Chapter 1

It all started at Easter the year I was five, Good Friday was on the 13th April, my birthday was the following Friday. In between we moved in next door to the Barker family.

There were five Barkers, James the father ran a local painting and decorating contractors, Pat, the mother was a stay at home Mum, and their three kids. Andrew was seven, David, five like me (although he was two weeks younger than I, and Alison, a doll-like little girl of three, who everyone called Pip. There were just the two of us in my house, Mum, Mary Warner and me Calista jane Warner.

We’d moved up from Norfolk where I’d been born, with, I hasten to point out five fingers on each hand, not six as scurrilous rumours would have you believe. My Dad had left when I was quite small, and Mum decided that we’d move back closer to where she came from, and where my grandparents still lived. Hence, we were now living in Castleford.

From my point of view, it was a bad move, or, more likely a good move at a bad time. I had no friends, and a birthday coming up, and at five, the idea of a birthday with no party was just not fair.

On Wednesday, my first full day in our new home, I was outside in the back garden, trying out the swing that had come with the house, when a small tousled head peeked over the fence.

“Hello,” she said, who are you?”

“I’m Calista,” I answered, “but everybody just calls me Cal.”

“They do that to me, too,” she said, “my name is Alison, but they all call me Pip. I’m three.”

“I’m four,” I replied, “but I’ll be five on Friday.”

“Ooh, are you having a party?”

“No,” I answered, shaking my head sadly, “I don’t have any friends here. All my friends are back at home in Norfolk.”

“I’m going to ask Mummy if we can have a party for you here,” she said, “don’t go ‘way.”

And she ran inside, yelling “Mummy, Mummy.”

A few minutes later she came back out, accompanied by a woman who was almost as beautiful as my Mummy. I knew she wasn’t quite as beautiful, because nobody was that beautiful, except my Mummy.

“Hello dear,” she said, she had a nice soft voice, not like some adults, “Pip tells me it’s your birthday soon.”

“Yes,” I replied, “on Friday, I’ll be five.”

“And Pip wants you to come to tea, because you’re not having a party.”

“No I’m not, we left all my friends behind.”

“Well then,” she said, “if it’s all right with your Mummy, you and she must come to tea. Would you like a cake?”

Would I like a cake?

“Yes please,” I said, “if it’s no trouble.”

Just then. Something incredible happened, my Mummy came out of the house, and the two mothers looked at each other and squealed. Which to an almost five year old was a very unMummy like thing to do.

“Pat,” Mine squealed.

“Mary,” Pip’s squeaked.

And then they started talking, about at the speed of light.

You see, it seems that my mother and Pip’s mother had been best friends at school, and had lost touch when my mother went off to take a job as a nurse in Norfolk, they hadn’t seen each other in years.

Which is how, for the rest of my life I came to start calling her Aunt Pat, her husband Uncle James, and their kids called my mother Aunt Mary.

It wasn’t until the following day, that I got to meet the rest of the Barker family.

There was a tree in our garden, a big old Ash tree, and it was from a branch of that that my swing hung. I was outside, playing with my teddies. I was tossing one teddy in the air, seeing how high I could get it, and on one throw it didn’t come back down. It was stuck on a branch, and I did what any self-respecting nearly five year old girl would do. I sat down on the grass and started crying.

After a couple of minutes, I was reaching the point where I was seriously thinking of giving up the crying, since nobody seemed to be paying any attention, when I heard a voice.

“Are you all right?” the voice asked.

I looked up, my eyes blurred with tears and saw heaven.

All right, not heaven, it was a boy, and at that age, boys are just Yech.

But he was small, smaller than me, which apparently most boys are until the get older, but he had untidy, dirty blond hair, and the most piercing pale blue eyes that I have, to this day never seen the like of. And he was smiling.

“My Teddy,” I whined, “I got him stuck in the tree.”

I pointed up into the branches, and there a good ten feet over my head was a teddy bear.

“Hang on a minute,” he said, and disappeared.

Only to reappear a few seconds later charging down our driveway.

“I’ll get it for you,” he said, and without stopping, started to climb the tree.

It took him a few minutes, but eventually I saw his arm reach out to take hold of the teddy, and just at that moment, he fell.

That was the first time I met David James Barker, it was also the first time he ended up in A and E with a broken bone (his forearm this time) while rescuing me or one of my toys. It was not the last.

“I did what any practically minded girl of my age would at that moment. I screamed for my Mummy.

My mother, being a nurse, did a quick assessment of the situation told him not to move and me not to touch him, then ran inside and called an ambulance, and his mother, in that order.

Five hours later, we dropped the two of them, plus Andy and Alison, off at home, with my mother apologising almost constantly to both David and what was now Aunty Pat for my causing him to break his arm.

On Friday, we did go to tea at the Barker’s, and we did have cake, and each one of them bought me a birthday present.

It was also the last birthday I had for the next thirteen years without it being a joint party with David, half way between our two birthdays.

Now skip forward eight years, and six more visits to A and E to have David’s lumps and bumps fixed to April 20th 1998, my thirteenth birthday. The start of, perhaps the most momentous year of my life (until then).

I got a lot of cards from friends at school, and quite a few presents, so that was a good start to the fourteenth year of my life. What wasn’t good was the griping stomach pain I woke up with. It got worse. When I dragged myself out of bed and went to the look, there was blood on the paper when I wiped myself dry.

“Mum,” I yelled, loud enough, I thought, to wake the dead.

I wouldn’t say she came running, but she was at the door pretty quickly.

Now, I’d read all the pamphlets, knew what was happening, even had the session during citizenship lesson at school where they separated the boys and the girls, and talked to us about woman’s problems. But it was happening. On my thirteenth birthday, I got my first period. The party wouldn’t be for a week, so I knew that I wouldn’t be ‘on’ for that, but I was excited, and at the same time a little worried, that I’d made the transition from young girl to young woman.

As well as my birthday, it was back to school day after the easter holidays. So once I’d done what I had to in the bathroom, had a shower and got dressed, I went downstairs for breakfast.

In the kitchen I was greeted by the smiling face of my best friend, David James Barker. When I thought back, in the eight years we’d been friends, the only times I’d ever seen him without a smile on his face was as he was being loaded into some vehicle to be carted off to the hospital, after hurting himself doing something nice for me. On an impulse, I walked round the table and kissed him on the cheek.

“What was that for?” he asked, reaching up to touch the spot I’d just kissed.

Mum turned from the cooker where she was grilling bacon, and looked at me quizzically.

“What?” I asked her.

“Nothing,” she replied, “sit down. David, would you like some breakfast?”

And the pair of them went into their usual routine. He said no thanks, he’d already had breakfast at home, she said how about just a bacon sandwich, I’ve cooked too much, he said, well if it helps you out, and he got a bacon sandwich.

I laughed.

“What do you find so funny?” Mum asked.

“You two,” I replied, “every morning, David comes round to walk to school with me, every morning you go through the same routine, and he ends up with a bacon sandwich.”

“Sometimes it’s sausage,” David broke in.

“All right, a sandwich,” I corrected, “Mum, why don’t you just invite David to breakfast every day and save yourselves the effort.”

Neither of them replied.

I ate my breakfast, David ate his sandwich, we both had a glass of orange juice.

When we finished, I ran back upstairs to get my school bag, threw a couple of extra pads into it, and ran back down to meet David at the front door for our walk to school.

As we came to the end of our street, I slipped my arm through David’s and we walked closer together.

“Er, Cal,” he began, sounding nervous,” what’s happening?”

“What do you mean,” I asked, “we’re walking to school together, like we always do.”

“I mean, the kiss on the cheek earlier, and this,” he gestured at my arm linking through his.