love runs far deeper than what we had and told me that when I find it I will know.”
Rachel said kindly, “Kevin might have a point there. Perhaps at sixteen or seventeen you were too young to know if it really was love that you felt and had you not gone through the things you did then perhaps you would have grown through that period in your life. Instead you had so much to deal with that your emotions were all over the place, you had a breakdown and in a sense became trapped in time, unable to move on.”
A few weeks earlier Emma may not have agreed with her but almost before Rachel had finished speaking Emma said, “I know. Ever since I understood the entries in the diaries my thoughts and feelings about Kevin have been changing. They have changed even more since we talked so openly on our journey back from St Albans. Then another very significant thing happened today. From the moment I saw him I knew whatever it was that I used to feel for him was gone. That person was not the Kevin I had thought about and wanted to see all these years and I am not saying that just because he looked different. I don’t think the Kevin that existed in my mind ever really existed at all and nor did most of what I thought were memories of our time together. I asked him if he remembered our first kiss, which he said he did but he remembers nothing about standing in the darkness searching the skies for a meteor shower or of being a true gentleman by trying to keep me warm. Instead, he said that just as we got off the train one night he told me he liked me a lot and asked me if I would be his girlfriend and if so, would I watch him play football at the weekend. When I said yes he said we should seal it with a kiss so we went behind the old signal box at the end of the platform where we thought we couldn’t be seen and had what he described as our first rather sloppy kiss. He said that as we kissed a little more, he tried to do what all boys of that age try to do with a girl and that was to have a bit of a feel but just as he was lifting up my skirt the lady from the sweet shop walked by with her dog and gave us a piece of her mind. She sent us both packing and that was more or less that except that as we left I noticed his trousers were sticking out at the front and when I realised what it was I, sniggered, hit it with my school bag and told him to keep it away from me. There was no meteor shower, there was no passion under the stars and there was no chivalry. Instead, he got an erection went for a quick grope but even that didn’t happen.” Rachel couldn’t help but chuckle and that set Emma off too. She saw the funny side of it even though it troubled her to think that from that small insignificant event behind the old signal box her mind had created a passionate, intimate and erotic experience under the stars that had never actually taken place.
A Café In Utrecht: Part 2
Where would I be without you?
As Rachel continued to listen to Emma telling her what Kevin had said and what she had said to him she knew that visiting Utrecht had been the right thing to do and the more she talked the more it seemed that a huge weight was being lifted from her. There were serious and sad moments such as her description of Kevin’s reaction to his mother’s letter and his father’s illness but there were also light-hearted moments and moments of importance such as Emma’s revelation that the feelings she thought she once had for Kevin had gone. Emma finished by telling Rachel that Kevin left the room without even shaking her hand let alone giving her a farewell hug but he did wish her well, he told her he would arrange to see his parents and he thanked her for coming. Then she explained that in the five or six minutes she waited for the attendant to arrive she burst into tears and cried for having stupidly wasted so many years of her life trying to clutch on to something that was never really