Julie Wassmer - More Than Just Coincidence

I never actually told them where I was going or who I was seeing but, not surprisingly, they guessed there was a boy involved. When a neighbour told my mother she had seen a handsome young man walking me home one night, she didn’t sit me down to discuss sex or contraception. Instead she simply insisted point-blank that the relationship should end. To me this seemed unreasonable, so I ignored her edict, but from then on when I went to Martin’s I pretended to be visiting June.

My best friend now seemed to come and go as she pleased with little parental supervision. She and her father had reached an accommodation: they just avoided each other. June appeared to be reacting to her mother’s absence by developing an eating disorder. Looking back, she displayed all the symptoms of anorexia, though at the time it wasn’t a word we’d ever heard.

After six months, my mother backed off. Perhaps she was in denial about my relationship with Martin; perhaps she had decided to trust me to be sensible. My father, however, remained outraged about the late nights I kept.

One evening when I was round at Martin’s there was a knock on the front door. Bridie was in, too, as it was her night off, and she opened it to find my mother on her doorstep, upset and pleading for me to come home. It transpired that she had argued with my father, who was blaming her for having no ‘proper control’. Bridie calmed her down, reassuring her that there was no cause for concern. She convinced my mother there was nothing to fear from her son. Martin was a good boy, she said. He and I were dating, it was all perfectly normal at our age and he would always walk me back to our flat.

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