Chapter 7

After that unfortunate event the day began to wind down. Most of the girls had missed the action as they were inside the shop, (Jodie was one of these) and so the three girls who had been behind Christian and I, regaled the others with the story of how the idiot had attacked rob and I'd put him down hard.

Of course their retelling took almost half an hour and by then they'd managed to completely psycho-analyse the idiot and come to the startling conclusion that ... he was an idiot.

Rob, Christian and I meanwhile were bonding over the experience as guys tend to. Rob was upset that he didn't get a chance to hit the idiot while Christian it seemed was glad he hadn't had to get involved but it was clear he would have if he had too.

Though I couldn't have known it at the time, this one fight led to a friendship between Christian and myself that has lasted years. An experience like that really brings people together.

I'm sure there is a really clever reason a psychologist could give you for why men bond over being in fights, but I only got a C in A-level psychology. As such I can only guess that it's some kind of animal instinct we aren't aware of. It seems to me that when you're in a fight with someone it's kind of the ultimate pledge of friendship. For a second it's as if it's you and them against the rest of the world, in truth it's just a group of stupid teenagers but at that moment it seems much bigger.