Emma

I have known Emma since I was about seven years old. She delights on reminding me that we have been friends for over 20 years. This delights me too, even if it astonishes me slightly I have known her for such a large proportion of my life.
I remember my first conversation with Emma. In the school playground we had just watched the first half of Disney’s’ Robin Hood. She had already seen it and wanted to know if I thought Robin Hood was going to die or not. She was happy to reassure me that he would live to fight another day.
We started going around to each other’s house to “play”. We would get all our teddies out and I think it was Emma who introduced me to Keepers. Our first argument was about a teddy bear. We both had “Snow Bears” from the local supermarket. She told me my Snow Bear wasn’t a proper Snow Bear. I was quite put out.
When we were a bit older we would have sleepovers which almost always included a midnight feast. We would go to the shop in the afternoon and stock up on treats. I always had a chocolate milkshake, Emma strawberry. We stayed up talking about boys who we fancied, lying in her sofa bed. We both fancied Paul but she liked James as well. Neither of us got anywhere with either of them!
When we started secondary school she would pick me up on the way so we could walk together. We would spend this time fantasising about boys and our future. By the time we were 13 our favourite topic was Take That and how we would meet them. Naturally our favourite band members would fall for us, whether is was because we were their dancers, or I was their sax player, or we had designed the cover of their next album. Mark was my favourite, Robbie Emma’s. The rest of the band was shared out among the rest of our friends. It was during that walk to school that I told Emma my grandma, and then granddad, had died, less than an hour after I had found out myself. Walking to school the morning the news broke we analysed the split of Take That and consolidated each other. But we didn’t cry. We were 16 and grown up by then.
We spend our Saturday mornings at an art group where we occasionally made art and always had yet another boy to swoon over. I took a shine to the much older Steven then moved on to the shy Andy and short James. Emma had a fair selection too, although went off one of them after inviting him to her birthday party and seeing him behaving badly with the boys. We had a great time, mercilessly winding up one of the teachers (sorry Brian). Every year we went to an arts parade in Nottingham. One year we made a giant beetle. Being the tallest in our group I was at the head. Emma being the shortest was its backside. “I can’t believe I am going to be a beetle’s butt!” she would exclaim whenever given the opportunity.
One Saturday morning she whispered to me, “I’ve got something for you that you are really really going to like!” I was intrigued! As soon as we had the opportunity we scurried away so she could uncover her treasure; a black and white photo of my current favourite, Andy. It was gorgeous! I kept it in my bedside cabinet, only taking it out and putting it beside my bed at night so my mum wouldn’t see it. At the time it was the best thing anyone had given me ever.
The rest of our free time together we spent “with” Take That. We would watch their videos and all their TV appearances, learning their dance moves. We would listen to their music, learning all the words. We would go through magazines, cutting out and keeping every morsel we could find on them. Our walls were plastered in their posters which we would compare, deciding which ones showed off our favourite’s good looks the most, occasionally swapping them. We even managed to go to see them in concert a couple of times, and spent hours getting ready so that when they saw us in the crowd, they would instantly fall madly in love with us. Emma made me a cross stitch badge with Mark’s name on it and we spend hours desperately trying to draw pictures of them. We were besotted!

One of our favourite past times was going for “walks”. This usually consisted in homing in on the areas that our favourite boys lived. We very rarely saw them but enjoyed trying to figure out which house they lived in anyway. Then one evening we were crossing the road near the roundabout to the A1. I was looking for traffic; all of a sudden I saw Emma being hit by a car. I screamed in sheer horror, and for that second before she started to moan in pain I thought she was dead. It was one of the longest seconds of my life.

Luckily Emma wasn’t badly hurt. She was bruised and suffered with fluid on her knee for a long time afterwards (and still suffers on occasion now I think) but had got away with the accident quite lightly. When I went to school over the next few days everyone wanted to know what had happened. I remember sitting in our German class and having to quell the rumours that were already circulating. One of the boys who had been one of the first on the scene after the accident delighted in giving me a commentary on the accident, giving me a news reader’s account on how I thought my best mate had died. I was not amused.

Looking back it was after the accident that Emma and I went through a rough patch. Understandably (although I don’t think I really got it at the time) she didn’t want to go out for walks any more. She started to get closer to her other friends and stopped walking to school with me. She began spending more time with Melissa, a girl who I believe to this day was only interested in “stealing” people’s best mates in order to get the satisfaction of seeing a friendship crumble before moving on to her next target. Emma fell for her flattery and attention and I was pushed out. I remember analysing the situation with our mutual friend Carly. “We are not going to let Melissa take away our friend” Carly announced defiantly one day, so we went on a mission to win Emma back, taking her out for the day in Grantham. But it wasn’t until Emma started to see Melissa for what she really was that she came back to us. And had to suffer the consequences of her desertion when Melissa’s little sister started to threaten her.

Even after Melissa my friendship with Emma was strained. We would “fall out” more often over little things. My quirky sense of humour and quite possible desperate attempts to please others grated on her. If I was getting grief from another member of our social circle she was more likely to stick up for them than me. I think Emma started to resent my friendship with Carly, who I had started to out to the pub and later clubbing with. Carly was not very popular and a lot of people didn’t like her, whether it was because she had a relationship with an older boy or her unorthodox family I don’t know. Even the teachers didn’t like her. Emma delighted in telling me any gossip. “Carly got told to take her lipstick off in Science, you know”. I did know but did not see what the big deal was.

Things were difficult until we went to university. We stayed in touch, meeting up in the holidays and I visited Emma in Manchester once. Emma had a bit of grief with her course and moved to Lincoln University to finish her degree, graduating a year or two after me. She was much happier at a university where she could live at home. Whereas I had always been keen to move to the big city, Emma was a home bird, and lives under an hour’s drive from her parents to this day.

By this time, Emma’s taste in men had diversified. She had gone through a Jamaican phase (the film Cool Runnings had a lot to do with that) and had now moved on to Scottish men (Ewan McGregor was a turning point in this one). I think she was in her final year at Lincoln when she decided to organise a holiday to Scotland. I was nervous about going, especially when our mutual friend Katie backed out. But went anyway.

We ended up staying in a static caravan on Loch Lomond. It was a beautiful campsite but very isolated. We went with two of Emma’s uni friends and one of Emma’s friends from school, Holly, who I had once been close to but grown apart from when she developed a tendency to moan about everything and feel decidedly sorry for herself.

A week is a very long time to spend in a caravan with someone who you have hardly seen for about 4 years. We had both changed a lot since our school days. I had moved on from trying to keep everyone happy and had developed the confidence to challenge and question people. Emma wasn’t used to that.

Emma and Gemma had developed an interest in castles. I was happy to go and see one, but I think we saw four in that week, including a stately home. I was not too impressed, especially as my suggestions to do something different were met with resistance. We spent most of the time in the caravan when I was keen to go out and explore. We watched the Eurovision song contest and Gemma stormed out of the living area complaining it was rigged when we did badly. We went out a couple of evenings, once driving for miles to a Scottish dancing and dining night which was sold out, and another time to a local pub. Gemma got dressed up for a night on the town. I don’t know if she felt over-dressed, but our table certainly got a few odd looks from the locals.

Quad biking was suggested, but when we went to investigate the other girls became nervous and decided against it. We went pony trekking which I thoroughly enjoyed, if only because I had an excuse not to talk to Emma and Gemma, who were increasingly annoying me with their dominance over the holiday. Of course, not being a driver, I had no say in where we went. So I made the most of the company of my horse for that hour. He didn’t argue with me.

Halfway through the week Danny had to drive home for a family emergency. Emma was gutted – she really liked him even though he was in a relationship with another woman. Her mood deteriorated, and with her mood her tolerance of me. We ended up snapping at each other. At the end of the holiday she was filling in the customer feedback form and asked us our opinion on one of the questions. I expressed mine and she quickly dismissed it as invalid. I muttered something about getting used to not having an opinion. She retorted with a comment about having “had enough” of me. We hardly spoke on the drive back. It was a long journey!

When we got back to Newark, I was relieved but also devastated. Was that the end of our friendship? All those years we had known each other and it seemed like we couldn’t stand the sight of each other any more. But then Emma phoned me – I had left something in the car so I went over to pick it up. She looked a bit uneasy to see me but offered me a glass of wine. We sat in the back room of her parents’ house and started talking about what had happened. She felt it was because she had been trying so hard to keep Gemma happy. I said I thought it was because we had both changed so much that we just weren’t used to each other’s developed personalities. But we silently said to each other that whatever had caused our clashes over the last week, we would stick with each other.

Since our holiday to Loch Lomond we still see each other a few times a year. Until very recently she lived with a friend I introduced her to whom I met at uni. I often go to visit them for their birthdays, and they sometimes come down to London. Emma now knows that when I disagree with or question her opinion, I am not doing so to start a conflict, but to try to let her see alternative viewpoints. When I give her my opinion on something, whether it is art, a social issue or a man, she listens to me, and although we often disagree, she appreciates my viewpoint, no matter how wide of her own it is. And I have grown to love all her traits, and her faults. Emma wouldn’t be Emma if she didn’t love Manchester United so passionately she will argue to the death anyone who dares to criticise their team. Or to get grumpy when she is tired. Or to be so intolerant towards other drivers.

When I told Emma I was getting a tattoo of a dove in flight on my back she asked why. I explained that it was to remind me of my freedom, to never let anything or anyone hold me back, as well as being a symbol of peace. She paused for thought. “I really like that,” she said after some deliberation, “because you’ve always been a free spirit and done things your own way, not following the crowd”. It meant a lot to me that she said that. Because it said to me that she can now appreciate all those things about me that she may have found irritating in the past. Which I guess is why we are still friends twenty years on.