"Oh, that's so romantic! Such a sweet present!" Amy's mum gushed. She put an arm around me and squeezed me against herself.
I'd been agonising about what to get my girlfriend for her nineteenth birthday. I wanted to surprise Amy, but had I asked her, I was certain that she'd say that all she wanted was to spend the weekend alone with me, something we'd been planning for the preceding three weeks. We'd be giving the double bed in her uncle's cottage a good workout, but I wanted to give her something tangible that she could take with her to university and not just the warm memories of good sex. All I'd come up with was a framed print of the selfie that the two of us had taken in Trafalgar Square on our first visit to London together.
Clueless, I'd turned to my friends for inspiration. Stijn, one half of the most durable couple at school, seemed the most likely to offer sensible suggestions, but when we'd met for a drink, he'd spent almost the entirety of the evening agonising over whether he should split up with Rachel. It seemed a little insensitive, when talk finally turned to my relationship with Amy, to ask for his advice on a birthday present.
James had given me far too much information about the bra-and-panty set that he'd purchased for Becky (and the night she'd given him in return), and I declined his kind invitation to accompany me to a lingerie shop. Perhaps I was too much of a prude, but I wasn't ready to buy Amy underwear and I suspected that she wasn't ready to receive it either. Above all, I wanted a present that she wouldn't be embarrassed to show her mother.
Lauren and Danny had returned penniless and exhausted from their grand tour of Europe, and had talked at nauseating length about their adventures. Male pride prevented me from admitting to my cousin that I was out of ideas and, had I asked him, Danny would only have referred me back to her for advice.
"Why don't you record yourself playing the guitar?" suggested Mum, after I'd turned to her in desperation with under a week to go. "Sing a few songs for her?"
It was an inspired idea. I practised frantically to work up eight or so songs and a couple of instrumentals to performance standard. Then, two days before Amy's birthday, I found myself in the sound-proof studio at James' house, laying down the tracks with the help of his middle brother.
I'm not going to pretend that I was a one-take wonder and it had taken the best part of four hours to record forty minutes of music, but I was pretty pleased with the end result. By mid-afternoon I emerged clutching my guitar and two memory sticks containing the precious audio files.
I walked slowly from James' house into town. We were well into September now and the unbearable heat of summer had loosened its hold on the south of England. There was a cooler edge to the stiffening breeze; autumn was on its way.
I'd finished my job at the Campsite at the end of August and was working at the Stables. Jackie, the owner, was still spending a lot of time with her frail mother up in Sheffield and, even if the school holidays were over, there was still plenty for me to do. It was nice to work with Amy, although opportunities to show affection for each other were limited. We'd had sex twice at the end of the summer, but our schedules, her period, and a general lack of privacy had prevented us from experimenting further. I couldn't wait to spirit her away for a romantic weekend.
I'd been fairly good at keeping up with my school friends, all of whom were preparing to head off to university. Like Lauren and Danny, many had taken advantage of the longer vacation to go on extended trips away. Amy and I would undoubtedly have done the same were it not for the attack after the prom.
I reached the café in the town centre, where I'd arranged to meet Anna. She'd been Head Girl at school for our final year and would be going to Newcastle to study biochemistry. I wasn't entirely sure when her term was due to start, but she'd be leaving for the north of England soon.
I liked Anna a lot. Perhaps that wasn't difficult - she was fun, confident and articulate. With the possible exception of Becky, she was the most attractive girl in our year group - tall, blonde, with the body of a volleyball player - in short, every male teenager's wet dream. Most of the boys at school had tried to come on to her, but without success. Ritchie had attempted to woo her several times, before turning his sights on Amy. As for me, I'd known all along that it wasn't worth trying; Anna was way out of my league.
We paid for our drinks and headed to a small table at the back of the café. We exchanged a few pleasantries about our respective summers and then the real reason for Anna's request to meet became clear.
"Er Jake," she began, "I wanted to ask you something - about school. It's the prizegiving evening in December..."
I nodded. Our school was a little unusual in that our 'graduation ceremony' would take place almost six months after we'd left. The scheduling, although utterly illogical at first glance, was the first available point in the calendar after our A level results had been published and university places confirmed, when the vast majority of awardees were likely to be available to attend. (Any date in August or September was impossible because of summer vacations and the spread of start dates for university terms.)
Tradition dictated that the Head Boy and Girl would give a joint speech and therein lay the first problem: Ritchie was on remand in a young offenders' institution and therefore otherwise engaged for the evening. I'd suspected that she was going to offer me the opportunity to take his place, and I'd planned a respectful refusal. Anna would have to give the speech on her own.
"The invitations are going to go out in a couple of days' time," she continued. "And, well, some of the others were wondering what we should do. You know how badly the school behaved about Ritchie, well, some people are saying we should boycott the ceremony and maybe do something somewhere else on the same night."
"A rival event?" I asked, half-horrified. I hadn't seen that one coming.
"People have suggested booking the Town Hall," she stated. "Invite the local press and make it a celebration of us as a year group and not let the school take the credit for what we've achieved."
Anna was conflicted and cautious. I sensed a tremendous loyalty within her to the school, but there were clearly voices around her who thought that carrying on with business-as-usual in the light of the summer's events and revelations was hypocritical. Maybe they had a point.
The problem was that I knew who the voices were - a gaggle of about half-a-dozen students, whose raison d'être was posting indignant comments on social media - shrieking banshees who'd jump on any bandwagon going. Where were the outraged when Ritchie was at the height of his power? Saying nothing and trying to sleep with him, in a pathetic attempt to improve their own standing - that's what they were doing. To be taking the moral high ground now was the very definition of sanctimonious duplicity.
Yes, the school had behaved appallingly over the Ritchie issue for several years, but various investigations (some led by the police and some by the council) were getting to the bottom of those events now. Wounds were beginning to heal and reopening them in such a petulant way was not going to help anyone. Mention of inviting the local press was the give-away - this was a stunt, nothing more.
Finally there were the practicalities to consider. Just who was going to organise and pay for a rival event? It was all very well dreaming up big statements over the summer when time was plentiful and everyone was searching for distractions from boredom, but the idea of arranging something in the Town Hall through the final weeks of a busy university term from at least a hundred miles away was simply a non-starter. The virtue signallers would blithely make promises now, but the whole thing would be dumped onto Anna's shoulders as the time approached.
The Head Girl let me think for several seconds as I pretended to tussle with the issues. Eventually I shook my head.
"Anna," I began, "I can see why some people think this would be a good idea and yes, I think the school's got a lot to answer for, but this isn't the way to put things right. There were some bad teachers, some very bad teachers, but they're gone now; the good ones are still there; we should thank them for what they did and let them celebrate with us."
There were signs of relief in Anna's face.
"You don't think we're endorsing a bad school?" she asked warily.
I shook my head.
"No," I replied. "We're showing that we're proud of what we've achieved. Some people might have stood in our way, but so many more have helped us. And we should acknowledge that. We've got no idea what went on behind the scenes, maybe some of them took risks to protect us - we'll never know what they might have done."
Anna nodded.
"And should I mention the attack, in my speech?" she asked.
I shook my head. The greatest insult we could pay Ritchie would be to ignore him completely, to expunge him from the record as if he'd never existed.
"Everyone knows," I said gently. "Focus on what we did, not on the people who tried to stop us."
Anna and I chatted for another twenty minutes or so as we finished our drinks. It was about half past four and the café had pretty much emptied.
We walked the short distance to the town square, where our paths diverged.
