I wrote this story as a present for my wife, who loved it (she said), so I decided to post it to see what a less biased audience would make of it. It is rather long, and is in two parts, both of which have been submitted. It is my first submission and depending on the response, it may also be my last!
It is written in British English. Though written in the first person, it is not autobiographical.
All persons in sexual situations are 18 years old or older. The age of students in the final year of many British High Schools is eighteen years and many students go straight on to university from school.
------
Every Sunday on the BBC's Radio 2 Programme, there is a two hour programme called 'Sunday Love Songs'. Listeners ring, email or write in with requests for loved ones. Children ring in about parents, husbands about wives and vice versa; wedding anniversaries and birthdays are celebrated. It is generally a programme to give one optimism about the human condition. All these people love each other and want to extol their love, while surprising their loved ones. Wonderful.
Well, yes. Except there is one part of the show when 'long lost loves' are featured. Someone would ring in and tell of a person with whom they have lost touch. It was when my name was mentioned that I wondered about the wisdom of listening to this particular programme.
"Nicola Grayson has emailed us to find a lost love. Ten years ago she was at school with Kevin Connors and they lived near each other in Sunderland. They were 'close' for their final year at school, but after school they lost touch. Kevin it seems went off to Oxford University, while Nicola went to Durham. She wrote for a while but then university life intervened and the letters stopped."
Yes, I bet it did,
I thought,
and I bet I know what she was doing to lose concentration!
Also I didn't think 'close' aptly described how we were for the final year of High School.
"So, Kevin, once of Sunderland, if you'd like to link up with Nicola, ring us at BBC..."
I had severe doubts that I wanted to 'link up with' Nicola. The intervening ten years had been peaceful; enjoyable. Busy, but peaceful. The same could not be said of that final school year, 'the year of Nicola'.
I still called it that; it was etched, bitter sweet, in my memory. Mainly bitter, come to think of it.
-----
Nicola Grayson was by far the prettiest girl in the school. She had always been pretty, but at eighteen, in our final year at High School, she was stunningly beautiful.
Let's start at the top. She had shoulder length straight lustrous rich dark brown hair with lighter highlights, all natural. She kept it clean and it always shone. It was thick and she sometimes wore it in a pony tail, sometimes in a chignon, or an updo style. She had blue eyes, very blue, startlingly so. Delicate features, small nose, wide mouth. Her neck was long and slender; she was slim, her breasts medium in size, her waist narrow and her hips still slim but wider, giving her a graceful hour-glass figure, and there were those long shapely legs. The effect was staggering. She smiled easily, and when she smiled, her face seemed to shine.
She took after her mother in looks. We had all seen her mother, who was a devastating beauty in her own right. Her father was some sort of executive. She was highly intelligent, but tended towards languages, where I was into maths and science.
However she had always been held on a tight leash by her parents ever since we all started at school at age eleven. They never let her out of their sight, always collecting her after school. She was never seen at weekends or evenings.
However, from second year, she and I always walked to school together. It seemed that her parents thought she was safe enough to walk to school on her own. None of her friends lived on her route, so she walked alone until we met one morning.
It happened like this.
I had to take a message to one of my aunts on the way to school. I emerged from Aunt Mary's front gate to find Nicola with her back against the garden wall, and in front of her a large dog growling. She was crying and terrified, and the dog sensed her terror. There was no dog owner in evidence.
At that time we had a dog, and I knew what to do. I strode confidently up to the animal and shouted at it in as gruff voice as I could manage. I think I told it to go home. Its tail went down between its legs and it slunk off.
"You OK?" I asked.
"Yes thanks," she said giving me a grateful smile.
We fell in step and I walked with her to school. We talked about our families, where we lived, and school. The dog was not mentioned.
When we reached the school gates, she said offhandedly, "If I come by your place tomorrow morning -- walk in with me?"
"OK."
No more was said. I got some grief from my mates, but I realised they were jealous and told them so. So began a routine that continued throughout our school life, until that fateful last year. We walked to school together, and parted at the gates. She joined her mates, and I joined mine. On the way our conversations changed as we grew, and we shared a great deal about our lives, our hopes and dreams. We promised each other that our talks would never go further than each other, and they never did.
She lived a number of roads away from our house. We were an average income family, but her family were wealthy, and thought they were a cut above the rest.
That daily routine changed in our final school year. She was now eighteen and as I said, was strikingly beautiful. Something had changed at home for her: her father had to spend a year in the middle east and her parents both went, leaving her to lodge with an aunt who lived even closer to my house, only two roads away.
Now her parents were not picking her up from school, she and I walked to and from school together. My delight could hardly be hidden: I was walking the prettiest girl to and from school, though once at school she was monopolised by the captain of the football team.
My younger sister Lorraine teased me unmercifully about her.
My relationship with Nicola was all to change dramatically for the worse shortly after Christmas.
Nicola asked me out. Astonishment is a word that does not do justice to my feelings.
"May I take you out for a meal?" she asked on the way to school.
"Pardon?"
"May I take you out for a meal? I want to talk with you."
"Um, well, yes!" I replied. Heaven opened its doors and the heavenly choir sang loudly.
"Friday?"
"OK, thanks Nicola."
If I was surprised by her invitation, I was about to be confounded by what she had to say. She picked me up at home in a taxi, and took me to a high-end restaurant. My family had a little money, but I knew she had much, much more. We passed the time chatting until the dessert and coffee. I was in a mellow mood having consumed half a bottle of red wine with her (eighteen is the legal drinking age in Britain), when she got to business.
"Kevin, I asked you out for a meal to ask you a favour."
"Yes?" At that stage I would have granted her anything, but I was not prepared for what followed.
"You know I'm going with Barry?"
Barry Wilkes was the aforesaid Captain -- one of the jocks. I was what is now termed a 'nerd'. I was not on a school team, and had little interest or association with those who were. I was on my way, I hoped, to Oxford and a well paid job thereafter.
"Well, he's on at me to have sex."
