In the Neighbourhood

The bus pulls in at a stop you haven’t alighted at in twenty years and you step down in to your past. You look around at the shopping precinct, the buildings are smaller than you remember but the trees are larger; they are saplings in your memories but here they are fully grown. It's an odd sensation being here, unreal. Perhaps this is how it feels to be a ghost.

You become aware of more changes. The old wooden bus shelter has been replaced by an ugly perspex box. At first sight the shops have remained the same but you soon notice that the names on the store fronts have changed. The supermarket is in different hands, the florist has become a take-away and the ironmongers is now a pound shop festooned with cheap plastic goods from China. Only the hairdresser appears the same, you glance through the windows as you walk by half-hoping one of the girls you once knew still works there but you don’t recognise any of the faces.

You cross the car park towards a cluster of red brick eighties town houses. From a distance they appear unaltered but as you near them you see the differences; an extension here, a new fence there. They look more lived in now, more weathered. You stop and fish a cigarette from your bag. You are meant to be giving up again but you feel so apprehensive. Can two decades really have passed? At times it seems a lifetime ago but at other times it’s just yesterday.

You weave your way through the narrow alleys of the estate as if you have never been away. Then you are there, standing in front of your old home. There’s a satellite dish now and double glazed windows but your heart skips a beat when you when you see that the trellis you and Dad spent all one hot summer afternoon putting up is still there. Mum never did get around to planting the roses she had planned to grow up it.

You had been so surprised when they split up; just a few months after you had left for University. All those years and you had never noticed their unhappiness, never had the slightest suspicion that they were only staying together for your sake. You ask yourself if you could be so selfless.

You gaze up at your old bedroom window, curious as to who sleeps there now. The summer you were sixteen you had painted it brilliant white and bought a black duvet and a black blind with your birthday money. The memory raises a smile; you had thought yourself so sophisticated. You had lost your virginity in that white room. With Michelle What-was-her-name after sharing a bottle of sickly vermouth stolen from her parents’ drinks cabinet. You wonder where she is now. Michelle Jones? Michelle Jenkins? It bothers you that you can't recall her surname. You see a face peering over a fence and quickly turn and walk away. You are visiting places not people.

You leave the estate and follow the cycle path past the converted barn which had hosted the local youth club. You wonder if they still hold the monthly discos which had been the highlight of the social calendar. You remember the excitement building as the day approached; friends pooling money to buy cider and cigarettes, the girls endlessly discussing what they were going to wear. It's a long time since you felt that thrill of anticipation about anything. Perhaps that's what you are missing.

There are more houses now, less open green space between the estates. The suburb had only been half built in your day, the second phase of a new town. You find it difficult to make sense of the nostalgia you’ve been experiencing for this place. So strong at times that it keeps you awake at night. It hadn’t been a bad place to grow up, you hadn’t been unhappy; mostly you had just been bored. A half finished waiting room for adulthood and real life.

So why has it been playing on your mind so much lately? For two decades you had hardly given it a thought, but for the past year or so you keep finding yourself getting maudlin after one too many glasses of Merlot, watching old music videos on the internet and yearning for your lost youth.

“It’s just part of getting older” Claire would say. “We all feel it at times, but be honest, would you really want to be fifteen again?”

Eventually you reach the school, a leafy red brick campus with the big library and sports centre shared with the community. You wonder whether any of the staff from your day are still here. Perhaps one or two of the younger ones are still teaching, it wouldn’t be a bad place to spend a career. You'd like to see your old classrooms but can't imagine that they allow nostalgic old pupil to wander the corridors. Instead you walk out across the playing fields, pondering memories of sports days and miserable afternoons playing rugby in the rain. You light a cigarette as you walk, a tiny act of defiance from the future.

You’re pleased to discover the hole in the hedge on the far side of the field still exists, maintained by generations of dog walkers and kids taking a short cut. You climb through and walk down a narrow alley leading to a street of thirties semis. You’re in the village now, mentioned in Domesday but swamped by the suburban sprawl of the new town. You wonder if the divide between the village and the estate kids still exists, they had always thought themselves a cut above, while you had mocked them as yokels.

You reach the Green and the Six Bells. It had been a real old man’s pub in the eighties, reeking of smoke and stale beer. You hardly recognise it now . The inside has been gutted, the old division between saloon and lounge and snug replaced by a big open space with dark hardwood floors and designer furniture. It’s early for lunch, just gone midday and you’re the first customer. You take a table by the window and ask for the menu.

You enjoy a salad accompanied by a glass of very good Pinot Noir. You like the view of whitewashed thatched cottages and the honey coloured Norman Church. You’d never appreciated it in your youth. It’s picture-postcard pretty, Claire would love it here.
You feel guilty about this morning. You had hurt her when you told her you wanted to come alone. “Of course I understand” she had said, but you had caught the disappointment in her eyes.

You will make it up to her. Perhaps that necklace she had admired so much in Greenwich Market. Coming back here had been her idea. She talks a lot of the future and suspects the past is holding you back. Was she right? Maybe. Perhaps the reality would banish the sun-dappled memory that had grown in your mind.

After another glass of wine you stroll past the church and across the main road to the lake. The memories are strongest here and the alcohol has made you a little maudlin. You remember long summer days smoking weed beneath the trees and cold autumn nights building fires. The winter the lake froze (88? 89?) and you had all encouraged each other to go further and further out until the ice had started to creak and shift and you had scrambled off in a panic. The day Danny had dived from the bridge, hit his head and nearly drowned. Katie James, her black hair glistening and dark eyes glinting in the moonlight.

You sit down on a bench. You wonder where they all are now. The old gang. What they are doing, what they look like. Sometimes the urge to google their names or join one of those websites that reunite lost friends is almost overwhelming. But it would be a mistake. Your life is so different now, how could you even begin to explain? And after the initial flurry of nostalgia what would you have in common?

“You've changed!” had been an insult when you were growing up. You had never understood that attitude. Wasn't life all about change? Growing up, moving on? Once your parents had split up there had been fewer and fewer reasons to come home. Mum returned to Cardiff and after Dads first heart attack he had moved to the coast. You kept in touch with people for a year or so; made a few visits, each one leaving you feeling you had less and less in common. It was easier in those pre-internet, pre-mobile days to lose touch, and soon you had left them behind as you built a new life.

You walk slowly back to the precinct to catch the bus back to the city centre. They were good people here, decent people. But you could never have been yourself in a place like this. People would never have understood, and you would have been so alone.

You check your reflection in the chemist shop window as you wait. You think you look fairly good. Tall and slim and always meticulous with clothes and hair and make up. You are much more at ease with yourself than you were when you first started living as a woman. It’s been six years since the final operation and you feel yourself in a way you never had before. You are happy now.

Claire is waiting at the hotel surrounded by the detritus of a boozy lunch. She is sipping on a gin and tonic and flirting with the outrageously handsome young Pole clearing the tables. You sit down opposite and order a drink.

"How did it go?"
"Good.” You take her hand in yours. ”I think it helped.”
She smiles.
"I'm glad".
You smile back.
“I've come to a decision” you say, gazing in to those big brown eyes. “There's nothing I want more than for us to have a baby.”