My Single friend by Jane Costello

Chapter 3

Chapter 3

            The day I met Henry isn’t one that I remember vividly. But Henry does, probably because he has a brain the size of Pluto, and I’ve heard his version of the event often.

            He recalls the tiniest detail of our introduction, despite it having happened so long ago that every household in Britain owned a Rubik’s cube at the time.

            I was in my fourth year in Kingsfield Primary School and Henry was the new boy. His parents, who were both professors, had transferred from their jobs in London to Liverpool University and the family was new in the city.

            Henry was wheeled into our class and forced to stand at the front of the room while Miss Jameson introduced him to the other pupils. He tells me that that moment – when he, a glasses-wearing swot with a funny posh accent and freaky hair, had to stand in front of thirty streetwise city kids – was the most traumatic four minutes of his childhood.

            Whether primary-school children can be as tough as Henry remembers is up for discussion. But there’s no doubt that he was immediately considered different. A stranger who was shy, sensitive, brainy and, worst of all, wore brown laceups that resembled under-cooked Cornish pasties – shoes no self-respecting nine-year-old should step out in. Not even after dark.

            Henry says that after Miss Jameson’s rambling introduction, she turned to the class and beamed: ‘Now, children, who’ll volunteer to look after Henry for the day?’

            A silence descended that was so deafening you could have heard pins drop in Devon. In that terrible moment, one thing was clear to everybody. To Miss Jameson, to Henry, to those rotten kids whose only excuse was that they were at an age when tribal instincts kick in furiously: nobody was going to put up their hand.

            Then somebody piped up from row three.

            ‘Go on, Miss. I’ll do it.’

            Henry says my voice was the thick-accented squeak he’d heard. When he looked up, dizzy with relief and gratitude, there I was, wonky-fringed and defiant.

            ‘You fancy him,’ sneered Andy Smith.

            ‘Shurrup or I’ll tell our Dave,’ I snapped. It was a threat I often issued, despite the fact that my brother reserved physical violence for just one person: me. Dave and I fought like rabid alley cats in those days – throwing each other downstairs, pulling hair, scratching and punching – so the prospect of him defending his little sister was as remote as a hamlet in the depths of the Amazon Basin.

            ‘Now, now, children!’ said Miss Jameson, clapping her hands. She didn’t have what you’d call a commanding presence, even with a bunch of nine-year-olds. ‘Well done, Lucy Tyler. Henry can take a seat next to you and you can show him the ropes at lunchtime.’

            Henry shuffled to the desk and smiled. I frowned suspiciously.

            ‘Thanks,’ he said softly.

            ‘’S’all right,’ I replied. ‘Why’ja wear them soft glasses?’

            The accent has been ironed out today. It hasn’t gone completely, and I haven’t tried to ditch it deliberately: I was brought up in a world where that would be the ultimate in pretentiousness. But after three years at St Andrew’s University and nearly eight in PR, I’ve got a voice that has prompted certain members of my extended family to accuse me of ‘going all posh’.

            Anyway, despite not personally remembering the details of the day Henry and I met, I recall quickly feeling that he was somebody I both admired and wanted to protect.

            Admired because, as well as turning out to be a great laugh, Henry knew the answers to everything. How many plates a Stegosaurus had, how volcanoes work, how to remember your times tables, plus a plethora of French swear words so choice they’d make a sailor blush.

            There seemed to be no piece of knowledge Henry hadn’t acquired in his short life. Which was liberating – because I wanted to know the answers to everything. I never had a particularly natural intellect, not as vast and effortless as Henry’s, but I loved learning and knew that I wanted to do my best in life – to be the best I could. I was, and have always been, a tryer.

            I’m digressing. Despite all this, Henry needed protecting from the Andy Smiths of this world, who entertained themselves by stealing his homework books and defacing his pencil case with Denise Gibbin’s My Little Pony stickers (she was one of those girls you just knew would grow up to be a lap dancer).

            Eventually, years later, Henry gained a degree of acceptance among our contemporaries. This was thanks entirely to the fact that one of the many things at which he excelled was sport – and, at our school, if you were good at sport, you can’t have been all bad. So Henry got some positive attention for once, albeit as ‘that weird kid who’s shit-hot in midfield’.

            What I knew that the others didn’t was that he was also hilariously funny when he wanted to be. Frustratingly, if they could have seen that, they’d have loved him. But his shyness prevented that and the class geek he remained.

            As we grew up, I was aware that my close association with Henry put me at permanent risk of a catastrophic downturn in kudos. But there was never any question of ditching our friendship to placate the in-crowd. Being Henry’s friend felt as if I knew a secret nobody else did. I understood his magic and was luckier for it.

            These days, Henry still gets the odd look that must take him back to that first day in Miss Jameson’s class. It’s not surprising. His glasses are abysmal. His dress sense wouldn’t make it onto the fashion pages of Railway Enthusiasts Weekly. And his hair, to be frank, looks as if it’s been attacked with a hedge-trimmer. But Henry doesn’t care. So why on earth should I?