Back in the Day

I wake. No need for the alarm. It’s Sunday after all. Stretching I review my day. A quick trip to the gym and then a lazy weekend newspaper-reading session before a meal with the children and grandchildren early evening. Well a man isn’t 61 every day. On my way downstairs I can hear music. FFS it’s not yet December and I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday is playing on breakfast radio. More pleasingly I can smell bacon frying. My beautiful wife Suzanne has obviously decided to treat me to a birthday fry-up. 

I walk into the kitchen to find my mum, who incidentally has been dead these past
three years, plating up the full-works, complete with three slices of buttered white toast. There is a pile of cards and presents and a handmade banner - Happy 17^th Birthday Joe – besides which stands my sister, her broad smile displaying two gaps where once her baby teeth where rooted.  

Obviously I’m still asleep. In a moment or two I’ll wake up properly. In the  meantime I may as well eat the meal that mum has so lovingly prepared. As I chew the, I have to admit very realistic, food I wonder why my consciousness has taken me back to this particular year. 1973. The year I'd most like to forget. The birthday that, I try to pretend to myself, never happened.  

The music changes. Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree – cheesy I know - accompanied our first dance mid-summer when Lisa and I became an ‘item’. Coming around to the fact that I will likely relive this dreadful day to its bitter end I promise myself that what sense I’ve acquired over six decades will influence what I say and do this time around. After opening my gifts, which include Bowie’s latest album and new pair of flairs, I ruffle my sister’s hair and kiss mum on the cheek. I had forgotten how soft her skin was and I’m grateful at least for the extra chance to touch her. Surprised by the physical affection, which my teenage self, avoided at all costs, she turns and hugs me tight. I can feel her smile and briefly lean into her. Slinging my school bag over my shoulder – it’s Monday in 1973 – I leave before Carly Simon really gets into You're So Vain.  

I manage not to meet Lisa until lunchtime. We’re in the same sets for English, Maths and History but not for French which we both have first thing. Following the break, which I spend skulking in the boy’s changing room, she has Music whilst it’s Chemistry for me. So I have all morning to decide what to say to her; how to play it differently than I did 43 years ago. She already eating lunch when I arrive at the dining room. I don’t join her as I usually do. She notices and frowns, clearly confused. She doesn’t know that I know what’s going to happen next; what she has to tell me. 

Appreciating that I can’t put it off any longer I leave my meal and follow her out to the school yard. At first she brushes me off when I try to take her hand but soon relents, her usual sweet self. In silence we walk to our favourite spot at the far end
of the sports field; a place were on a normal day we would chat and engage in a
little light petting as long as no teachers are near. There is more silence. Clearly she doesn’t know how to begin. I could make it easier for her but despite the hours I have spent planning to be a braver, more honourable person, I just can’t do it. If this is real what I say now will change my future forever which probably means no university and no Suzanne for me. Not to mention our wonderful girls and theirs. So, rejecting the opportunity to be better, I am the coward I once was, and the final words between us, before she slaps my face, are the same: ‘Is it mine?’ 

This time around I know what comes next. She is sent away and by the time she (presumably) returns mum, dad, my sister and I have moved up north following a promotion for my father. As far as I am aware Lisa told no one that I was the father of our baby. And I have never spoken the truth to anyone. I do not know what happened to her. I’ve googled but can find no trace. I hope she’s been content and had a happy life. As for me, despite as much professional and personal success as any man could ask for, I remain haunted, however much I try to deny it, by the memory of a girl and the injury I did her.  

****

I wake with a start. The radio alarm I don't remember setting, it is Sunday after all, clicks on. Remembering my dream I shiver. The presenter is speaking. ‘And now to the track that surely promises to be this year's Christmas hit. It's Wizard with I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday. . .