I have two best friends (greedy, I know), Lauren and Ryan. I've known Ryan forever. He's lived next door to me for as long as I can remember. According to Mum, Ryan and his family moved in on a sunny Saturday in June, 1989 (she remembers it was sunny because she was wearing a pair of cut-off denim shorts and a bikini top. It was definitely June because it was about a month before my birthday - she'd been discussing having a pool party to celebrate my turning 2. We don't have a pool, Dad had pointed out, what with us being a very working class family from Manchester. We'll get one of those blow-up pools and dangle our feet in, Mum said. Which we did. Thankfully I don't remember it).
Anyway, little Ryan (because he was little back then, being two-and-a-half) and his family moved into the house next door. It had once belonged to an elderly couple who banged on the wall if you dared to sneeze, so Mum was delighted to see a young family replacing them. She thought they'd be able to chat over the garden wall and invite each other round for dinner parties and the young chap could come to my birthday party.
It didn't happen. Ryan's mum is a snob. She took one look at Mum's shorts and bikini top, stuck her nose in the air and scarpered into the house. She declined Mum's offer of a casserole (That's very kind of you, but no thank you. We're very picky about what we eat), Ryan couldn't come to my 'pool' party (My Ryan is a very chesty child. I don't want him getting a chill) and the dinner invites never materialised.
Mum said she wasn't going to mention the fact that the elderly neighbours had died in the house - the old man in his chair in the living room and the old girl in the front bedroom. They'd been dead for at least three weeks before they were discovered (and only then because Mum had alerted the police twice over the lack of banging on the walls. When she'd played Dad's T-Rex at top volume as a test and received nothing in return, she badgered the local coppers until they checked on them). But she accidentally dropped all of this into conversation as she and Ryan's mum hung their washing out. I do hope the smell hasn't lingered, Mum had said before she took her basket back inside.
Ryan and I probably weren't destined to be friends. Our parents certainly weren't. But Ryan was sent to an all-boys school so I was a bit of a novelty. We hung around together after school and at the weekends, either at my house (we weren't allowed in Ryan's. His mum feared we'd get the place dirty or something) or on the wasteland behind our houses (it doesn't exist anymore. There are a load of three-bedroom houses the size of shoeboxes squeezed onto there now).
Ryan is a PE teacher now (so not so chesty after all. He could have dangled his feet in my inflatable pool all those years ago). He has a passion for football and women, although the women aren't so passionate about him in return. It isn't that Ryan is ugly - he's quite cute at the right angle - but he always seems to go for the wrong sort of girl.
Bitches, he goes for bitches. There, I've said it. If they deign to date him at all, they use him for a week or two then spit him out. It's a shame because Ryan's a pretty great guy (although I call him a knobhead frequently. It's my duty as his best friend to keep him grounded and not to let his ego get away with him). He just needs to find the right girl.
In case you're wondering, I am not that girl. And no, I am not protesting too much. Ryan and I are friends. Best friends. And that's all we'll ever be.
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