From Out of the Rising Star By Charlie Place
I don’t think it’s there anymore, that shabby bar in Camden where we met. Remember it? “The Rising Star”, just up from the tube station. That was where we all used to meet. Our crowd. All 20 somethings, all escapees from dull, grey, northern towns who had headed South for the bright lights of the capital. Yeah, we’d been lied to, the streets weren’t paved with gold but there were pubs and clubs and bands and booze and no end of fun to be had with some like-minded individuals. Yes, The Rising Star, that was it. I could tell you some stories about that place, that’s for sure.
It was your hair that first attracted me to you, if I’m honest. You had really short hair, and we’re talking about the mid-nineties and Camden here so there was no shortage of bobs and pixie cuts and what have you, but yours was properly short and to me it looked amazing. I mean, obviously I called you Sinead O’Connor at the time and by the end of night we’d managed a couple of impromptu renditions of Noting Compare 2 U, but really you looked sassy and sexy and cool and edgy and I was intrigued to know if you really were all these things or if you simply had short hair. I suppose that’s how our friendship began.
To me you were devastatingly and dangerously attractive. You were also the fiancée of my best friend. I mean, that’s how we got to meet. Now, this could have been an issue but strangely in those early days it was very much a positive. It meant I got to see lots of you for a start, now you were hanging out with our crowd. But it also meant that I could flirt with you outrageously. I mean, you and him were so in love and me and him were such good mates, it was obvious that nothing was going to happen, so we got to hide in plain sight. And everybody loves a good flirt, right?
I’ll tell you when things changed though. It was at Leon and Nigella’s wedding. After the service and after the reception, in the small hours of the night after we’d found some seedy Islington watering hole. We were sat next to each and talking, well, shouting really and you asked me why I was single. You said you couldn’t understand it because I was your favourite in the group and I laughed and said “well obviously not” and you looked me in the eyes and said “yes, the favourite”. And through the drink and the haze and the smoke and the lights and the noise, I felt something change.
Nothing happened though, did it? Well, not for a month or so anyway. Another event, same old faces. Steve’s wedding this time. I guess we were just at that age where everyone starts getting married because we seemed to have a wedding a week. Anyway, Steve was getting married back in Yorkshire, can’t remember the name of that little town but it was straight out of a Hovis advert. Our crowd had all booked into the same hotel and inevitably we all ended up in the bar. One by one, as the drinks and the hour took their toll, another casualty would depart to bed but even as our numbers dwindled I swear to God I never had a plan, even when my mate, your fiancée, took himself off. But then there was just us alone in the bar and then we were kissing and then we were touching and then...... And then.
Who knows what would have happened if that guy hadn’t sat down with us? What was his name? Shaun? Some local cliché, flat cap and everything, just off the back shift at the factory and looking for someone to have a chat with while he had a pint. Me and him talked about football and you slinked off to bed and nothing was said at breakfast but a line had been crossed and we knew it.
And so we began our “thing”, whatever it was that you would call it. I think affair would definitely be over-egging it, we certainly never slept together but every time we met there was a kiss here, a cuddle there and tantalising taste of a forbidden future and every time we dived in a little bit deeper. I often wonder if any of our friends suspected something was going on. I mean, they must have, mustn’t they? Looking back it must have been so blatant but then I guess we were all a little bit self-obsessed in those days. Something else was happening too. I was falling in love with you.
The guilt was catching up with me though, and the enormity of what we would be doing if we went further was starting to sink in. I was in a strange town, these people were my only friends and I knew we would be pariahs and never forgiven if it ever got out. Could I risk everything for someone who, let’s face it, I didn’t really know anything about other than that she had short hair and I was crazy about her?
New Year’s Eve party at your house, I made my decision, resolution number one, this had to stop. Start the New Year afresh. Obviously, I didn’t tell you that though, I was far too weak and pathetic for that. No, we went through our now familiar routine of finding a room to ourselves and getting as close as possible to each other whilst pretending it would still look innocent if any of our friends entered the room unexpectedly, and we talked and we touched and we dared to dream until reluctantly the time came to rejoin the party. Then as dawn came around I tiptoed gingerly over the slumbering party guests, let myself out of your door and walked away from it all.
I remember so clearly the last thing you said to me that night though. I thought it was the deepest, most romantic thing I had ever heard. You must remember that I was deeply in love with you and I’d already drunk my own body weight in champagne so it probably sounds trite now but at the time it sounded straight from a Bronte novel - “if nothing more happens between us, then I want you to know that it is not because I didn’t want it to”.
Time passed. We both moved out of London, we got on with our lives, I found myself a fiancée of my own and slowly but surely your memory drifted away until out of the blue the invitation arrived on my door mat. You filled it with glitter you idiot, you knew I hated glitter, we’d talked about it, why would you do that? But suddenly there I was, at your wedding and you’d had your hair cut especially short for the big day and all those feelings came flooding back. I never meant them too I promise, no one was more surprised than me and I was so happy for you and for him and that’s all I meant to say when we were alone in that room in the hotel.
And I can’t remember who did what to who and how it started, and I can’t pretend it was as magical as I’d always imagined because it never is, is it? And I’d been drinking since noon so that didn’t help. We couldn’t escape the fact though that you had been unfaithful within a couple of hours of getting married and that our story had taken another turn. And once again I ran away.
All I can say to you in explanation is that I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to feel. I didn’t know what to think. I had a partner. You had a husband. I had a best friend. I didn’t know what to do. So I did nothing. I used to think that was often the best way.
Six months later and it was Jason that told me. You two had split up! You’d been having an affair! You’d left him for another man! He was devastated! For a minute the world seemed to stop as I thought he was talking about me but then I realised no, this was something else completely. “We’ll have to rally round him” said Jason, “he’s really struggling” At least, I think he said that, but I wasn’t really listening. How could you do that? To him? To me? How long had it been going on? I mean, had you been cheating on me and if so did I have any right to feel annoyed? Because to be honest, I didn’t know what to feel. Guilt? Anger? Regret?
We used to talk about books, you and I. I told you that you should always read a book three or four times, if it’s a decent book that is. The first time you read a book, you read it straight through without pausing, just get the plot and then the second time you read it you see how some of the incidents in the first few chapters start to make more sense. But it’s only by reading it back over and over that you start to understand why things happened like they did and you begin to comprehend the real meaning of the story. Well, stuck in this room, with all this time to reflect it’s like I’m reading through the book of my life over and over and over again, but I’m not sure Aesop himself could come up with moral to this story. I just keep thinking of those words “if nothing more happens between us, then I want you to know that it is not because I didn’t want it to” and unfortunately, it’s taken me 25 years to realise, yes, I wanted it to happen to. If only I’d known.
Judges Comments
From Out of the Rising Star, the runner-up in WM's Last Line short story competition, is a bittersweet evocation of the complexities of young love, and an attempt to make sense of them later in life, when new information comes to light and offers a shifting perspective on an old scenario. Thoughtfully written and observed, it exposes the nuances of being young and newly in a new city, where a stable friendship group is the difference between being at loose and adrift.
The narrator makes this clear, juggling the thrill of falling in love with loyalty, being a good friend and behaving in a way that won't lead to being ostracised. It's a delicate balancing act, the writing subtly revealing the layers of desire and deception in the unspoken, unacknowledged relationship and the impact it has on the narrator years down the line. As the past and the present collide in Charlie's well-told tale, the wistful 'if only I'd known' last line takes on a particular poignancy about a love affair that never fulfilled its promise.