The Function to Breathe

Seven

1995

Over the summer we spent all our free time together, sometimes with a group of others, sometimes just the two of us. I was rapidly falling in love. I'd never met anyone like Ricky, anyone I got on so well with and felt so relaxed with.

With other boyfriends I'd always felt it necessary to put on an act, to be who they wanted me to be, or who I thought they wanted me to be. With Ricky I didn't need to. I felt no pressure to be anyone other than me.

Two weeks before my eighteenth birthday Ricky told me he loved me. It was a Saturday night; we were on the bus coming home from another gig. For some reason we weren't sitting right at the back, I think when we got on there'd been another couple already occupying what we'd come to think of as 'our' seats, so we'd sat about halfway down on one side. Ricky had his arm round me and we were kissing, as we often did on our late night bus rides home. All of a sudden he pulled away and looked at me shyly.

"I love you Cat." He said quietly, not quite meeting my eyes with his.

I didn't know what to say. I knew I felt the same but I was scared to say it. Those three words weren't words I was used to hearing said to me and I certainly wasn't used to saying to anyone. The last person who'd told me they loved me was my Auntie Pearl, who I hadn't seen since we'd moved up to Leeds. I don't think my father had ever said he loved me, and my previous boyfriends certainly never had. I'd never told a boyfriend I loved him before, I hadn't told my father I loved him for years. Love wasn't something there was a lot of in my life.

I looked at Ricky in silence, biting my lip nervously. My heart was pounding and my stomach flipping while my brain tried to work out how to deal with this revelation.

"Oh shit." He said, "Forget I even said that."

His arm was still around my shoulders and he started to lift it away. I leaned in closer to him, resting my head on his shoulder. I realised that if I didn't speak now it would be too late; I'd have lost my opportunity, and possibly him. "I love you too." I whispered, my voice barely audible over the diesel thud of the bus engine. I did love him, it was just so scary to say it out loud.

"Really?" The delight in his voice was obvious. His arms tightened around me again and his lips hovered over mine before crushing down on them, silencing any further reply I might have been about to give.

***

My eighteenth birthday fell on a Saturday which would have been perfect for a party, but I wasn't having one. I hadn't asked my father if I could; there was no point, he'd never have agreed to a party in a hall or somewhere like that. I suppose I could have asked a few friends to my house but I didn't really want them to see what a miserable life I led away from school.

I was embarrassed by the state of our house. I tried to keep it clean and tidy but everything about it was shabby and worn out. It was damp and cold and in need of decorating and we desperately needed new furniture. Most of ours dated back to the 1970's by the look of it. I don't remember my father ever buying new furniture in my lifetime, other than replacing items that actually fell apart. The only room that was halfway decent was my bedroom; I'd brought all the bedding and curtains and the cushions and things that I'd made from my room in our old house and somehow made them fit in my bedroom here. The furniture I had there wasn't too bad either, and that was thanks to Auntie Pearl. She'd given me her old bedroom furniture a couple of years earlier when she and Uncle Peter had decided to have fitted wardrobes installed. It wasn't really my taste, it was a bit old fashioned which was probably why she'd decided to get rid of it, but it was good quality and still in good condition.