Forever Is Over (55 page)

I
felt that I was naked with a finger pointing at my lumpy ball, but
still could not bring myself to get the right words out. I pathetically
refused. I had once told Kelly that my middle name was Cheddar. It
wasn
’
t. Stubborn was my middle name.

“
I can
’
t, Jemma! Not after everything that
’
s happened. I can
’
t!
”

Jemma, at this point, probably realised the irony of the situation, I
may have had a dodgy, cancerous ball, but I did not have
‘
the balls
’
to
tell Kelly.
Jemma offered to do my dirty work for me.

“
Just tell her, Richie, or I will
”
.

The penny dropped. There was no way back now. I had testicular
cancer and it was time I faced it like a man. I was not going to let Kelly
find out from Jemma about this. I needed to tell her myself about this,
right here, right now.

I was about to say,

“
No, let me tell her!
”

But as soon as I said,
“
No
…
.,
”
I paused, taking a huge intake of
breath, ready to spill it all out, but Kelly did not give me that opportunity.
She ran off like a scalded cat. Jemma shouted after her,

“
Kelly! Wait! Please wait! Let me explain!
”

It was too late, Kelly was disappearing into the distance. I think
Jemma was going to make one last ditch attempt to bring her back,
she had one final thing to shout, but just as she was about to yell it, she
recognised the significance of what she was going to say. Jemma could
not broadcast my illness to the surrounding masses, so instead she just
spoke the words, she had been about to scream.

“
He
’
s got cancer, Kelly. Richie
’
s got cancer.
”

Jemma

As a couple, when you meet new friends in life, at some point, they
want to know how you came together as a couple. With Richie and I,
the questions tended to follow the same path.
“
How did you meet?
”

Followed by,

“
When did you get together as a couple then?
”
Then finally,

“
If there was such a long gap between when you met and when you
finally got it together, when was it that you first realised that you had
feelings for each other?
”

This is an interesting one as our answers were always different! I don
’
t
mean the answers we gave were always different (although admittedly
Richie did vary his answer a bit!) but we definitely recognised our
feelings for each other at a different point in time. For me, the day I
discovered Richie had testicular cancer was the day I realised that I
had some sort of feelings for him. I didn
’
t fully understand what those
feelings were, I just understood how I was feeling was not how I should
be feeling about my sister
’
s boyfriend.

When we were at school, it was undeniable that Richie was a good
looking lad, but he was always outside my age radar. I was always after
lads two years older to five years older, so Richie Billingham did not
overly interest me. I thought he was too young for me and too old for
my little sister. I chose to ignore the fact that he was less than eighteen
months older than Kelly! Using my own criteria, Richie was actually
too young for Kelly!

As they became a couple, I grew to know Richie better and grew
to like him. My initial doubts about him were down to
“
The Phantom
Fucker
”
incident at the Birch
’
s party, but putting that to one side, there
was no doubting that he adored Kelly. As my feelings for my own
boyfriend, Ray, began to ease, I developed a thought process of ,

“
Why could I not have a boyfriend like Richie?
”
which eventually
became,

“
Why could I not have Richie?
”

On the weekend of Vomit Breath
’
s death, Ray and Richie went to
an Everton football match together. It turned out also to be the day
of the Hillsborough disaster. Ray was not someone who was overly
sporty, nor was he someone with any real social circle, outside of work
,
he was not a good mixer other than with older women, as he had grown
accustomed to them from working in a bank. To compensate for these
social inadequacies, from all accounts, he really tried to sell himself to
Richie by talking about himself and exaggerating his sporting prowess.
This was forgivable, I could totally understand why he would do this,
but the fact that he then went on to say something abhorrent about the
victims of the Hillsborough was indefensible. I imagine he did it to try
to look tough in front of someone he was trying to impress, but all the
same it was indefensible.

Once Richie told me about Ray
’
s idiotic Hillsborough comments
and his subsequent reaction to being kissed by him, I could only see Ray
as an egotistical, homophobic idiot. On the other hand, the fact that
Richie had reacted to Ray
’
s comments by grabbing hold of him, pinning
him down and kissing him, I thought showed a strength of character
that was excitingly individual. During
those moments that Richie and
I talked in Coronation Park, I knew my time with Ray and as a knock
on effect, my time at the Middlelands Bank, was over. Ninety minutes
after Kelly ended Richie
’
s testicular cancer confession by turning up
unannounced and then running off, I had managed to finish with Ray
and hand my notice in at work. Ray had flown off the handle when I
had returned to the branch following my two hour lunch break and as
I was not in the right frame of mind for an argument, I just told him
what to do with our relationship and th
e stupid job! My arrogance did
not serve me well! I did not have another job after that for more than
two years and never had the opportunity to work in a bank again! It
wasn
’
t just down to a row with Ray though!

For a young woman, an escape route from a relationship is an
important thing. If your relationship is on its knees, it is always good
to know what Plan B is. A few times during that long conversation at
Coronation Park, especially when I felt compelled to hug him or cradle
him and kiss his salty tears, Richie seemed like the ideal candidate to be
Plan B. It was only really when I mentioned Kelly
’
s name, that I came to
my senses and dismissed this notion as the thoughts of a moron. The way
Richie spoke, you could just tell he was smitten by Kelly. I also reflected
on what Kelly had done for me, she had probably saved my life the night
Vomit Breath died and I was repaying her by having romantic thoughts
about her boyfriend. I concluded this was all wrong and attempted to
redeem myself by going out on a limb for Kelly, by drumming home to
Richie that he should tell Kelly about his illness.

I was doing a great job convincing myself that I was acting solely
in my sister
’
s interests, until Richie broke down in tears for the second
time that day. When I comforted him, I just could not help myself
appreciating that Richie had a warmth to his soul that Ray would never
have. The fact that Richie was bloody gorgeous and Ray was bloody 
ugly was also a factor, even Vomit Breath had noticed that one, but
the main thing that struck me was how passionately I felt about caring
for this man. I wanted to take this journey with him. I wanted to be
his shoulder to cry on. I wanted to be his confidant, to hold his hand
in times of joy and times of trouble. I wanted to mean everything to
Richie and for Richie to mean everything to me. All this was running
through my brain when Kelly showed up and I expect I had guilt written
all over my face.

The moment Kelly found Richie and I together was still a debating
point between the two of us fifteen years later! In my opinion, if Richie
had no feelings for me at that moment, he would have just blurted
out,

“
Kelly, I
’
ve got cancer!
”
and Kelly would have immediately forgotten
about the suspicious clinch she had found us in. He didn
’
t though. He
said nothing. Nothing about his cancer anyway. He just froze on the
spot. In my opinion, although Richie puts a different slant on it, this was
because he knew, deep down in his soul that he felt something for me.
Richie argued that he was only aware of those feelings much, much later although he does confess that he was physically attracted to me from the
day he started secondary school (he just thought I was a bit of a bitch)!
Choose to believe him if you like, but if you do, he
’
s conning you!

             
For my part, I think I did what I genuinely felt was the right thing
to do. I tried to encourage Richie to tel
l Kelly about his cancer. When
he stalled though and Kelly ran off, there was a moment when I was
going to stop her by shouting that Richie had cancer. Just as I was
about to shout, I stopped myself and just said the words, out of Kelly
’
s
earshot. I was unsure how to interpret the events of the afternoon. By
not telling Kelly about his cancer, but telling me, was there something
between us? Some sort of chemistry? I wasn
’
t sure, but if Richie had
avoided telling Kelly, why should I win her back on his behalf? Maybe
he wanted to lose her.

They say true love never runs smooth. It certainly didn
’
t for Richie.
Within a few hours of discovering he had testicular cancer, his girlfriend
had fled to Amsterdam and within a few days, there was an even more
dramatic development, his future wife was arrested for the suspected
murder of her mother.

Kelly

Despite everything I had to ring him. Twenty four hours into my
time in the Netherlands, I could not help myself phoning Richie. I was
a sixteen year old girl who had never been abroad before and my first
experience of a foreign country followed on from my mother
’
s death at
my own hands and my boyfriend cheating on me with my sister. Not
exactly the perfect ingredients for a relaxing trip away!

The first night, I had stopped in a Youth Hostel in the city centre
called the Hostel Orfeo, but the lady at reception pointed out as soon
as I checked in, that they only had a bed for one night. They were fully
booked throughout the weekend. I slept well that first night as I was
shattered after a traumatic day, but the following morning, on checking
out, they should have given me a donkey and a bearded man called
Joseph to accompany me around the city, as every bed and breakfast and
every hostel was fully booked. I decided to visit Anne Frank house as I
had read her diary when I was thirteen and whilst in the queue for the
museum, I befriended two American girls, Lauren and Madison, who
were eighteen. They were heading over to Rotterdam on the four o
’
clock
train, as they could not find vacant accommodation for love nor money
either, so I decided to head across with them. There was something
about Rotterdam that really appealed to me, it did not have all the
canals running through it like Amsterdam, but as soon as you come out
of the Rotterdam
’
s Centraal station, there is a buzz about the city which
I found infectious. The Youth Hostel was pleasant too and I even had a
few beers with Lauren and Madison from the bar, all three of us excited
by the fact that we were deemed old enough to be served. I did not want
to be sharing adventures with two girls from Boston though, I wanted
to be sharing adventures with Richie and emboldened by alcohol, I
decided to use my remaining guilders that I had allocated for the day,
to phone him. Given that I had bought three beers for the two girls and
I, there was not a huge amount of coinage left in my pocket but a quick
conversation was definitely better than no conversation at all.