52 stories about my
life
School Friend
Carol (without an ‘E’) and I
competed. We wanted to be top of the class. Spelling tests, Mental arithmetic,
speedy changing after P.T. - we were desperate to outdo each other. And
somehow, despite our competitive streak, we remained good friends. When I was
house-bound with chickenpox, we wrote long letters to each other delivered by
another Carole (the one with an ‘E) who lived around the corner from me. Carol
and I appear next to each other like a pair of conjoined twins in junior school
photos. Same height (tall for our years), same confident smile.
We both passed the 11+ to go to
Grammar School. On the first day in the new school, I searched in vain for
familiar faces. I spotted Carol, distinctive with her light blonde hair, but
she was out of reach across the huge assembly hall full of anxious 11 year
olds. Carol was placed in a different form (class) and so our paths diverged.
We came together again in our final year when we were studying for GCE ‘O’
Levels. We managed to fit in a social life, of sorts. In a town with nothing to
do and the “Swinging 60s” going on somewhere else, we joined youth clubs, went
to the pictures most Saturday nights and hung around on street corners. Carol
and I both left school after ‘O’ levels. Eldest child in our families, we were
expected to go out to work and bring home wages. She went to work in a bank and
I joined the library service. We lost touch.
Over the years I wondered what had
happened to her. Had she married? Had children? Had she stayed in our home town
or moved away like me? Thinking back, I realised that we had never once visited
each other at home. A distance of a mile or so between our houses could have
been the other side of the moon. Yet, in the 50s, we had great freedom to roam
but it had never occurred to me to visit Carol or vice versa.
In the 90s when more and more people were
finding old friends through websites like Friends Reunited and Genes Reunited,
I decided to make an effort to find Carol. I checked the Births, Marriages and
Deaths indexes for our home town and found Carol had married. I now had her
married name. Someone still living in our home town looked in the local
telephone directory and found an address and phone number. After a gap of
almost 40 years, I had to pluck up courage to ring the number. A man answered.
I blurted out the reason for calling, the words spurting out in a gush.
Fortunately he got my drift. He was married to Carol but they no longer lived
together. He could give me her address and her number. I rang her immediately.
Her voice was just as I remembered it. When she had recovered from her
surprise, she told me that she had just seen a TV advert for Genes Reunited and
thought of me. Minutes later, the phone had rung.
