When I was about eleven I completely fell for a boy in my choir. I kind of conflated him with Will from His Dark Materials, was part of the problem - obviously, I was Lyra, in my own head. But of course it was just a silly crush.

The first boy I ever fancied was in my year six class, so I guess I was, what, ten? Anyway, we were both on the top table, i.e. the table for the literate kids (that might be a little harsh, but never mind), and we were just friends, acquaintances really, he was far too cool for me to call him my friend really, anyway, one day, he looked up, as he must have done on so many other days, and half-smiled at me when I looked up at him, probably just one of those smiles you do when you catch someone looking at you and you’re friends enough that you can’t just look back down again straight away, anyway, he did this little half-smile, and, straight in the solar plexus, there it was. Blam. It was a feeling like nothing else I had ever felt. It was amazing.

My first kiss wasn’t for several years. I was at a party just after GCSE results. I was drunk, so was he, and he took my hand and led me outside and kissed me and it was just…great fun.

I really don’t think you can truly be in love with someone unless you know them. C and I met when I was sixteen, in my first year at sixth form, and we talked and talked and talked and talked, and had a bit of a thing going the following summer, and then he went off on his gap year and things got hideously messy, there were fights and tears and anger and we were trying to simply be friends for the sake of all our mutual friends but it was spiky and angry and awkward and at one point I remember saying, so, is this it, then, should we stop even trying to be in the same room at the same time as each other? But somehow we pulled through. And  he’s one of my closest friends these days. And sometimes we still have sex, when we’re both single, it’s quite companionable really. I can’t see that it makes me a bad Christian, before you ask. Love the Lord thy God and love thy neighbour as thyself. Follow no other commandment but these.

I don’t know if I was in love with C. I didn’t get the chance to fully realise what happiness love could bring, I was too unwell, the situation was too unresolved. And then there was Pete, and that… I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy as, sometimes, we were. And that was difficult too (don’t roll your eyes, you’d find it fucking difficult being in a relationship with a girl as sick as I was, fuck off) but sometimes it was worth it, but in the end, for Pete, it wasn’t, not quite, even though by the time it ended, I was better - he was just too confused about how he felt, we never quite learned to relate to one another as mentally well adults, and we fell into our old roles, that was a massive part of the problem.

[Which is why, here’s a salutary lesson: If you’re going to go ‘on a break’, do it properly. Break up properly, no matter how you feel about one another. Go and do your own thing for, Christ, as long as you can. Frankly, at least a year. Pete and I realised after about a month apart that we wanted to get back together again, and so we gave it another shot after a couple more months. If we’d waited longer I think our chances would have been better. But we didn’t, we’ve lost that chance now, and to be honest if he rang me up today and asked me for another chance, I’d turn him down. Not now. I don’t have the time. Never say never… but almost certainly not.

To be honest I don’t think going on a break and giving things another shot often works out. I know two couples who have made it work, so far, and I know of one other. D and E got together when they were fourteen, broke up in the second year of university, got back together three years later, and now, in their late twenties, they’ve finally moved in together. That’s fifteen years. S and H got together at school and broke up at the start of their second years at uni despite being at the same uni on the same course; six months later, they finally conceded that they still loved one another, but both needed those six months to do some serious growing up. Eighteen months later they’re still going strong. My mother had some friends, J and T, who got together in their early twenties, but things were rocky. Lots of fights and screaming and even a suicide attempt on one of their parts. Eventually they sorted themselves out and got a grip and their relationship has been solid, steady, for decades now.]