You recognise his amazing handwriting on the envelope: a flowing italic with modest flourishes beneath the address. It was the only thing that ever struck you about him, and you didn’t know about that until the end of the date. His name was Danny, and he was a couple of years older than you were. You had met him the night before the carnival, found yourself sitting next to him on the beach, where most of the town’s population were staring at the bonfire and waiting for the fireworks to start.
You used to like the bonfire, because it was the only night of the year when you could be anonymous in this place; but that just meant losing yourself in the crowd or losing the crowd itself in the lingering shadows at the far edge of the bonfire’s light. You could slip beneath the notice of their upturned faces and their coos of enjoyment.
He was from Canada, and really there was no imaginable reason for him to be lingering in this outflung hole of a town in the north of England. He had leaned over and asked you the time, and even in your utter naivety, you recognised that as a chat-up line. It didn’t make sense, though. You were not pretty; you had very bad hair and your clothes were never quite fashionable. You knew this for a fact, because your classmates often told you all about it.
Now you recall that he had an attractive smile, but you can’t remember the colour of his eyes. His accent was cute, and he said the same thing about yours, which made you laugh, because of course you didn’t have an accent. It had been your friend Kelly who had seen you talking to him, and encouraged him to ask you out. To you, it had seemed pointless.
You arranged to meet the next day in the same place, and of course you were early. Kelly had loaned you a nice top, but it was an east coast cold afternoon so you had a big coat on as well. You kicked around for a few minutes on the beach, and when you looked round you spotted him, leaning casually against the railing up on the promenade. It felt a bit creepy, not knowing how long he had been there, watching her.
You walked with him along the grey concrete prom, both with your hands deep in your pockets. The sea was an indolent non-colour, dropping apathetic waves on to the dirty beach, and then sucking them back into itself, leaving a yellowish scum among the pebbles.
He told you that he was leaving tomorrow for a week with some friends in London, before he went home to Canada. You talked a lot about music, and he turned his nose up at most of the bands you liked, and talked instead about musicians you had never heard of. He wasn’t as friendly as he had been the night before, and at one point he asked if you had ever had a boyfriend before.
Not much, you had said, with a casual shrug.
You mean “not many.”
In fact, you meant none at all, but that did not need to be elucidated. He managed to make 17 seem immensely grown-up, compared with your 14 and a half.
For a while, you loitered in the bandstand, but the wind was getting under your coat, and he told you he had to be going, because there was something he wanted to watch on TV. He walked with you to the end of your street, where you both paused with half an expectation, although there had been no romance in the cold hour you had just spent conversing by the sea. He wrote down his address on a scrap of card that he found in his pocket, and that was when you saw his beautiful writing, the only reminder of the warmth in the smile you had seen the day before.
Six months afterwards you were surprised to get a christmas card from him; but not as surprised as you are now, half a lifetime later, to see his writing on an envelope on your doormat.