll never forget you.’