countryside demonstrate themselves in the colour in her flushed cheeks. The taste of the oven-fresh bramble pie, made with pastry shaped by her mother’ s hands( that were technically too naturally warm for the task, she complained when I visited, but practised enough to make up for their shortcoming) and warm iced buns that filled her family’ s cottage kitchen are still with her in the roundness of her face and the sweetness of her treatment of me. Her tiny village primary school, and general lack of social conditioning, shaped the openness of her soul: it is so simple for her, so obvious and easy to offer hugs to a friend quite clearly in need of them. There is no doubt I would not care that she is a few days overdue a hair wash, and in Harry Potter jogging bottoms that she bought when she was twelve. The absolute absence of doubt is a product of her quiet upbringing, and heals some of the eardrum punctures caused by the noise of mine.
The sound of what feels like a stampede fills the house, and intensifies as the other two girls come running up the stairs, the sound of my laughter a green light for them, an indication that I’ m ready for human interaction. Noise is kinder here. Their genuine desire to be there for me still astounds me, even though they have never suggested anything less. But part of me is still seventeen. Seventeen and accepting isolation after two years of pleading with her friends to care, all the while watching them vaporise from within her grasp. Seventeen and trying to sit at a different lunch table in the dining hall every day at school, knowing her weight was too groan-inducing to repeatedly burden the same one. Seventeen and fortifying herself within those yellow confines because her sadness made her snap. Sitting on the shower floor and letting the concept of absolute solitude soak her, desiring saturation so great that there was no space within her to hope for more. Part of me is still trained to be sad alone and cannot comprehend being liked, but now,‘ Do you need a hug?’ echoes around our drafty student house. Saltwater fills my eyes with the sentiment that I’ m so incredibly lucky to have these girls, who I’ ve known for less than a year, yet who care for me so vehemently and makes the suggestion of‘ emotional-support entire bottles of wine?’ leave my still-quivering lips. And of course, they accept.
Cut to volunteers to make the less-than-fifty yard excursion out to the corner shop.‘ Red or white?’ Debates on whose frontal lobe is developed enough for red.‘ But
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