NATALIE LUCAS
Sixteen, Sixty-One
A memoir

authonomy

by HarperCollinsPublishers

For Trish, who saved my life

Table of Contents

Title Page

Dedication

Preface

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Part Two

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Part Three

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Epilogue

Thanking

About Authonomy

Footnotes

Letter 1 transcript

Letter 2 transcript

Letter 3 transcript

About the Book

Copyright

About the Publisher

Preface

14th May 2007

Dear Matthew

Dear Mr Wright

Dear Albert Sumac

Dear Bastard

Dear Ghost,

My therapist keeps asking what I’d say to you if I had the chance. I wonder this myself: what will I say if we bump into each other when I return home this summer? I see your grey eyes coolly inspecting my appearance, noticing I’ve put on weight and look plainer with my hair this length. I imagine you composing an email after the event, though you no longer have my address, so perhaps it’ll be a letter. It will tell me I’ve turned into my mother or that I was cruel to return or that you’re shocked by how evil I’ve become. The worst thing you could write would be that you’re proud of me.

None of this will have been provoked. I see myself still moving on the same strip of pavement, heading for a collision, and I see the moment of horrified surprise that will wash your tanned face of its careful persona, a flash of reality, followed by your collecting yourself, straightening your spine and telling me how nice it is to see me, how was studying abroad?

But I cannot see my own face in this. I cannot form a response, hysterical or otherwise. All I can picture are fantasies of keying your car and smearing pig’s blood on your door, of scratching the letters P-A-E-D-O on your bonnet and hurling bricks through your French windows. Sometimes I scare myself thinking I actually would post a petrol bomb through your letterbox if I could be sure Annabelle was out. And if I wasn’t a wimpy English Literature student with no idea how to make a petrol bomb.

I imagine you now, reading this and laughing. This means you’ve won, doesn’t it? You are still inside me. At sixteen, you filled me with love and that was bad, but now you fill me with hate and this is worse. I hate that you have this power still. Are you flattered? Maybe this is better for you: most people can be loved, there is nothing extraordinary in that. Even the plebs you scorn have their Valentine’s cards and wedding bands. But how many people are utterly despised? How many people are in someone else’s thoughts every day and in their nightmares every night? You should be proud: you’ve achieved some kind of immortality, even if you haven’t written that book you said you would, filmed your screenplay, or established your name.

I hate you by any name.

Sincerely,

Nat

Harriet

Lilith

Natalie

PART ONE

1

I was fifteen when my second life began.

It was the summer of 2000. Other things that happened that summer included Julie Fellows allowing Tom Pepper to touch her nipples for the first time, Sam Roberts claiming to have gone all the way with Rose Taylor and her denying it, Wayne Price getting permanently excluded for selling his crushed-up medication on the playground, Mrs Forman resigning her post as head of English amid rumours of an affair with the new science teacher, Pete Sampras winning his thirteenth Grand Slam title at Wimbledon, the leaders of North and South Korea meeting for the first time and the News of the World campaigning for new legislation giving parents the right to know whether a convicted paedophile lived in their area.

Sheltered from such dramas, my first life had been pretty regular. I grew up in a small town in the countryside. I had a mother, a father and a brother. My parents separated when I was eleven, but my mum, my brother and I only moved across town, a few streets away. After we moved, I fell out with my dad for a few years. He began dating twenty-three-year-olds, going to raves and acting like a teenager. I began revising for my SATs, reading books and swapping notes with boys in class. I had my first kiss when I was eleven – with Harry Heeley on the bus back from swimming practice while Kayla Weatherford timed us with her digital watch and Danny King looked out for Mrs Rice walking up the aisle. Shortly after that I started secondary school, where I held hands with Ben Legg, Robbie Burton, Chris Price, Michael Peterson, Stephen Hunt, Simon Shaw, Steven Critchley, David Robson, Gavin Gregs, Reece Cook and a guy at youth club known as Spike.

My favourite item of clothing was a floor-length denim skirt I could hardly walk in. My dark blonde hair reached my shoulder blades in a thick tangle, curtaining my face when I wanted to hide from the world. I’d recently purchased my first pair of tweezers and a box of Jolen personal bleach but had yet to use either, thus noticeable hairs shadowed both my upper lip and between my brows. I was short, not even five foot one – a situation I had tried to rectify a month ago by convincing my dad to spend £16 on five-inch silver platform sandals. I’d worn them with denim pedal-pushers to go shopping and would never again remove the Bowie-esque disasters from beneath my bed.

I considered a day a good one if I managed to avoid embarrassing myself during the seven excruciating hours spent at my mediocre school in the next town. They were few. Most recently, the blonde, bronzed netball captain had seemed to befriend me in order to confirm rumours that I had a crush on Stuart Oxford and, moments after I confided in her, summoned him to tell me – over the sniggers of all around – that he had a girlfriend (a hockey-playing, make-up wearing, French-kissing, Winona Ryder-look-alike girlfriend), but if she and all the other girls in this and every other school coincidentally fell in a vat of beauty-destroying acid, perhaps he’d take me to the cinema. Later that week, I’d also managed to alienate Rachael, the one friend I still had, while we secretly watched her sister’s Sex and the City videos by claiming with confidence that spooning was a kinky form of anal sex and I thought it disgusting. She’d asked her sister to clarify and told me at school the next day that I was full of shit and would probably die a virgin.

While on the topic, though I’d had a few boyfriends and even touched Peter Booth’s thing after we’d been ‘going out’ for six months (but only for a second before feeling utterly repulsed, darting out of the tent to find another cherry-flavoured Hooch and telling him I didn’t want to be his girlfriend any more), I had never handled a condom, still believed you could get pregnant from oral sex and had a poster of Dean Cain dressed as Superman on my wardrobe door that I’d torn out of Shout magazine at the age of twelve.

However, for all my naiveties, I was worldly-wise enough to realise owning up to them was out of the question. I may have known nothing about boys or sex that I hadn’t read in the Barbara Taylor Bradford novels my mum left in the loo, but I had never received less than an A*. I studied long words in the dictionary with the same voracity others my age collected Pokemon cards, I watched the news rather than cartoons and I made it a point to have every adult who met me comment, at least to themselves, ‘She’s so mature for her age.’

Why was I mature? One therapy analysis would conclude it had something to do with being a product of a broken home, my parents splitting up the same year I transferred from primary to secondary school and my devastated mother telling me every nasty thing she could think about my father as we packed our family lives into boxes and moved out of the thirteen-room Georgian detached house that had been a home for the first eleven years of my life. Another would suggest it was down to the amount I read and my stubborn insistence on skipping straight from The Famous Five to Anita Shreve, Margaret Atwood, Pat Barker and Paul Auster, bypassing entirely those Goosebumps and Point Horror years that might shape an average teenager’s development. And another theory entirely would say that, as of yet, I wasn’t any more mature for my age than every other teenager who wants to be grown: that it was what came next that thrust me into an adult world with a child’s mind.

My second life began one Saturday in March when I begrudgingly followed my mum to a tea party at a neighbour’s house. We lived on a row of skinny Edwardian semis on the edge of town, the gardens backing on to a small wood beyond which acres of farmland stretched towards the horizon. The party was at the end of the street. Even my brother James decided this outing required sufficiently little effort to warrant attending, so the three of us plodded the few dozen steps along the pavement to be ushered through to the open-plan kitchen of number twenty-seven.

Once inside, the host Annabelle handed us mugs of tea and directed us through clumps of people to help ourselves from the buffet table. I loaded a plate with sausage rolls and fairy cakes and scuttled to a chair in the corner. When I’d swallowed my first mouthful and was reaching for my sugary tea, a voice spoke from my left.

‘I hate these things.’

I looked over and saw the mildly familiar face of Annabelle’s husband.

‘Isn’t this your party?’ I placed another sausage roll on my tongue and, noting the glass of wine in his hand, wondered if he was drunk.

‘Oh yeah, of course you have to put on a show, keep them all happy.’

‘What d’you mean?’ I asked, only half interested.

‘See over there?’ He pointed. ‘My in-laws. She chairs the WI and he sets the church quiz every Tuesday. If I didn’t throw a party, especially for a “big” birthday like this, I’d be hung, drawn and quartered by the gossipy blue-rinse brigade. Barbara’d come knocking on our door asking Annabelle what’s wrong, was I ill? Were we having marital problems? Annabelle would try to shut her mother up and Barb’d shriek, “What will everyone say?” and we’d end up having a party just to calm her down anyway. Much easier this way.’

I tried to stifle a giggle and almost choked on a large flake of pastry as he put on an old woman’s voice and flailed his arms in prim horror.

‘I’m sure it’s not as bad as all that. How old are you anyway?’

‘How old do you think I am?’ He looked at me with a smile.

‘Oh no, now you’ll get offended.’

‘I promise I won’t.’

‘Hmm, okay. Well, you said it’s a big one, and I’m pretty sure you’re older than my parents, so I guess it must be fifty.’

‘HA!’ His face cracked into a grin and he spilt a little wine on his beige trousers as he chuckled to himself.

‘What?’

‘I think you’re my new best friend.’

‘What, are you older? Fifty-five?’

‘Nope.’ He grinned.

‘Well you can’t be sixty, I don’t believe you’re sixty.’ Sixty was the age of grandparents, that pensionable age where spines curved and walking sticks were suddenly required. The man before me was a little wrinkled and his hair was silver, but his skin was brown, his eyes sparkled and his limbs moved with muscular ease. He certainly betrayed no signs of qualifying for free prescriptions on the NHS. I liked him; he was funny; he couldn’t be sixty.

But he was nodding.

‘Wow.’

‘Yep, I was born in the first half of the last century. It scares me because I don’t feel that old, but I can remember the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.’

I was silent.

‘You don’t even know when that was, do you? Oh dear. 1953. I was eleven. But that’s enough of old-fuddy-duddy talk anyway; let’s speak of youthful things. What rubbish are they teaching you at school these days?’

‘I’m revising for my GCSEs,’ I replied importantly, dismissing his implication that my studies were anything but monumental. ‘And next week I have to pick what subjects to do for A-Level. It’s pretty stressful.’

‘What are you going to take?’

‘Well, at the moment, I think it’ll be Maths, Further Maths, Business and Geography, but I’m not sure.’

He recoiled. ‘Yikes, what would you want to do those for?’

‘What’s wrong with them?’

‘Nothing, they’re just all so dull.’ He faked a long, loud yawn. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

‘An actuary … or maybe a lawyer.’

‘Oh dear. Child, you’re going to have a boring life. Have you met the people who go into those professions? They have no gnosis, no emotions, no pulse. They’re just money-grubbing machines.’

‘That’s not true,’ I replied defensively, though I’d no idea what ‘gnosis’ meant. ‘Some of the work’s really interesting. And I like numbers.’

‘But what about the poetry? The passion?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t you do English and Art? Aren’t there any subjects that make you feel excited, spark your creativity?’

‘Well, sure. I love English and I gave up Art in Year 9 but I still like sketching and things. They’re not exactly practical career options, though.’

‘Says who?’

‘Um, my mum, my teachers, the careers adviser.’

‘What do they know? They’re stuck in unfulfilling jobs that sap all creativity. What would the world be like if every artist since Shakespeare had followed the advice of their careers advisers and become lawyers instead?’

I was silent.

‘What they don’t want to tell you is that none of it’s real. Earning money and following the system isn’t real living, it’s just what you have to do in order to find the space to live. The whole thing is an elaborate unreality designed to make us conform. Have you read Nineteen Eighty-Four?’

I shook my head.

‘What about Hermann Hesse?’

‘No.’

‘I tell you what, you say you like English, how about I lend you some books? You can take them away and when you’re done, come and have a pot of tea with me and we’ll talk about this actuary business.’

I took away Steppenwolf and The Outsider that day. Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Mrs Dalloway, The Age of Innocence, Brighton Rock, The Plague, The Bell Jar, The Pupil and Sophie’s World followed.

Each time I returned a book, Matthew would carry it down the stairs and place it delicately on the farmhouse table while he boiled the kettle. After nestling the cosy on the pot, he’d offer me a chair and, sitting opposite me, begin: ‘So, what did it make you think?’

‘I don’t know.’ I was shy at first; worried my thoughts wouldn’t be deep enough, worried I would have missed the point of the prose, that I wasn’t reading as I was meant to, that he might think me stupid.

‘Come on, there’s no right or wrong answer. I just want to know how the book affected you.’

Gradually, I allowed myself to answer.

‘It made me wonder why people have to conform.’ (Camus)

‘It made me think one single day can offer more beauty and pain than a whole lifetime.’ (Woolf)

‘It made me question whether a society can condition you to accept anything and, if so, whether there’s any such thing as right or wrong.’ (Huxley)

‘It made me think philosophy is like maths: just logic applied to the world. So, if you think hard enough, there must be an answer, but that religion seems to get in the way.’ (Gaarder)

‘It made me think I should dislike the character, but I didn’t.’ (Hesse)

‘It made me wish I’d been born in that time.’ (Sartre)

And, of course, like every girl my age: ‘It reminded me of me.’ (Plath)

‘Excellent.’ Matthew smiled. ‘Existentialism asks all those questions and comes to the conclusion that the only thing that’s for certain is that we exist; we are here. Nothing else is real. All this crap society puts into our heads: money, work, school, cars, class, status, children, wives – everything we’re supposed to care about – it’s completely unreal. True reality is what’s in our minds. And when you accept that, you realise that conforming to society’s rules just makes you a sheep. You might as well die now. Only a few people have the courage to truly accept this and those are the few that stick their heads above the manhole-cover, who make art and seek out love. I call them Uncles. They’re usually persecuted for it, but at least they’re living.’

‘Why “Uncles”?’ I asked.

He frowned as if I’d missed the point, but shrugged and replied, ‘Because parents are too close, they fuck you up, so it’s down to Uncles, relatives with a little distance, to guide you through life. When I was slightly older than you I found a mentor, I called him Uncle. It was a sign of respect back then, but now I know it means more.’

I considered his words after I left. I watched my mum cooking dinner and wondered if she had ever stuck her head above the manhole-cover. I observed James playing on the PlayStation and decided he hadn’t yet realised the world was unreal. Visiting my dad at the weekend, I looked at him tinkering in the shed and thought perhaps he’d never read Camus.

I sat on my bed and looked out the window.

That is unreal, I thought. Only I am real.

At school, I began to feel I was play-acting in my unreality. It made it easier to deal with the popular girls who told me to pluck my eyebrows, but I found my reality a little lonely. I felt like Matthew was the only person who understood it, so I began visiting him more often. If school and home and youth club and the Post Office were all unreal, Matthew’s kitchen and the pack of cards between us were real.

Annabelle often busied herself in her bedroom, but always asked if I wanted to stay for dinner. The three of us gossiped about the neighbours over shepherd’s pie and sometimes climbed the stairs to watch Friends in their living room. I shared the second sofa with the cat.

One evening, after I’d brushed my teeth and was climbing into bed, my mum knocked on my door.

‘Can I come in?’

‘Of course.’

‘I just wanted to say goodnight.’

She looked uncomfortable.

‘Sweetie, I know you’re spending a lot of time with Matthew and that you’re fond of him. I just want you to be a little careful with him.’

‘What on earth do you mean?’ She didn’t reply and I looked at her in astonishment. ‘That’s ridiculous!’

‘I know, he’s a lovely man and I’m sure he wouldn’t do anything, but I’m a mother and I have to worry. So just promise me you’ll look after yourself.’

I made the promise and muttered angrily to myself as she left about just wanting a father figure because she’d picked such a rotten one in the first place.

When I told Matthew of the conversation the following day, he looked concerned.

‘Your mother’s a nice woman, but she’s steeped in the unreality. She’ll never be an Uncle and she’ll never understand. You may have to be more careful from now on.’

‘What do you mean?’

Instead of answering me, he sent me away with a collection of Oscar Wilde plays, one of which, The Importance of Being Earnest, was indicated with a bookmark.

On page 259 I found a word had been circled in pencil.

ALGERNON: … What you really are is a . I was quite right in saying you were a Bunburyist. You are one of the most advanced Bunburyists I know.

JACK: What on earth do you mean?

ALGERNON: You have invented a very useful younger brother called Ernest, in order that you may be able to come up to town as often as you like. I have invented an invaluable permanent invalid called Bunbury, in order that I may be able to go down into the country whenever I choose. Bunbury is perfectly invaluable. If it wasn’t for Bunbury’s extraordinary bad health, for instance, I wouldn’t be able to dine with you at Willis’s tonight, for I have been really engaged to Aunt Augusta for more than a week.

‘You think I should create my own Mr Bunbury?’ I asked the next time I saw Matthew.

‘Sure,’ he smiled, leading me to his study. ‘Bunburying is an essential part of life.’

‘I’m not sure I want to lie, though.’ I perched instinctively on the navy chaise longue.

‘I know you don’t, because you’re honest and true.’ Matthew sighed and sat heavily beside me. ‘But sadly you’ll have to if you want to live freely. It’s the dreadful irony of life that all Uncles really want is to live pure, innocent lives, but society forces them to play its sordid little games.’

‘So, do you have a Bunbury?’ I turned to face him.

‘I have many Bunburys my dear,’ he answered with a wink. ‘I’ve even had to assume whole other identities.’

After making me promise not to tell anyone, he unlocked a drawer in his desk and showed me the credit cards he had in other names.

Albert Sumac.

Leonard Bloom.

Charles Cain.

‘I mainly just use the first one. It’s been necessary for me to hide certain parts of my life from other parts of my life,’ he paused as he relocked the drawer. ‘For, um, financial reasons as well as personal ones.’

‘You’ve stolen money?’ I hiccupped.

‘You’re very blunt.’ His lips curled into that lazy smile I liked.

‘I don’t think I’ll be shocked.’ I sat up straight, feeling suddenly adult. ‘I’m just curious.’

Matthew returned to the chaise and spoke quietly to the bookcase on his left. ‘I took what I needed from my last employer when I left, yes. My son helped me hide it in the Channel Islands, and later I invested it in property in Kew. It was a one-off thing; now I just do a little tinkering of the books with my racing clients and the housing association where one of my flats is. They pay me – well, Albert – to manage the building and I skim a little off the top. It’s no worse than the banks do every day.’

‘And the personal reasons?’ I whispered excitedly.

‘Ah.’ He turned his wrinkled eyes to me. ‘Well, I’m afraid you might be shocked by those.’

‘I’m not a child!’ I blurted.

‘You’re right, you’re not a child. Okay, well I suppose you’ll find out sometime.’ He glanced quickly towards the closed door before whispering that he and Annabelle had an ‘arrangement’. I listened to his words with wide-eyes, neither daring to ask for details about this ‘arrangement’ nor questioning for one moment whether this might be the sort of line all adulterous men use to justify their actions.

‘You mean you see other women?’ My voice hit an embarrassingly-high note.

‘Shhh!’ He sat back with a grin. ‘I think you’re trying to make me blush today. Yes, I have other women. It’s a necessity of being an Uncle … and a man.’

I mulled over this for a moment, and then asked, ‘How many?’

‘Excuse me?’ He raised one caterpillar eyebrow.

‘Sorry, you don’t have to tell me,’ I mumbled. ‘I’m just curious how many women you’ve “needed”?’

‘In my whole life?’ he chuckled. ‘Annabelle asked me that once and made me count. I think it was sixty-three.’

‘You’re lying!’ I choked. ‘That’s ridiculous. It’s probably impossible.’

‘I wish it was,’ he sighed. ‘Sadly, there have only been a few I really cared about. For some, I can’t even remember their names.’

Over the coming weeks, in between philosophical discussions about art and Uncles and gossipy chats about next-door’s decision to cut down the oak tree, Matthew told me about the women in his life.

‘I used to have to sneak girls past the witch I lodged with. We tried every trick in the book. As far as she knew, I had seven sisters who would each visit me on a different night of the week. Stupid old bag!’

I knew it was weird being told these stories, but I enjoyed them. I imagined them as scenes from black-and-white movies flickering through my mind and tried to work out what my silver-haired friend must have been like as a young man.

‘Sometimes, if I liked a girl, I’d treat her to a hotel room. But in those days they wouldn’t let just anyone into hotels, so you had to pretend to have just got married or, if the manager had a heart, you could make up some sob story about her dad being out to get you but you just being a nice lad after all.’

‘My friend Thomas had this plan to put a mattress in the back of his van, but I think it got him more slaps than shags.’

‘I once kissed three generations of the same family. I was in love with Mrs Shelby when I was six and she gave me a kiss after the school play, then later I dated her daughter Jenny, and when she got too old and grey, I took out her daughter Rose.’

‘Jocelyn was an actress. She never had a penny, but her breasts were magnificent.’

‘Linda was a secretary and used to steal office supplies for me, so I could work from my flat. I hated going into Fleet Street; drinking was the only thing that made it bearable.’

‘Amy was fun; she didn’t mind doing it outside or in the car.’

‘Julie almost killed me. She came to pick me up from work so we could go to the pictures, but what I didn’t know was that she’d found out I was going with her flatmate too. Everything seemed normal and she stayed quiet as I chatted about my day, until she turned onto the motorway and just kept accelerating until we were going 120mph and I was clutching the door handle for dear life.’

‘Kate was beautiful, but she peed herself when she had an orgasm. I could never get into that.’

‘Elizabeth and I used to eat at the best restaurants, and then run out without paying. It put us on such a high. But she always fancied my friend more than me.’

‘Lucy wanted to marry me.’

‘Irene did marry me: trapped me into it by getting pregnant. I was still in Norfolk in those days and you couldn’t run out on a girl in farm country. It was different in the city. I liked the city.’

‘Marie – Annabelle’s friend whom I was seeing before her – was utterly neurotic. The stupid cow used to cry after sex and then insist on cooking me bacon and eggs, even in the middle of the night.’

After hearing these tales, when the teapot was cold or empty and Annabelle was making quiet fumbling noises in the hall – indicating she wanted some attention now – I would stumble onto the street and stare bewilderedly at the pavement I had plodded so many times before. I imagined the seven-year-old me, clad in a gingham dress and kicking stones with sensible shoes, and I wondered how she and I were still in the same place, how I could know so much now, yet still have to pretend to be the same little girl living the same little life in the same little town.

One day Matthew played me a Leonard Cohen album and began speaking in a much more serious tone.

‘Of course, what I was looking for yet was afraid to find all those years was what I had right at the beginning. When I went to university, my family made a big deal about it because I was the first one of us not to work on the farm. I wanted to go to Oxford, of course, but I failed my Latin, so Exeter it was. I was reading English Literature and rushed to join the department paper, to set up a John Donne society and to establish the best way to sneak books past the librarians. I was so innocent then, hardly thinking about girls.

‘Suzanne was in one of my lectures. She was from Paris and wore only black. All the boys were in love with her, but for some reason she came over to speak to me. I bought her a hot chocolate at a café and she took me back to meet her flatmate Marie-Anne.’

I noticed with something approaching panic that a tear had dribbled from Matthew’s eyeball.

‘We had from November to June together and it was perfect. The three of us lived in harmony: Marie-Anne and I both totally in love with Suzanne and loving each other for our mutual predicament. I would watch Suzanne spread out on the bed on spring afternoons, reading poetry aloud as Marie-Anne ran a razor ever so gently over her pubic bone, then softly kissed the raw skin.

‘But that upstart Mickey Robinson decided to publish something in the campus paper about our ménage à trois as he called it. It was the biggest scandal of the term and I was hauled into the Dean’s office. He was so embarrassed he couldn’t even look me in the face when he told me I was being sent down. Suzanne’s parents were informed and she was summoned back to France before any of us could say goodbye. But it was Marie-Anne who took it the worst.’

He was crying fully now and, borrowing a gesture learnt from films rather than life, I walked over to his chair and wrapped my skinny arms over his shoulders.

‘What happened to Marie-Anne?’ I asked softly.

‘She hanged herself in our flat. The landlady found her. I wasn’t even allowed to go to the funeral.’

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Before I learnt about Suzanne and the others, before I’d committed too fully to my second life, Matthew and I had to organise my Bunbury.

‘It’s regrettable, but I think it would be safest if we offered your mother a reason for you to come here so often.’

‘What sort of reason?’

‘Well, perhaps you could work for me. I’ll employ you to sort my books and maybe put my horseracing accounts on the computer. How about that?’

I’d never thought about what Matthew ‘did’. I knew he’d once been a journalist and was vaguely aware he now made money offering betting tips to a mysterious collection of ‘clients’, but generally I imagined he spent his days reading poetry and waiting for my visits. In contrast to my workaholic parents, Matthew’s life was so theoretical and luxurious that the concept of him sat in front of a computer concentrating on paid employment was almost laughable.

‘I really could do with sorting through my books – both the horsing ones, and these,’ he said, brushing his hand over an old edition of To the Lighthouse. ‘I’d like them in order throughout the house. We could do it together and drink cups of tea and discuss the dead poets as we go. As far as your mother’s concerned, you’d just be earning a bit of pocket money helping out a scatterbrained old gambler.’

Thus I began ‘working’ for Matthew. The legitimacy of this work was never clear; sometimes he would thrust a small amount of money into my hand as a kind of payment ‘to show Mummy’, but most of the time I just spent my Saturday and Sunday afternoons reclining on his chaise longue reading scraps of verse from the anthologies we were meant to be alphabetising.

Sometimes I felt a pang of guilt when I returned home and my mum asked me how the afternoon had gone, if we’d got much done. But mostly I rationalised that it wasn’t a lie as such and, anyway, such measures were only necessary because she and everyone else who thought it odd for a teenager to spend so much time with a sexagenarian were so steeped in the dismal unreality of the world they couldn’t see the true beauty of friendship. Besides, Matthew was adept at sensing my angst and, whenever I began to slip too far into the vicinity of guilt and shame, I would find an email waiting in my inbox, pulling me back to the beautiful world of literature and poetry:

From: Matthew Wright <theoutsider@worldopen.co.uk>

To: Natalie Lucas <sexy_chocolate69@sweetmail.com>

Sent: 12 July 2000, 08:27:31

Subject: Your worries

I know you struggle with the lies, but never forget what is real. You feel guilty about your Ma, who herself feels guilty about you and her Ma and all of the world, simply because she’s trying too hard. She can’t see the beauty.

But you, my angel (my Uncle), can. And that is a gift (for me as well as you).

Edmond Rostand said: ‘The dream alone is of interest.’

So, my darling, let us dream.

MW

*

About halfway through the summer, just after my sixteenth birthday, we began discussing love. We read the Romantics, then moved on to Whitman and finally picked up some collections by Leonard Cohen. I liked the singsong neatness of Blake and the hallmark sentiments of Burns, but Matthew would always reach for Leaves of Grass or mumble the lyrics to ‘Death of a Ladies’ Man’.

We discussed unrequited, inexpressible and forbidden love; we talked about communities running people out of town, countries stoning women for infidelity and religions turning their backs on faithful worshippers. We watched The Wicker Man and flicked through the writings of the Marquis de Sade. We reread extracts from Brave New World and talked about the concept of everyone ‘belonging’ to one another. He told me monogamy was just as abstract an idea as polygamy and we discussed his relationship with Annabelle once more. We talked about the line between friendship and love, about why the world has to be so blind to the possibilities of their overlap. Sometime in late August, Matthew told me he loved me and I wrote in my diary that he was not being improper.

A lingering hug became our ritual goodbye. Back in my bedroom I would miss his arms and want the safe feeling of being enveloped by a true friend. We swapped ‘I love you’s in emails and notes through the letterbox. We knew the others wouldn’t understand, but we also knew that it was true and innocent.

My Bunbury evolved so that once I returned to school to begin the sixth form I had permanent employment archiving Matthew’s racing tips at the weekends. I never went near his computer, but sometimes he’d tell me about reading the form and calculating probabilities so I could blag my way through knowing about gambling. Through a slow accumulation of half-truths and almost-lies, Matthew and I constructed a wall around our friendship that allowed us to spend intense afternoons discussing Uncles, love and poetry. The neighbours, my parents and his in-laws ceased raising their eyebrows and gradually came to expect us to sit together at parties, to dawdle behind or step out ahead on Sunday afternoon walks and to be found together when we were nowhere else.

My diary during that time was a scruffy composition book I’d covered with an angsty painting on squared graph paper. I’d bought it as I walked through the town one Thursday in Year 11 after Josephine Cuthbert had taunted me about my crush on Adam Hound and my brother had poked me in the arm for the duration of our bus ride.

Arriving home, I’d slammed the front door and ran up to my room at the top of my house. I’d spread my paints and brushes over the floor and began making crude, angry marks. After a while, my mum had knocked tentatively at the door. She asked what was wrong and listened sympathetically for a while as I sobbed and tried to describe the hideous impossibility of school and life and myself.

When I paused to hiccup my breath, she glanced towards the window, sighed, and said, ‘Well, I’m sure it will get better. It could be a lot worse – at least you have food on your plate. Dinner will be at seven.’

She left and I grabbed a pen. My first entry looked like this:

21/03/2000

‘Maybe it’s not the school,’ she said. ‘It’s happened before.’ Does she think I don’t know that? Does she think that every day I don’t wish I could fit in, just lazily walk into school and be greeted by a few proper friends instead of worrying who I’m going to burden myself with next?! I hate it. I hate school. I know I’ve never really been able to settle down with good friends, not at primary school either, but I just think that if I reinvent myself one more time then maybe someone will like me. And sixth form is different. If I could just switch schools one more time I shouldn’t get so much of the ‘keen bean’ stuff. It’s only a week until the end of term, thank God. Maybe I’ll make it.

Why the hell am I writing this crap? I hate diaries. They’re pointless and I always write in them for a month or two and then stop. It’ll probably be the way of this one. I just don’t get the point of writing something no one is ever going to read. But then it scares me to rely on memories. I don’t want to forget things, especially not the bad stuff, because that’s what reminds you not to live in the past but the present.

I don’t think I live in either, though. Half the time I seem to be daydreaming: thinking, scheming, planning. And then when I wake up it all hits me again and I get a great wave of depression at the sorry facts of my life.

You probably want to slap me right now. I would. I mean, there are starving kids in Africa and I’m complaining that I have no friends! Not really comparable, I know. My mum says I’m self-indulgent. She cries a lot of the time too, though. I just have issues, you could call it paranoia (is it ‘io’?). I mean, I always find I don’t trust people. Why should I? I don’t trust myself even. I’m two-faced and I lie, so how can I expect all the other girls not to be bitching behind my back? I can’t stand myself. I cringe as I say things and I hate being shy. I hate the way I go red and my eyes fill up with water at the slightest things. I hate biting my nails, I hate how people intimidate me just because they don’t hate themselves. I don’t hate the way I look all the time, but I’m forever wishing I was someone else.

*

By the time Matthew got his hands on my diary, there were many pages of similar complaints about my mother, school, nobody understanding me and the black bags under my eyes. But there were a couple of other things that made me hesitate when he gently asked to read my thoughts.

‘I want to know you inside out.’

‘I know you’re writing it because you want to be read, so why not let me?’

‘It would be the most intimate act imaginable.’

Firstly, of course, I worried because by this time he featured quite extensively. There was probably nothing in there I wouldn’t say to his face given we’d developed such an open form of conversation, but still, what would it be like to have him see things like this in ink:

14/08/00

The only Uncle I have is Matthew, who is four times my age. It scares me because I’ve become quite dependent on him but he’s going to leave me. Be it death or moving to Bournemouth like Annabelle’s always talking about or me going off to university, he’s not always going to be here and that makes me want to weep.

22/08/00

Of course, I wouldn’t go there. Yuk. I can’t believe my mind just came up with that. He’s just my best friend and I’m looking for a father figure. It must be all those French films we’re watching.

29/08/00

I can’t help it. I was in the chemist’s the other day and the woman in front looked ancient. She had a prescription three pages long. I looked over her shoulder and read her date of birth. 1926. She was 74. All I could think was that, when I’m thirty, that’ll be Matthew. He’ll turn seventy the same year I’m twenty-six.

The second thing that I worried would set my diary apart from any other sixteen-year-old’s Matthew happened to read was the confession that had made one of my ex-boyfriends, Todd, exclaim, ‘Oh God, you’re just confused. Every girl I’ve ever met says that. Get over it, you’re not a lesbian!’ I didn’t know if I was a lesbian or not, but after the incident with Todd I stopped admitting seriously to friends that I thought I might like girls. I did, however, scrawl lines and lines about my concerns and ventured tentative explorations behind the mask of alcohol.

22/03/00

I figured out why I’m writing a diary. It’s because I watched Girl, Interrupted (my favourite film, along with American Beauty and The Virgin Suicides) and she writes a diary in that. I guess I thought it might help me figure out some of my feelings. Watching that film again was really scary. It’s about a girl with Borderline Personality Disorder and the scary bit is I could relate to everything she said: all about not fitting in, not being listened to, not being able to just accept life and finding it easier to live in a fantasy land. The only thing I didn’t really relate to was the whole promiscuous thing – still being a virgin and all. But even that’s quite shady because I think that if I had the confidence, I may be promiscuous. I keep thinking about shagging some random girl. I don’t even know how it would work but I look at Jenna and Claire and Becky in class and I just want to press my lips onto theirs. Sometimes I worry they can see my thoughts, so I tell them I was thinking about Juan, this fit new Spanish guy in my tutor group. But, truth is, I’m far more interested in the lesbian thing. I heard some girls in the year below got really drunk last Saturday and all took each other’s tops off and had an orgy. All the girls in the toilets squealed with horror and said to keep away from them in PE in case they perved on us, but I just wanted to ask who they were and how I could make friends. Am I a freak?

*

Matthew had asked me ages ago whether I kept a diary and what security measures I had to prevent my brother and parents from reading it. He’d also asked in a teasing tone what secrets I recorded there and whether I kept secrets from him. For a few weeks I’d been entertaining the idea of letting him see it, of allowing another person to read me. I’d read and reread my own hand, wondering what Matthew might make of it: would he be shocked by my curiosities about my sexuality? Would he laugh at my immaturity? Would he think I was a bad daughter because I wrote angrily about my mother? Would he realise I was a loser with no friends at school and not want to spend time with me any more? Would he be offended by my thoughts about him? Would he still like me?

Eventually these doubts were outweighed by the heavy desire to be known: for a single person in the world to understand all that was in my head and help me work it out. One Sunday, after we’d had tea and chatted about Emily Dickinson, I removed the tatty book from my backpack and, with a trembling hand, offered it to Matthew. I paced miserably home and woke a dozen times in the night wondering if I had an email from him.

The next day, Matthew hung my diary from our doorknob in a plastic Safeway’s bag, along with two other items. The first was a new, spiral-bound, orange-flowered notebook; the second, a palm-sized engraved metal shape that Google later informed me was an ankh, the Egyptian symbol for immortality. My immediate concern, though, was the printed page wrapped around the object:

Extract from The Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler

The ordinary mortal in our urban civilisation moves virtually all his life on the Trivial Plane.

You are not ordinary, Natalie.

I saw Matthew a few hours later and all seemed normal, but as he poured me a cup of tea he asked nonchalantly, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were wondering about such things?’

I looked at him blankly.

‘It’s perfectly natural. In fact, it’s essential for Uncles to be open to love in any possible form. Most people go through their lives too afraid to admit their desires; they lock them up and only let out what their mummies say is okay, then end up in dead-end marriages having sex twice a year and finding their wives have been having an affair with the gardener.’

I giggled at his wild, angry gesticulations.

‘Your friends at school are just threatened by your insight. They probably go home and masturbate over you, wishing they had the guts to follow through.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ I smiled. ‘But is it okay then? Is it normal?’

‘Why on earth would you want to be normal?’ he chided. ‘But of course it’s okay for you, it’s what you feel. It’s exciting.’

There wasn’t a day that innocence turned to deception and friendship to seduction. The declarations of love and the poetry we were reading lent themselves to hypothetical discussions about erotic possibilities, but they began in the abstract.

‘If society is so wrong that it forbids a perfectly healthy friendship between an old man and a young girl,’ I’d ask, ‘how can we be sure that everything else it deems “wrong” isn’t just as natural?’

‘Exactly,’ Matthew would grin. ‘The machine is there to perpetuate itself, not to protect us. You must find your own rules.’

‘But it’s absurd that a society it doesn’t affect in the slightest condemns it so forcefully. What difference does it make to Mrs Roberts and my mum and Pat down the road whether you’re my best friend and I want to tell you I love you?’

‘None.’

‘And obviously I don’t, but what difference would it make if I wanted that to be romantic love? As long as it made you and me happy and Annabelle was not hurt by it, who else could it possibly affect?’

‘No one.’

‘And it makes you wonder what else we’re being conditioned to disapprove of. Why is euthanasia banned? Why is bigamy illegal? Why can’t tribes live as they want? Homosexuals get married? Lesbians adopt? Prostitutes work in the open and couples swing?’

‘Because true freedom is too much for most people. Only Uncles realise the true possibilities of love and life. And sadly it means they must spend their lives fighting against society just to stay alive.’

By mid-September, we’d all but given up on sorting books. Instead, we’d carry a tray of tea and Eccles cakes into his study and close the door. We’d sit sideways on the chaise and I’d snuggle into his arm while cradling a cup in two hands. Being cuddled by Matthew was my favourite thing and I conveniently ignored the occasional slip of his hand or sniff of my hair.

Sometimes, if we were having an impassioned debate about literature or the world, our faces would get close, our eyes locked together in intensity. One day, his argument trailed off and I thought I must have won my point, but his face remained close and my eyes couldn’t turn away. I felt something tingle in my throat and shoulders. I had a sensation like pressing a bruise and became strangely aware of my sandalled toes. Was it my imagination, or was his face inching closer, were his eyelids drooping closed?

I pulled away and straightened my T-shirt.

Matthew reached for his mug and sat back, smiling.

‘You almost let me kiss you then.’

‘No I didn’t!’ I blurted out, then blushed.

Matthew sipped his tea and muttered, ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,’ before replacing his cup and asking what time I’d be able to come tomorrow.

The scene of the almost-kiss was repeated a few days later on the couch in the living room and again over the table in the kitchen. Each time, I allowed myself to indulge that dizzying feeling for a moment longer; smelling his musky cologne and studying his wrinkled lips; tasting and enjoying the unknown before being plunged into the confusing rapids of shame and regret.

I wrote pages in my diary each night, convinced this elastic band of emotions was true passion and I was the only person ever to have felt it so potently. And every second or third weekend, Matthew read my angst-ridden thoughts and told me my soul was beautiful, my life would be incredible.

On 28th September, Matthew succeeded. I wrote in my diary it was ‘Nothing huge, but special all the same.’

That evening, he sent me an email:

From: Matthew Wright <theoutsider@worldopen.co.uk>

To: Natalie Lucas <sexy_chocolate69@sweetmail.com>

Sent: 28 September 2000, 22:37:31

Subject: Thank you

Your mind was beautiful today, your body pure bliss. I belong to you.

Ancient Person of thy heart

*

You can probably see where this is going now. It wasn’t quite as clear-cut and sordid as it might appear. Naive as I may have seemed thus far, I realised there were certain lines that required more consideration than others before crossing.

While the kissing gradually led to ‘sorting books’ in a horizontal position in the top room, I was quite insistent that whatever his hands and mouth did to please me, his belt-buckle was not going to budge. And though we sent emails most evenings telling the other of our desire, dreaming of total abandonment from the safety of separate bedrooms and discussing the orgasmic meeting of my ‘baby kitten’ and his ‘throbbing doppelgänger’, I was certain of one thing: I didn’t want him to be my first.

I was aware mine was an unorthodox adolescence. I realised I could grow to regret it, despite my enlightened knowledge that this was the real world. So, for the sake of damage limitation, I wanted to lose my virginity to someone else. Matthew and I discussed the situation via email only, never referring to it between declarations of love in person.

From: Matthew Wright <theoutsider@worldopen.co.uk>

To: Natalie Lucas <sexy_chocolate69@sweetmail.com>

Sent: 4 October 2000, 09:20:12

Subject: Two roads in a wood

I see you worrying about what the world will think and whether you will be able to take things back, whether you’ll regret our friendship in later life or discover you chose the wrong yellow-brick path. I see you struggling to find the answers and I wish I could take your pain away, because this time for me is beautiful and relaxed. As you grow, you will understand the world has its reason and things will happen as they please. Our decisions always seem more significant before we have made them.

So, if in your deliberations you ever worry about me, please don’t. I am a happy voyeur of your beautiful mind and the conclusions I know it will eventually reach. I cannot, of course, give you advice, but perhaps if you have your A* mathematician’s hat on today, you will appreciate the words of Mr Einstein: ‘Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world; all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it. Propositions arrived at by purely logical means are completely empty of reality.’1

Follow your heart, my love. I will await.

Your very parfait gentle knight

MW

Every night I’d retreat to my room and attack my diary. Matthew told me the decision was in my hands, but our mutual stumbling block was my virginity. He said he couldn’t ‘take the lid off’ that side of me because the first time would inevitably be disappointing and he didn’t want to ruin what we had. I agreed. Everyone said it hurt and I was sure I’d end up hating him. But how could I take the lid off with someone else knowing I was in love with Matthew?

What I needed was a boy my own age who wouldn’t mind being used and whom I trusted enough not to tell the rest of the sixth form about my proposition.

Richard was my target. We had been girlfriend and boyfriend for a short while in Year 10 and had remained flirty friends since. Our ‘relationship’ had ended when Richard had told me, quite seriously, that he had important and dangerous things he had to concentrate on to fulfil his destiny and he couldn’t be distracted by the usual trappings of teenage life. The gossip tree soon filtered to me that Richard had confided in his best friend Andy that he had been approached by an old homeless man while on holiday in Greece who had told him he was the Second Messiah and dark powers were approaching that only he could battle. Ever since, Richard had been bidding for Samurai swords on eBay.

To sum it up, in Richard’s favour:

 Single

 Too focused to want a girlfriend

 Too self-absorbed to bother caring about my motives for such a deed

And, against him:

 Possibly slightly unhinged.

I told Matthew I had decided on a person. I suggested the thing to Richard via MSN Messenger. And Richard agreed. The how and where were a little more complicated, so, though it was only October, we decided on New Year’s Eve, knowing somebody would have a party. It was settled. I would pop my cherry as I was meant to: drunk and in someone’s parents’ bed with an acne-ridden boy I found only mildly attractive, and thus I would be free to explore the world of Uncles with one less worry.

Then came the green candle.

On 4th November, I received the lyrics to a Leonard Cohen song via email. The first line was blown up in bigger font and some words made bold:

I lit a thin green candle to make you jealous of me.

Attached was an extract from Matthew’s diary:

November 2000

So, old man, what are you going to do?

About what? And who are you calling old? I thought we were only as young as we feel.

Fool. I suppose you’re telling me she’s the elixir of life?

Natalie? Yes, she might be.

So, what will you do?

I can’t hurry her. Her beauty and charm is in her innocence – she needs to find her own way.

But what about you? What about your needs?

My needs are less important than hers.

Less important, perhaps, but no less pressing. Every man has needs; it’s foolish to deny them.

Yes, yes, we’ve been down this path before. I know I must do something.

So?

Well, Suzie keeps pestering me.

The PhD student who snaps at you if you bring her flowers and doesn’t care if you don’t call? Sounds perfect.

Yes, and she tells me she’s spent the past six months in the gym.

But..

But every time I see her she tells me she wants my child.

Yikes.

Indeed. She says I won’t have to be involved, but I’m not so sure.

You think she’s tricking you?

Not deliberately, but women are irrational, they change their minds, especially when children are involved. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.

So, what’s the alternative?

Becky’s eager.

The one with the nice bum?

Yes, you perv, the one with the nice bum. But she’s not much older than Natalie. Eighteen, and nowhere near as mature.

Could be fun, though.

Yes, perhaps.

But..

But my heart’s not in it, I suppose. Even though I know I need something and Natalie’s talking about experimenting with some boy from school..

Wait! You’re talking about living like a monk while she goes around with spotty teenagers? You’re even more of a fool than I thought.

Perhaps. A fool for love?

Pah. It doesn’t seem fair at all.

No, but she’s a child, I can’t expect her to understand. I can’t make demands on her.

And what’s this email about? Are you lighting a green candle?

No, maybe, no. No, I just want her to know how I feel. Perhaps I won’t even send it.

And if you do?

Nothing. Then she’ll know I’ve chosen what I have with her over anything I could have with the others.

How very noble.

Don’t be so sarcastic. I mean it. I love her. It’s real. For the first time in my measly, ancient life, it’s real.

A bubble began to rise in my stomach as I read. Suzie and Becky. Who were they? Why should I care? Matthew said he was not lighting a green candle, but still sent me the lyrics to the song. What could that mean? The basement room where I was reading was lit only by the light of the screen and I imagined myself engulfed by a turquoise flame. I pounded up the stairs to my bedroom and scrabbled beneath my mattress for my diary.

After an hour sprawled on my bed with a biro in my hand and tears in my lashes, I paced back down to the computer, praying my brother hadn’t gone to play his stupid Age of Empires game and read the email I’d left open on the screen. Happily I passed the living-room door and saw James cross-legged in front of the PlayStation instead.

Back at the keyboard, I hesitated. As much as my fingers tingled to reply ‘No, don’t! I’m here and, yes, I’ll be an Uncle,’ my throat longed to scream that this was unfair, that I was being handled and manipulated and an Uncle wouldn’t do such a thing.

My fingers won.

From: Natalie Lucas <sexy_chocolate69@sweetmail.com>

To: Matthew Wright <theoutsider@worldopen.co.uk>

Sent: 4 November 2000, 22:42:03

Subject: RE: One of Us Cannot Be Wrong

The flame is burning moss. I have an in-service training day a week on Wednesday – can we find a Bunbury?

Later, in my room, I doodled in my notebook:

Am I condemned to be

Number sixty-four?

Will you tell your next girl

This one was a bore?

That innocent little kitten

You deflowered so well;

My young naive mind,

To the devil did I sell?

Will you tell of the chase?

The thrill of the game

That finally won me …

To discover I’m too tame?

Not like Suzie,

She was fun.

Not like Becky,

With the ‘nice bum’.

Is it worth it?

Will I disappoint?

Will you regret the effort?

Will I score a point?

2

At approximately 3pm on 15th November 2000, in room 107 of The Swan Hotel in Swindon, I lost my virginity. I’d been wearing three-inch heels and an oversized suit-jacket, too much make-up for a teenager and black cotton knickers bought in a pack of five from BHS by my mum. I’d known Matthew had booked a hotel room and I’d lied to my mother about going to the cinema with a friend, but I still padded to the bathroom, self-conscious about my nakedness, and looked in the mirror with surprise. As I peed, I wondered what I had thought usually happened when a sixth-former allowed a sexagenarian to spend £150 on a plush suite that would only be used for an afternoon. Had I thought we would simply continue what we had been doing in his top room? Had I imagined his hands and mouth would always work eagerly to please me without his belt-buckle ever budging? Had I believed we could stay in the no-man’s-land of technically doing nothing wrong? Had I hoped the past few months contained mere digressions that I could take or leave when the mood struck and walk away with my purity intact?

Perhaps I had. It wasn’t as if my bookshelves, teachers or friends could provide a precedent; it wasn’t as if there were any rules. But I’d responded to his green candle, hadn’t I? I wasn’t totally naive: I’d known what he’d wanted. But I hadn’t thought about this while clipping my bra and brushing my teeth this morning. I hadn’t said goodbye to my mum thinking that the next time I saw her I’d be, what, a woman? I’d thought of my Bunbury: I’d concentrated on not overlabouring my lies but making them seem natural. I’d wondered how easy it was going to be to walk nonchalantly towards the bus stop, then dart off onto North Street and slip unobserved into Matthew’s waiting passenger seat. I’d deliberated over whether to hide my heels in my handbag and change into them while crouched in his car, or to risk my mother’s disapproving comments about unsuitable footwear for the cinema and just leave the house in them anyway. But I hadn’t thought about what it would be like to be in a hotel room with Matthew, about his penis actually sliding inside me, about his body on top of mine, about whether it would hurt or whether I might have forgotten my pill even though I hadn’t once since I’d been put on it for period pains in Year 10, about all that advice in sex education classes to use condoms even if you’re taking contraceptives because you’re not protected from STIs that make your pussy resemble an erupting volcano. With the innocence of a teenager who has spent countless Maths classes giggling with friends and ex-best-friends over code-words for body parts and rumours that the girl at the back puts out for the price of a chocolate bar, I hadn’t thought we’d actually do it.

I didn’t bleed and I didn’t cry. I didn’t even see his thing. Matthew approached it technically, disappearing into the bathroom and returning in his shirt and underpants, smelling like talcum powder, before undressing me and laying me on the duvet. Next, he rifled through his briefcase and pulled out a bottle of Johnson’s Baby Oil, placed it neatly on the bedside table. Then, climbing delicately onto the bed, he fixed his eyes on mine.

‘Do you love me?’ His demanding tone surprised me and I nodded meekly, letting only a nervous breath escape my lips.

‘Yes, I can see the love-light in your eyes.’

And in a few minutes it was over. Matthew offered me a box of tissues to clean the stickiness from between my thighs and pulled his trousers back on.

After I returned from the bathroom, we lay on top of the duvet for a while, me naked, him clothed. I wanted to appear mature, but my head was reeling with excitement and disappointment: Was that it? Is that what everyone whispers about in school? Am I different now? Will they be able to tell? Will my mother know? Will I remember this as special? Matthew withdrew his arm from around my stomach and walked to the dressing table to fetch his cigars. I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged myself.

‘What are you doing?’ He turned back in amusement and horror.

‘Nothing. Just thinking.’

‘That’s what women do to get pregnant you know – lie back like that. You’re not trying to trap me, are you?’

‘What? No!’ I blushed and sat up straight, embarrassed that I’d let my ignorance show.

‘I was just thinking about Meursault,’ I said, defaulting to literature as a safe topic where we might speak as equals and forget the mundane realities of his grey hair and my smooth skin.

‘Hmm?’

‘He’s the hero of existentialism, the man who refused to play the game, let alone abide by the rules, and he highlights all that’s wrong with the world – all that makes this an impossible place for poets and Uncles to live in – but do you think he ever experienced love? Isn’t half the point of the novel that he doesn’t feel any passions, doesn’t understand the motivations of those around him or why laws must dictate x and y? He’s basically just an ordinary man: neither an Uncle nor a sheep. He sticks his head above the parapet, but not for any of the reasons that writers and lovers and you and I do.’

‘True. But he’s just a character. The point is that Camus was feeling all those things and rebelling through his creation.’ Matthew sat back against the headboard, a slight smile curling his lips.

‘But Camus didn’t actually challenge the law and expectations; he didn’t kill anyone and face punishment but not even experience it as punishment. For most of his life, he played society’s games and persona’d like the rest of us.’

‘So, you wanted him to martyr himself for a world that wouldn’t care?’

‘No, but it’s just, who should we celebrate? Camus or Meursault? Camus’s creation of Meursault almost serves to highlight how thoroughly trapped he himself was by the bullshit of the world.’

‘Hence why we have to Bunbury,’ he winked at me, exhaling a cloud of smoky air.

‘But, I want to know if any Uncles ever find the ideal, ever manage to live fully. That has to be the ideal, right? Otherwise what’s the point? Why would we continue? We should all wander into rivers with stones in our pockets or stick our heads in ovens. Because a little bit of poetry is not enough. This escape, being here, being with you is my reality and the rest is just gross, you know that? It makes me cry at night. And if I thought it was going to always be like this, I don’t know what I’d do. Sometimes I think I’d rather die on a happy note – that’s when I’d consider suicide, after the most ecstatic moment of my life, because the thought of falling after being so high would be totally unbearable.’

Matthew smiled at me and I knew I’d redeemed myself. We were no longer in a plush hotel room with a Bible in the drawer and a disapproving receptionist downstairs; we didn’t have to leave in a couple of hours and drive back home to face parents and wives, neighbours and peers; instead we were sitting on a cloud with Virginia Woolf and Edgar Allan Poe, sipping tea with Simone de Beauvoir and Marcel Proust. And on this cloud, Matthew’s leathery lips tasted like March daffodils as they pressed to my own. My skin buzzed as he folded me back into his arms, whispering into my neck about Helen of Troy.

We left Swindon around five, me sneaking past reception to the car while Matthew dawdled to tell the concierge he’d received a phone call requesting his immediate return, so alas would not be staying and would not require breakfast in the morning. He drove in silence and as we neared home I ducked my head between my knees in case the passing headlights of a neighbour or relative’s vehicle happened to illuminate our incongruous faces. He dropped me off at the other end of town and I changed back into my Nikes to plod home, past the Post Office, grocer’s and butcher’s, preparing my lies and not-quite-lies in my head.

‘Yes, Mum, Claire and I had a great time.’ Claire most probably enjoyed her day off too and I didn’t say we had a great time together, so we’ll call this true.

‘We went to this cool little café and had cream teas.’ True. It was called the Scribbling Horse and the woman gave us extra cream.

‘The Road to Eldorado is okay, it’s a bit childish, though.’ You don’t have to see the film to know this and, as my mother refuses to watch animations, it seems unlikely I’ll be quizzed about plot and character development. Therefore, true, plus extra points for successful Bunbury.

‘Hastings was really crowded.’ Also most likely true … I just wasn’t there.

‘No, I didn’t buy anything, but we did look in some book shops.’ True. Matthew bought a Collected Letters of Virginia Woolf and I fingered a first edition Oscar Wilde, but shopping wasn’t our main priority.

‘The bus was a little late.’ Okay, this one’s a lie, but unavoidable. Five truths and one lie – not bad.

A few hours later, my mum, my brother and I banged our gate and walked the 300 yards to number fourteen. Lydia answered and led us into the sitting room. Annabelle was already sprawled on the floor with her work-friend Lucy, inspecting hand-made jewellery. Lydia’s sister, Hannah, was fussing over a teapot by the bay window, and their frail but sharp-eyed mother, Valerie, was characteristically bent double beside a bookshelf, hunting for a specific volume of her 1948 edition of The Encyclopaedia Britannica. These were my mother’s friends: people who had been kind to me since I was in single digits; honorary aunts and uncles who cared for my brother and me like children of a collective. Occasionally I felt a pang of guilty tenderness towards this extended family, but mostly over the past few months I’d begun to see them through Matthew’s cruel cynicism, noting their individual quirks and scorning their refusal to stick their heads above the parapet.

‘I’m so glad you could come on short notice,’ Hannah gushed in over-the-top hostess mode. ‘Lucy’s showing us her gems. Isn’t she good? I’m thinking of taking a course.’

My mum had said we’d been invited to look at jewellery; a kind of Tupperware party with beads I supposed. I’d fancied a cup of tea and James had been bribed with biscuits. I shuffled into the room after my brother and noticed Matthew on the end of the couch, a book in his lap. He made eye contact and I turned away, willing my cheeks not to burn.

My eyes landed on Annabelle’s patterned skirt. She’d coupled it with an embroidered shirt and looked sumptuously hippyish. In contrast, Hannah wore tight black jeans, ankle-boots and an oversized jumper that made less than subtle allusions to the 1980s, a period in fashion that had not yet returned to the likes of Topshop and H&M.

Lucy, a tiny blonde woman swathed in coloured silk, was explaining how she chose each bead. Something about the karmic energy, I think. I watched her mouth as she talked for a while, but quickly turned my attention to her husband, Graham, who wore ripped jeans and sat with an air of boredom on the sofa next to Matthew. He and Lucy had a son two years above me at school, but Graham looked a bit like a floppy-haired George Clooney so I figured it wasn’t too bad to have a crush on him. I sat on the floor next to his feet and asked him about his motorbike, giggling when he said I should come for a ride one day.

‘If your mum says it’s all right, that is.’

I flushed with excitement and tried not to notice how old Matthew looked beside Graham, how his leg rested effeminately upon his knee and his shirt fell over a muscle-less torso. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him or that I didn’t want to repeat what we’d done this afternoon, but something had changed today and I felt a new kind of energy coursing through my limbs, one that drew me instinctively towards the Grahams and Lucys of the world.

I wasn’t the only one, though, and before the evening was over, Hannah was sat tipsily in Graham’s lap and Annabelle was fawning over Lucy’s earrings, brushing the skin on her neck as she fingered the green gems dangling from her lobes. My mum and Valerie were deep in discussion about the treatment of mental health patients in 1975 and James’s head rested heavily on his arm as Lydia spoke of the difficulties of getting out to do the gardening. On the way home, James growled at my mum that he’d never be forced to go to one of those things again and she muttered a reply along the lines of, ‘I don’t know why you have to be so antisocial; Nat seemed to enjoy herself.’

3

On dreary country days, when the air choked with the pitiful mediocrity of small town life, old ladies wheeled their trolleys through town to collect their pensions from Nicky at the Post Office and Ray listened to people natter about haemorrhoids in the chemist before dispensing Preparation H, I would sit in Matthew and Annabelle’s open-plan kitchen, playing cards and drinking tea from a pot. Sometimes I’d curl my legs under me on the awkward unpadded chairs while Annabelle doodled flowers beside the crossword in the Telegraph and Matthew consulted The Racing Post. He sat at the head, with the two of us on either side; these were unarticulated but set places and it was always odd when Annabelle was away and Matthew set my place for dinner at her chair.

During term time, I spent six out of seven nights there and, on holidays, most days too. Eight front doors and eleven cars separated their house from my mum’s. The Grays, the Smiths, the Popels, Mrs Pratt, Mr Davis, Oliver and June, Beatrice and the Roberts lived in between. Our immediate neighbours, the Grays, had retired to tend their immaculate garden and always said hello when I passed them on the pavement, but would become more reserved in a few months once I moved in with my dad and my mum began muttering up and down the street about my being an ‘awkward teenager’. Mrs Pratt had been a teacher at my primary school and, although she asked kindly about my exams and future plans, I was still a little afraid of her and mumbled nervously whenever I encountered her on my way to the house on the end.

Matthew’s study lay behind the street-side window, so I could always tell before I arrived whether he or Annabelle would answer my knock first. Their post-box-red front door encased in its black frame now looms overly significant in my memory. Stepping through that doorway I would shed the unhappy teenager living in a deadly dull town that haunted me on the outside and enter the safe place of art, poetry, philosophy and love.

A kingfisher I had drawn in pastels at the age of eight hung above their stove, the Piglet I had won Matthew at the fair was pinned to the whiteboard in his study, my cribbage board had found a permanent home on the shelf with his chess set, and Juno, Annabelle’s cat, paid no attention to my comings and goings. Towards the end, I might even have had a key, and, of course, volumes of my angsty diaries lay in a locked drawer of Matthew’s bureau because we’d agreed early on that this was safer than having them only perfunctorily hidden beneath my mattress.

The three of us played cards, drank wine and sometimes smoked weed acquired from my friends at school. Matthew and I would touch feet under the table and sneak a kiss when Annabelle ran upstairs to fetch something. Sometime after 10pm Annabelle would pour herself a tiny glass of port and wish us goodnight. I would stay, wrapped in Matthew’s arms as we whispered secrets to each other or dared ourselves to forget Annabelle was only upstairs, until it got late enough that I worried a parent might come looking for me and I let myself out, arrived home and calmly watched some television repeat with my unquestioning family.

My first memories of Matthew and Annabelle hardly involve Matthew at all. Annabelle and my mum were introduced through Ruth, a woman who had had her first marriage annulled and convinced a Methodist priest, despite her four grown children, to perform her second attempt to a childhood friend. When my parents were ending their messy though marriageless relationship, Ruth was the witch who stole my mother from me when she cried, but Annabelle was the angel who gently entertained my brother and me; she turned packing up our family home into a game of make-believe pirates and princesses.

Annabelle’s husband was just one of those shadowy figures of husbands you remember from playing in the garden while your mother gossiped with her friends on the patio, drinking cups of instant coffee. He must have been in the background and I must have known him, but the squiggly jigsaw pieces of his identity in my mind didn’t slot together until our conversation at his birthday party. From that moment, though, it was like someone flicked a switch and swapped the direction of the escalators in a department store. As Matthew became a fleshy figure, a father, mentor, Uncle and lover, and I spent more time with Annabelle, building the friendship I’d craved as a child, the haloed idol of my youth slipped away and was replaced by her altogether more self-assured husband.

I didn’t, don’t and probably never will know what Annabelle knew about what was between Matthew and me, but she was my friend. I’d loved her in a childish way and still adored spending time with her, but I never felt guilty about sleeping with her husband. The larger difficulty was sneaking around. Matthew and I were conducting an affair in a small, gossipy town where privacy didn’t come easy. I had to sneak along the street, invent reasons to go into town, dart through his door when the coast was clear, tell my mother I checked my email five times a day because of school projects, leave notes under a plant by his door, pin myself to the wall until he’d drawn the curtains, worry about his aftershave on my coat and secretly wash my expensive lingerie in the bathroom sink.

Communication was the most difficult: frequently I would arrive at his door expecting intimacy only to be greeted by a booming, ‘Oh look, it’s Nat, how unexpected. We haven’t seen you in ages! Barbara and Richard are here, do come in. Have you come to borrow that book?’ and have to endure an afternoon of personaed small talk instead. Or I’d wait all day to visit at the appointed time, but discover Annabelle had changed her plans and run her errands in the morning.

Mothers and brothers and fathers and in-laws, neighbours and doctors, shopkeepers and postmen all thwarted our arrangements, left us tapping out frustrated messages from separate computers, compelling us to dream of a mythical time and place where we could be free to love in the open.

Sometimes we’d plot elaborate Bunburys and, to our surprise, they’d come together: we’d escape for a night in my half-term holidays to return to Swindon, or I’d skip my Wednesday afternoon Psychology class to drive to Rye for a cream tea and a hunt through the second-hand bookshops. But more often than not, these secret passionate or plebeian encounters would be spoilt or at least dissipated by unlucky coincidences.

A favourite free-period picnic spot was the Beachy Head car park in Warren Hill, where Matthew and I would share flasks of coffee and flaky pastries as well as more incriminating things. But two terrifying incidents marked an end to those visits. The first was Felicity Roberts, daughter of Mr and Mrs Roberts who lived next door to Matthew and Annabelle, passing our parked vehicle with her dog Bobby on the way to the footpath while Matthew and I were in the middle of one of those incriminatingly passionate things. I convinced myself she hadn’t seen or hadn’t recognised me and was persuaded to go back the following week, but returning from a lazy amble into Holywell, we found the passenger-side window of Matthew’s car had been smashed and my school-bag stolen. I had to sit in the back avoiding shards of glass on the way home and we developed a flat along a country lane, but none of that was as scary as having to explain to my parents how I’d lost my wallet, house keys, new glasses and a piece of coursework and why I didn’t want to try to claim them on the house insurance.

Much safer options for seeing each other were under cover of larger groups, where we could steal glances and share knowing laughs. We arranged cinema trips with my mum where I sat in the middle and tentatively touched Matthew’s knee during dark scenes, group outings to the races where Matthew paced seriously, studying form and winking as he told me to put my allowance on a 30-1 outsider, and neighbourhood picnics at Pevensey Bay where I pranced in tiny bikinis only to notice my neighbour Bob ogling me as well as Matthew. But these half-moments together often left me missing the Matthew I knew even more than when we were apart.

One Saturday in the spring, two weeks after Matthew’s birthday, four months since I lost my virginity and thirteen weeks until my AS exams, I followed Matthew into his study after a silent greeting. With his back to me, he took something from the desk, and then turned around to present a carrier bag.

‘I bought us phones,’ he grinned and waited for my response.

‘Huh?’ I managed after a pause and took the bag from his outstretched hand.

‘They’re on the same network, so as long as we put ten pounds on each month, we can text each other for free.’

I pulled a box the size of a Roget’s Thesaurus from the bag.

I’d had a phone before. My best friend Alicia had been promised one for her fourteenth birthday in August and, with the insane jealousy known only to teenage girls, I’d begged my dad to beat her parents to it and get me one for mine in July. At the last minute, he’d acquiesced and bought me a pay-as-you-go Vodaphone brick that I’d diligently lugged around for three months, receiving approximately two phone calls per week, generally from my mum to see what time I’d be home, before conceding that I didn’t really have a use for it and kicking it under my bed along with the ancient Mega Drive and the broken personal CD player.

This was a third of the size of my old phone, red plastic encasing the minuscule screen. It weighed less than my house keys and already had a screen-saver message saying, ‘Hello Kitten’.

‘Look, mine’s the same,’ continued Matthew, pulling an identical handset from his inside jacket pocket.

I smiled.

‘To activate the SIM you’ll need to call this number,’ he pointed to a white sticker on the box. ‘I chose us the same PIN number: 1661.’

‘Okay,’ I murmured, concentrating on finding the Unlock button.

‘It’s our ages,’ Matthew chuckled. ‘Also the year Newton got into Cambridge.’

‘Fascinating,’ I drawled precociously and kissed him on the lips.

Despite the precedents of Anna Karenina, Lady Chatterley and other pre-twenty-first-century literary examples, affairs and mobile phones go together like stockings and suspenders. Six months into ours we had passed the incidental lying-in-the-name-of-love period and were ready for the cold, premeditated deception-for-the-sake-of-debauchery stage. The jumble of plastic and circuits in my hand meant, without a doubt, Matthew was mine: my illicit lover, my shocking secret, my erotic exhilaration – my man.

4

My mum stopped eating when my dad left her. She told me later that a couple of times she went to bed with a carving knife. I was eleven at the time and we were close. We went swimming most days, and, driving along the dual carriageway with our costumes in the back and tears staining our cheeks, she’d tell me about the separation. She explained my father had found another girlfriend before he’d even told her he wanted out; described his shock that she’d changed the locks one morning when he returned from Katie’s to collect clean socks before work; and told me he wanted to keep the house, meaning we would have to move. She recounted the names he’d called her, sobbed about promises he’d broken and raged at how much she’d sacrificed for the relationship.

Some would say I was too young to hear this and my mother must have contributed to the lousy relationship I had with my father through my teens, but I adored being told these things. Her confidence in me assured me I was her best friend and provided me my first taste of the contradictory pleasure of intense pain.

When she told me my dad had suggested I live with her and he take James, I threw myself into hating the father who loved me less than my brother. When forced to spend the weekend with him, I would scream an explicit response to his, ‘Would you like to cut my lawn?’ and stomp back down the road into my mother’s arms.

That kind of intense closeness with a parent is exhilarating, but exhausting. My mum’s friends would comment that I seemed insecure because I insisted on telling her I loved her a dozen times an hour. And when I was old enough to stay at other people’s houses, I’d feel guilty for breaking up our family unit for an evening.

By the time my second life began, my mum and I were already clashing like any teen cliché. So, when, half a dozen months after my first Bunbury at Swindon, she screeched up the stairs, ‘WHY DON’T YOU GO AND LIVE WITH YOUR FATHER IF YOU FEEL LIKE THAT?’ I did. While she sobbed that she hadn’t meant it and couldn’t understand why I was doing this, I dragged suitcases across town and moved in with the man I’d hated for the past five years.

Living with my dad proved convenient. He was out a lot and didn’t ask where I was going. Over months of microwaved rice and washing-up stand-offs, my dad and I began to rebuild the relationship I’d treasured as a little girl. However, my basic lack of respect for him as a parent meant conducting an affair under his nose was purely mathematical; uncomplicated by the guilt I’d felt when lying to my mother. My biggest shame, even now, out of everything I did and everyone I deceived, was allowing my mum to think I left because of her. My brother would update me on how many times a week he found her crying and how, for years afterwards, she would periodically tell him she still didn’t understand why I’d gone. After our initial anger had worn off, we tentatively made up, but our closeness was lost. We never spoke of me moving out and she told me she would be my friend from now on, but no longer my mother.

At sixteen, I’d achieved what I’d set out to do and what most teenagers long for: I’d shed parental guidance and found autonomy. But it felt awful.

I turned to Matthew and Annabelle. Matthew was not only my lover, but my father and mother too. And eating roast dinners around their table or helping them do the crossword on a Saturday morning let me pretend I had a functioning family.

However, when my dad took his campervan to raves or visited one of his girlfriends for the night, my functioning family became less Brady, more Bovary.

I’d wait in the hall, peering through the glass front door. The transparency of my father’s bay-windowed house freaked me out when I was alone at night and I’d imagine faceless strangers standing on the lawns, watching as I climbed the stairs and walked in and out of uncurtained rooms. On nights like this I’d worry the couple in the manor house across the road could see everything I did. I’d turn off the lights.

From the dark, I’d watch the curved front path bathed in orange streetlight. I’d jump at every shadow and tap my foot nervously when an old lady pulled her Fiat Punto to the other side of the street to stuff an envelope into the post-box.

I’d be wearing the knee-length suede coat my dad had bought me as a reward for getting straight As in my GCSEs. I’d have on the one pair of heels I owned, purchased for a tenner from New Look, and, underneath the coat, an intricately detailed lace thong or a complicatedly clasped suspenders set.

A black-coated figure would make his way up the path. He’d climb the porch steps and trigger the sensored light. We’d both panic. I’d let him in and shoo him away from the window. We’d go directly to my bedroom.

The walls were a deep red that my grandmother had warned would look like the lining of a womb. With candles flickering shadows to the ceiling and Norah Jones lilting softly, I felt it had the appropriateness of a theatrical set. The bed flaunted itself in the middle of the room, not beside a wall or tucked into an alcove, but centre stage. Around it were no stuffed toys, stacks of board games or cheesy ‘Best Buds’ photo frames, as featured in my friends’ bedrooms, but instead: white canvas furniture; bookshelves divided into novels, poetry, reference and erotica; a leather armchair with Steppenwolf resting upon it; six or seven kohl pencils beside the mirror; and a bottle of baby oil on the bedside table.

My silver-haired guest would unlace his shoes and place them together before neatly removing his clothes and folding them in a pile upon the chair. I’d keep my coat buttoned and he’d come to me. He’d coyly ask what I was hiding and I’d giggle.

At some point, the coat would fall to the floor and he’d push me, still in my heels, onto the bed. It had posts, to which I was sometimes delicately laced with silk scarves or violently chained by handcuffs. Other nights, however much I gripped the bars and moaned that I wanted him to take control, he wouldn’t be in the mood.

He’d direct his attentions beneath the lingerie, glancing at my face regularly to gauge his success, before methodically wetting himself with oil and spilling two drops on the beige carpet but not apologising. He’d manoeuvre my limbs as he wanted them, concentrating on his angle as he entered. He’d look at me briefly, searchingly, angrily, perhaps even accusingly, but eventually say, ‘I love you.’ I’d reply and the hardness in his eyes would return.

‘Do you?’ he’d demand as he twisted me over and pressed me to the sheets. I’d feel the weight of his wrinkled hand upon my back, but my crotch would respond and he’d split my thighs further with each thrust. I’d reach underneath to touch myself and, seeing me, he’d quicken his pace, clutching my hips to guide his strokes. I’d utter low, gravelly responses to his questions: did I like that? Could I feel him? Was he deep inside me? Was I bad? Did I need to be punished? Did I want to be fucked? He’d continue talking not looking for a response; my stifled cries enough. He was fucking me, he’d tell me, and he wasn’t going to stop, he was going to fuck me until I came, until my cunt was sore and I begged him to stop. I was a naughty little girl who needed to be taught a lesson, he’d growl. He had my legs split and was fucking me with his thick cock, he’d say, he was filling my hole, was right up inside me and wasn’t going to stop however much I wanted him to, was going to give me the best fucking of my life, was going to ruin me, was …

The deep thrusts would melt into frantic and sloppy jerks as I felt a hot liquid smear between my legs and begin to trickle. For a moment, I’d stay in the same position, still locked to the bed though his hand had gone. I’d become aware of my arse waving in the air and shyly roll over, reaching for a tissue. He’d be lying down already, drifting into sleep. He’d reach out his arm for me and we’d lie stiffly, avoiding the wet patch, until he roused himself and said it was late, he should leave.

My sixth-form life was thus divided between sordid trysts and a desire to fit in. I’d ruined a relationship with my mum, my dad was out four nights a week and my friends at school were so alienated by my jumble of lies that there was a rumour going around that I’d made up an imaginary boyfriend that I actually believed in, meaning I was probably certifiably crazy. Instead of spotty boys and impossible algebra, my head was filled with poetry, Uncles and how I could next see the man who told me I was special.

Every day after school, most weekends and all holidays I’d snake down the garden path and fall onto the street. I’d pace across town, and, hurrying past my mum’s house, I’d worry vaguely about the Grays and the Roberts as I darted through Matthew’s wrought-iron gate, noting whether Annabelle’s car rested beside his. I’d press the doorbell, plus bang the knocker if the chipped red door failed to open immediately, and my foot would tap anxiously before a face peeked from behind the draught-excluding curtain, checking over my shoulder for witnesses and whispering hurriedly about Annabelle’s mood or how long we had alone. Once inside, those familiar smells of incense and coffee, cat and perfume. The hallway full of Indian patterns, net curtains and antique lamps, stairs leading upwards and doors to my left and one to my right. If Annabelle was home, a quick shuffle to the right and softly close the study door. A kiss and an embrace between the solid fire-proof door and the light blue curtains, drawn above the leather chaise longue, banishing the street outside, separating Uncles from others; us from them. I’d lean back on the dark wood of the ancient desk, absently fingering the knob of the locked drawer where my diaries were kept. I’d smell the familiar scent of the books on the shelf, twisting with too much Jovan Musk in the air. My ancient lover would be clean-shaven, wearing a soft pink shirt, or stubbly and sick-looking, padding about in a dressing gown and repulsing me with his weakness. The whiteboard would be scrawled with names like Southern Star, Kieren Fallon, Monty’s Pass and John Velazquez, and a picture of me from the previous summer was taped discreetly to the back of the door, along with a calendar dotted with the word ‘Baba’.

Following prudent ‘hellos’, we’d venture back into the hall and seek out Annabelle. Though she rarely sat in there except to watch television in the evenings, I’d poke my head in the living room and survey the formal couches, the locked bookcase of first editions, the china cats guarding the wedding photograph on the faux-marble mantelpiece and the real feline, Juno, gazing at me from a cushion on the rocking chair in the bay window. I’d follow Matthew along the hall into the extended kitchen and wait for my eyes to adjust to the light pouring from the south-facing veranda windows. Through them I could see their long, overgrown garden, and the tips of the trees in the wood beyond.

Annabelle would be sat at the chunky table twirling a pencil above a shopping list, or standing by the counter pouring water into the teapot, or kneeling by the boarded-up fireplace painting a mural. Or the kitchen would be empty and I’d wander to ‘my seat’ and grab a pack of cards from the bookshelf, begin shuffling while Matthew filled the kettle, glanced in the fridge and stepped onto the patio to check Annabelle was safely engrossed pulling weeds. He’d kiss me and we’d giggle naughtily about ‘doppelgänger’ and ‘kitten’ as we played cribbage and Matthew let me win. After a while, Annabelle would amble slowly up the garden path and we’d shuffle our chairs apart. We’d all discuss Mrs Roberts’s new decking, Lydia’s latest DIY dream or Hannah’s new boyfriend.

After a cup of tea, Annabelle would say they needed bread for the morning and something to eat for dinner, so perhaps she’d drive down to Sainsbury’s. It’d be another half hour of desperate anticipatory glances between Matthew and me before she’d actually leave. We’d act nonchalant as she finished her list, hunted for a lost glove and telephoned her mother to see if she wanted anything picking up, but as soon as we heard the Yale click into place, we’d spring from our seats. Matthew would lead me back along the hall and up the staircase lined with laminated collages of cats and fairies. We’d sweep past the first landing, which always had two closed doors. As I always did when I passed through this floor, I’d try to imagine Annabelle’s bedroom, picturing a mass of ancient teddy bears piled on cotton sheets and books like Jane Eyre beneath a lamp. I never saw inside, though. The other door led to Annabelle’s equally mysterious office. For all that she welcomed me into their unit and was ‘kind’ to us by finding excuses to leave us alone, there was a tacit understanding that this floor was sacred; that I belonged in the attic. So I’d follow Matthew up another, steeper flight of stairs with nothing adorning the walls.

The room in the attic was sparse, an old B&B offering with an en-suite shower room and two twin beds under the eaves. One was always unmade, a chiropractic pillow resting beside striped pyjamas and thick reading glasses. The other had just a navy fleece blanket and one pillow. This one was for me. At the foot of the second bed sat a desk piled with hardbacks overflowing from the two bookcases: evidence, should anyone ask, that I belonged up here ‘sorting books’. Matthew would drape a piece of gauzy fabric from two nails either side of the window as a makeshift curtain, then unlace his shoes and remove his socks. We were usually in a hurry, I suppose, but I’d still hesitate until Matthew asked if I was being coy, then I’d remove my jeans to reveal an expensive thong he’d bought me or Primark hold-ups or nothing at all. He’d make love to me on his side, always looking for the ‘love-light’. He’d try to make me come and tell me what his friend in the ‘industry’ had said about the percentage of women who can’t reach orgasm, but we’d inevitably end with a stickiness between my thighs and his penis shrivelled contentedly back into place. He’d disappear into the bathroom and return smelling of baby powder, then I’d go to pee and clean myself. We’d lie together for a few minutes, speaking of love and poetry, but soon grow restless and pull on our clothes, anxious to be back playing cards before Annabelle returned. Sometimes we’d hear her key before our underwear was in place and he’d hurry down in his dressing gown to tell her he’d suddenly ‘felt funny’ and I’d gone home, before ushering me silently out the door while she put the shopping away downstairs.

Back on the street, I’d breathe the daylight air or skulk into the starry shadows and wonder if my cheeks were flushed. I’d miss him instantly and suddenly want to cry. Sneaking back past my mother’s house, I’d take a detour via the empty park, sit on a swing and reach in my bag for my diary. I’d scrawl about how life was unfair and the bitter irony of true beauty. Eventually, I’d return home and begin boiling pasta, chat to my dad if he was home and absently make up a lie about doing homework with Claire. He’d only half listen while watching Stargate anyway, and I’d lock myself in my room with Tori Amos and the latest book Matthew had instructed me to read.

5

On 20th October 2001, I walked to Matthew’s after school as usual. My dad was still at work so it was easy to sneak away and I left a note saying I’d be out for dinner. Annabelle was visiting her mother for the evening, so Matthew wrapped his arms around me as soon as the door was closed. We kissed as if we hadn’t seen each other yesterday and the day before. With hours before us, there was no hurry. Matthew was making shepherd’s pie and there was an Eccles cake waiting for me with a pot of tea ready to be poured. We played cards and talked about books until my foot beneath the table aroused enough interest for Matthew to pull me from my chair and shoo me upstairs.

In the attic, we fucked. I don’t remember how. Perhaps that was the day he bent me over the bed and I cried as his cock dug painful holes in my abdomen. Or perhaps it was the time I knelt to suck his dick and guided my hand behind his balls only to find shit on my finger when I was done. Or perhaps I enjoyed it, despite not orgasming. Either way, we finished and dressed and padded downstairs to shovel potatoes and gravy onto our tongues. Annabelle came home at some point and we divided a bottle of wine before retiring to the living room. When Friends ended, Annabelle made a show of yawning and said she was going to bed. I scurried to the other sofa and folded myself into Matthew’s arms, flicking to the music channels hoping to find the Britney Spears video that turned me on. As Matthew was slipping his hand beneath my T-shirt and fingering the fabric of my bra, knuckles rapped at the front door.

Matthew snapped his hand away and stood up in one motion, then strode into the hall, smoothing his hair.

‘John!’ I heard from the other room.

‘Um, hello Matthew. Is Natalie here?’

‘She is. Would you like to come in?’ Matthew’s voice was liquid, subtly patronising yet unquestionably friendly.

I moved into the hallway. My dad looked distracted, annoyed even.

‘Nat, I’ve been trying your phone for hours.’

‘Oh, sorry,’ I muttered, realising my bag was in the kitchen and I probably hadn’t turned my profile off silent since school.

‘Your mum called. Nana’s in hospital—’

‘What?!’ I shrilled, as if shoving all the concern I should have felt in the past few hours into one short sentence.

‘She seems to have collapsed in the supermarket. Your mother says it’s possibly a stroke. I’ve been trying to get hold of you.’

‘I’m sorry, I left a note. My phone’s on vibrate,’ I muttered guiltily. ‘Is she going to be okay?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think it’s looking good.’ My dad looked apologetic. ‘James is at ours, will you come home?’

‘Of course.’

I darted along the hall to get my coat and bag, and then left with only the briefest of waves to Matthew, hovering helplessly in his study doorway.

As we walked back to the house, I begged my dad to drive us to the hospital immediately. I imagined my mother all alone in some waiting room as blue-suited nurses rushed in and out of an operating room, my nana lying on her back, her face as pale as her permed hair and today’s carefully selected jewellery gleaming rudely against a dishevelled hospital gown.

Trying to calm me, my dad explained it would take thirty minutes to get to the hospital and that my mum had said there might not be that much time, that we should wait for news; that it didn’t bear thinking about, but there was no point making the trip if she was going to die in the next half hour.

I cried of course. I could hardly see the tiles on the floor as we stepped into the house. My brother was a smudge as he offered a shy hello and asked if I wanted a glass of water.

The phone rang at 11.46.

‘Sweetie, Nana’s passed away … No, it’s okay, there was nothing you could have done anyway. It would have happened before you got here … I’m fine … I have to sort some things out here and go back to her house, but then I’ll come home … Don’t wait up … Honestly, I’ll be okay … Goodnight darling … I love you too.’

I crawled into bed and saw a strobe of images in the dark. I saw my nana falling in the bread aisle, reaching out for the handle of her trolley and crashing into a display of muffins. My mum struggling for breath as the paramedics wheeled her mother into the ambulance. The blinking of a sad coffee machine opposite plastic chairs in the relatives’ room. A man in a paper suit and white shoes telling my mum they did everything they could. Her hand wrapped around the payphone, the dial tone buzzing from the receiver after I’d hung up. The walk back to her car, seeing Nana’s coat on the passenger seat, entering the house where the afternoon teacup still bore lipstick, the fridge still hummed and the VCR had kicked in to record Midsomer Murders. I saw my mum pacing around the house, flicking switches off and trying to avoid looking at knick-knacks. Locking the door behind her and sitting in her car, resting her head upon the steering wheel and wondering how she could drive down the dual carriageway with so many tears in her eyes. Finally getting home at almost two in the morning and looking in on my brother, tangled in his sheets and snoring lightly. Glancing at my old room and wondering if I too was sound asleep at my father’s house. Turning to her own bed and sobbing quietly into her pillow because her mummy was gone and nobody was there to hold her. Then I saw myself, writhing in Matthew’s sheets and laughing at a sordid suggestion. My foot sliding up his trouser leg as we ate and his lips nibbling my ear while I selected a CD. I saw my phone vibrating furiously in an empty room and my tongue forming a lie for my father about playing cards.

As I slept, my sheets turned to chains; I felt my lies wrap themselves around my limbs and imagined my nana in a sterile room, watching me on a projected screen, seeing my thoughts and knowing my crudest acts. I woke in a sweat and cried as I stared into the bathroom mirror.

I called my mum as soon as it was light and offered to help her sort everything out, but she told me to go to school, she’d be fine. I ignored his emails and didn’t return to Matthew’s for a fortnight.

6

There were other times I doubted our relationship too. When Simon Shaw asked me out in the common room and an image of a normal teenage relationship involving cinema dates and second and third base flashed before my mind; when my English teacher asked what I wanted to be when I was older and which universities I was looking at; when the kids in my Philosophy class finally learnt about existentialism but moved on to Foucault and post-structuralism the following week; when I tried to imagine myself in ten or twenty years’ time; and when I turned up at his house and his unshaved jaw, tatty slippers and complaints about sciatica made me imagine Matthew’s death. One way or another, though, he always brought me back to my safe places between the pages of books and the sheets of his bed.

From: Matthew Wright <theoutsider@worldopen.co.uk>

To: Natalie Lucas <sexy_chocolate69@sweetmail.com>

Sent: 4 November 2001, 08:27:31

Subject: O me! O Life!

I hear you, my darling. Why, if we are built to feel, do we construct a society that cuts off feeling? Why, if our loins ache with longing, do we instil in children guilt and fear of intimacy? Why, if we value learning, are we afraid of those with knowledge? Why, if your teachers want you to think philosophically, do they punish you when you ask questions to which they know no answers? Why, if truth and honesty are the highest virtues, is it necessary to lie to those who are close to you? Why, if humans are taught generosity, do thousands die in poverty? Why, if we are taught to be individuals, are those who raise their heads above the parapet shot down? Why, if love is pure in all forms, are those who feel it outside the heterosexual, mono-generational, singularly racial norms punished? Why, if you feel passion in your veins when holding a book or mouthing a verse, do others pierce your reverie with mundane expectations? Why is the world so sad? Why does your Ma not understand love? Why does your Pa run away from commitment? Why does your brother turn everything into a mathematical equation? Why does Annabelle want only a hand to hold? Why do people discuss the weather when Shakespeare lies on the shelves? Why, Why, Why, what good amid these sad questions? O me, O Life?

The Answer:

That you are here—that life exists, and identity;

That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Yet, throughout my bizarre yo-yoing of passion and guilt, happiness and misery, I maintained some element of teenage normalcy. Despite my devotion to Matthew, alongside sitting exams and applying to universities, I flirted with boys at school and wove myself into such difficult situations with Nathan, David, Stephen and Pete that I was branded a cock-tease. Sometimes I felt guilty about Matthew or about the boys themselves, but my actions were not deliberate, just gestures of self-preservation to keep me from going insane in my unreality. I felt the only part of school and the teenage Nat I pretended to be that connected to the real me, the one only Matthew knew, was my continued attempt to drunkenly seduce sixth-form girls.

Though Matthew hadn’t made me come, I enjoyed sex with him and adored the secret eroticism of my life and the power I felt it endowed me with. But there was an ache. A hole beneath my intestines that throbbed when I watched pop stars gyrate in music videos. I’d lie for hours on Matthew’s couch, demanding deep tissue massages while I channel-hopped through Britney, Beyoncé and B*Witched. My fantasies were fed by Matthew’s stories of threesomes in his past, our mutual appreciation of Helmut Newton and his promises to find me a girl so he could watch me enjoy her. I ached from the beginning to the end of the school day, barely able to check my desire to ogle the popular girls in their skin-tight jeans and navel-rising tees. I wondered if they could see into my head and blushed when a male friend jokingly sought my opinion on Suzie’s behind. My one saviour was the regularity of house parties. I rarely got very far, but alcohol and a lack of parental supervision made everyone more open and I managed to content myself throughout Years 12 and 13 with periodic lesbianism.

After the parties, of course, I heard whispers in the common room like, ‘Hey, that’s the “keeno” girl who gets drunk and becomes a lesbian.’ But, thinking of Matthew and how all these people were just plebs watching the wall of the cave from their chains, I shrugged off their ridicule. I tried not to be discouraged by the popular girls who avoided me and regularly punched my male friends with whom conversations about my fantasies always ended: ‘But of course you’re bi, though.’ I attempted to develop a collection of witty responses behind which to hide my feelings of isolation. When Steve slouched beside me in the common room as I was eating a granola bar and asked, ‘Is that a dyke bar?’ I responded calmly, ‘Yes, and I’m about to shove it up my cunt.’ He ran out of the room in shocked disgust and I laughed to myself on my lonely couch.

I tried to live on the glory of each drunken party for as long as possible, but was always looking for another opportunity. Kissing Jenna before she passed out at my birthday bash saw me through the summer. Spin-the-bottle at Ruth’s house party made September bearable. In October, at Holly’s Hallowe’en do and with my best friend Claire’s encouragement, I whirled around the Lambrusco-littered rooms in search of a girl called Leah. She was the year below and only slightly pretty, but I’d heard she’d properly come out as bi and I was totally in awe. I found her downing Becks and we kissed with tongues on the couch until she deserted me for a rugby player. Sipping more fruity alcohol, I returned a skinny ginger girl’s gaze and idled up to her with what I thought was a flirtatious line about getting another drink. She admitted that I was the first girl she’d kissed and I cracked lame jokes about popping her lesbian cherry, feeling almost experienced. On the way home with Scott, the boy who gave me flowers for my birthday and would eventually be my platonic date for the sixth-form ball, I invented a story about dating a secret older woman that I couldn’t tell anyone about. I elaborated on my lie, making Matthew younger, female and a supremely attractive teacher stuck in a loveless marriage, until I began to believe it myself. I fell asleep with my clothes on, dreaming about Radclyffe Hall.

When, some months later, I had become so disheartened by the heteronormativity of my small town surroundings that I decided lesbians were just a myth, I contented myself with reading Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and writing imaginary love letters about ‘unrecognised social conditioning’ to Claire. Matthew and I spoke of Virginia Woolf and Marlene Dietrich, and while my friends at school laughed that my latent lesbianism was a harmless quirk, I privately lamented the plight of the outcast in society as if it were still Victorian England. After rereading Tipping the Velvet, I came to the conclusion it would actually have been easier to be gay then than it was now.

At a New Year’s Eve party in Year 13, I drank disgusting cocktails and teamed up with Toby to form a terribly clever club called ‘Ibs’. With an air of superiority, we perused the party declaring ourselves Ibs, until someone politely informed us that it was pretty obvious what we meant, and were we aware that we’d just announced our dubious desires to the entire sixth form?

Frustrated and with nothing more to lose, I focused my hopes on the one girl who might have been desperate enough: Kate. Kate was the sort of outsider of the group who imagined she had her own fashion sense and turned up to school in a mixture of checked lumberjack shirts and fishnet tights. Tonight, she had arrived with a new haircut that made her look like a member of a bad eighties girl-group.

Toby and I found Kate throwing up in the bath because someone had dared her to down half a bottle of vodka. We cleaned her up and asked if she would like to join our club. We sat on the kitchen tiles and attempted a three-way kiss, before I shamelessly stole Kate’s lips for myself and spent the rest of the night bouncing between my friends’ hysterical laughter and Kate’s vomit-tinged breath.

When Matthew read about this episode in my diary, he said something had to be done. We had never spoken in detail about these teenage parties where I pretended to be normal. I’d never asked his permission, but I felt free to do what I liked at them. Still, I never told him our games of spin-the-bottle involved me locking lips with boys as well as girls, that some nights I tasted the saliva of up to ten of my peers and that James Huntwood had managed to thrust his hand into my jeans as I lay almost passed out on Ruth’s kitchen floor. I only told him about the girls because he smiled and talked of ‘tight little pussies’, whispered in my ear during sex that if any of them were here right now we could change their stubborn little minds, tease them until they creamed and begged for more. He seemed to enjoy these things as much as I did, so I continued attending my promiscuous parties and never worried too much about issues of fidelity.

But, though he brought mention of her into our bed once or twice, Matthew was decidedly unimpressed by the idea of Kate.

‘You need a real woman. You deserve something far more sophisticated than these drunk idiots. It’s probably the answer to your orgasm problem too. We will have to find you someone.’

I was terrified, but titillated.

His plan was to create a profile on a dating website using our combined details to attract someone to join not just me but us.

In April, we discovered Gaydargirls.com. The profile we made featured just me, as did the picture. ‘You can’t say you’re a couple because then they don’t trust you. You’ll have to meet them first and convince them I’m not a sex fiend,’ Matthew winked.

‘You’ll also need another name. You should have one anyway, for other things,’ he added vaguely.

We spent three hours perfecting the description of me (us) and what I (we) wanted to find. By the evening, we were ready to make it live and Harriet Moore, the ‘sexy Literature student looking for fun’, became a reality.

‘Harry Moore. I like it: both androgynous and greedy.’ Matthew kissed me excitedly and I felt the familiar anticipatory ache between my legs.

In June, I received an email from I<3ellen16@sweetmail.com. She described her interests as shopping, flirting and playing football; Tori Amos and Aimee Mann were listed under her musical favourites; and her profile picture showed a roundish face with a choppy blonde bob, pink highlights and startling blue eyes. I imagined love.

Her email asked me if I wanted to ‘chat’ and offered her MSN Messenger addy. Sitting at my dad’s PC in the downstairs study, I keyed her into the Add New Friend box. When the sand-timer had finished rotating, a little green figure appeared beside her name, indicating she was online.

Chat with I<3ellen16

Harriet_Moore101: Hey

I<3ellen16: Hey, u found me!!

Harriet_Moore101: Yep

I<3ellen16: Howz uz 2day?

Harriet_Moore101: I’m good. How about u?

I<3ellen16: OK. I had a REALLY boring day at school, but apart from that everyfins peachy

Harriet_Moore101: Tell me about it, I can’t wait for the weekend!!

I<3ellen16: Me either. Wot u up 2?

Harriet_Moore101: Not much, it’s pretty boring where I live.

I<3ellen16: Me too. Tunbridge Wells’s so lame. There’s like one gay night at one club, and they’ve started getting pretty tight about ID.

Harriet_Moore101: That’s one more night than where I live. Quite seriously, I’m the only gay in the village!!

I<3ellen16: Lol! You’re hilarious. You should come see me sometime.

Harriet_Moore101: That’d be cool. Would you show me around?

I<3ellen16: Sure.

Harriet_Moore101: Cool

I<3ellen16: g2g, chat 2 u l8rz

Harriet_Moore101: Oh, ok. Bye.

I<3ellen16: bye sweets xxx

*

On the third day after the end of my last ever term at school, I set out to begin my destiny as an enlightened Uncle lesbian by making up an overly complicated story about going shopping with Claire in Hastings because she needed to find something to wear to her third-cousin’s wedding as her sister had already claimed the colour blue and all of Claire’s favourite clothes were blue, plus it was her boyfriend’s birthday and she needed to buy him a present and he’d seen everything in the shops around us so she had to go somewhere else and needed my opinion because she was rubbish at making decisions. The intention was to bore and confuse my dad so much that he wouldn’t notice that I’d asked for a lift to the wrong station to get to Hastings.

One of the first rules of Bunburying is to keep your story as close to the truth as possible – i.e. never change the place you are going to. You have to think about eventualities: What if a bomb goes off and your parents try to contact you? What if someone tries to rob a bank while you’re in it and you end up on national TV, proving you’re in London rather than Liverpool? What if a car breaks down and you can’t get home, but you’ve said you’re just down the road? What if Hastings turns out to be closed due to freak flooding and you don’t see the news until you’ve waltzed through the door and said you had a fantastic day’s shopping there?

I knew all of this and pondered the possibilities nervously as I plonked into my firm window seat in an empty carriage. There was no excuse; I should have been more careful, and, considering the complex duplicity I’d successfully woven into my life over the past two years, I really should have been able to pull off a simple blind date. But I was nervous. I’d changed six times this morning and had another panic about my casual jeans and T-shirt decision as I left the house. I’d put my hair up, then brushed it over my shoulders, then tried pigtails and half-up, half-down, finally settling back on a ponytail with a few loose strands that I now began to worry. I’d tried no make-up, then just eyeliner, then full face, then scrubbed it all off and stencilled a thick kohl line beneath each of my eyes and dabbed green mascara on my lashes.

Heather, aka I<3ellen16, was to meet me outside the station. She hadn’t been impressed that I didn’t know where her favourite coffee shop was and that I wouldn’t be able to make my own way to the town centre (she’d typed ‘omg, wtf, wot planet r u from?!’), but she’d seemed quite jovial (she’d typed ‘lol’) when she’d finally offered to just pick me up from my train and show me around.

She was late. I fingered a hole in the sleeve of my jacket with annoyance. When a girl vaguely resembling the photo I’d studied sauntered nonchalantly up to me, though, I of course replied: ‘No, I just arrived.’

‘Cool,’ she muttered, making no effort to hide the fact that she was eyeing me up and down. ‘So, you want to go shopping?’

‘Sure,’ I smiled, realising I must have blinked and missed the ‘Hi, hello, how are you? How was your journey? It’s good to finally meet you. Hey, we might even hug at this juncture’-part because Heather was already waiting by the traffic lights at the end of the road.

Still, her distance gave me a chance to subtly assess her in person. She was shorter than I’d imagined, but still about an inch taller than me so that was okay. Her hair had been cut since the picture I’d seen and she seemed to have a sort of natural sourness to her face that had not shown in the soft, posed smile of the photograph. I was a little repelled, but my nervous, desperate excitement won out and I began to picture us meeting like this throughout the holidays, going on picnics, holding hands and kissing by lakes.

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