1986, Yorkshire, England.
Part one
Chapter 1
It was around 11am I received the phone call that turned my life upside-down.
"Edward, it's for you", my mother shouted from the hall. "A girl."
Who this mystery female caller could be, I had no idea. My mother handed me the receiver with that knowing wink only a mother could give to her son.
"Hello?" I asked as much as greeted the caller.
"Edward, hey it's me!" Came the cheerful female voice, my mind was whirring at computer speed trying to process the identity of the particular
me
in question. The full name
Edward
was definitely said mockingly, in a way as to mimic my mother, everyone I know calls me Ed.
"I give up, who is this?"
"My god Ed, have you forgotten me already?" The voice was becoming more and more familiar with every word.
"Kelly? Wow it's been a while!" I finally put a name to the voice, a talent that was never a strength of mine.
"Your first kiss," She said (not hers), "walking home from school that day in year 8, did it mean that little to you?" She feigned offence.
On the contrary, it had meant the world to me. She was the prettiest girl in my year group, I was overwhelmed and couldn't kiss her for more than a few seconds as it felt like my knees would give out.
We went on a few dates and kissed some more, but attention spans are short at the age of thirteen, events took their natural course. Kelly dated a boy from year ten and I had my first heartbreak. Five years had passed since then and Kelly was on the phone to me out of the blue.
"Anyway, it's been almost two years since we left school, what are you up to these days? Are you on a YTS? I'm on one, training to be a hairdresser at my mother's salon." Kelly went on.
The Youth Training Scheme was a government initiative. Many eighties kids left school and went on a YTS, it was a full-time job that paid around the same as unemployment benefit, but was intended to give the young person a skill for a career. What it did for sure was remove them from the streets and the unemployment statistics.
"Yeah, I'm in the steelworks. It's hot and hard work but I'm hoping they'll take me on permanently."
"So now we've caught up, I thought we should see more of each other", she teased, as though she were coming to a bigger point. "A lot more as it happens."
"Really?" I asked, still unsure as to the direction in which this conversation was going.
"The crazy old man next door to you, he died a few months ago, yes?"
George, bless him, was a generous old gentleman. He suffered from what we would now call Alzheimer's disease, but in 1986 he was senile, or plain old crazy. "Yeah, why?" I asked.
"My mother has split with my stepdad, we're moving in next to you." Kelly finally got to the point.
"That's amazing, Kel, when do you move in?"
"Tomorrow morning, we're packed and ready, I can't wait to see you, now we're grown up."
It was only two years since I saw her last, but at the age of eighteen, that seemed like a lifetime. I remember our final week in school, she was so popular and stunningly pretty, her light brown hair always had blonde highlights and the style seemed to change every week.
Simply, she was way out of my league, despite our kisses years before. "Take care, Ed." was the last thing she said to me with a kiss on the cheek when school was over for the final time.
And yet, here she was on the phone. She had kept my number all this time. It would be a welcome sight to see her pretty face over the garden wall. Garden is what we called it, back yard is what it was in reality. A faceless terraced house on a terraced street in the town of Trembley, Yorkshire, England.
Trembley was a small town that grew up around coal mines. The mines began to disappear before I was born and eventually disappeared completely. The town was lucky, we had a steelworks half a mile down the road, and a big glassmaking factory just beyond that. Many towns and their inhabitants didn't fare as well.
We said our goodbyes until the morning. My mother had been listening from the other room "Anyone I should know about?"
"Our new neighbours, Mum."
Chapter 2
The terraced house in which I, my two younger brothers and two younger sisters were born, was too small for a family of seven. My father was a truck driver and we only saw him at weekends. Consequently, much of the time I was the man of the house. The kids were growing up fine and with good manners. I took pride and a little satisfaction with my part in helping with that.
The loft had been converted into a fourth bedroom for me. For this privacy I was grateful. It was to there I retreated after the call from Kelly. Maybe now, I wasn't out of her league completely like before.
The hot, manual labour at the steelworks kept me slim and fit without the need to work out. The dark brown hair which had been curly (for which I'd been teased cruelly in high school. "Pube-head" I was known as), was straightening into more mature waves. I was confident that my dick, which nobody had yet experienced the pleasure of, was a good size, or at least average.
I wanted to imagine Kelly, seeing her every day. Maybe sunbathing in the back yard, in a small bikini, asking me to rub the sunscreen on her back and legs, rubbing it into her perfect ass cheeks, untying her bikini strap and rubbing all over her back as she moaned with pleasure. I closed the bedroom door and imagined some more.