Dear Emma
It’s been a long time. Since June 1998, to be exact. I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing with your life. How could I, it’s been twenty-seven years? I just thought I would write to say goodbye. Properly, this time.
We only knew each other, what, six months? But we lived together, so we saw each other pretty much every day for those six months. That was more than enough time to immerse.
There was me, arriving in Elgin in early January, 22 years old, with my big suitcase and a head full of lesson plans, to take up my first ever full-time job, as a Teacher of English at the Academy. I’d been recommended Sigi Spence’s house as a good place to lodge by the school, and in my initial call to him from my flat in Stirling he’d said, in that curling Orcadian accent of his (not a native of Elgin was Sigi, but neither was I, and neither were you), 'There’s only one other lodger. Emma. Beeeeaautiful girrul. Marrrrvellous girrul.'
Emma Taylor, whose maiden name was Sharp. Or Emma Sharp, whose maiden name was Taylor. I can’t remember which it was.
Obviously, the prospect of living with two strangers for several months far away from home, in a region of Scotland that was completely new to me (though, to be fair, every region in Scotland beyond the Central Belt was completely new to me at the time) had me worried. But you greeted me with warmth and charm and a smile, in what sounded to my working-class ear like an incredibly posh English voice. You were still in your twenties: your late twenties, right enough. Plus, you were married and worked for the local council. You were ‘mature.’
And you were indeed a 'beeeeeautiful girrul', as Sigi had attested – stunning, in fact – but after those first few evenings, in which I’d flop onto the sofa after a long day’s teaching, in the two hours I’d allow myself before tackling the mountain of marking, and you’d flop onto the other sofa after a day’s work for the council, and we’d chatter like excited insects, we realised, with no small amount of relief, that we liked each other, tremendously, in fact, but that we weren’t actually attracted to each other. Not like that, anyway. It was just as well, really. We were living in the same house and both of us were away from our partners. Sexual attraction would’ve fucked everything up.
But we found something better and less complicated: friendship. Companionship. Mutual confidants. A shared love of Led Zeppelin.
It was a lonely existence, up there in Elgin. My then-fiancé was back down in Stirling. I travelled home to her at the weekends. From Sunday night onwards, however, after the long train journey up to Moray, I’d be drowning under the workload of my first teaching post. Up at six in the morning, trudging to the Academy through a cold, dark, desolate town-centre, to arrive for seven, at a time when the only other occupants were the cleaners, to properly set up my lessons and get the requisite photocopying done.
Then in the evenings, til 11pm, I’d be marking essays and preparing the next day’s work, a single lamplight and the John Peel Sessions my only company.
Those two hours we’d spend catching up in the living room (I don’t think I once saw your bedroom or you mine) was the most joyous part of my day. Neither of us had any other responsibility in that moment: no work to do, no partners to attend to, no emails or messages or social media to check in with (this was 1998, the very last year before the mobile phone took a central place in everyone’s lives). You were smart, funny, principled. You were a great talker and a great listener. You gave sound advice. You were sympathetic. I can’t remember us ever arguing. You introduced me to the phrase, 'Rugby is a game for thugs played by gentleman, football is a game for gentlemen played by thugs,' a phrase I still parrot to this day. We giggled together over affectionate Sigi impressions, rolling our ‘r’s exaggeratedly. You were, for the first half of 1998, my best friend. You were my only friend. We both missed our partners. We were, for those six months, I suppose, a replacement partner for each other, but without the sex or the obligation.
This is what makes me regret how it ended.
You’ll remember. It was my final day in Sigi’s house. The teacher who I’d been covering for, who’d been on long-term sick-leave for six months, was finally resuming his post. My time in Elgin was up. You and I had stayed up the night before – for the first time ever! our first late night! our first actual proper drink! – basking in each other, in the memory of the time we’d shared, already pre-nostalgic.
In the morning, I packed, waiting for the taxi to take me to the station. You and Sigi were in the living room, waiting to say goodbye. Through the bedroom window I saw the taxi arrive and so I simply slipped out of the front door with my suitcase, into the taxi, and gone from your life forever.
No goodbye.
Looking back on this twenty-seven years later, I’m still not sure why I did this. Was it because I’d thought I’d find the word ‘goodbye’ too upsetting? Was it because I’d felt the previous night had been the real send-off? Was it even because (being 22 years-old and male) I’d thought that kind of exit in some way ‘cooler’?
But, given there were no mobile phones, no email and no social media, the scrap of paper on which I’d written down your number was soon lost, and the next time I visited Elgin you were gone. I found out from Sigi, during that visit, how upset you’d been that I’d slid away without even a goodbye. You’d bought me a farewell gift. You’d wanted a farewell hug. There was an empty space where a fond parting should have been. It had hurt you. It had felt, somehow, like a fuck-you.
Many years later, with the arrival of Facebook, I typed your name into the Search bar. But I couldn’t remember if your married name was Sharp or Taylor, and either way there were thousands of Emma Sharps, thousands of Emma Taylors. Maybe you’d re-married and your name had changed again? Whatever. I never found you. The chance of us ever meeting again grows closer to nil as the decades progress.
So I wanted to write to you in this way, Emma Sharp or Emma Taylor, in the forlorn hope that you might somehow, by chance, pick up this book, and remember those six months in Sigi’s house – when you were my closest friend and I was yours – and thank you for being a beeeeeeeautiful girrul, a marrrrvellous girrul, and wish you every goddam happiness.
Your friend, forever.
Goodbye.
Alan