THE SPARK

It's 1963, I am 15. She lived in Kitchen Gardens with her parents and brother, and was a year younger than me. She was a sylph; a gazelle; exquisite with dark hair. We had grown up together but had never spoken – I was paralysingly shy and covered in acne; and in any case I believed mother would make it impossible. We had both passed the 11+, but selective schools at that date were almost exclusively single sex - I went to King Edward VI grammar school in Stratford upon Avon with her brother, she for some reason did not go to the girl's high school in Stratford, but to the Kings High School in Warwick (now a very prestigious private school). We all went on the 150 Midland Red bus to Stratford every morning, but she then had to catch another bus to Warwick.

So I and she would stand at the bus stop, in the same positions, every day, and I would secretly yearn for her.

We would occasionally run into each other of course – she lived on the site of a lean-to kitchen garden greenhouse against the perimeter wall, and by chance there was a door through the wall behind it into North Drive which gave a slightly shorter route to the local shop. I would deliberately go that way and hang around outside the door in the hope she would come out.

Once she and I happened to be in the shop together and she couldn't reach an item on the top shelf – so she asked me to reach it down for her – oh bliss! I think these were the only words she ever spoke to me.

In the summer Kings High girls wore light blue dresses with white piping, and I worshipped her from behind at the bus stop. Unrequited First Love is a terrible thing – I thought of her constantly, and I have to say that she has moulded my subsequent taste in women; slender, dark haired bob, innocent, wistful (in blue dresses!).

On the bus we sat on the top deck, rough boys at the back, wimps at the front, and the girls in the middle, The bus reached Stratford bus station and we all stood up to exit as it was still moving. As I moved down the central isle there was a crowd of girls standing at their seats and waiting to get into the isle, so I let them go and the last was her; she steadied herself by reaching backward and grasping the seat top, just as I reached forward to grasp it. I swear it wasn't deliberate or planned, I don't even think I knew it was her, but OUR HANDS MET.

I swear to God, I felt a surge of energy jump between us as we touched – and it wasn't static. Incredible. She looked back, perhaps she had felt it too, saw it was me, gave me a disdainful look and and withdrew her hand. Nothing was said and life continued as it had. But I had touched her and felt a surge of power. Alas, it has never happened with any other woman.

In the end of course we each took A levels and went out into life – I to Manchester University, and she a year later, I don’t even know what she did. I had said perhaps two words to her and touched her hand briefly once. But I remember her always.

10? years later mother was going through the churchyard and met her going in the opposite direction, harassed by twin boy toddlers, and they had a few words – married of course and visiting her mother with the grand-children.

But she is my biggest regret in life – we could have had such a wonderful romance, roaming the Warwickshire countryside, making love in barns and haystacks. A node point in one's time line where one went down the wrong branch. I search for her occasionally on the web just out of curiosity about how her life panned out – she ran an eBay shop from a bleak northern town selling second hand (sorry 'pre-loved') female fashion, which was in the beginning for oversize women – so perhaps she is no longer a sylph; a gazelle. Occasionally she included her hand in the photographs of the goods – the hand that gave me the surge of power, the only photo I have of  her.

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