We had it good?

We had it good?

 “Batty? George? Is that you George Batterman?”

The shock of recognition lifts his head skyward as he belly laughs.

“Flipping Nora!”

“Sarah Abbott?”

We grasp each other’s arms and bounce on the spot. For five glorious minutes we are teenagers. We gabble and giggle oblivious of the staring commuters crammed in around us.

“Damn, it’s my stop.”

The spell is broken, he fumbles in his suit pocket for a business card, grabs his rucksack and squeezes himself through the crowd onto the platform. I stare through the sliding door window and see him mouth, “Call me.”

16.30 to Hastings

I watch the Kent countryside stream past. Do I call him and tell him my truth? In that bubble we revisited a period of no fear, a lifetime ahead of no significance, each day lived in the moment.

My imagination plays out in black and white. I recall the large oak tree overlooking the factory where most of the parents from the estate worked. I can feel the smooth bark on the backs of my bare thighs polished by rows of dangling legs, swinging above unlocked bikes abandoned on the grass. We talked about nothing, but we were forging our own thoughts and ideals. We were separated from everything else in the world.

My first puff on a cigarette, my first fumbling kiss, my first broken bone. It all happened on the green.

I remember the mist that muted the outline of the industrial area. It was always there, worse in the summer months when we stayed out far later than we should.

The doctors say this was a likely cause of my stage four lung cancer. I am part of a cluster of adults that developed similar diseases.    

 Bus 64 to Croydon

Sarah Abbott, can you believe it? My first crush never fulfilled. I am sure she wasn’t wearing a ring. I should have stayed on the tube. Damn it.

My nephews are always telling me how lucky we were, and how young lives are much harder today. In this moment I agree. The excitement of saving enough money from my paper round to buy my Chopper. The pride in turning up to the green on it and laying it beside the other older bikes around the oak trunk. The fizz of excitement when the girls turned up.

Then, I remember the agonising sizzle as I attempt the climb, the pain on my legs from the whack of the poker, too great to bear. The sight of my mum’s fearful face when I came home late.

I dare to imagine a safe family home. I look at my phone, I pray she calls.

Nicky Higgins