the middle

It really wasn’t a very good idea for T and I to go to the villa before anyone else. It had happened accidentally - I think it was because the dates got muddled, but anyway, we ended up with four or five days alone before Joel and the others arrived.

T had split up with his girlfriend and we were spending more time together. The problem was that we both had such tempers and we were both very stubborn. With Joel as our buffer zone it didn’t matter so much. We always teased each other about everything. T and I would make cutting remarks about Joel’s small feet when we wanted to get him angry – “you know what they say about small feet,” we’d say, looking pointedly at his. Joel and T made fun of the habit I had of playing with my hair when I was angry. Sometimes they only had to give me a look, take an imaginary curl of hair between their fingers and I would launch myself at them to make them stop. We would wind up T by calling him a moody fucker. It always worked.

The villa was Marnie and David’s. It was on a small island in the Mediterranean, fairly near the coast of North Africa. They shared it with another family, each using it at different times of the year. All their other friends had villas there too, and they would arrange to go at the same time in great big groups so it was one long party.

The heat smacked us in the face as we stepped out of the plane – it literally took our breath away. T had been there the year before – I’d been away with another boyfriend that time – so he knew what to do. You had to go across the big island to the port, and then take the battered and dangerously overcrowded looking ferry across to the small island.

The bus to the village was delightful. It was a very Catholic country and the whole front dashboard was one mass of swaying rosaries, St. Christopher medals and brightly coloured statuettes of the Virgin Mary. I wasn’t sure how much of the road the driver could see through all those things but judging from the driving, I understood why he thought it necessary to try for as much spiritual help as he could.

We had two days in a little hotel before the villa was free, and then I think we lasted another evening there before we had the most enormous and utterly pointless argument. It was so stupid. Scrabble of all things. I knew I was right, and T knew he was right, and without Joel there to make us laugh it off, we were instantly in the most massive sulk you could imagine – the kind you can’t get out of without a real apology and there was no way either of us was going to back down. By the time Joel arrived he was far too late to make it better. We didn’t speak properly again for many, many years.

We still managed to have fun – there were so many other people, it was easy to skirt around each other without it being too obvious. I’m not sure how much the adults knew, but they ignored it anyway. They were too busy making sure everyone had plenty to do. Every morning we’d be taken off to a particular beach and we’d lie there getting brown, dashing into the sea from time to time to cool off. Sometimes we’d go out on a yacht, with a picnic, for the day and swim from the boat.

In the late afternoons we’d go back to the villa and Marnie and her friends would dress us up and take photos of us. It’s always in my memory when I think of that time, the constant click, click noise of the cameras. She gave me a pair of high heels to wear and she showed me how to stand with one knee in front of the other, slouching my body slightly to one side, like models do when they stop on a catwalk. She put the boys in gangster hats and me in a loud orange shirt with a belt at the waist and nothing else – to show off my brown legs. T wore his mirrored shades and his clash tshirt and braces. Joel was all in black looking even thinner than usual. As his tan got deeper, his hair became bleached almost white by the sun

In the evenings we’d go and meet up with the other young people at the little clubs and drink ourselves stupid before staggering home in the pitch black of the night. As we passed the little sleeping villages, we’d make howling noises which would wake all the dogs and start them barking. We thought it was hilarious.

Once we were back in England, T went off to the States. He’d been working in a record shop in Notting Hill, saving and scamming the money together. Before the argument I’d often gone there to pass the time of day with him and I missed him, but I was still sulking. Joel and I were fine on our own.

Soon after, I began to get sick. I thought it was flu at first, but it went on and on – fevers, tiredness. I’d go to bed for a few days, and get up feeling ok but after one day I was totally wasted again. I was in trouble at my university. It was hard to keep up with the work feeling crap, and my mind didn’t seem to be able to focus so well. I even managed to get run over by a bicycle on the Kentish Town Road. It was kind of a relief when they said I also had glandular fever. I was told to take the rest of the year off and of course I went straight from the University College Hospital to Joel’s. I’d already told him on the phone and he was waiting at the door. I started crying and he folded me into his arms and told me not to worry. He stroked my hair and said it was ok, we’d both be ok – he’d always be there for me

That was in October, just a few days before my twenty first birthday. I had a big dinner for it at Le P’tit Prince in Kentish Town. We took over the whole restaurant so there must have been quite a few of us there, but the only person I can remember now was Joel. When you have glandular fever and you drink alcohol you go from sober to paralytic in five seconds. Joel had to practically carry me out of the taxi that night. I don’t know why, but we stayed at the flat of Marnie’s long-time lover who’d just died. He was a secret alcoholic, and when they came to clear his flat, every time they opened a cupboard, a great rush of empty bottles would come tumbling out.

After that, I went to bed and I didn’t get up for quite a long time. Joel and I talked on the phone a lot. He told me T had a girlfriend in the States – her dad was a rancher or something, and we made a lot of stupid jokes about cowboys and shotgun weddings. He was my lifeline to the real world while I was stuck in bed.

I think it must have been Stephen who phoned to tell me Joel was in hospital. He took me to see him at the Royal Free. The man in the bed next to him had driven a car off a cliff on holiday while drunk and had broken his neck. Joel had had a thrombosis – a blood clot. It was something to do with what his dad had died of before he was born. He was taking drugs to thin his blood though, and he’d be ok. It wasn’t nice seeing him there, but I was relieved it was all under control. I felt slightly awkward. We cracked jokes about stupid things, and I pinned a badge on his tshirt that said “out to lunch”

I was still very sick so I hardly went anywhere anymore. Everything was such an effort. Once I remember driving in Stephen’s car, Joel and I in the back, frantically trying to find the late night chemist in Picadilly Circus because Joel had run out of his pills. Bob Dylan was playing on the cassette player. It was always Bob Dylan in Stephen’s car. We used to tease him about it

The next I heard, Joel had had another thrombosis and this time they were doing more tests. He was still ok though - no big deal - it was still under control. Joel called me when he got out of hospital. He was really excited. He had a new girlfriend. I was so pleased for him. She was older than us and she lived in West Hampstead and had an ancient E-type Jaguar. It didn’t actually work but it looked really cool.

I think the last time we spoke was in early March. I was just beginning to feel a little better, but I was painfully thin and everything exhausted me. I used to look in the newspaper each day, checking the time the sun would rise, watching it get earlier and earlier. I felt as the spring advanced, I’d get stronger until everything could go back to how it was before.

Then one day, one horrible day, the phone rang and it was Stephen. At first I thought he was joking – some awful twisted joke – only I knew it couldn’t really be a joke. He said Joel had died in the night – suddenly – just like that. He’d gone to bed saying his head was hurting him so badly, and then he was dead. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I don’t think I cried. I was too numb. I looked at my face in the mirror and it looked just the same as before. How could that be? I didn’t understand how anything could be just the same when my whole world had collapsed around me