Can't believe you're gone bro.' RIP

Something terrible has happened in our quiet, mostly wealthy, generally-considered-provincial  city.
It is something so tragically unexpected that nothing will ever feel quite the same again.
On Friday night, a teenage boy was fatally wounded after being stabbed..
Apparently it was a drug related crime.
Apparently it was a personal argument.
Apparently the victim was only a few yards from his destination, the hostel he was staying in.
Apparently the victim and his alleged attacker had been at a nearby party....and there it is, the only "apparently," that mattered to me at first.. 
The selfish "apparently."
The "apparently," that  clamped a steel ring of panic around my heart.
Because all I could think was... it could have been one of our kids. 
They could have been at that party. 
They might have been caught up in that fight. 
They might have been walking home along that road.
But they weren't....and he was.
The tragedy is his not theirs
And for that I am selfishly and eternally thankful.
Thankful that this isn't their story. 
Because I cannot begin to imagine the agonising grief of the family whose story it is.
As a parent, there is nothing more terrifying than the thought that something might happen to your children.
That fear is what makes letting go so hard.
And this story is everything you dread.                                                     
The victim, left at the side of the road, had been at school with our daughter.
Her contemporary from the age of 9 until last year.
He wasn't a close friend but Chichester is a small place.
All the seventeen and eighteen year olds know each other.
They mostly orbit the same party scene.
They mostly acknowledge each other in passing, coolness factor allowing.
They mostly share a common friend, 
A separation of mostly one degree.
 He was a familiar part of the  teenage fabric that binds them all together, this young victim.
And now he's gone.
And the fabric is torn.
And our teenagers are left dazed and a little less carefree.
His life, a could-be-their-life, was cut short.
It ended before it had been truly lived.
And suddenly all that we have and all that we are seems fleeting and fragile.
The base of certainty upon which our teenagers danced, is cracked.
Uncertainties are seeping through.
Life is not endless but finite.
"Now," is not forever, it's transitory.

Around the tree where the stabbing took place, candles burn amidst bunches of daffodils and wrapped roses.
A card reads:
" Can't believe you're gone bro'. I'll miss you."
"He was always a loner," says our daughter, " even when we were ten. "
She tries to stem the flow of tears.
" And people at school....they weren't always nice to him then."
She looks at me, her dark eyes haunted by painful memories.
Unwanted questions float in the air between us..
How did the other kids make  him feel? Was school a horrible place for him? Was he hurt by what people said? Was he lonely? Was he lost? Did he long for a different life?
I hug her close, our eighteen year old daughter, but I can't take away her pain.
" He went out with my friend," she says, " do you remember?. They were together for ages.  I used to tell you about them.  How neither of them could ever sleep and how, on the nights they weren't together they would lie in their rooms and talk and talk and talk on Skype. They wouldn't stop until one of them fell asleep."
And suddenly I did remember.
Not him, not the person, but the story.
I remember being amazed at such a depth of emotion in two people who were so young.
Wondering at the all-consumingness of first love.
Remembering how nothing else exists but the two of you.
How the only thing that matters in the world, is what you share.
How it's impossible to believe that what you have will ever end.
How, just for a while, you feel complete and whole.
And I smile, because at least he had that. . 
At least, however short his life, he experienced one of the most important reasons for living.

And I hope, wherever he is now, he no longer feels like a loner.
I hope he no longer feels hurt or lost..
I hope he isn't alone. 
And I hope, with all my heart, that someone is talking and talking and talking to him, until he falls asleep.
.

                                                               RIP Luke

Camper Van Ethics

Sometimes something happens and without you quite realising, it changes how you feel about the world, . 
Not the horror of religious extremism and hatred that seems to be flooding our world at the moment.
Nor the current epidemic of killing, bombing and terrorising.
They create an unavoidable ever-present whisper of fear that we are all trying to ignore.
They are all too huge somehow, too terrible, too incomprehensibly inhuman to think about.
But this week something happened, something small and tangible and utterly unsettling. 

It started with the milk.

Three times a week we have our milk delivered by a milkman ( a quaint English habit that we can't quite kick}.

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we wake up and our milk is waiting for us on the doorstep.
But last week,it wasn't.
 I opened the door to a frayed  doormat and an empty space where the milk bottles should have been.
Outraged we phoned the dairy who apologised, explained it was probably a new milkman who hadn't quite learnt his round yet and gave us a refund.
But it wasn't the milkman.
On Saturday we found our milk bottles, and even some that belonged to our neighbours.
It was the evening, already full of November darkness, and Ninesh (my husband) and I, were piling bedding into our camper van.
We were spending the night with my sister and her family because my niece was having an 18th birthday party and, much to our surprise, she had invited us "oldies," as well as our teenage children.
But since we are at the age where the thought of sleeping on the cold floor amongst empty beer cans and smouldering cigarette butts fills us with horror, we'd decided we would sleep in the relative comfort and splendid isolation of our van.

Ninesh slid open the door and climbed inside .....and that's when he almost fell over the milk bottles.
Cursing under his breath, he turned on the lights..... it wasn't just milk bottles.
The roof bed had been pulled out and covered in a now-grubby sheet. 
One of our torches lay on top of it and every surface was covered in a thin film of tobacco dust, cigarette ends and joints.
At first Ninesh and I just stood there, speechless.
How could it be that a few yards from our front door, a complete stranger had been living in our camper van?
How many times had we walked past and not noticed him?
How many times had he watched us enter and leave our house?
How many times had he watched the living room window as the daily mundanity of our family life unfolded? 
How many times, under cover of early-evening and late-morning darkness had he climbed in and out of our van?
And how had we not heard the door sliding shut? ( We never manage to do that without waking everyone up!)
We felt shocked, violated, indignant.
How dare he...
We started looking around more closely.
Opening cupboards, pulling out drawers, checking for more evidence, wondering what he had stolen.
But the truth was, he hadn't stolen anything.
Instead, he had left his phone charger, his pen knife and his grinder lying around.
One of our neighbours wandered over
" Has someone been living in your van?" he asked, peering through the door. 
" How did you know," asked Ninesh.
" Oh, we just saw a young man wearing a hoodie leaving it," he said." It was only about 5 minutes ok. Shall I help you chase after him.  I know which direction he went in?" 
For a moment I followed his gaze through the street-lamp lit darkness.
Then I turned and looked at the penknife and the phone charger and the grinder, probably everything he owned in the world. 
I looked at the crumpled sheet and the lonely torch.
" It's ok,"  I said.
" But he broke into your van and lived in it," said our neighbour.
" But he's gone now," said Ninesh " and he didn't steal anything and we're taking the van away tonight."
And suddenly I imagined it.
A young, homeless man turning the corner onto our road late that night, and staring at the space, where his temporary home should have been.
And just like that my sense of indignation and violation evaporated.
And all I felt was a sense of overwhelming sadness.
We cleared away the milk bottles and the cigarette ends.
We opened all the doors  and windows to get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke.
I collected the sheet and put it in the washing machine and we folded away the roof bed.
In the end all that was left of our van's temporary inhabitant was a small pile of his possessions.
We drove to the party, trying to process what had just happened and not to notice the scent of tobacco that lingered in the air.
" I feel bad keeping his stuff," I said, " it's probably all he's got.  What shall we do with it? Shall we just leave on our wall and hope he comes by to pick it up?"
" Good plan," said Ninesh, " we'll just leave a phone charger and a sharp knife outside our house! No one else would be interested in those!"
" Perhaps we could leave a note," I suggested.
" Right," said Ninesh, " to the person who broke into our camper van and has been living there illegally-
 Please knock on the door and we will return your possessions!"
I sighed, he was right.
The price he had paid for living in our empty camper van was the loss of everything he owned.
" At least he still has his phone," Ninesh pointed out.
I thought about that.
Wondered how someone who has nothing can afford a phone.
Wondered why you would choose a phone over food.
There is a cynical explanation, that the phone was stolen that he was dealing drugs, that he needed to stay in touch with his contacts.
And I know that's the most likely answer.
But a part of me wants to believe something different.
I want to believe that at least, with a phone, he could pretend he wasn't lonely.

We danced the night away amongst devils and angels at my niece's " Gods and Monsters," party and when the night was over we climbed wearily into our van.
We reclaimed it as our own. as the movable holiday home it is.
But emotions are never that simple.
He haunted our dreams, this homeless man.
It's easier not to face the truth, to hide behind our belief that we are, at heart good people who give money to charity and believe in freedom and justice and equality.
But perhaps believing is no longer enough. 
Because there is something so undeniably unjust and unequal about living in a world where some of us have empty bedrooms and empty vans and food to spare while all around us our world is filling with people who have nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat.
So now our lives have been divided into the time before our stranger in the camper van story and the time after it. 
Before it happened I could convince myself that " just caring ,"was enough.
Since it's happened my illusions of personal goodness have been shattered.

I phoned and registered our spare room as a space for asylum seekers with the council but apparently Chichester is not one of the places they are fleeing to.
Perhaps we should leave our van door permanently open and a supply of food and milk inside.... but somehow we can't bring ourselves to be that altruistic.
In this world of constant change and fear, it's hard not to cling even more tightly to what you hold dear.
I find myself looking searchingly at " The Big Issue," sellers and the empty-eyed hooded figures slumped on benches.
" Is it you?" I want to ask them," did you sleep in our van?"
But I know I never will.
The truth is, I don't have the courage to cross the bridge from thought to action. 
And so I live with the knowledge that our camper van will never feel quite like ours again.  That staying in it will always make us feel just a little bit guilty.
And every time I lie down on its comfortable cushions, I will see the lost face of a complete stranger who, for a very short time, had a place that he could call home.

Weddings, marriage and the great wedding dress hunt.

Strangely, I spent much of last weekend wedding dress shopping.
I say " strangely," because I know nothing about wedding dresses.
Our wedding wasn't the kind that needed a dreamy dress.
But one of my friends is getting married next year and Chichester is a good place to start  "the great-wedding dress-hunt." because it has lots of wedding dress shops, all very close together.
So despite my complete lack of experience, knowledge or expertise, I became my friend's wedding dress guide for the day.
I was looking forward to it.
Sitting, watching and subjectively advising is the easy party.
Trying on hundreds of dresses, each one fitted and flowing with miles of fabric, is the hard part.
But even I felt overwhelmed when we walked into the first shop and were greeted by  oceans of silk, miles of satin and a forest of lace and netting.

Where do you begin? 
How can you find out what style you need or what shade of white is best?
How do you know whether you need your dress to be boned or corseted, body-hugging or meringue-skirted? 
" Let me just talk you through our shop," said the first smiling assistant, greeting us at the door.
And immediately I could tell, this wasn't going to be the easy, laid-back, fun-filled  day I had imagined..
Because if you have to begin by being  "talked through," a tiny shop, down a narrow side-street in a small city, things are only going to get more complicated!
My friend, on the other hand, seemed completely unfazed by the unending choice of dresses or the complicated styles or the wedding dress lingo.
"These ones at the front of the shop are the designers with the longest lead time," explained the assistant.
" What's lead time?" I asked.
The assistant cast me a pitying look and my friend a sympathetic glance.
" The amount of time it takes for the dress to be ordered and arrive in the shop," she explained patiently." Now towards the back it's a bit shorter.  And then there's the fitting time to be factored in. Tell me again, when are you getting married?"
My friend gave her the date - about a year from now.
The assistant sucked in her breath thoughtfully, 
" You might still have just enough time," she said.
I almost fell over.
For someone, like me who usually plans what they are going to wear two minutes before they leave the house, the thought of having to plan what you will be wearing in a year's time is a hard concept to grasp.
My friend took the news bravely and began to browse through the rails of taffeta and frills and ivory silk.
And somehow, from the impossibly huge number of dresses, she managed to choose six.
" Don't worry," said her personal assistant comfortingly, " it's a start!"
While my friend  stepped in and out of fairy-tale dresses, I sat on a comfortable sofa, watching and listening and struggling to keep a grasp on reality.
Behind every changing-room curtain, brides-to-be were being helped on and off with dresses.
When they emerged, they would walk past me with a rustle of netting and a swirl of silk and survey themselves critically in a full-length mirror. 
it began to feel as though I had stepped into a world peopled only by princesses and me.
And everyone looked beautiful-whatever their size or shape or style.
Because isn't that the thing about wedding dresses?
For just one day in our often very ordinary lives,they make us feel that we are someone special and important and beautiful.
For just one day we live the fairy-tale dream.
And it works.
Every time my friend walked through the changing room curtain, she looked amazing..
But I'm not sure that was because of the dress.
I think maybe it was the flush of happiness and the thrill of excitement.
I hope it was because she's looking forward to marrying the man she loves. 

According to the office of National Statistics, every hour in England in 2012, thirteen couples got divorced.
Most divorces happen in the first ten years of marriage.
So as I sat in that " land of taffeta and lace,"  I couldn't help wondering if maybe we should be spending less time searching for the perfect dress and more time checking that we have really found the perfect partner.
Of course none of us ever know what will happen in the future, our hearts are " daft," and unpredictable, but it can be easy to get swept up in the excitement of a wedding and forget that what you are doing is getting married.
And that means committing yourself to another human being for the rest of your life: for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health.
A complete giving of yourself.
It's hard to imagine what that really means.
Marriage is an enormous thing to contemplate.
Never again in your life will you have to make such a huge decision.
Yet people spend more time choosing dresses and venues and cakes than truly contemplating the journey they are about to embark on when they say the words: " I do."
It's something Ninesh and I were thinking about slightly nervously on the drunken night before we got married.
We were in a bar in New York.

The Kettle of Fish, New York

  
Our witness, the only person who knew about our plan,  is gay and so it was a gay bar 
( always the best bars in New York).
Mostly it was full of gay men.
" What are you doing?" they asked Ninesh,crowding around him supportively.
" Celebrating," explained Ninesh, " we're getting married tomorrow."
" That's what we mean," chorused his audience, " what are you doing? Why are you marrying a woman?"
" I tried it once," said one of them, catching hold of his boyfriend's hand, " biggest mistake i ever made. Don't do it"
Have you really thought this through?" asked another.
" Have another shot, why don't you," they said, calling the waiter over, " it might help you change your mind, see things more clearly."
But many shots later, as we made our way back to my friend's loft apartment at 5 o'clock in the morning, Ninesh could see nothing clearly but remained adamant that he not only wanted to marry, but was sure he wanted it to be to a woman.
So we woke up on our wedding-day, blurry-eyed, muddle-headed but determined.
Outside the sky was painfully blue.
Ninesh pulled his sleeping bag over his head.
" Somebody turn off the sun," he moaned " what's for breakfast?"
" Lunch, you mean," said our friend climbing down the ladder from his loft bed, " it's 2 o'clock."
" Nesh," I shouted, struggling to sit up and hold my head at the same time, " we've missed our wedding.  We were meant to get married at 10 ."
From under the covers Ninesh groaned again.
" It's ok," said my friend, handing me a calming cup of coffee, " I phoned City Hall, they said if you are there before 3.30 you should still be ok to get married.  They don't close 'til 4. We can make it if we leave in the next 10 minutes."
Which is how come our wedding day found us hungover and gasping for breath, racing through Manhatten, me barefooted so that I could run faster,  diving on and off tubes and trains, arriving just in time to get married before the office closed for the day.

City Hall, New York

And all I can remember thinking as I sat on the train watching the Manhatten skyline speeding by, is how lucky I was not to be wearing a beautiful, priceless dress. 
Because the one thing you don't practice in any of the wedding shops, is running for the subway in your wedding dress.

Neither Ninesh nor I remember the date we got married but it doesn't really matter.
It was a long time ago and we are still together.
But the journey hasn't always been easy.
Like every couple, we have had our ups and downs.
There have been times when we have had to work hard at being together, work hard at being there for each other.
Understanding someone else is never easy, even when you love them.
Marriage is about compromise, about accepting each other for who you are and not trying to change each other into someone you are not. 
But in the end the effort has always, always been worth it.
Marriage is our prize that's worth fighting for.

Of course my friend found her perfect dress.
She stepped through the curtains and took my breath away.
She looked stunningly beautiful.
" It's like a red-carpet dress," she smiled.
And she was right.
And I know, on her wedding day everyone will cry because she will look so beautiful and her future husband will feel like the luckiest man in the world.
But a wedding lasts just one day ( or sometimes just a few minutes! ).
A marriage is for the rest of your life.
So here's hoping that the rest of their life together is one long red carpet of dreams and love and happiness, even if they are only wearing ripped jeans and old T-shirts as they walk along it.

The heart-warming coincidence of friendship

I spent last Friday night sitting upstairs in my friend's bedroom, while downstairs her teenage daughter (and mine ) were partying the night away.
We were under strict instructions, my friend and I: we were not to set foot downstairs unless summoned.
And we did as we were told. Obedient to the end, as all good parents should be.
Every now and then, Eliza ( my friend's daughter ) and Mia ( my daughter ) would come upstairs and check on us. Like reverse babysitters, they would bring us a few snacks and drinks and make sure we were still awake.  
And between visits from our daughters, my friend and I talked.  
She has two small children now, as well as two teenagers, so it's rare that we get such a stretch of uninterrupted time to sit and chat.
We shared stories and thoughts and laughter and memories.
And threading through it all was the coincidence of our friendship and of how a chance meeting in a park has led to such an interweaving of lives.

Our now teenage daughters were 3 when we met. 
It was a sunny day and on my way to pick up Mia from nursery, I took Joss (2), in the bike trailer ( I only mention it because it is an important part of this story )  to Priory Park in the centre of Chichester. It has swings and roundabouts and climbing frames, everything that a toddler could wish for. Only one other mum was in the park when we arrived.  She had a little girl about the same age as Mia. We smiled at each other and continued watching our own children, each of us looking for an opportunity to start up a conversation.
" Is that bike-trailer any good?"  she asked me at last.  " Only I've been thinking about getting one."
I grinned, relieved that she had opened the conversational door. 
" It's great," I said, " carries the kids, the shopping and even the cat sometimes.I'm Becky, by the way and this is Joss"
" Leisa," she smiled and pointed at her daughter who was busy climbing the steps of the slide, " and this is Eliza. You've got a daughter as well, haven't you?"
" Yes," I said, surprised " how did you know?"
" Oh, I was reading a library book with Eliza in the back garden yesterday and you cycled past." 
" I  cycled past your back garden?" I asked, " how did I do that. I usually only cycle past front gardens!" 
Leisa laughed.
" I think you have a friend who lives a few doors down from us," she said.
And she was right, when she told me where she lived, I realised that some our best friends lived two houses away from her.
" It's strange," she said, " because I had just been wondering whether I should get a bike-trailer and I looked up  and there you and your bike trailer were, cycling past." 
As we chatted I found out that they had just moved from Woking, that she had a son at primary school and that she was an artist and wanted to illustrate childrens' books.  
I told her that was strange because I was a children's author.
" I've always wished I could illustrate my stories as well as write them," I said, " you artists are a constant source of wonder to me."
" What books have you written?" she asked.
" Only a few," I said, " my first one was about an autistic boy and his brother….you probably won't have read it….."
I trailed off because Leisa was staring at me.
" Is it called " My Brother Sammy?" she asked.
I nodded, pleased and surprised that she had heard of it.
" Have your read it?" I asked.
" Yes," said Leisa, " yesterday. It's the book Eliza and I were reading when you cycled past!"

And that's it.
The co-incidence of a friendship that was meant to be. 
A few days after we met in the park, we went to Eliza's 4th birthday party in the very rooms, where downstairs, last Friday night, the music boomed and our two teenage daughters partied.
It's a friendship that has weathered many storms.
A friendship that has survived where even love has failed.
But perhaps that's the thing about friendship- it"s more constant and less volatile than love.

The joy of being a " grown-up," is that you can choose your friends.
Unlike when you are younger, your friends do not have to be your school peers or the children of your parent's friends.
As you get older your friends are not people you want to impress. There is no longer the pressure to be popular with as many people as possible.
Instead, your friends  are simply the people you most enjoy being with, the people whose company gives you the most pleasure.
People who you can comfortably laugh and cry with.
People who warm your heart.
Perhaps once you leave school or college or university most friendships are based on coincidence.
Perhaps they depend on two people being in the same place at the same time.
But I can't help thinking that there is more to friendship than that.
That there are people in life who you are destined to meet.
People who will keep cycling past the end of your garden until you look up and invite them through the gate.