Back in Time

I want to go back in time. Back to when you and I were friends. Thirty years ago, when we were neighbors living at home with our families. 

My mum passed away that year. The same year we moved into the house next door to yours. You always said our crossing of paths was “meant to be.”

You’d wave from your landing window on the way up to your bedroom. I’d lean forward out of mine, laughing at your face, as you pressed it against the glass. 

How young we were! Twelve and eleven. For three months of every year – from June to early September – you were always a year older. 

Remember the first time we met? 

You sat on your front doorstep. I don’t recall what you were doing – just your smile. Your curls overflowed in spirals from the ponytail on top of your head. You looked expectant, as if you’d been waiting for me. 

I walked right over. Bold as brass. Across your mum’s front garden – her flower beds, daffodils at my ankles – and said, “Hello. My name is Becky,” to which you replied, “I know. My mum told me.” 

From then on, we were the earth, air, fire, and water. We caught the school bus every morning. Giggling. Always late. Experienced our first kiss together – with boys much older than us – in the grassy fields at the end of our road. You fell madly in love with Lewis. 

We plotted how to look older. Shopped at the drugstore for hairspray and lipstick, wore revealing clothes without realizing how slender we were. How youthful we looked. 

Back then, we didn’t have any notion of time. 

As young women, we travelled together. Learnt how to navigate foreign countries. A once in a lifetime trip to Australia where we posed on Bondi beach, swam with a shoal of jumping fish in shallow waters, and trekked through dewy rainforests. 

There were weekends away. Weddings. Parties. We “cruised the vicinity.”

We got terribly sunburnt on girly holidays. Lazed on beaches and ate exotic-sounding sorbets with names like “Mojito Love” and “Ouzo Orange” stretched out like sleeping gazelles on beach towels. You sped off on the back of a moped with an English boy in Rhodes and walked back in the searing mid-day sun. Your lone silhouette appeared on the dusty horizon just as I began to wonder if you would ever return. 

We danced at local haunts and further afield in London clubs as if no one was watching. We came home sweaty and wide-eyed in the early hours, just as the sun rose. You had rhythm and hips that swayed like a moving river. We drove miles together. Singing. Laughing. Talking. 

Sometimes we lied about where we went. Once, I held you upright on a swivel stool in a glitzy wine bar, fending off predators, as you swayed back and forth, your eyes whizzing and whirring because you had a Piña colada(you never drank) and the world went topsy turvy. 

I protected you that night, as you’d done for me on countless occasions. No one was going to take advantage of my gal. 

Your favorite saying was “trust in the universe.” When you won a local radio competition, you told me afterwards you believed more than ever in “the power of the universe.” We trail-blazed for an entire year in the prize: a brand new, two-seater, silvery-gray sports car.

We thought we were the bee’s knees. 

We thought our friendship would last forever and we’d end up old women, reminiscing to our children and our children’s children about all the times we thought we were finished. How we’d always held it together. Gotten ourselves out of a jam – because we had each other. 

I was “your Bec.”

Growing up without a mum, I turned to you. You tried your best to make up for the hole only a mother could fill. We were a sisterhood, unlike any other. 

We walked life’s journey together, holding onto one another’s hands. And when my dad died thirteen years later – we met every day. 

You’d pick me up, honking your horn outside the house (back then you had a tiny, white Panda car) and we’d drive. Away from everything. 

We never went very far. Just through the village, but it wasn’t distance that mattered. We drove down forgotten lanes and sat side by side overlooking the river until nightfall. You never once said to me sorry I have to go– it’s getting late. You made me join the gym a few months later. It wasn’t an option you said. Your argument being that exercise releases serotine, and serotine helps depressed people; bereaved people– feel better.

You were right.

You listened to me grieve. You listened to my grief. You took my hand when I thought living through such pain wasn’t possible. You led me to the light. Just by being there. Just by being my best friend. The best person I’d ever known. 

I want to say sorry for what I did. Was it one thing? Was it many? 

“I’m letting you go,” you told me after my wedding as you looked me in the eye and wished me well. Only, you whispered the first part quietly, like a wish. 

Somehow, your words seemed less than they were.

Our friendship. Our love. You snipped the ribbon gently, like a grand opening. Except you weren’t celebrating the start of something – you were marking the end. 

I didn’t take you seriously. Or realize what you meant.

We lived in different countries. You had children and a family of your own. Besides – and I don’t mean this lightly – we’d argued a few Christmases before, eventually reconciling. We always did. 

But this wasn’t like that. 

Your intentions fell lightly, passing over me like a late summer afternoon’s breeze. Hazy and soft. I didn’t hear the words. I heard the sound, but not the meaning.  

Then came the non-starters. 

Intended silences that, at first, weren’t discerning. You were busy. I wrote you a poignant letter, expecting a reply that never came. A birthday gift to you in June, sent from America to Ireland. Presents in the post to your children. Time passed. Then, my birthday in September it dawned on me – when there was no card, no present, no phone call – just how much the silence had grown. Like an affirmation. Finally, I heard you. 

I pictured you gently closing the door, like a mother would on a sleeping child. It was my fault for not listening. My fault for being me. I’d broken you. You’d broken us. Maybe, unknowingly – we’d broken each other. 

And now, I’m awake. A child. Like when we first met. Wondering what happened.

Asking what did I do wrong? 

It’s agonizing. The loss of your friendship. Not quite like a parent – few things could compare to that – but still painful enough to linger and hurt whenever I think of you. 

Of us. 

I analyze the final stretch, searching for signs. There were no cross words, bitter exchanges, or raging hysterics. Just a silent parting of ways. 

Is that what you’d call it? 

I wonder what you told your mum. Your children. The story of what happened to your lifelong friend, their Aunty Bec. Your Bec. I hope whatever you told them, it was the truth. 

The ribbon you cut in half; I hold a piece in each hand. Both ends tangle, too fragile to mend. To wind. To start all over again. 

I wish I could go back in time. 

Back to the beginning. 

Back to when you and I were the best of friends. 

-Becky Jeeves

Becky is an emerging writer who has always enjoyed creative writing. She is working on her first book, a memoir, and recently published an excerpt in the July 2020 issue of The Write Launch.