A Perfect Lie

One

Picture the most amazing memory from your childhood. I bet right now you imagine flowers, sunsets, long hot summer days baking away at the park with some of your closest friends; I see you thinking back to those cold and unforgiving winter nights where you and your family are snuggled up by a heater, or an open fire, watching whatever is playing on the TV or playing a board game. You think of innocence and happiness. You think of your best friends and all the times you'd spend wishing to be grown-ups. (A wish I definitely know you regret making at such a young age.) You see some of the best times of your life.

When I think of my childhood memories, almost every single one leads back to my best friend Antartica, Arti for short.

She was the wild child I could only ever dream of being. Arti was the kind of kid who could both charm and annoy you within the same three seconds; She had a cheek in her smile which kind of made her a loveable ruffian - I remember my mum constantly comparing her to Annie (you know, the one from the musical.) Saying that she would be identical if only she had ginger hair instead of her curly brown. Whenever my mum would bring up the resemblance Arti would always laugh and joke about it being a 'hard knock life' every time, without fail.

Arti also had this amazing way of enticing you into a conversation with her. It is how we became friends actually. We were both seven years old and my family had just moved up into London, where Arti and her family already lived at the time. It was the first full day in our new location and since the summer weather was beautiful mum and dad decided it would be a nice idea for the family to go to a pub lunch at our new local, we arrive and immediately myself and my older brother Kion rushed into the tiny play area that they had.

I don't remember much, other than Kion refusing to share the swing with me so I went off into the little sandpit in a huff, something I did frequently as a child. Whilst I was building - well, whatever I was building, a huge mob of curly hair tumble rolled through the sandpit in a stream of squeals and crushed whatever I'd been making.

I remember being so panicked about my little house or whatever and the people inside who had just been savagely murdered that I didn't even for a second stop to think if the girl who had just tumble rolled and savagely crushed my creation was okay. It was Arti, she was obviously okay.

The next thing I knew Kion and Arti were full out fighting; with Kion losing badly. he finally held his hands up in a mock-defeat before dabbing carefully at his cut lip and apologising for pushing her, or whatever he'd done. By this point Arti's older sister India had already come over and started yelling at her sister for being such a wildly misbehaved kid- even though she was only two years older herself. Arti defended herself by saying she was protecting me, and how she had seen Kion being nasty to me at the swings and decided that she needed to make him learn how to share. From that moment on, we were best friends.

It was only luck that Arti and her family lived a few doors' down from our new house, and were regulars at the pub every Sunday where their family had a roast dinner, as did mine. Soon enough our families became intertwined, Our dads would go and watch the football together or the darts, whichever sport showed enough masculine man-dad appeal. Our mothers were both big foodies and loved to bake, so they would often slip a few doors down with a bottle of wine and a freshly baked treat for their baking buddy to share. India and Kion were not as close though; Kion, being two years older than me meant that he was a whole year older than India so they didn't share any classes when we eventually went to the local primary school. He did, however, develop a gigantic crush on India, who was always extremely oblivious.

It was always interesting looking at the difference between the two sisters. Their parents met when studying Geography at university, but the fact that they were named after places were the only things that they had in common. India was very fair skinned, blue eyed, with pin-straight dark brown hair that she always wore pushed back with some kind of headband when we were kids. She was never late to anything, always handed in her homework on time and always brought back the perfect grades home. Arti on the other hand was a mass of freckles up close and had a genetic defect which turned one of her blue eyes half brown, her curly hair was rarely ever done neatly and she was always doing her homework the night before it was due; but still managed to rack in fairly decent grades, though they didn't match up to India's.