i) The Runaways, June 1984
Kay and I are best friends. We’ve just left school, forever. We are three weeks into the summer holidays, and I’m walking to her house down the North Circular Road. The grass verge with its pink cherry trees that runs between the dual carriageways is beautiful, like a postcard from the country. I love the familiar smell of cherry blossom mixed with ever-present traffic fumes.
I have my homemade map with me. Kay will tease me a bit because I’ve bothered to bring it, but then she will take out hers from her wardrobe and we’ll put them together. The only roads and buildings we include are the ones that matter to us: my house. Kay’s house. The A406 from Edmonton to Palmer’s Green, the sharp left of the road onto Green Lanes. On mine, the way to Kay’s house is drawn as a sharp backwards ‘L’ with a dislocated tail. Our maps are more like constellations, felt tip dreams of our reality.
Kay and I became interested in maps when we joined the Science Club at school. It was run by our unfeasibly good-looking science teacher, Mr Forster. We were fascinated by his laborious experiments to measure longitude and latitude: building a quadrant, waiting for the midday sun. We had to take his word for it when it came to working out latitude and identifying the North Star, because we were forbidden from meeting him at night. But our imaginations soared. We called ourselves the Mappers, and spent hours poring over ordinance survey maps and atlases in the school library.
We agreed that we would run away today – only for a day. Kay thinks it will take my mind off the fact that I failed all my O’ levels except two: Maths and Physics.
‘Let’s catch the 29 bus all the way to Trafalgar Square and wonder down the Thames towards Docklands,’ Kay suggested. ‘Don’t worry. In twenty year’s time school exams won’t seem so important anymore.’
I’m not sure I believe her.
ii) A Baby, August 1992
I receive a letter from Kay. It begins,
Guess what? I’ve had a baby! It’s a boy, 7lbs 9oz. I’m so happy! The labour was hell, though, I could barely walk afterwards!! Dave’s been brilliant, he’s going to be a great Dad…
I begin to lose interest. Kay writes that they are going to christen the baby Perry, which is a horrible name. She regrets that I couldn’t come to their wedding (that was a year ago), is sorry that I missed their housewarming party.
I concentrate on the hum and trundle of washing machines and dryers from the launderette beneath my flat. I stare down at the busy street full of shoppers through my living room window.
When we were teenagers, Kay and I said that we cared about most in the world is freedom, and in order to remain free we wouldn’t have kids. We didn’t tell anyone about this. It was the Mappers’ secret. Kay has broken the pact between us. Worse, she’s obviously forgotten that we made the pact in the first place. We are no longer the Mappers.
iii) On Not Meeting, March 2004
I’m forty. My soul is lost to Barclay’s Bank and banking is what I do for a living. The Maths O’ level came in handy. I’m divorced, I kept the Mappers’ pact. I travel to work, walking from my flat to Turnpike Lane station. I get the tube to Moorgate, and walk five minutes to the bank. If I was still updating my map, I would represent this journey with one-dimensional Monopoly houses of different colours (red for home and green for work) and a tangle of felt tip lines to indicate direction and method of transport. It would make sense.
I have an account on the Friends Reunited website. I waste time scrolling through the profiles of my ex-school acquaintances, now remarkably transformed into happy, successful adults. I look at Kay’s profile occasionally, and she is now on Baby Number Four. Kay posts pictures of camping holidays and family Christmases, and nights out with work colleagues. One day, unexpectedly, after years of silence I receive this message:
Hiya! It’s Kay – great to find you on here, it’s been ages!
We send each other messages, promise to catch up, make a date to meet. But now we are plotted on a map not made by us I want to erase the timeline.