The Story of Me & Him

This is how the story goes.

This is how my version of the story goes.

This is what I remember of my version of the story, plus all those softenings, embellishments, and flourishes that my romantic idealisation has contributed.

Because you see, lovely reader, it has been over 14 years now since the events in this story have passed. More than enough time, I think you’ll agree, for any number of alterations to be made to my memory.

In this incarnation of the story, I am 18 years old. In fact, if I’m being precise here, I am 18 years, 4 months, 2 weeks and 1 day, but that, as you will see, is one of the many details quibbled over.

So, in the spirit of compromise, or even just to temporarily suspend the argument, I was 18, and I was working as a barmaid in a pub just down the road from my university campus. Cheryl was also working there. A large than life, butch, Floridian lesbian, she kind of stood out amongst the Scottish locals of our wee village, and she was loved all the more for her undeniably incongruous presence.

Now, on paper, Cheryl and I had little in common – we were not two people you would naturally pair up as good friends. And yet, we got on like a house on fire. Always laughing. And drinking. And then laughing some more.

She used to do this thing whereby she would turn up at the door to my dorm at the University’s halls of residence and just announce that we were going to go off sightseeing. And I, at that point in my life, not being the most conscientious of students, would go along for the ride.

On the particular day in question, she turned up at my door declaring that we were off to see Loch Ness. Sure, I said, shrugging my shoulders with a nonchalance only achieved by a hungover teenager. I grabbed my bag and we headed for the bus station.

Now to get to Loch Ness from Stirling, you need to get the CityLink bus up through Perth and Pitlochry and Aviemore, all the way up that awful A9 road where drivers adopt a kamikaze mindset the very moment they hit its tarmacadam surface, until you arrive in the tiny bus station of Inverness. From here, you need to take another bus which drops you off, on request, at the small but gloriously named village of Drumnadrochit. The whole trip probably takes around 4 hours, but by the time you get there, you feel as though you’ve been transported into another world lightyears away from your small dingy dorm in halls.

Hugging the shoreline of Loch Ness, which is, by the way, a freshwater loch, not the seawater loch they tried to pass off as the real thing in that awful Ted Danson movie, is the village of Drumnadrochit. Situated beside Drum, is the even tinier East Lewiston, and then just beyond there is the somewhat disappointing ruins of Castle Urquhart.

After wandering around for a bit, staring out at the black waters of the loch in the vain attempt to catch some small sight of a monster, and then giving it up as a dead loss before grabbing a fish supper and some Irn Bru for tea, we discovered we had missed our bus home.

We rocked up at the local backpackers in East Lewiston, which was, in mid-February, thankfully, but unsurprisingly, more or less deserted. There was most certainly room at this inn. And so we did what anyone else would have done in our situation. We went to the pub, lined up the tequila slammers and proceeded to get more than a little tipsy.

Now, I don’t know, dear reader, if you’ve ever been to a pub in the Scottish highlands, but what I didn’t realise was just how early they close their doors. I was of the mind that the evening was only just beginning, when the bell rang to call last orders at the bar. I blame what happened next entirely on the number of tequilas I had poured down my throat, because this is certainly not the kind of action I consider indicative of my general behaviour.

I stood up in the middle of the bar and very loudly demanded to know where the after-party was going to be. One local lad shrugged his shoulders and smiled, swirling the remains of his lager around in the bottom of his pint glass, and said, ‘I guess you could all come back to mine.’

The entire gathering in the pub, and please keep in mind it was not a big pub – we are probably talking 20 people or less here – drank up the dregs of their drinks and headed up the road: a somewhat bedraggled procession through the sleepy streets of a village trapped in deepest, darkest February.

And it was on our way there that I met him. I liked his eyes. So dark they looked black in the dimly lit street, but they twinkled with a kind of mischief that I found extremely promising. His hair was long and dark, gently curling past his shoulders, and his uplilting voice told me that he wasn’t from around these here parts.

All the way to the impromptu party we spoke, flirted and shared the remnants of a bottle brought from the pub, the conversation as easy and free flowing as the liquor. Sitting in the sparsely furnished living room surrounded by an odd assortment of seasonal workers and local villagers, we sat close by one another, completely captivated in what the other had to say. After a while, he announced that he was going to have to go. He worked at the local backpackers – did I know it?

Why yes, that’s where I’m staying too, I announced, perhaps a little too gleefully. I was never very good at coy. It was then that I glanced around and noticed that Cheryl had left the party. I had no idea when she had left, but what I did know was that I was at a party in the middle of nowhere, I didn’t know a soul there, and I had no idea how to get back to the backpackers. Seizing my chance, I said, ‘I’ll just come too!’.

I grabbed my winter coat, said my goodbyes and followed him out into the freezing night.

So, lovely reader, what happened next was one of those turning points. One of those junctions that you reach in your life where you can quite clearly see fate diverging off into two distinctly different directions. I’d like to say that I considered both options in a clearheaded, considered, calm way. But, let’s face it, I had by this point drunk more than my fair share of a Jose Cuervo bottle, and had already fallen head over heels for this man’s enigmatic charm and twinkly eyes.

As we walked back down the gently sloping road towards the backpackers, I slipped my hand into his, my cold palm resting against his warm palm. And here is where I made my choice. I’m not sure whether I would quite so bravely offer myself up for potential humiliation now as I did then, but, as I think I’ve already made clear, I wasn’t all that sober at the time. He turned towards me, the amber glow of the streetlamp above us illuminating the line of his cheekbone, his stubbled jaw, and I was so sure that he was turning to kiss me. So sure.

As it was, he was actually turning towards me to continue our conversation, but he never got a chance to say what he was planning to say because, in my certainty, I kissed him mid-sentence.

12 weeks later we were living together. 9 months later we were married. 8 months later I gave birth to our daughter. 15 months after that, our son. And then 24 months after that, our second son. This November will be our 14th wedding anniversary.

Now if you were to ask him for his version of the story, I’m sure you’d hear a very different tale. There would be certain moments, a few exchanges that might, just might, match up. The one part we certainly never agree on is the date of our meeting with him swearing we met after midnight and me, before. But, you know, dear reader, the truth of it is, is that there is no truth when it comes to stories of the heart. We can only ever tell the memories of how we met, how we first kissed, how we fell in love, as we remember them. Our very subjectivity twists the plot of how we got from there to here.

So this is how my version of the story, as I remember it, with all the insignificant, and not so insignificant, nostalgic, romantic embroiderings, goes.

This is how my version of the story goes

This is how my story goes.