Epilogue

So I got my good degree, I got to start a PhD in ... well it doesn’t matter, you wouldn’t understand it anyway; at Lancaster University. Maybe not the best uni in the UK, but I liked it.

That first summer I missed the sailing week. I had graduate school to attend. Tony, Joanne and Sarah wrote often, and we met up at holidays. Sarah went to Oxford. Joanne took a year off. At first everyone thought it was just for a gap year.

I got to go to the sailing week the next year. It was great fun! Truly. The sailing was great and I was now regarded as an expert. I had girls and boys hanging on my every bit of sailing advice. A young voice came up to me. “Hi Chris”

“Hi, Fred, how are you. Enjoying the sailing?”

“Do you know, I am. Our boat capsized yesterday, it was great fun. I’m taking our dorm room bible study. Seems I’m a responsible person now. I am sixteen after all”

“Wow, time flies doesn’t it?”

“Yup, Sixteen, nearly seventeen. If you get my drift?”

“I do, you still on for that? But not here.”

“Obviously not! What do you think I am, some kind of easy tramp?” she stomped off. I wasn’t quite sure how I’d misunderstood that. I spent the rest of the week trying to be nice to her.

The following September Joanne and Tony both went to university together; they shared a twin dorm room. That was planned. That they came to the same uni as me was not. They kept it a secret until they were there.

“Heh, Chris!”

“Jo!, and Tony! What? Are you here? Wow, that’s amazing. Really good.”

“Yeah, we share a room. Twin beds, but...” Tony poked me in the ribs “as you know, we only need the one”

“We should get together for a curry sometime.” I said

“That would be good. Just to be clear; curry would be the only thing on the plate now. We’re a couple, a monogamous couple”

“Good for you! Really, I’m pleased for you”

We met for a curry, well, I went to their halls and they made me a meal. It was curried beans, they were feminist, lesbian vegetarians. I liked them both, but clearly our paths had diverged and neither of us would ever have made a go of it together. I like sausages, bacon, chicken, beef, pork, even the occasional fresh roadkill has been known to provide a meal (rabbit I mean, not cat or something). “Oh, not sure if you can help, Chris. Fred is coming up next weekend.

She could stay with us, but, well, I’m not sure how comfortable she is with out-of-the-closet lesbians; and well...”

“I could put her up, if you’re okay with that. I have an inflatable lilo she, or I, can have. I -”

“She probably wouldn’t need the lilo, she mentioned you and she had some unfinished business to attend to?”

I could feel woody waking up. She’d waited this long? The last of the crew? I had no objections to that. “Oh, okay. Well. I’ll look forward to that”

“I’m sure you will. I’m sure you will. Goodnight” said Tony