23 Attempts at Love

Chapter 1: The First One

I wasn't interested in the boys at school. This was primarily because they didn't have any interest in me either. At primary school I was a cherubic blonde-haired, blue-eyed child with a charming grin and an unwavering sense of curiosity. By the time I reached secondary school my blonde hair was unkempt, I needed some kind of set of braces for nearly three years, and compared to my classmates I was short, dumpy and tomboyish. I was a scruffy pale potato.

I made friends easily enough, but I watched and waited in the side-lines while other girls from my year drifted from boyfriend to boyfriend. Classroom romances developed on the back seats of English classes, and geography teachers squawked about 6-inch rules between students in corridors.

You wouldn't have guessed I was even interested in boys during school: I was too tomboyish, too energetic, too academic and sporty to even have time to worry about them. No, I was perfectly content with my merry band of break-time musketeers who, like me, had no success with the opposite sex, although some of them at least tried.

My parents never had much of an opinion on things: Mum was a painter who spent her days wandering through the house with an easel, brush and a filthy apron looking for inspiration. Dad, by contrast, has served in the army for 20 years and now worked as an independent security advisor. They alternated weekends driving around the country taking me to swimming competitions, my younger brother Sam to tennis matches, and my little sister Katie to dance recitals and competitions.

"It's all about planning and organisation, Lucy," Dad barked first thing on a Saturday morning. "If you want to win your competition and Katie wants to beat those other little twinkle-toes this afternoon, we have to set you up to win. Even if that means arriving two hours earlier than the rest of those losers. That's two more hours to get your head in the game!"

Largely, my parents stayed out of my private life. They let me see my friends on the weekend as long as I was home by a certain time (9pm for a long time, but it slowly moved to 10pm), and they rarely checked my social media or phone as long as my grades were good. Each report card which came through would be analysed and evaluated, with the final – and most important – report delivered by my parents in-person at the dining room table.

September rolled around one year and I started Year 11: the final year of secondary school and the year I turned 16, which sounds like a big deal, but it really isn't. I'd made a habit out of googling the things you can legally do at each age: at 16 I could buy my own pet, choose my own GP and drink alcohol with a meal in restaurants, which seemed like a big deal until I realised how gross most alcohol was (this opinion didn't last long).

Turning 16 also meant I could train and compete with the seniors at my swimming club, which meant leaving behind junior training nights and splashing around with the adults... And boys.

So, on a cold Wednesday evening in September I packed my most flattering swimsuit, swept waterproof mascara across my lashes and spent an hour agonising over the most casual pre and post-training outfit I could find. I wanted to look like one of the models you see walking off the beach in Cornwall or the Bahamas: salt-curled hair and flipflops. You don't tend to see that much in the Midlands, unfortunately.

I had a couple of friends I had grown up with at the swimming club who were joining me for the first time this session, so we warmed up together nervously in a trio, awkwardly waiting for someone to tell us what to do. What if we jumped in the wrong end of the pool? What if a particular lane was designated for someone else? What if I suddenly forgot how my arms worked and got relegated right back down to swimming with the kiddies again?

I was distracted immediately by the arrival of three tall, lanky boys, a little older than us, setting their bags down on the benches and laughing about something. They had all the swagger and confidence of people I wanted to be friends with. Alice and May, the two friends I was standing with, soon realised what I was looking at.