And that was where it had started, though she had been hoping for this, and dreaming of it, and imagining how it would be, all the way up in the minibus and all the way across those endless fields. It had been the only thing that had kept her going. If she didn’t make it to the festival, she didn’t get to sleep with Deano.
She had planned it in her mind so perfectly that any little deviation from her fantasies threw her. He didn’t take as long to get her in the mood as Imaginary-Deano had, and he was surprisingly less confident than she had thought. She still managed to get a free hand to her canvas rucksack, to scrabble about in there for the pack of condoms, before it was too late.
‘What’s this?’ he said, when she pressed the foil square into his palm.
‘Er, take a wild guess.’
‘I thought you were on the Pill?’
His slightly ungracious reaction to this didn’t stay with her, though, and neither did his unceremonious rush to bolt through her maidenhead. She put the bits that weren’t perfect out of her mind and pulled together the good bits over the gaps until her memory was sewn up in a pattern she liked.
Only now, nearly twenty years later, did it occur to her with a minor shock that this was not the true pattern. She had deliberately chosen to forget certain aspects of it – aspects that might have acted as a warning.
Afterwards, when she had felt at her most vulnerable, tender and shining from what had just passed between them, he had pulled up his jeans and grunted something about going outside for a smoke.
Why had she forgotten that? It had made her cry at the time.
But then, when he had come back in, two hours later, he had spooned her and kissed her and told her she knew how much he loved her, didn’t she?
Yes.
She had told herself, yes.
And he had loved her. It had been love. There was no way hindsight was going to rewrite that precious time of her life; she wouldn’t allow it. That rush of young love – that first opening up to one person, in the hope that such happiness could last a whole life – had an almost sacred quality to her. She had enshrined it and preserved it like a holy relic.
Did Deano feel the same? Or was it all just water under the bridge now, irrelevant? She felt such a sharp pang that she had to turn away from Jason in case he saw it in her face.
‘Bad memory?’ he asked sympathetically, putting a hand on her shoulder.
‘No, not bad, exactly. Just . . .’ She tried a laugh. Not very convincing. ‘It was such a long time ago.’
‘What was it like in the Dark Ages?’ quipped Jason. ‘Did blokes know about the clitoris back then?’
He seemed to realise that his levity of tone was a misjudgement.
‘Hey,’ he said, more gently, when she didn’t reply. ‘Jen. Talk to me.’
‘Sorry,’ she whispered, then she cleared her throat and turned back to him with a determined effort to chase away the . . . regrets? Whatever the feelings were. ‘Just for a moment, it felt as if I was back there, back in the tent.’
‘The tent?’ Jason smiled at her. ‘I can’t see you doing the camping thing.’
She smiled back.
‘No, not these days. Maybe glamping? That looks all right. But all that hammering pegs into the ground and communal shower blocks – ugh! Mind you, we didn’t even have those, where we were. It was a festival.’
‘What, Glastonbury, you mean?’
‘No, less official than that. An illegal one, in the middle of nowhere. The band were headlining – their first gig outside the local pub scene.’
‘Cool.’
‘Yes.’ She let him stroke her hair. ‘I was pretty cool, in those days. I had attitude and passion, and a rock star boyfriend. Aspiring rock star boyfriend, I should say.’
‘He aspired right on up there,’ commented Jason. ‘Anyway, you’ve still got attitude and passion.’
‘You’ve got more.’
‘Aw, hey.’