The Story of You by Katy Regan Page B

with Hello Kitty on the front, opened it up and pulled a photo out.
    ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’ she said, showing me a picture of a dark, petite teenager.
    ‘She is,’ I said. ‘She looks like you.’
    ‘D’you think so?’
    ‘Definitely, same little face, big eyes. What’s her name?’
    ‘Cec – Cecily,’ she said. ‘I named her after my dad – Cecil. He died falling down an escalator.’ I watched as she sucked on her cigarette. Was that story even true?
    ‘Has she been to visit you here?’ I said.
    ‘Nah, she’s really busy with her boyfriend, you know – typical fourteen-year-old. And who’d want to come and visit someone here?’
    She paused for a moment and slipped the photo back in its card.
    ‘Also, she’s very talented, she wants to be an illustrator.’
    ‘Wow, you must be very proud of her.’
    ‘Oh, yeah, very. Shame, really, she can’t say the same about me. Have you got kids?’ she said, eventually, turning to face me.
    ‘No,’ I said. It had started to spot with rain. ‘No, I haven’t. Not yet.’
    Joe didn’t reply to my email, apologizing for my wanton behaviour at the funeral, for two days. I was beginning to think he never would, and also that that would be a shame; it was lovely to be back in touch with him. Perhaps we could be friends now? Perhaps, after sixteen years, we were ready for that?
    Then he did reply. Only it wasn’t the reply I was expecting.
    6 April 2013
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    Do you want to know what the best escapism is?
    you+kissing+barn+JackDaniel’s+nakedflesh. That really helped.
    The Evil Dead
– though good – doesn’t cut it, I’ve found.
    Clearly my strategy to nip any flirting in the bud had washed right over him, but what was surprising was how I reacted.
    Oh. I
see.
Well, I’m glad. Even if that escapism took the form of helping you drink a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, then taking all my clothes off in a barn, like some wanton milkmaid.
    I thought I’d be scared off but I found myself flirting back!
    It didn’t take long for Joe to respond in similar fashion.
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    I know. I was being naughty (although the image of you as a wanton milkmaid is a
great
one) …
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    Why have you sent me a picture of a shark?
    From: [email protected]
    To: [email protected]
    Oh. That’s a nurse shark. I meant to attach a pic of a nurse. I’m on Ethan’s desktop. He’s still obsessed with animals, in particular sharks. I’m obsessed with nurses …
    And there followed three wonderful weeks of emails between us – deep and meaningful emails, shamelessly flirtatious emails, silly emails – and it was wonderful. All the clichés were there. I was
that
girl in the heady first weeks of a new relationship (albeit a long-distance, electronic one that I constantly told myself I wasn’t getting into at all. This wasn’t a relationship, Joe was just my friend); giggling at my desk at his messages, staring into space in meetings. ‘She’s got her Joe face on,’ Leon would say. ‘I know, you can practically see the dirty workings of her mind,’ Kaye would tease, narrowing her eyes. She was one to talk: Kaye has the dirtiest mind in the world – a penchant for the puerile. She knew that Joe was my first love. She just didn’t know the rest of it.
    A month after his mum’s funeral, on 3 May, Joe emailed me to say he was coming to London to stay with his school friend, Bomber:
    I’m staying at Bomber’s on the weekend of 24 May – we could meet? In actual real life?
    My heart was in my mouth but I wrote back immediately:
    Great. Be lovely to see you and I promise to behave this time. Luckily, there aren’t many barns in this part of the world …
    *
    To my Robyn, my Bobby, my middle one.
    What is it they say about the middle child? That ‘difficult’ middle