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I wanted her to give me some perspective, to say things out loud and make them seem a little more ordinary.
But I didn’t say anything, I just said oh I had a postcard from Peru, from someone called Rob, I said I couldn’t remember who he was.
She said you must do, he was that guy from over the road, he tried skating down that hill in the park, don’t you remember?
I smiled and said oh yes, and she said remember how no one went to help him because we were all laughing so much, and I laughed and held my hand to my mouth because it still seemed unfair to find it so funny, the way he went sprawling to the floor, arms flung out for balance, bellyflopping across the tarmac.
I said and remember how he had no skin on his arms for the rest of the summer, just those long grey scabs?
And she said I know I know, laughing, she said I can’t believe you’d forgotten, and I could picture the way she screwed her eyes up when she laughed.
We talked about other people, saying do you remember when, and how funny was that, and I wonder what happened to.
We talked about the medicine girl next door, the boy in Rob’s house who thought he could play the guitar, the good-looking boy down the road with the sketchpad.
We talked about the people at number seventeen, Alison who got her tongue pierced, and Chris, and the boy with the ring in his eyebrow but we couldn’t remember his name.
I tried to remember what it was like to be near so many people who knew me.
She said what’s Rob doing in Peru anyway, and I said I don’t know I think he’s saving the children or something.
Do you think he’s taken his skateboard she said, and I laughed and then remembered the way his hair got in his eyes when he was trying to pull off tricks.
The way his jeans always got scuffed under the heels of his trainers.
I thought about him being all those thousands of miles away, and I wondered how long the postcard had taken to reach me.
I read it again, looking at the long looping letters, trying to imagine the slow slur of his voice.
Things are going massively here it said, I’m having an ace time.
It said I’m not really homesick, but I’m missing decent cups of tea, it said you could write to me sometime.
I looked at the front of the card, at the pictures of Peru, smiling women in traditional dress, mountains, monkeys in fruit trees.
She said hello are you still there?
I said do you ever think about it, I mean, that last day.
She didn’t say anything for a moment, I heard a television in the background and I wondered where she was, if she was with anyone.
She said I try not to, it’s weird, you know, I’d rather forget about it.
It seems like a long time ago now she said.
I said I know but I can’t get it out of my head.
It keeps coming back I said, just recently, I don’t know why.
She was quiet, and I waited for her to say something.
I straightened the flowers in the vase on the table, pulled out the dead leaves.
I watched the traffic lights changing in the street outside.
She said what I always remember is the way everything carried on afterwards.
There were still buses going past on the main road she said, and some of the people on them turned to look for a moment but some of them didn’t even notice.
