It has been a couple of decades, and I was pleasantly surprised at my reaction to the email. He was going to be in Melbourne for a conference. “What about a catch-up?” I am waiting at the terminal.
We were the ultimate Three Musketeers, Stephen, Becky and I. We were in Bubs together, throughout Primary and for most of our early Secondary schooling. We shared the same classes, the same interests; inseparable in, and out of school. There were sleep overs, parties; three sets of parents sharing the responsibilities.
There was some competitive banter, but not enough to ever strain things. I remember our lunch boxes used to create a bit of friction. Mum was forever putting little paper-twists of last night’s leftovers, a wedge of smelly cheese, a few dry biscuits, a taramasalata, gherkin and egg sandwich. Steve or Beck’s Mum loaded peanut butter, or cheese and vegemite sandwiches on de-crusted, white bread, a slice of cake, and a fruit juice box. Nobody wanted to swap anything from my box!
Bye and bye, puberty arrived. Stephen and I were early casualties, as Beck found the older boys had already thrown away the train sets, the tree house and bikes! I saw Beck coughing on a ciggie, behind the Shelter Shed one afternoon!
We did eventually achieve a half-way sense of masculinity, squeaky, unpredictable voices, fluff forming on our cheeks and things changing ‘down below’. Steve found some magazines and we poured over the ‘educational’ pictures.
Beck’s eighteenth birthday was a bit of a watershed. She looked fabulous – her blond hair, her figure and outfit. Steve and I were in awe, both quite openly appreciating the changes that had occurred, envious of the current guy at her command, our own girlfriends, both still in fifth form, unable to cut the mustard.
We all breezed into Uni, Steve into Vet Science at Flinders, in Adelaide, Beck and I into Medicine, at Melbourne. Beck and I continued to party together, and for a few brief months in our final year, we became a discrete, albeit furiously erotic ‘item’. Our affaire remained off the radar; I don’t think Steve ever knew.
I still mull over what might have been. How did she end up marrying Steve? He took up an offer of a post-graduate posting in Sri Lanka, working with the privately-funded Elephants for Life organisation. Beck ended up at the Women and Children’s Hospital while I went interstate, into private practice.
Contact between us drifted, as work, and my own family commitments took centre stage. There were the Christmas Letters, the occasional email but their wedding invitation knocked me for a six! I had no idea they were even in the same hemisphere.
That corner of memory that holds the wistful emotions had never comfortably ‘placed’ or settled Beck. The unbidden longing occasionally resurfaced. When I saw both of them, coming down the concourse, my emotions fell apart. The hugs had me tearing up, loudly – a spectacle that I couldn’t quite explain.