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I lay in the bed incredulously. A corridor of light stretched diagonally across my bedroom, illuminating fragments of dust in the air and warming the tops of my legs which were uncomfortably hot underneath the heavy duvet. The light made its way across the floor and rested upon a book flung there which I can’t quite remember the name of. I just remember being frustrated with the ending. I think it might have been a Hardy novel. But that doesn’t matter. What mattered was the girl lying next to me, her recently tanned skin shining in the early morning sunlight. She lay on her stomach with her right arm bent underneath her, the curve of her breast showing above the crook of her elbow. Her naked back was entirely exposed, the curve of her spinal cord running down to where her body disappeared into the duvet. Her dark brown hair fell across her face and over her shoulders, spreading itself on the pillow. Her back rose and fell in harmony with her steady, sleeping breath and her eyelids flickered in dream. Her full pink lips were slightly parted and formed a subtle smile that I never saw when she was awake. Her shield could not be lifted; she was vulnerable to anyone and anything. That was the first morning of my life that I felt like a man and not a teenage boy. That was the morning when I realised what I wanted to do with my life. That was the morning I discovered what real love was. The very same morning after Eve Wilcox had taken my virginity.
That is the memory I always return to when thinking of Eve. I think of her sleeping next to me. I think of her as mine. But I just want to set a few things straight. I’m going to tell the story of Eve and me, maybe not in order but how I like to remember it. Whether I start with when we met or when we parted it’s all the same. It all happened.
First I’ll tell you about myself. My name is Jude Moore. My parents named me after that Beatles song (you know the one) which resulted in numerous taunting renditions of the repetitive chorus throughout my childhood and adolescence. I can’t quite say I’ve ever forgiven my parents for that. I had a pretty standard upbringing. I had a twin sister and a younger brother. My sister was 3 minutes older than me so I guess you could say that I had middle child syndrome. My brother, Michael, was always the golden child. Golden hair, golden personality, golden everything. Michael was supreme in every social sphere. Everyone loved him. He went to Oxford, graduated with a first and he now lives with his lovely family in a very nice house in Chiswick. He started earning more money than my father when he was only 26 years old. Every time Michael would speak about his job my father would sit back in his chair and stare at a chosen spot on the kitchen wall with a rehearsed look of pride that, to me, was unmistakably marred by envy. My sister, Delphine, always had her own niche wherever she went. She could always slot herself right in. When she was 10 she would sit with the girls who liked to talk about Jaqueline Wilson novels. She read them all and she would say that she was ‘method acting’ a phrase she learned from the description on the back of one of my father’s books. When she reached adolescence she had a knack for being the arty individual kid. In university she discovered her true niche and now, like Michael, she lives happily in Kent with her husband and 6 children. Yes, 6. Even though we were twins we weren’t really alike. We’ve never been alike. Mum would say that when we were toddlers we never fought over toys or anything because we simply didn’t like the same things. We had nothing in common. Maybe it’s because we’re not identical.
I suppose that I felt dwarfed by my siblings when I was young. I felt so entirely different from the rest of my family that I was sometimes uncomfortable around them. Mostly because I thought they were uncomfortable around me. My relationship with my family during my adolescence can be summed up by one event; the death of my best friend, Simon, when I was sixteen years old. He had been diagnosed with leukaemia when he was twelve but it didn’t get bad until he was around fourteen. Anyway, he died and I was very sad. His brother called me the day he died when I was with my family shopping for our Christmas tree. When we had finished speaking I put my phone in my pocket and didn’t say a word. It wasn’t until a week later when my mum opened the invitation to Simon’s funeral that they realised why I had been in such a ‘mood’ for the past few days. They sat me down in the kitchen and my dad asked me why I hadn’t told them. I didn’t have an answer for them. They said something about me being in denial which was a natural stage of grief. But that wasn’t it. I just hadn’t seen the point in telling them. They couldn’t fix it and they couldn’t have said anything to make me feel any better. Better to suffer in silence I thought.