Natalie Lucas - Sixteen, Sixty-One

Sometimes we’d plot elaborate Bunburys and, to our surprise, they’d come together: we’d escape for a night in my half-term holidays to return to Swindon, or I’d skip my Wednesday afternoon Psychology class to drive to Rye for a cream tea and a hunt through the second-hand bookshops. But more often than not, these secret passionate or plebeian encounters would be spoilt or at least dissipated by unlucky coincidences.

A favourite free-period picnic spot was the Beachy Head car park in Warren Hill, where Matthew and I would share flasks of coffee and flaky pastries as well as more incriminating things. But two terrifying incidents marked an end to those visits. The first was Felicity Roberts, daughter of Mr and Mrs Roberts who lived next door to Matthew and Annabelle, passing our parked vehicle with her dog Bobby on the way to the footpath while Matthew and I were in the middle of one of those incriminatingly passionate things. I convinced myself she hadn’t seen or hadn’t recognised me and was persuaded to go back the following week, but returning from a lazy amble into Holywell, we found the passenger-side window of Matthew’s car had been smashed and my school-bag stolen. I had to sit in the back avoiding shards of glass on the way home and we developed a flat along a country lane, but none of that was as scary as having to explain to my parents how I’d lost my wallet, house keys, new glasses and a piece of coursework and why I didn’t want to try to claim them on the house insurance.

Much safer options for seeing each other were under cover of larger groups, where we could steal glances and share knowing laughs. We arranged cinema trips with my mum where I sat in the middle and tentatively touched Matthew’s knee during dark scenes, group outings to the races where Matthew paced seriously, studying form and winking as he told me to put my allowance on a 30-1 outsider, and neighbourhood picnics at Pevensey Bay where I pranced in tiny bikinis only to notice my neighbour Bob ogling me as well as Matthew. But these half-moments together often left me missing the Matthew I knew even more than when we were apart.

One Saturday in the spring, two weeks after Matthew’s birthday, four months since I lost my virginity and thirteen weeks until my AS exams, I followed Matthew into his study after a silent greeting. With his back to me, he took something from the desk, and then turned around to present a carrier bag.

‘I bought us phones,’ he grinned and waited for my response.

‘Huh?’ I managed after a pause and took the bag from his outstretched hand.

‘They’re on the same network, so as long as we put ten pounds on each month, we can text each other for free.’

I pulled a box the size of a Roget’s Thesaurus from the bag.

I’d had a phone before. My best friend Alicia had been promised one for her fourteenth birthday in August and, with the insane jealousy known only to teenage girls, I’d begged my dad to beat her parents to it and get me one for mine in July. At the last minute, he’d acquiesced and bought me a pay-as-you-go Vodaphone brick that I’d diligently lugged around for three months, receiving approximately two phone calls per week, generally from my mum to see what time I’d be home, before conceding that I didn’t really have a use for it and kicking it under my bed along with the ancient Mega Drive and the broken personal CD player.

This was a third of the size of my old phone, red plastic encasing the minuscule screen. It weighed less than my house keys and already had a screen-saver message saying, ‘Hello Kitten’.

‘Look, mine’s the same,’ continued Matthew, pulling an identical handset from his inside jacket pocket.

I smiled.

‘To activate the SIM you’ll need to call this number,’ he pointed to a white sticker on the box. ‘I chose us the same PIN number: 1661.’

‘Okay,’ I murmured, concentrating on finding the Unlock button.

‘It’s our ages,’ Matthew chuckled. ‘Also the year Newton got into Cambridge.’

‘Fascinating,’ I drawled precociously and kissed him on the lips.

Despite the precedents of Anna Karenina, Lady Chatterley and other pre-twenty-first-century literary examples, affairs and mobile phones go together like stockings and suspenders. Six months into ours we had passed the incidental lying-in-the-name-of-love period and were ready for the cold, premeditated deception-for-the-sake-of-debauchery stage. The jumble of plastic and circuits in my hand meant, without a doubt, Matthew was mine: my illicit lover, my shocking secret, my erotic exhilaration – my man.

My mum stopped eating when my dad left her. She told me later that a couple of times she went to bed with a carving knife. I was eleven at the time and we were close. We went swimming most days, and, driving along the dual carriageway with our costumes in the back and tears staining our cheeks, she’d tell me about the separation. She explained my father had found another girlfriend before he’d even told her he wanted out; described his shock that she’d changed the locks one morning when he returned from Katie’s to collect clean socks before work; and told me he wanted to keep the house, meaning we would have to move. She recounted the names he’d called her, sobbed about promises he’d broken and raged at how much she’d sacrificed for the relationship.

Some would say I was too young to hear this and my mother must have contributed to the lousy relationship I had with my father through my teens, but I adored being told these things. Her confidence in me assured me I was her best friend and provided me my first taste of the contradictory pleasure of intense pain.

When she told me my dad had suggested I live with her and he take James, I threw myself into hating the father who loved me less than my brother. When forced to spend the weekend with him, I would scream an explicit response to his, ‘Would you like to cut my lawn?’ and stomp back down the road into my mother’s arms.

That kind of intense closeness with a parent is exhilarating, but exhausting. My mum’s friends would comment that I seemed insecure because I insisted on telling her I loved her a dozen times an hour. And when I was old enough to stay at other people’s houses, I’d feel guilty for breaking up our family unit for an evening.

By the time my second life began, my mum and I were already clashing like any teen cliché. So, when, half a dozen months after my first Bunbury at Swindon, she screeched up the stairs, ‘WHY DON’T YOU GO AND LIVE WITH YOUR FATHER IF YOU FEEL LIKE THAT?’ I did. While she sobbed that she hadn’t meant it and couldn’t understand why I was doing this, I dragged suitcases across town and moved in with the man I’d hated for the past five years.

Living with my dad proved convenient. He was out a lot and didn’t ask where I was going. Over months of microwaved rice and washing-up stand-offs, my dad and I began to rebuild the relationship I’d treasured as a little girl. However, my basic lack of respect for him as a parent meant conducting an affair under his nose was purely mathematical; uncomplicated by the guilt I’d felt when lying to my mother. My biggest shame, even now, out of everything I did and everyone I deceived, was allowing my mum to think I left because of her. My brother would update me on how many times a week he found her crying and how, for years afterwards, she would periodically tell him she still didn’t understand why I’d gone. After our initial anger had worn off, we tentatively made up, but our closeness was lost. We never spoke of me moving out and she told me she would be my friend from now on, but no longer my mother.

At sixteen, I’d achieved what I’d set out to do and what most teenagers long for: I’d shed parental guidance and found autonomy. But it felt awful.