[MATURE]
seventeen years ago noora and william met, parted and never said goodbye. and soon they're going to have to ask themselves: could it be that they actually found what they've both been looking for, back in the mid-eighties, in a holiday park...
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al & emma's dining room, saturday, 19 September 2017, 12:35 a.m
william glanced around the table at his friends. they were all roughly the same age as him - twenty five, twenty six. this conversation, or one very like it, was probably going on around a thousand london dinner tables at this very moment. but this was special because it was being brought out, like the best china, for a very special guest. for him.
this was the first group gathering since he and vilde had split up, and everyone seemed extra-sparkly, like guests at a pretend TV dinner party. he's seen them do it before, with new girlfriends and old friends, who arrived suddenly from overseas, out of the blue, like characters in a soap opera.
they wanted him to know that he was still one of them, whatever his status. look, they were saying, you've got fantastic friends and life is going to be just great. and in showing themselves to him afresh, they were retiring their shared history. remember when, they said. remember that time in amsterdam - chris' stag night, remember - on the ferry on the way back and chris projectile-vomited all over the food counter. and remember that weekend in cornwall; remember al standing on that rock in the middle of the sea at five in the morning fucked out of his brain on speed and how that wave crashed over him and we all thought he was dead. remember that?
the conversation turned to a time before william had known half of these people, to a time they shared at university before he'd come into their lives. stories of snakebite and acid and STDs. stories of grim fridges and disastrous casseroles, of sleepwalking and incontinence.
he rested his chin on his clasped hands and absorbed the atmosphere while he listened to his friends reminisce. the clock on the microwave said 12:38 a.m. he'd usually be home by now, he mused, paying the baby-sitter, looking in on lara. instead he was still here. nowhere to go; no one to get back to. he was a married man who wasn't married, a father who didn't live with his child. he was all wrong. everything in his life felt pended, unbalanced. but here in the genial, familiar warmth of al and emma's kitchen, red wine and whisky basking in his bloodstream, the world was righted once more.
the conversation regressed further. they were talking about schooldays now, days before even the oldest of the friends had known each other. they were talking about crazes and crushes and snogging - then natalie asked an open question.
"so," she said, smiling mischievously over her fingertips, "how old was everyone when they lost their virginity? and who to? you first, al."
al groaned, but went on to tell everyone that it was to a girl called karen on a school trip to paris when he was sixteen years old. they'd had sex in the bottom bed of the hostel bunks, while his friend joe farted audibly, odorously and deliberately overhead.
emma lost hers when she was seventeen, to a married man who promised he'd leave his wife for her, then never contacted her again.
natalie was more traditional, losing her virginity at the age of fourteen to a guy called darren who looked like james franco. it was all over in thirty seconds and he cried when she didn't bleed because he thought it meant she wasn't really a virgin.
steve had lost his at fifteen at his parents' B & B, to an austrian guest who lured him into her bedroom while he was on his way to the toilet in the middle of the night. she was forty-five. she grabbed his (at the time) long hair so hard while she rode him that she actually pulled a clump of it out. afterwards, she waved it in the air like a trophy.
claire shocked everyone by announcing that she'd lost it to her seventeen-year-old cousin on a hoseasons boating holiday when she was only thirteen. they had sex under a bush on the banks of the coventry canal while their parents got drunk and shouted at each other inside the boat. claire found out five years later that her older sister had lost her virginity to the same cousin and that he ended up being gay and living with a seventy-year-old man.
tom lost his at sixteen in the back of a transit van being driven by his friend who'd just taken two tabs of acid and thought that they were a pair of giant writhing lizards. he'd pulled over to the side of the road, grabbed handfuls of grass out of the verge and thrown them all over the newly consummated couple because he thought maybe the lizards were hungry. tom couldn't remember the name of the girl.
and then it was william's turn. his friends turned and smiled at him encouragingly.
"go on, mr. magnusson," said al, rubbing his hands together, "hit us with it. what kind of depraved, repellent, deviant experience did you have?"
william smiled and half-toyed with the idea of lying, just to gratify his friends, but then he looked at natalie's soft face, glowing in the candlelight, one arm draped lovingly around her drunken husband, and decided he'd tell the truth.
"the night i lost my virginity," he began, "was the most brilliant night of my life."
there was a seconds silence broken by tom. "oh, give over," he said. "no one enjoys losing their virginity."
"but i did," said william, simply. "it was perfect. just - perfect."
the group fell silent as they absorbed this unconventional statement. the men looked slightly disappointed, while the women around the table looked at him inquiringly.
"go on then," said claire. "tell us. who was it?"
"it was a girl i met in norfolk. when i was nineteen. her name was noora."
