Have you ever heard that gag by some old-time American comedian? “I remember the first time I had sex – I kept the receipt.” Maisy didn’t give me a receipt but I’ve never forgotten the occasion. I was sweet fifteen at the time and so was she. I thought I was in love with her, not that I had the faintest idea what love was back then. It was a disposable word people used like any other. Hungry. Cold. Ashamed. Confused. Betrayed. It still is, if I’m honest. All these years later. Love is a many unexplained thing.

This is the story of how Maisy betrayed me a few months later and how we both moved on. She suddenly went to the dark side. “I’ve decided I prefer men,” she announced coolly one day. “I hope we can remain friends on a purely platonic basis, Tina?” I shed a few tears and she put a comforting arm chastely around my shoulder.

It wouldn’t have felt so bad if we hadn’t been in the same class at school because I was obliged to watch on as the first man she made a play for just happened to be our English teacher. Maisy’s audacity frankly staggered me. It wasn’t just the fact the bloke was twice her age either. Halfway through a lesson she asked him whether he had read Saturday’s Guardian supplement. “There’s an article in the culture section about sex,” she cooed. “The journalist argues that nobody has ever successfully written in fiction about the sexual act. Do you agree with that, sir?”

Sir, whose real name was Warren Forbes, allowed the titters of his students to expire before he replied. “I’ve never really thought about it,” he smiled. “Is there any particular reason you ask, Maisy?”

“Well, if what he says is true,” she answered, “it puts a huge black mark against the whole activity of creative writing, doesn’t it?”

He did not challenge her on that and took the supplement she offered him, promising to read it and get back another time with an opinion. If Warren anticipated she might forget he could not have been more mistaken. The very next lesson she piped up, “Did you read the article yet, sir?” The fifteen of us in the room collectively bristled. He had just handed out copies of a sonnet by Robert Burns entitled My Love Is Like A Red Red Rose and asked us to read it. So I suppose the idiot had Maisy’s interruption coming to him.

“Yes, I did,” he answered amicably enough and began chalking questions on the blackboard that we were supposed to answer after reading the Burns poem. When he finished as he went to sit down Maisy said, “And so did you agree with the argument or not, sir?”

He was one of those young, easy going teachers who tried hard not to take offence at anything anybody said to him. “Not entirely,” he replied. “Of course it’s undoubtedly true that religious propriety has undermined our ability to think of the sexual act in a healthy way and therefore as a consequence to write about it. Romantic storytellers have found it easier just to cut away from the impending bedroom confrontation to an afterwards scenario. Then once the publishing laws about what could and could not be regarded as decency changed, the floodgates opened and writing about sex went from one extreme to the other. I think the taboos about sex are established so strongly in the human psyche that it has become sort of impossible to know what good writing about sex actually is. Storytellers might relish the challenge but have become defeated by its cultural contradictions.”

When Mr Forbes paused you could have cut the atmosphere in the room with a knife. I experienced my classmates being in a state of squirming embarrassment. Everybody holding their breath waiting for whatever detour into transgressive territory would happen next. Then after what seemed like an eternity of silence, at least to me, Maisy said, “We may not know what good writing about sex is, sir, but surely we all know what good sex is?”

“Look, I suspect this is a subject that does not have a great deal of relevance to most of the class,” blustered the teacher, “and there is an exercise waiting to be done. If you want to pick the bones of the article it might be better for us to do it privately together sometime, alright Maisy?”

As an attempt to close the conversation down this was beyond clumsy, of course, and everybody except Mr Forbes instantly understood why. “Thank you. I’d really like that, sir,” beamed Maisy as complacently as a cat who had not just got the cream but cornered the mouse as well.

Maisy’s audacious behaviour affected me in two ways. Firstly it got me (not to mention everybody else in that class) assuming that an affair between her and Mr Forbes had now been launched, albeit to be conducted in a very discreet, hush hush way which, given that she was under the age of consent and he was conjugally elsewhere committed, could not in any circumstances declare its name; but secondly and most importantly it prompted my curiosity about the nature of ‘good sex’ and its relationship to this state of being popularly called ‘love’. For instance, had I been in love with Maisy or just enjoyed having sex with her? And did that love eventually evaporate into nothing like vapour once the sex stopped? Possibly novels had now been written that delved into these issues but what they were I had no idea and I certainly felt it would have been inappropriate of me to ask my English teacher for a list of titles.

Anyway at the end of that school year I lost touch with Maisy. She went on to a sixth form college to take an A level course while I signed up for the university of life via a part-time receptionist’s job in a pharmacy. To be honest I wasn’t the academic type. I liked running and tennis and especially football. My body filled up with adrenalin on the sports field and crowded out all the confusing questions of social life that plagued my adolescence. From time to time I heard gossip about Maisy and Mr Forbes but I took no notice. Market towns thrive on tittle-tattle. People who dwell in the sticks seem to need it in the same way a certain kind of beetle needs dung. Maisy might have unceremoniously dumped me but she had also given me a confidence that had previously been absent. I was eighteen when I got scouted by a professional agent and subsequently invited to join the academy of a major WSL team in the capital. It meant moving up to the smoke, finding digs and abandoning everything I had come to understand as security – but the opportunity was just too good to turn down. Playing for that club became everything to me. I loved my team mates with all my heart. I still do. We made common purpose together for a number of years. At our best we shed our individuality and just blended into one another. Or so it seemed to me.

I’m going to fast forward now because I feel suddenly in danger of becoming mawkishly self-indulgent and losing my thread. One day I found myself in a hotel room listening idly to a local radio station. Having recently retired from the game due to injury, I was attending a coaching course and had travelled up to Manchester a day early to chill out and take in a few cultural sights like The Lowry Centre and The National Football Museum. It sounded as if a listener advice session was in progress. “And now we have Lorna from Stockport on the line,” said the radio hostess. “Not her real name I hasten quickly to add. Hullo, Lorna. You’re sweet sixteen and in your first A level year at school, I understand?”

“That’s right, Maisy,” replied the listener. “I feel a bit nervous. I’m a first time caller.”

I almost fell off the upright chair I was sitting on applying my make-up. It couldn’t be a coincidence. How many Maisys exist in the world? And this one still retained the slight burr of a west country accent. “You are most welcome, Lorna,” Maisy warmly encouraged her invisible guest. “Take a few deep breaths to compose yourself, if you wish. There is no need to rush into anything you want to say. We have plenty of time.”

It transpired that Maisy had become a radio agony aunt. A female Frasier Crane if you will. Lorna from Stockport went on to explain that she had fallen in love with a girl in the year above her at school and they had sexually consummated their relationship – “if that was the proper expression?” Maisy reassured her it would do for now and asked the young lady to continue. “Anyway I’ve not come out of the closet with anyone, especially with my parents who are very old school Christians,” Lorna said. “And to be honest, I’m very confused about my own feelings. Previously I’ve only dated boys and never once went the whole way. But now I feel as if I’ve crossed the Rubicon. I’ve become an all in lesbian without really understanding how it happened.” She paused at that point then plaintively added. “Oh dear, is this making any sense?”

Maisy’s counselling technique was to ask questions of the caller then keep reminding her that our ideas about normative loving relationships stemmed from deep rooted heterosexual myths reinforced in our culture by song lyrics, films, poetry, commercials, religious indoctrination and much else besides. “Of course the tide is changing now, driven by the LBGT plus wind,” she advised, “but I would say for young people growing up today that to feel confused about your sexual identity is absolutely normative.” They swapped thoughts about this for a while then Maisy suddenly said, “You know when I was about your age I had this passionate relationship with a girl in my class and it scared the life out of me. It seemed to swamp me. It felt like all my birthdays had arrived at the same time. My destiny had been signed, sealed and delivered. She was a beautiful, gifted person but she had appeared out of left field and completely usurped my agency. In the end I didn’t know who I was any more and had to quite ruthlessly break off from her, and I say that with an enduring sense of shame.”

“Are you suggesting that’s what I should do?” asked Lorna.

“No, not at all,” Maisy quickly reassured her. “I’m just sharing here. No question I handled my confusion very badly. I didn’t talk to my lover about it. I just crudely cut her out of my life. I was a total coward. I encourage you to be open with your lover about the conflicted feelings you have. She may well share them. Try your best to move forward in understanding them together.”

Later that day I obtained the phone number of the local radio station and put a call through. I didn’t hold much hope the message I left for Maisy would be passed on and even if it was she would welcome it. Two days and several text exchanges later, however, I found myself sitting down to lunch with her in a swanky Deansgate restaurant. She had put on a bit of weight but otherwise I could detect little difference in her vivacious appearance, short mid-brown hair, quick impish smile and grey green eyes. She had simply stayed on in Manchester after completing university courses that qualified her as a clinical psychologist. “You look great, Tina,” she greeted me. “So slim and fit and tanned. I hope you don’t mind me perusing you like the feminist icon you’ve become?”

“So long as you’re not trying to hit on me,” I shot back and she fell about laughing.

“As if I would dare!” she exclaimed. “I mean you, an acclaimed athlete with a European cup winner’s medal and me, a nicotine addicted frump with a penchant for doughnuts!”

After fifteen minutes the banter collapsed in on itself like a dying star and we were left staring into the black hole of our schooldays. “It came as a shock to me when I heard you confess to that caller how badly you treated me,” I confessed. “It was me you were referring to, I assume, not somebody else?”

She nodded her head pensively and I thought I noticed a wetness accumulating in those grey green eyes as her response proceeded. She told me I had not been her first conquest, but her bestest by far. She had loved me to the point of disempowerment. When I asked her what she meant by that word she said, “I felt myself merging into you and your interests and it was more than I could bear. I had always cherished the idea of myself as independent, an adventurer in search of new experiences, new worlds. And now this relationship was eroding me. It felt like an evacuation of my will power, my purpose in life and at such a young age. This love thing, this investment – call it what you will – began to terrify me much more than it excited and physically stimulated me.”

“So you had to cut me out of your psyche like a cancerous tumour?” I remarked, not without a residue of bitterness.

“I’m sorry,” Maisy said. “It remains the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make in my life.”
She looked contrite and I wanted to believe her. But the facts as I remembered them diluted the explanation. “It didn’t stop you going after Warren Forbes in such a brazen way though, did it?” I retorted. Maisy didn’t immediately reply. “What was all that about?” I pressed her.

“It was about several things, I suppose,” she reflected. “It was partly about challenging myself and partly about challenging the stuffy conventions of the classroom. I wasn’t going after Warren. I genuinely wanted to know his opinion. Why is it so difficult, nay virtually impossible, to write honestly about sex? If you can’t ask your English teacher a question like that, who can you ask? It was about rebellion. Breaking cover. I didn’t have any designs on the man.”

“Well, that contradicts the general assumption everyone else made,” I said. “At a stroke you and Warren became the butt of endless sordid speculation. Didn’t you realise?”

“Of course we realised!” replied Maisy. “And we found it hugely entertaining, all three of us.”

Three of us? I thought I had misheard. Then she began to elaborate. How gradually she had become intimate with not only Warren but with his partner as well. They had twin boys aged four and needed a reliable baby sitter. Maisy like any student needed pin money and fitted the bill. She effectively became part of the family and simultaneously a lover to both of them. I am not going to attempt to write down the details she shared with me of how this worked. To do so would be to fall into the same trap that the author of that article on literary sex which fascinated Maisy had so brilliantly identified. The crux of it was, however, to be entirely open in sharing your fantasies, she explained. And to avoid hurting anyone when trying to enact them.

“How long are you in Manchester for?” she asked me as the deserts were being served. I told her the course finished on Friday afternoon and I was heading home the following morning. “Why don’t you come round for dinner on Friday night then?” she suggested. “My wife would love to meet you. She’s a big soccer fan and has watched lots of your games on TV. She asked me to ask, ‘how come you’ve decided to move into coaching when you’re still only thirty-two?’”

I explained that I’d never properly recovered after a cruciate ligament operation. I couldn’t sprint like I did before. It was time to throw the towel in rather than drift into a state of decline. My ambition now was to become the first woman managing a male premiership team. “Fanciful or what?” I quipped.

It wasn’t until we left the restaurant and stood on the pavement outside that I thought to ask her how Warren was doing these days. “I suppose he must be a head teacher by now?” I opined. “Or gone into the inspectorate maybe?”

Maisy grimaced as if somebody had just pinched her. “He died,” she muttered. “Run over in his prime by some pissed up farm labourer.”

The elegant woman introduced to me on Friday evening was called Shirley. It surprised me how much older she looked than Maisy, not old enough to be her mother but not far off. She smiled a lot and had a relaxed tactile manner that instantly put me at my ease. It turned out she had been a good hockey player in her youth and still enjoyed social tennis at a club in nearby Didsbury. As the wine flowed she sought out my opinion on the rise of Manchester City under the supervision of Guardiola, the woman management skills of Sarina Weigman and, under pressure from Maisy, confessed Shirley to having once run the London marathon in ten minutes short of four hours. “Five minutes quicker than my husband ever managed,” she added with a smile.

I should have caught on then but as Maisy once said to me during our schooldays, I’m not exactly the brightest goldfish in the bowl. It was later while they were in the kitchen dispensing with the dirty dishes and I was left to my own devices. A framed photograph on the mantelpiece of two young men caught my eye, their features absolutely identical. “My step sons,” announced Maisy, catching me unawares. “Matt who’s in his fourth year of a medical course at Cambridge and Charlie who’s finished his degree in sustainable economics at Sussex and is now backpacking round the world while he decides what to do next.”

“Warren’s children?” I blinked foolishly. “So Shirley is – er?”

“Their mother,” said Maisy, completing my sentence. By the time Shirley rejoined us carrying a tray of coffees and chocolates the full picture had been etched in. The twins were fifteen when their father died. Maisy had been proactive in giving them emotional support, mainly in the form of bereavement counselling. Once they were eighteen and left home to go to university Maisy persuaded Shirley to sell up and move in with her in Manchester.

“It meant prematurely giving up my career as a health visitor,” Shirley explained, “but I wanted to be with Maisy and besides I’d suffered from west countryitis for far too long. You understand what I mean? I’m a Londoner by birth.”

All too well I understood. My birth place for all its home comforts – its orchards and unpolluted air and verdant countryside and indolent pace of life was a cultural backwater. Scratch beneath the surface and you found inbreeding, incompetence, and narrowmindedness. In the town hall freemasonry and nepotism firmly embedded. But most people chose not to notice. Above all there existed a fear of modernity. Our town was about as comfortable as a padded cell.

“In any case moving back to the city was no more than Warren had wanted,” Shirley added. “He just never got the opportunity he craved.”

This prompted me to say something stupid that I instantly regretted. “Warren was such a decent man. You must miss him terribly.” The silence that followed mortified me. “I’m so sorry,” I muttered bashfully, glancing nervously from one to the other.

Shirley was more than gracious in forgiving my gaucheness. She readily confessed that indeed there had been some very dark days but then narrated a story about her childhood and, such was the the impression made on my imagination, I could not stop thinking about it on the train journey back to Euston.
“I was raised in south Middlesex,” she had said. “An ordinary semi-detached house in a suburban road except for one feature. It had a long back garden that ran down to a tributary of the Thames. Okay, they called it a tributary but most of the time it was no more than a piddly trickle a couple of inches deep. But twice a day when the tide rose in the main river a magical transformation took place. The gulf filled up to the ten feet brim, a host of water fowl arrived and the canoeists emerged to ride the murky brown ripples. Many fine trees thrived within the embankment landscape although one willow in particular dominated. It must have been centuries old. You could tell by the thickness of the branches that spun out from the main trunk in contortions that seemed to defy the force of gravity. During the summer months the multiple fronds dripped down as if enamoured of the water they could never quite reach, a tapestry of emeralds that shielded our gaze from the magnificent wooden sculpture that supported it. One day we heard on the neighbourhood grapevine that this behemoth had been proscribed by the council. Its roots had become corrupted by a fungal disease and the arboreal doctors had given it an imminent death certificate. If the tree suddenly collapsed in high winds the subsequent damage to the adjacent gardens and river would be substantial. Within days the surgeons moved in, wielding axes and electric saws and the other paraphernalia of dissolution. This goddess was whittled down and vanished before my incredulous eyes. I cried like a baby. I vowed never, ever to wander out into my treeless garden again. But the day came when I did. The void left in the aftermath of this massacre haunted my young mind. It must have been only a bad dream, I tried to console myself. But it wasn’t. I had to get used to the absence. Just like the absence had to get used to me gazing at it in disbelief. As the weeks passed into months I began to notice the other trees. They had always been there but eclipsed by the willow. It struck me as a trick of perspective. I had fancifully relegated them to bit part players, to extras, in my childhood garden of Eden. But now I realised they were beautiful and majestic in their own right. They had symmetry, nuances of colour and above all a will to thrust their branches towards the zenith. And the more I noticed these things, the more colossal they grew. And in this way the void became gradually filled. It required time and patience and above all attentiveness……..”