In the Neighbourhood

You alight at a stop you haven't visited in almost twenty years. You immediately notice the changes; the wooden bus shelter is gone, replaced by an ugly perspex oblong box. The trees have grown, they're saplings in your memory but now they are almost full grown. Physically the small shopping precinct remains the same; a quadrangle of single storey red brick shops with benches and shrubbery in the centre and a covered walkway on each side to protect shoppers from the rain.

You're reassured the Co-Op is still there, though its smaller than you remember, but many of the other shops have changed hands. The florist is gone, the video shop has become a take-away and the Ironmongers one of those pound shops festooned with cheap plastic goods from the Far East. The chippy is still in business under a new name and the hairdressers remains. You can’t help but look through the window as you pass half hoping one of the girls is still working there, but you don’t recognise any of the faces.

You cross the car park heading for the estate where you spent the best part of your teenage years. From a distance it is exactly as you remember it, modern townhouses clustered closely together, each home one of half a dozen slightly different designs. They were brand new when you first came here a quarter of a century ago, but as you get nearer you see the changes, an extension here, a new fence there. They look lived in now, weathered.

You weave your way through the blocks. You still remember each alley and shortcut, strange what stays with you. You stand before your old home, it hasn’t changed except for the addition of a satellite dish and a double glazed front door. Back in the day everyone still had the blue wooden doors put in by the Development Corporation. Your heart misses a beat when you realise the trellis you and Dad put up beneath the kitchen windows one summer Sunday afternoon is still there. Mum never did get round to planting the roses to grow up it.

Mum and Dad. They had broken up just a few weeks after you had left for Uni. You had been shocked. All those years they'd been keeping it together just for you, and you had no idea. You had never noticed their unhappiness, you'd never heard a cross word between them. You wonder if you could ever be so selfless.

With the house gone there had been little reason to come home, you kept in touch with your mates for a year or so, kept promising to come and visit but you'd got so caught up in your new life in the City; and the truth was you couldn’t wait to get out of here, couldn’t wait to get away. You didn’t have an unhappy time here, but it wasn't the best days of your life either. Mostly it had been a bore, a waiting room for adulthood and real life.

It's difficult to understand the nostalgia you've been feeling for this place over the past year, so strong it sometimes keeps you awake at nights. You hardly thought about the place for so long. Yet there you'd be, a couple of bottles of chardonnay the worst for wear, watching old pop videos on YouTube and fighting back tears for what once had been. Perhaps it's ageing, you reason. Looking at forty, you can feel youth ebbing away; and your impelled to grasp for a time and place forever out of reach now.

You stare up at your old window, wondering whose bedroom it was now. You remember how you had painted it brilliant white with a black blind and black duvet and that black ash furniture that was so fashionable back then. You'd thought it was so cool. You see a face peering out of next doors window. You wonder if Rosie still lives there but turn and walk away, you don’t want to see people, just places.

You walk on through the estate. You were in your twenties and far away from here when you realised each block was named after a Kent Village; Cranbrook, Davington, Halstead... the more idyllic the name the rougher the block it seemed. You come out on to a cycle path and follow it past the converted barn which had held the youth club. You remember the Discos, the highlight of the month. The excitement building as the day approached, all pooling your money to buy cider and cheap cigarettes. They had been a laugh though they invariably ended with the girls in tears as the boys fought or one of the younger kids was rushed to hospital to have their stomach pumped.

Eventually you reach the school. It’s much as you remember it, the leafy red brick campus and the large library and sports centre shared with the community. Rather a decent school looking back, you'd been happy enough . You’re curious whether any of the staff are still here from those days, perhaps one or two of the younger might still teaching. You walk up to the library and gaze in through the plate glass; you'd spent so much time here. No one had heard of the internet in those days and if you wanted to know about something you had to look it up, and you'd been one curious kid, obsessed with science. You hadn’t been a swot though; you’d managed to combine your interest in physics and chemistry with being one of the boys, a bit of a jack the lad.

You resist the temptation to go in and wander across the playing fields, remembering the sports days and the games lessons when they'd make you play rugby in the rain. You're pleased to discover the gap in the hedge is still there, kept open by generations of dog walkers. You clamber through and walk down a gap between two houses into a street of thirties semis. You’re coming into the old village now, over a thousand years old but swamped by the suburban red brick estates of the eighties development. You wonder if the bitter division between the estate and the village kids still exists. It had ended in punch up's on more than one occasion back then.

You walk to the village green, fiercely preserved in the face of urban sprawl. You cross to the Three Horseshoes. It had been a real old mans pub back in the day, stinking of stale tobacco and beer. It was very different now. The inside had been gutted; the old division between the saloon bar and lounge was gone, replaced by a big open space with dark hardwood floors and pricey designer furniture. It’s early for lunch, only just gone midday and you’re the first customer. You take a table by the window and ask for a menu.

You enjoy a light lunch of salad and a glass of very good Pinot Noir. You gaze at the whitewashed thatched cottages that surround the green and the Norman Church at one end and wonder if there were any working families left in the Village, properties must cost a fortune. It's picture-postcard pretty, Claire would love it here.

You know she was hurt when you told her this morning that you wanted come here alone, despite her protestations that she understood. Coming back had been her idea, she talked a lot about the future and you suspect she thinks the past is holding you back. You'd resisted the idea at first, you had never been one for revisiting old ghosts, but eventually you agreed. Telling yourself it would be good to see some of the old places, see how things had changed.

You stroll down through the village and across the main road to the lakes. A chain of large man made pools in parkland, they had featured heavily in the advertising when the new suburb was first built. If you grew up anywhere it was here. Memories cascade out of the past; the long summer days lying beneath the trees, the chilly autumnal nights when you’d light a fire until the Police would come and chase you away. You remember the winter the Lakes had frozen and you’d dared each other to walk out further and further on to the ice until you’d all scrambled off in panic as it began to shift and crack around you, Danny C nearly drowning after diving in off one of the small bridges and smashing his head on a rock, Stephie Jones, her black hair swept back and her dark eyes twinkling in the moonlight.

You sit down on a bench. It's almost painful to be here, all those memories, all those years ago... You wonder for the hundredth time where everyone is now, what they're doing, what they look like. Probably married with wives and kids, working in the building trade or the engineering plants. Sometimes the urge to start googling their names, or to join one of those sites for reuniting lost friends is almost overwhelming, but you never do in the end. It wasn't them, it was you. You had changed so much, how would you even begin to explain your life now to them?

'You've changed' had been a bad thing to say when you were growing up, a charge uttered in anger, almost an insult. You'd never understood that attitude, wasn't life about change? growing, evolving, moving on? They were good people here, your people you think as you head back to the precinct, decent people. But you could never have been yourself in a place like this. Too small, too insular. They would never have understood, you'd have forever been a talking point, a freak. And you'd have been so alone.

You walk back to the precinct and wait for the bus back into the city centre. It's full of kids on their lunch break running and shouting and generally running amok. You feel such an identification with them, for a moment at least you are one of them, half expecting Nathan or Jonesy to come screeching around the corner on a stolen mountain bike or Fat Phil to wander nonchalantly out of the chippy munching on a saveloy.

Your reverie is ended with the growing realisation that a couple of boys are sniggering at you. Hardly a new experience but it's always unpleasant. You're relieved when the number twelve pulls up. You think you look fairly good, tall and slim and you’re meticulous about your clothes, hair and make up. But sometimes people catch on, something in the set of your features, or the timbre of your voice or the way you move gives it away. You are so much more at ease with yourself than you were in your twenties, when you first started living as a woman. It’s been over six years now since the final operation and you feel comfortable with yourself in a way you never had before. You’re happy now.

Claire is waiting for you at the hotel surrounded by the detritus of a boozy lunch; she’s sipping on a gin and tonic and flirting with the outrageously handsome East European cleaning the tables. You sit opposite her and order a drink. She looks at you expectantly.
"How did it go?" she asks. You take her hand in yours and stare into her big grey eyes.
"Good” you tell her, squeezing her hand. “It was interesting to go back”. She smiles, waiting for you to elaborate
“I've come to a decision" you tell her "There's nothing I want more than for us to have a baby”