We're on the homeward stretch now...

Love, according to Wet Wet Wet in the summer of 1994, was all around.  They were feeling it in their fingers and feeling it in their toes.  I wasn’t feeling it anywhere.

I was numb.  Numb, and nauseous with nerves, as the crammed train clunked into Temple Meads station on that May Friday.  Since Birmingham New Street, I’d been sagging pensively in the padded seat, wishing both that its colour was not such an evocative vomit orange, and that the dimply old dear next to me in it would shut up.  She was sweet enough, but I needed her chuntering like the proverbial hole in the head.  I wanted to think.

‘I’ve been visiting my daughter in Birmingham,’ she burred, ‘got a lovely place, she has.  Son-in-law’s summat big in banking.  What brings you to the West Country, my love?’

‘I’m spending the weekend with my boyfriend at the university.  He’s studying to be a vet.’

‘How lovely.’

I was none too sure it was going to be lovely – nor, strictly speaking, was I sure he was still my boyfriend.  Uni had changed Karl.

After that joyous, post-A-level summer together, corny letters, lust-charged reunions and telephone talk of the ‘no, you hang up first’ variety kept us warm through the homesick fresher term, which now seemed about a thousand years ago.  My new mates mocked that I was soppy, should forget my sweetheart back home and ‘have some fun,’ as they
put it, but I remained almost priggishly faithful.  I was beginning now to
wish I hadn't bothered.

We both developed inevitable self-assurance within our new scholarly environments – but with it Karl had acquired indifference and distance. 

I did all the chasing these days: phoning, writing, even foregoing nights out to wait forlornly for calls that would never come.  There were perpetual excuses for his sporadic communication: he’d been so busy; had assignments to hand in, guinea pigs to inoculate, cats to spay, that kind of thing.  Of late, he'd shown waning inclination to visit the Midlands or invite me for weekends at his Bristol digs.

This one had been arranged for weeks (at, it must be admitted, my behest, to fill a mutually convenient slot in our timetables) but discussed over the phone the other day with none of the passion that ought to befit languishing lovers parted for weeks.

‘We still on for Friday?’ I'd enquired, doggedly perky.

‘Yeah, if you want,’ was his eager response.

‘I’ll get the 1:45 from New Street then.’

‘OK.’

‘And you’ll meet me at the station?’

‘Yeah.’

I was starting to cry with disappointment, but I would not show it.  I must remain stoical and casual.  Tears would only peeve him.

As I now heaved my holdall off the afternoon train, I was, if honest, bracing myself to be dumped.

Karl’s very appearance had altered during our weeks asunder.  I nearly sailed past the stick man in the beery old jeans and creased Levellers T-shirt.  He sported, for the first time, a hackneyed ‘studenty’ image.  I hated to admit, but it was not a look that suited him.

‘Your hair’s grown a bit, Mr Crusty,’ I remarked, twiddling a shoulder-length rat-tail and trying to sound playful rather than disparaging.

‘What’s up – don’t you like it?’  His tone, though, implied he didn’t care whether I did or not.

‘It’s…different.’  I hoped I didn’t sound snooty.  Come on, Zo, you’re his girlfriend, not some disapproving maiden aunt.  You must love him for what he is, not for how he looks.  ‘Haven’t you got a hug for me?’

I had never had to request a hug before.  He gave it willingly enough, but it was a sad sign.  The old Karl was so ‘hands on’ I’d have had to peel him off me.

‘Let’s get the bus to my digs.  It’s not far.’

‘OK, Karl.’

He was gentlemanly enough to take my bag, though he carped about its weight.

‘What’ve you got in here?  You’re not staying for a bloody fortnight, you know.’  He sounded glad of this fact.

It felt completely false and surreal sharing a bus seat with this tatty stranger, making banal small talk and darting surreptitious gazes to identify any resemblance to my joyful sweetheart from sixth form.  I was in denims myself, but still felt ostentatiously overdressed next to him.  It wasn’t so much his appearance that I couldn’t get over, though, so much as his entire character transplant. 

One of those recurrent daydreams in which I sought solace when I was twelve or thirteen had involved constructing a radio-controlled robot replica of myself, which could attend school in lieu of me, fool teachers and classmates, while I got to stay at home.  And now I found myself wondering whether this truly was my Karl or his android twin.  His once smiley lips barely arched upwards at all, and he betrayed not a hint of being interested in or impressed by anything I told him. 

His apathy seemed oddly and hurtfully deliberate, as though he was, for some mystifying reason, protecting himself from me.  But occasionally, flashes of his old compassion would return, which threw me.  At one point, the bus jolted over a pothole, making me involuntarily clutch my delicate belly.

‘Got tummy ache?’ he enquired kindly.

‘Mmm, a bit.’

I didn’t elaborate, though.  I was desperate for Karl to love, and continue fancying me, and thought discussing nausea with him might perhaps do little to further my cause.

‘Here’s my den then,’ Karl proclaimed, twizzling his key and ushering me into a room that might well have been used as the set in Bottom.

A plate stuccoed with leftover beans and a festering toast crust protruded from beneath a grey-sheeted bed that appeared not to have been made or changed since about 1980.  Karl’s carpet was barely visible beneath foggy dust and a debris of ring-binders, mugs and boxer shorts.  An Olympic flag of coffee rings daubed his desk.

The same desk, though, did reassuringly bear a framed photograph of me.  He hadn’t completely written our relationship off then.  Oh, pathetic hope, how I clung to thee!

‘Bit of a messy sod, aren’t you?’  I strove for an affectionate, jokey tone but, as with the hair comment, ended up sounding like a sour schoolmarm and provoking a defensive response.

‘What d’you expect?  It’s a student hall of residence, not the bloody Ritz.  I suppose your room at the UCE’s spotless, is it?’

‘Chill out, Karl.  I was only kidding.  You’re right – I’m not exactly Mrs House-proud either.’

‘I’m sorry.  Do you fancy a coffee, or can’t you bear the thought of drinking out of my grimy old mugs?’  He was actually grinning now, though.  Confusing, or what!

‘That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.’

Things eased between us once we were squished up on his beanbag with our steaming sludgy caffeine.  (I simply couldn’t bring myself to sit on that bed, and hoped by the time I snuggled into it that night I’d be too kale-eyed to care about the clamminess.)  We nattered amiably for a good two hours, about friends and studies and TV and music, albeit in a more platonic and less lovery way than I’d have liked.

‘I’ve got three mates coming round in a bit,’ Karl announced at about six, ‘we’ve arranged to go out for a few bevvies up town, then a boogie.  The Student Union do a pretty good Friday night disco.  Very cheesy, you know, but always good for a laugh.’

‘Sounds right up my street.  I guess as we’re going out, I’d better freshen up and slip into something comfortable, as they say.’  I eased myself out of the comfy groove I’d made in the beanbag.  ‘Now where’s the bathroom?’

‘You don’t have to go over the top,’ Karl said anxiously, ‘it won’t be the poshest night out you’ve ever been on.’

‘I’ll hardly be in Gucci.  I just want to get out of these jeans – I’ve been wearing them all day – and look nice for my beloved.’  I planted a kittenish kiss on his nose.  ‘I’d hate to disgrace you in front of your intelligent friends.’

I felt fresher and bolder once I’d showered, reapplied my war paint and changed into the dress I’d packed for bevvying and boogieing purposes.  It was a casual purple strappy affair that was far from expensive or new, but I got bored of going out in jeans.  Besides, I wanted Karl to show me off; to prove I was more than a match for all those intellectual babes I was paranoid were distracting him from thoughts of me.

‘What d’you think?’  I pirouetted brazenly, doing my best supermodel impression – but something died when I clocked the crushing expression in Karl’s eyes.

‘Bit OTT, isn’t it?  We’re only pubbing it and going to a student disco.’

‘I still don’t want to go out looking like some old tramp.’

‘Like I do – is that what you’re saying?’

‘No.  It’s just – ’

‘Us pair are gunna look great together tonight, aren’t we?  So well matched!’

‘There’s no need to get all sarky just because I like to look nice.  Why don’t you get changed if you’re so embarrassed to be seen with me?’

‘I look perfectly all right.  I’m – ’

A drum roll on the door impeded further brickbats and sarcasm. 

‘It’s us!’ came raucous hollers from without.

‘Yaaay – here’s the posse!’

Karl’s transformation was little short of breathtaking.  He bounded to the door like a hyper kangaroo and flung it open theatrically to admit the motley triad, who made boisterous noise and comments of the ‘Ooh, so this is the girlfriend’ variety.

This lot didn’t have to ask for hugs, I noted with pique.  They all fell upon Karl in a kind of bantering, high-fiving rugby scrum.  It was saddening that my arrival or presence could no longer animate him like this.

This ‘posse’ comprised a pair of lads – Barry, a real all-mouth-and-trousers type from Reading who leered me up and down, nudging Karl in a ‘You’ve done well there, mate’ fashion, and the much quieter and quite pleasant Kevin – and one girl: a scraggy Mancunian loon called Angela who sported Nana Mouskouri glasses, smoked, as Granny would have phrased it, ‘like a chimbly,’ and whose picture could probably be found in the dictionary alongside the noun ladette.  I detested her on sight.

I detested her even more on hearing.

‘You’re a bit dolled up, aren’t you, luv?’  She herself was spikily bra-less beneath a beige vest top, with raggy old jeans.  ‘Is that how they dress in Birmingham nowadays?’

I don’t even remember how I responded to this – for the minute I opened my mouth, she interrupted with hysterical hooting and pointing. 

‘Ha – you sound like Mrs Overall with that accent!’

I silently repeated Dad’s primary school mantra: laugh it off, rise above it and chuckled artificially.  I’d have been the stone-faced odd one out had I not done so; the others – including, woundingly, Karl – were in creases at Angela’s hilarious observation.

‘Well you sound like – like – ’  Think, Zoe, think!  I need a silly TV character who comes from Manchester?  Ah, I know.   ‘Like Raquel from Coronation Street.’

A polite titter from Kevin was the sole reception to this not-terribly-biting insult.  In fact, Raquel was such a dollybird, a girl like Angela would be liable to take any comparison with her as a compliment.  She had won – the cow! – by planting an image of me as the decrepit Acorn Antiques char in everyone’s minds.

‘Are you coming drinking or what then, Karly-babes?’ she hollered.  I tensed – Hayley Jasper used to call him that.  ‘Or are you two gunna stay in all night shagging?  Us lot have had a few ciders already, so you’ve got some catching up to do.’

‘What are we waiting for then?  Come on, Zo.’

We straggled to an olde worlde pub – which even at this early hour was swarming with students, tourists and locals – where we ordered burgers and chips and bagged a table in the beer garden.  The others were on ciders or beers, but I stuck to white wine (a choice greeted by more derisively inverted-snobby ooohs) – though I felt so queasy, water would have sufficed.

The onset of a meal was – as ever – cheering, but my spirits sagged again at the unfavourable seating arrangement.  Angela unapologetically parked her arse on the long seat between Karl and me – a manoeuvre which drew an upsetting lack of protest from him.  He ventured neither word nor glance in my direction during the meal.  I was literally biting back tears as I heard him sniggering with that toilet-mouthed bint while I was penned in amongst Kev and Barry.

Wretchedly despondent, I decided I may as well attempt conversation with the only vaguely courteous person there.  Ignoring belchy, leery Barry opposite me, I addressed Kev with all the interest I could manage.  ‘So are you doing the Veterinary Science degree as well?’

‘Yeah.’  Trust me to get stuck with Monosyllabic Man.

‘Are you enjoying it?’

He grinned shyly through his grungy fringe.

‘Yeah – it’s great.’  Woo – three words that time!

‘Whereabouts do you come from?’

‘Hampshire.’

‘What part?’

‘Winchester.’ 

This was hopeless.  For my part, I was too obsessed with what Karl was playing at to care.  How could he fawn up to that human ashtray while barely acknowledging that I, his girlfriend of one year and three months, was even alive?  It was so not him. 

Was he so besotted with mangy Angie that I had ceased to matter to him? 

Was this his unsubtle way of letting me know I had served my purpose and could now piss off out of his life?

Believe it or not, things got worse after we’d eaten.

Angela, returning from the bar with her pint glass replenished, turned to me with troublemaker eyes.

‘So, Zo,’ she launched, in her smoker’s rasp, ‘we don’t appear to know anything about you.’

‘You don’t,’ I answered in what I intended to be a serenely enigmatic manner as my heart sank to my bowels.

She pointed her fag at me like a wand.  ‘Are you serious about Karl?’

I wasn’t so sure now. 

How might I conceivably answer such a question anyway?  A pious yes would make me even more of a piss-take target for these vacuous vets; a brusque no would be simply untrue.  I aimed for the middle ground and a nonchalant ‘S’pose so,’ whilst steadfastly averting my eyes from Karl.

Ange and Barry could have given interrogation seminars to the Gestapo.  They were pissed as farts now, and playing to the gallery: voices strident and eyes incandescent with malice as they took turns to shell me with questions.

‘Have you screwed him yet?’

‘Ever given him a BJ?’

‘Do you know what one of those is?’

‘Do you let him lick the lettuce?’

This was bullying – pure and simple.  I hadn’t been on the receiving end of this kind of maltreatment since the fourth form, and the intervening advancement of time had slightly blunted the memory of just how shitty it felt to be tortured, blanked and slandered.

But I was a wimpy, ugly schoolgirl no longer; I was a nineteen-year-old undergraduate, assured enough to live away from home, fight my own battles.  I attempted to fob them off with sarcastically evasive answers of the ‘Maybe I have, maybe I haven’t’ and ‘Ah, that would be telling’ variety – wishing to keep my secrets but without coming over as prissy or aloof.

Karl was no help.  My predicament was hilarious to him, if the look on his stupid, smug, inebriated face was anything to go by.  At the sight of it, another ripple of nausea washed through my tummy.  I darted into the pub to locate the loos.

I stayed in the dingy washroom for a good ten minutes, crying into the plug-hole and yearning to puke so I could at least rid myself of that awful quivery feeling in the pit of my gut.  I gagged until fearful I’d choke, but nothing would come out.  Not even the minutest carrot.

The door was hurled open and Ange clomped in.  She looked with contemptuous amusement at me cuddling the sink and rasped, ‘Message from Karl: get your skates on, pukey, we're going discoing!’

I had little option but to follow her, meekly, like a primary school kid who’d wet herself and was being escorted by Teacher to the gym cupboard for new knickers. 

So Karl was calling me ‘pukey’ now, was he?  I used to be ‘bab’ and ‘sweetheart’ – but clearly those romantic days were done now.  I was just a sickly wimp who irritated him.

Every step of our walk back to the uni made my head swim.  I was almost afraid to move for fear of dislodging the vomit and splatting it all over my shoes. 

Karl didn’t care.  There was a time when he did, when I truly thought I must be the most special girl in the world because I had his love.  But this love had waned now; I had evidently lost it to bloody Angela.

I glowered evilly at their backs as they rollicked on ahead of the pack, flirting and cackling together, being all unnecessarily nudgy and tactile and boisterous.

Well, if that’s what he wants out of life now…I thought – before bitchy rage took over.  Hell, what does he see in her?  She’s a hideous old dog!  With her big square specs and her lankly bobbed hair.  I know I’m no Liz Hurley, but surely I’m better looking than that?  What can she conceivably have that I haven’t?

Karl, by the look of it.

Every square centimetre of dancefloor was occupied by undergraduates twirling or shambling about at progressive stages along the pissed-o-meter.

I usually loved discos, and this one irksomely played precisely the kind of music I loved to dance to.  In more joyful circumstances, I’d have had a bostin’ night out – but how could one think of boogying when one’s heart, if not entirely broken, was horrifically scarred and chipped?

Karl actually lavished sufficient attention upon me to ask what I’d like to drink.  I was so pathetically grateful to him for this, I completely forgot to fume and bristle like the indignant ice maiden I wanted to be.

‘Oh Karl, I can’t face any more alcohol,’ I quivered, ‘not when my stomach’s all up and down like this.  I’d better stick to soft drinks.’

He reacted with the air of one offended by an obscenity.

‘You don’t go out with me and drink orange juice,’ he said firmly.  His glare was a laser of pure contempt that told me the great Karl Corbett would suffer eternal disgrace were any girlfriend of his to drink an un-intoxicating substance.  ‘You’re not having any of that wine cobblers either.  What d’you think I am – made of money?  I’m on a student grant now, you know.’ 

As if I wasn’t!

He plonked a voluminous glass of lager in my hands, so clumsily that foam sploshed all down my fingers, making me sticky.  ‘You’ll have that and lump it.’  I flinched.  I hate lager to this day; its abrasively blokey taste makes me wince.

The increasingly punchable Angela immediately tugged Karl into the crowd, with the brashly superfluous question ‘Don’t mind me stealing your boyfriend, do you?’ which was accompanied by a ‘Na-na-na-na-na’ smirk of pure evil.

Karl did not exactly look unhappy with this manoeuvre.  Or, to phrase it another way: he looked as smug as a dog with two cocks.  He shoved his own pint into my free hand, thus webbing those fingers with beery spume also, and unapologetically dumped me by the bar.  I felt such a lemon, the barman could have plopped me into a gin and tonic.

I watched them through a gauze of tears.  I was shattered, bewildered and morosely inebriated, with a thousand questions I was impatient to fire at Karl before I could even be granted the luxury of sleep.

Suddenly, Barry’s gargoyle face loomed, winking, towards me and his chimpy arms were shoving me into Kevin.

‘Oi watch it, I’ve spilt me pints!’ I yelped as I stumbled soggily into poor Kev.

‘Dance with him.  Be better than standing there on your tod.  He’s been dying to ask you.  He thinks your dead tasty.’

I recoiled from Barry’s brewery breath, but then thought why the hell not?  Why should I just look on like a tit while my so-called boyfriend danced with another woman?  What had I to lose now?

‘Go on!  I’ll take the glasses off you so you can have a good old bop.’  Barry slammed the untouched lagers on a table.

Karl moshed past us at one point.

‘Enjoying yourself, Zo?’ he asked with a hypocritically sarcastic edge to his inebriated voice.

‘I could ask you the same question,’ I snapped.  I was livid!  Kev and I were doing nothing but scuff from foot to foot, a metre apart, chaste as you like – whereas now Come on Eileen had started, Karl was clamping his arm unnecessarily snugly around Ange’s puny shoulder and boinging off with her to join the a massive circle that was orbiting the room.

I was distraught now. 

The minute we were in his room, Karl collapsed, fully-clad, on to his tiny bed – selfishly diagonally so that I was physically unable to get into it myself.  It took several minutes to shake him sufficiently awake so he could shove over and let me in.  For some reason, this frustrating act made me sob and howl. 

He was comatose all night – snoring cacophonously and emitting another, most odd noise, which could best be described as a squeak – unlike me, who failed to drop off at all.

I spent the empty and sleep-free early hours crying, longing to vomit but never quite succeeding, knocking back endless glasses of water to quell my desperate dehydration, and staring fixated at the slow, fluorescent figures on Karl’s digital clock.  I felt so lonely.  Karl was kipping like a baby, next to me yet a million miles away. 

Karl awoke at eight, opened his eyes bewilderedly, thought better of the idea and adjusted them to a squint that admitted the merest chink of hangover-inflaming light.  He looked rough and, for the first time since I’d known him, distinctly unfanciable. 

Perhaps that might make it easier, I thought.  He will be easier to part from while he isn’t gorgeous.  This break-up will not be a gut-curdling wrench.  No.

‘What you boohooing for?’  His question was rather brainless, I thought, but his tone not unkind.  Mine was, though.  I hoped.

‘Why d’you bloody think?  Your little performance last night with Angela.’

‘Performance?’  He looked genuinely baffled, which irked me even more severely.  ‘We were just having fun, that’s all.  She’s a laugh – unlike you were yesterday.’

‘Well funnily enough, Karl, I didn’t feel much like laughing yesterday,’ I snapped haughtily, ‘I travelled all the way down here, despite the fact I’m not feeling very well right now – ’

‘I didn’t make you, did I?’ he huffed.  ‘You could have cancelled the trip if you were poorly.’

‘But for some weird reason, I actually wanted to see you.  I wish I hadn’t bothered now, though, seeing as you weren’t exactly delighted by my arrival, and then you snubbed me all night while you sucked up to that scraggy bitch!  Have you shagged her?’

I was petrified of hearing his reply, but knew I must and braced myself for the worst.

‘So what if I have?’  He shrugged cruelly.  ‘Me and you don’t own one another.  We’re only nineteen.  Perhaps we should cool things off.’

‘So you have then?’  I tried my hardest to sound aggressive, but a devastated sob cracked my voice.

‘I haven’t, as it happens – she’s only a mate – but would you care anyway?  How do I know what you’re getting up to at uni?  You could have had half the men in Brum for all I know.’

This was the type of astoundingly insensitive thing Ben was forever coming out with.  Angry blood scorched my face.  Ben was the very last person I’d imagined Karl would ever remind me of – and the very last person I wanted in my thoughts right now.

‘How dare you – ’ 

‘Well you were looking a little bit cosy with Kev last night.’

‘That’s rich, considering you spent the whole night ignoring me and sniffing round her gusset!  Kevin was the only one actually being pleasant to me.’

‘You were with Barry quite a bit too.  I was getting quite jealous in there.’

‘You were?’

This boy was unbelievable!

‘Mmm.  I felt like a tramp next to you.  Zo, it’s quite obvious you don’t think I’m good enough for you anymore.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’ve been looking down your nose at me from the minute you arrived.  You hate my new hair, and the way I dress, then last night you dolled yourself up to the nines like you were expecting me to take you to some posh nightclub.  I don’t know what kind of snooty boozers you go to in Birmingham, but down here we don’t go in for anything fancy.  You used to like me the way I was.’

‘I do – or I did.  But you’ve changed.’

‘I’m not the one who’s changed.  What’s up, Zo – have you been mixing with too many stuck-up poets and English professors, or something?’

‘You’re the one who’s been like an iceberg with me lately.  You never phone or write like you used to.’

‘I’ve been mega busy.  It’s all right for you bloody Arts students – you’re lucky if you get one lecture a month – bit it’s well-known that vets and medics have the heaviest work schedule.  I thought you might understand that.  You used to be so easygoing – like Angie is now.  I suppose that’s why I get on so well with her.  I like people I can feel relaxed with.’

‘You and your bloody Angie!  She wasn’t very easygoing on me last night.  All those questions in the pub!  And I like the way you just sat and laughed as her and that Barry interrogated me.  You didn’t stick up for me or anything, and didn’t give a shit that I had to run off because I thought I was going to throw up.  You sent your tart in after me with that message saying “Get your skates on, pukey!”  That was nice and sensitive, wasn’t it!’

‘I said no such thing.  I only asked Ange to go in there and see if you were all right and tell you we were going to the disco.  I could hardly go in there after you myself, could I?  I didn’t even know you’d gone in there for a spew.’

‘Then what the hell did you think I was doing in there all that time?’

‘I dunno – a huge log.’

‘Oh Karl!’

‘Too vulgar for you, am I?’  He sighed sullenly and slumped back on his pillow.  ‘Oh Zo, why don’t you just go and find somebody else?  Somebody better – because I’m clearly not good enough for you anymore.  It shouldn’t be too difficult with your stunning looks.  Let’s nip this thing in the bud now and go our separate ways, eh?’

The nausea that was already lining my stomach took a stronger grip.  I hardly knew whether to throw up or burst into a mad sobbing fit.  But at the merest hint of tears, Karl jerked away from me and folded his arms across his still T-shirted chest.  He seemed genuinely afraid of getting too close.

‘You really mean that?’ I mewled incredulously.  ‘It’s all over?’

‘Don’t start getting all emotional on me,’ he said coldly, with a glare that could have frozen curry, ‘I can’t take it.’

This further rejection proved to be the straw that turned the camel’s stomach.  I dashed out to the nearest loo – grabbing Karl’s manky blue dressing gown from the back of his door, to shield my modesty from his fellow students – and disgorged gallons of soupy vomit down the pan. 

I was in there for ages, crying and retching, but Karl did not so much as knock the door to check on me.  Neither was there a hug for me when I returned to his room.  He continued lounging in bed, not acknowledging or even appearing to register my presence.

‘So that’s it then?’ I wobbled.  I had never felt so vulnerable and tiny in my life.  ‘It’s over?  Just like that?’

‘I s’pose so,’ he replied blandly, staring at the wall.

‘I might as well go home then.’

I watched him, all sprawled and skeletal in that unkempt bed, willing him to leap out of zombie mode, fall prone to the ground and plead with me not to leave him.

‘If that’s what you want.’

I gulped hard, in desperate disappointment.

‘Right then.’

I dressed awkwardly, beneath the bathrobe with my back to him, as though he were a stranger in a changing room: partly because it would be far too undignified – indecent, even – for him to see me nude now; partly to hide my weir of tears from his uncaring eyes.

I hadn’t properly unpacked the previous day, so had only a few items to fling into my bag, which I zipped up with finality and slung over my weary shoulder.

‘Goodbye Karl.’  I slogged out of his room without a second glance.

And didn’t see him again for nine years. 

He wrote, though.  A green-inked epistle (it’s funny how I remember it was green – even though I ripped and binned it almost immediately, I can still see that lined page with its snot-coloured splodges) was in my pigeonhole the following  Tuesday.  I have extracted and paraphrased the relevant paragraphs:

It doesn’t have to be over – if you don’t want it to be.  I’m sorry if I was a bit naff to you at the weekend.  I was confused.  I suppose I was trying to hurt you.  I’ve had my worries about you going off me, and then I got a bit mad when I saw you getting on so well with the lads. 

You also sounded dead casual when Angie asked if you and I were serious in the pub – I thought you might be giving me the brush-off because you wanted Kev to think you were available.  I found this dead hurtful.  That’s why I decided to leave you to it and spend the night having a laugh with Angie.  At least she is friendly and genuinely likes me.

I was serious about you, Zo (well I still am if you feel the same), but I can’t waste my time on someone who’s indifferent and bored of me.

Please be honest.  If it’s over, tell me, and set me free to date a girl who likes me for the person I am now.

In the circumstances, it was a rather nice letter.  Reasonable, rational, candid.  But as a rash nineteen-year-old, all I read were the ceaseless eulogies for Angela.  How dare he compare me to that harpy!  No girl likes to hear another spoken of in reverential terms – just as kids automatically hate the neighbourhood swot, whom their mother and teachers hold up as a shining example of how an adolescent angel ought to behave.

It stirred up the ‘sod you’ instinct in me.  Shaking with rage, I scribbled an indignant little reply, to the effect of ‘Angela is welcome to you.  Don’t contact me again.’

And, until August 2003, he did not.

‘What’s this?’  I looked with disgust at the proffered Post-It note.

‘It’s my phone number,’ Karl replied.

I sneered cynically.

‘Is this what you give to all the girls at the end of your nights out?’

‘There aren’t many girls I want phoning me these days.  Only one, to be precise.  And I don’t have all that many nights out.’

‘Ooh – I am privileged!’

‘I can quite understand why you’d get sarky with me, and I make no claims to be a prize catch, but I’m just here for you.  If you need a mate – or anything else, for that matter.  No pressure.  I just thought – ’

‘No thanks.’  With great disdain, I pushed the yellow sticky back across the table.

‘No?’

‘I know it’s hard to believe, it must be more than your ego can bear, but I have no use for your telephone number.’

‘But we’ve been getting on so well.  We’ve had such a great evening.’

He looked so crushed and little boy-ish – and spoke such truth – that I had trouble maintaining my ice-bitch façade, but if dignity was to stay in tact, then maintain it I must.

‘You know, when we started talking this evening I could really remember why I first fell for you – but now I can only remember why I dumped you.  You were right – you were a prat on that weekend.’

‘I know I was.  The biggest prat that ever wore shoes.  I haven’t stopped regretting it since.  But haven’t I earned myself a pardon after nine years?  Nineteen-year-old students aren’t exactly renowned for their maturity – does that mean they should never be allowed to have feelings or want to settle down as they get older?’

He was right.  So, so right.  What had he done but be a normal lad?  He hadn’t murdered anyone, or slept with my mother – and the fact he was now apologising for his normal laddishness must speak volumes about his adult character…

‘But you hurt me,’ I said stubbornly.  ‘In fact, you broke my heart.  I thought I was never going to get over you.  I went out with other lads, but it was ages before I could get properly involved with anyone.’

‘If it’s any consolation, I was in precisely the same boat.  Still am, in fact.’

‘Yeah, but I bet you got it together with that Angela, eh?’

‘I’m ashamed to say that I did.’  He truly did look ashamed too – as though he had just confessed to having sex with goats or something.  ‘But then the girl had had half of Bristol by the time she’d graduated.  I only went out with her for a short time.  You were dead right about her – unfortunately, I discovered the hard way that she was a complete slapper.’

‘Cheat on you, did she?’ I asked callously.

‘She did.  She was a cow – though I shouldn’t really say that as it’s an insult to some of the charming cows I’ve met in my veterinary capacity!’

I nodded, taking this in with a kind of satisfaction.

‘You seemed totally besotted with her on that stupid night.’

‘I really don’t know what I was thinking of, Zoe.  She put it all into my head that you’d turned snobby and that she was this wacky funster who thought I was great.  And I’m ashamed to say that I fell for it.’

‘So she turned you against me?’

‘That’s about the size of it.  She was jealous of you because you were so gorgeous.  She made me believe that all pretty girls must be stuck-up tarts whereas gawky, boobless scarecrows like her were all down to earth and lovely.  Well she proved herself wrong on that one.’

‘And were you with her before or after you broke up with me?’

‘After – believe me.  I never cheated on you.  If anything, I was paranoid about you being unfaithful.  I’d got this idea – influenced by her, naturally – that you were off clubbing in the big city with all these sophisticated blokes every night.  I was too dim to ever consider that you might be entertaining the same kind of thoughts about me.  I had a right chip on my shoulder because, to be honest, my workload was much heavier than I’d imagined and I thought you were probably out there larging it while I was stuck in every night learning about myxomatosis.  That’s probably why when I did venture out, like on that night, I tended to go a bit mad.’

‘Perhaps I wasn’t understanding enough either, though,’ I mused apologetically, ‘I didn’t appreciate how hard you were working.  I was expecting your life to still revolve around me.’

‘But it did.  If the truth be known.  You were the centre of my universe, and I took it hard when you sent me that final letter.  What could I do, though, after that?  Bombarding you with letters would hardly have impressed you, and at the end of the day a boy’s got his pride too, so I threw myself into my studies, got a good degree and tried my hardest to forget you.

‘I did plan to look you up when I left Bristol and came back up here to work.  I thought the dust might have settled by then and we could have made friends again, but then I heard you were with Neil and realised I’d missed my chance.  I’ve never met anyone else special.  In fact, our relationship still holds the record for being the longest I’ve ever had.’

‘Really?’  That was interesting.

‘Really.  Zo, aren’t I forgiven?  Haven’t I proved to you tonight that I’m a changed man?’

I twiddled with the cruet set, entirely unable to meet his eyes, which looked dangerously sincere.

I thought of our Holly Lane ‘wedding,’ and all the subsequent intimacy and jocularity we shared.  And then I thought of that horrendous Friday in Bristol, and the way I’d rebuilt my life since it.  I was happy now.  I couldn’t…no, I just couldn’t!

Following an infinite pause, I answered: ‘I’m sorry Karl’ – which was no lie – ‘I just can’t take the risk of getting involved with you again.’

‘At least take this.’  He gave me his number back.  ‘Fold it away in your purse, forget about it, maybe unfold it one day and call me up.  I’ll leave the ball in your court.’

I considered it for a second, then did as he said: folded it into a tiny square and zipped it into my purse – without memorising a single digit.

‘I suppose this is ta-ra then,’ Karl said regretfully as the waiter flew back with his Switch card.  He’d paid – ‘the very least I could so, since I dragged you away from your Jerry under false pretences’ – with which I was not entirely comfortable, as I didn’t want to feel beholden to him.  ‘Come on – I’ll walk you to your car.’

Outside, we exchanged a self-conscious hug, which I was rather desirous to break and he desirous to maintain.

‘So maybe we’ll speak soon,’ he said somewhat gruffly as he twiddled with his car lock, ‘goodbye Zoe.  Drive carefully.’

I climbed into my own car, watching him in my wing mirror.  He brushed something out of his eye and, after a little pause, revved away.

I will not phone him, I vowed decisively.  I am merely taking his number out of politeness.  I may even chuck it in the bin when I get home.

I will never see him again.  Off he roars in his Astra, and – oh, he’s turning right at the island now, and there – yes, that is the last I shall ever see of Karl Corbett.

I have exorcised him from my life, and I feel great.

Next time an old classmate invites me to a school reunion, I shall not tell them I would be delighted to attend.  I shall give an altogether different reply – the second word off which shall be ‘off’!

Deep breaths, count to ten.

I am calm and peaceful.

I started my car, pressed the clutch, slid her into reverse and steered out of the car park; away from this semi-familiar landscape.  I drove home believing myself a stronger, wiser person who had learned a valuable lesson about distance lending enchantment and the dangers of trying to relive one’s past.