We were both 16; she was the oddest girl in the school with her big round glasses and wild curly hair and eccentric family of mad brothers; we wrote each other poetry, and we wrote out lines of poetry written by others – mostly Sylvia Plath it has to be said. My ex-boyfriend fancied her and her brother fancied me, but I paid no attention to them. Our school was in the centre of the city, but we lived in different suburbs, so we would dawdle after school, at the local library, at a nearby arts centre, hanging about in central London with the pigeons – anywhere just to postpone the time we would have to part. It was innocent and sweet and passionate and just as you would imagine. When her glasses slid down her nose she had a very sweet way of nudging them back with the knuckle of her forefinger. One day we were sitting in Trafalgar Square in the rain, under a shared umbrella, and she did that nudging thing with her glasses and I leant forward and kissed her. She didn’t pull away. She kissed me back. Sweetly. But even I could tell she was confused.

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