He left on a Sunday as families tucked into their roast dinners, sheep grazed in their fields and the world continued to revolve slowly on its axis. After a perfect weekend of coffee in cafes and arm-in-arm walks she was blissfully blinded. So when he said ‘I love you but I can’t be with you anymore, it’s not fair’, it was the last thing she had expected. He was leaving her to chase the dream of a woman he had loved before her, a woman who had left him to travel half way around the world in search of adventure because their life together had been lacking. ‘I really believe you can love two people at once’ he said, was this some scant effort at making her feel better she wondered as the hot tears began to roll down her cheeks. He couldn’t bear to see her cry so he did what came to him instinctively, he put his arms around her and held her tight and one thing lead to another. Later as he got dressed and packed his things the sun began to set, sending shards of pinks and purples crashing silently into the cotswolds. And while the world carried on she sat in bed clinging to her duvet, trying to wring some comfort from it as she watched him leave for the last time.

Slumping down in her chair exhausted and fed up she wonders how she will conjure up the effort to do this assignment. As her account details appear on the screen, a message flashes before her eyes, you have new mail. She clicks the icon and reads the message, hello my sweet girl from Timbuctoo, I can see you from where I’m sitting, you make me smile. Momentarily she remembers a scene from a film that she loves; a girl at a computer, the image of her crush appearing in front of her, the crush standing up and smiling. These things only happen in the movies don’t they? She looks around furtively to see who has written this heart-fluttering message and she sees him sat not two or three rows away from her. Fred. The sweetest boy at uni. Fred with the heart-melting smile and the eyes that crinkle up at the corners when he laughs. Fred whose eyes dance whenever she walks into the room. She waves a small wave and beams a smile at him. Then she slumps back into her chair and heaves a silent sigh – risk is not a game she likes to play.  If only she were free to find out if he felt about her, the way she did about him.

Lately, she’s been aware that things have seemed different. She doesn’t feel the darkness bearing on her anymore, the mass that threatened at times to smother her. Instead she knows what it is to feel the weightlessness that a child feels when she is skipping along without a care in the world, floating as if on clouds. It’s not all rose tinted spectacles and cotton candy though…sometimes, on one of those days, she comes across little fractures in her life that let an insidious amount of the darkness seep through. It is then that she is acutely aware of the sensation of time rushing away from her, like treacle dripping through her fingers, and she wonders if it is something that she can ever stop.

He always looked forward to seeing her. They had such a rapport and could talk about all sorts for hours, their mates would tease them afterwards ‘We couldn’t get a word in’ they would laugh, ‘we may as well have not been at the pub’. He wasn’t sure what kind of crazy glue formed this bond between them, but he knew he liked it. Years later, after they have gone their separate ways he will convince himself that he was right not to tell her how he really felt about her. She was bright with university and a big future ahead of her, he was still living in the town that he had grown up in, in the same job he’d had for years, how could he hold her back? One day, when chance throws them together at a wedding, he sees her walking towards him and all those feelings that he’d masked for years come crashing back like a deluge. ‘You know, I had such a huge crush on you back then,’ she confides in him, eyes sparkling just like they used to. And just like that, the remorse and reality come tumbling about him as he understands that now, with his life, his obligations, this can never be, that back then, with her, he had the chance to be really happy and he let it slip away.

I’ve never really known your side of the story. A year after we split up your best mate told me that you were so proud of our friendship, that it meant the world to you. Hearing that was enough to keep me hanging on to the feeble line I’d been thrown, clinging desperately like a ship wreck survivor. I suffered a million heart breaks every time I saw you. I wanted to cut and run and be free of the pain, to finally shake off the tiny shards that kept digging into me. Yet something kept me hanging on. And I came out of the tempest and never looked back. But every now and then I come to an impasse and I wonder why I went through what I did on the word of someone I didn’t even know that well. So I ask you and you tell me that I should know how important this friendship is, how much I mean to you. But how would I ever know when you never tell me why?