Not Such An Early Bird, After All

Lately I’ve been writing about leaving things behind, and that strange pocket of time between deciding to start a brand new life and actually starting it. My new book is about four teenagers who move from London to Melbourne, how this variously changes or doesn’t change who they are. Regular readers of the blog will know that I know something about this on a personal level, though I made that move when I was in my early 30s – you might think that would mean I didn’t have to do much research but funnily enough I’ve done more for this book than for anything I’ve written before.

I’m using multiple viewpoints but the character I’m “in” at the moment is the main one – a nearly-13-year-old girl, the youngest of the four. In trying to get across how profound it feels to be leaving the home you’ve always known to go so very far away, I’ve had her bewildered with her own behaviour towards her best friend. She imagines that saying goodbye to this person she treasures should be thunderbolts and lightning, but as the days leading up to their flight drag on she fails to let this friend know just how much she’s going to miss her. And suddenly that moment has passed. The grand goodbye – all the fierce emotions she’s feeling – remain a hot, confused lump in her chest.

I didn’t have to research that bit at all because it’s exactly how I behaved when I left London. My friends were wonderful during that ‘strange pocket of time’ I referred to. They told me they’d miss me even while they were encouraging me about my new life, they organised a farewell party from start to finish – I just had to turn up to it (in my own house! I didn’t even have to catch the bus – now that’s friendship). All I can remember doing is smiling and acting slightly awkward and drinking wine and thinking that any second now there would be a moment when I’d tell these three girlfriends I’ve known and loved since university that I couldn’t imagine life without them, that sometimes I even allowed myself to dream that we could return to that blissful time we shared in Brighton, and that I was so, so grateful for their friendship. Grand, sincere feelings. Thunderbolts. Lightning.

But all too soon the farewell party was over; all too soon I was boarding a plane and the moment had passed. And though I’ve been back and forth a few times since then, I’m three and a half years too late to say: I don’t want to leave you. I wish we could live on the same street, not just the same hemisphere. I miss all of you. I miss the person I am when I’m with you. I will never be able to replace you.

My young character won’t wait that long, even though I’m heaping more pressure on her little shoulders than were on mine (aren’t writers mean?). But another thing she and I will have in common is the finding of new friends on the other side of the world and the unexpectedness she feels about that, and how – just when you think you’ve found someone, they might up and leave for reasons of their own.

I have this new friend, you see. She’s a rare person, being extremely smart, funny and beautiful but also completely lacking in ego to the point where I sometimes want to say – have you met yourself lately? Months ago she told me that she was leaving Melbourne to go travelling with her family. “Great!” said I. “You’ll have such a good time.” And from that moment until tonight I’ve been conscious of that ‘strange pocket of time’, during which I knew that at some point I would need to tell her how much I was going to miss her being part of my daily life.

It’s funny – she is by nature a very late person – as in late turning up to things. She says she has her own unique time, which is everyone else’s time plus 15 minutes. We laugh about this because I only have one obsessive compulsion and it’s to be early for everything. The hours in my life I’ve wasted waiting outside a venue for the rest of the world to turn up is quite scary. However, on this occasion she has beaten me to it. She catches a plane tomorrow, but this afternoon she raced up to me in the school playground, hugged me and said something really lovely – to which I replied something stupid like “Great!” , feeling embarrassed and overwhelmed by this sweet gift of words. And the moment seemed to pass me by yet again.

At 36 years old it seems I’m still learning how to be a good friend, but as the plane doesn’t leave for a few more hours let me sneak this one in:

I’ll miss you! A lot. Thank you so, so much for your friendship.