As I've said, it wasn't until a long time afterwards - long after I'd left the Cottages - that I realised just how significant our little encounter in the churchyard had been. I was upset at the time, yes. But I didn't believe it to be anything so different from other tiffs we'd had. It never occurred to me that our lives, until then so closely interwoven, could unravel and separate over a thing like that.

But the fact was, I suppose, there were powerful tides tugging us apart by then, and it only needed something like that to finish the task. If we'd understood that back then - who knows? - maybe we'd have kept a tighter hold of one another.

For one thing, more and more students were going off to be carers, and among our old Hailsham crowd, there was a growing feeling this was the natural course to follow. We still had our essays to finish, but it was well known we didn't really have to finish them if we chose to start our training. In our early days at the Cottages, the idea of not finishing our essays would have been unthinkable. But the more distant Hailsham grew, the less important the essays seemed. I had this idea at the time - and I was probably right - that if our sense of the essays being important was allowed to seep away, then so too would whatever bound us together as Hailsham students. That's why I tried for a while to keep going our enthusiasm for all the reading and note-taking. But with no reason to suppose we'd ever see our guardians again, and with so many students moving on, it soon began to feel like a lost cause.

Anyway, in the days after that talk in the churchyard, I did what I could to put it behind us. I behaved towards both Tommy and Ruth as though nothing special had occurred, and they did much the same. But there was always something there now, and it wasn't just between me and them. Though they still made a show of being a couple - they still did the punching-on-the-arm thing when they parted - I knew them well enough to see they'd grown quite distant from each other.

Of course I felt bad about it all, especially about Tommy's animals. But it wasn't as simple any more as going to him and saying sorry and explaining how things really were. A few years earlier, even six months earlier, it might have worked out that way. Tommy and I would have talked it over and sorted it out. But somehow, by that second summer, things were different. Maybe it was because of this relationship with Lenny, I don't know. Anyway, talking to Tommy wasn't so easy any more. On the surface, at least, it was much like before, but we never mentioned the animals or what had happened in the churchyard.

So that was what had been happening just before I had that conversation with Ruth in the old bus shelter, when I got so annoyed with her for pretending to forget about the rhubarb patch at Hailsham. Like I said, I'd probably not have got nearly so cross if it hadn't come up in the middle of such a serious conversation. Okay, we'd got through a lot of the meat of it by then, but even so, even if we were just easing off and chatting by that point, that was still all part of our trying to sort things with each other, and there was no room for any pretend stuff like that.

What had happened was this. Although something had come between me and Tommy, it hadn't quite got like that with Ruth - or at least that's what I'd thought - and I'd decided it was time I talked with her about what had happened in the churchyard. We'd just had one of those summer days of rain and thunderstorms, and we'd been cooped up indoors despite the humidity. So when it appeared to clear for the evening, with a nice pink sunset, I suggested to Ruth we get a bit of air. There was a steep footpath I'd discovered leading up along the edge of the valley and just where it came out onto the road was an old bus shelter. The buses had stopped coming ages ago, the bus stop sign had been taken away, and on the wall at the back of the shelter, there was left only the frame of what must have once been a glassed-in notice displaying all the bus times. But the shelter itself - which was like a lovingly constructed wooden hut with one side open to the fields going down the valleyside - was still standing, and even had its bench intact. So that's where Ruth and I were sitting to get our breath back, looking at the cobwebs up on the rafters and the summer evening outside. Then I said something like:

‘You know, Ruth, we should try and sort it out, what happened the other day.’

I'd made my voice conciliatory, and Ruth responded. She said immediately how daft it was, the three of us having rows over the most stupid things. She brought up other times we'd rowed and we laughed a bit about them. But I didn't really want Ruth just to bury the thing like that, so I said, still in the least challenging voice I could:

‘Ruth, you know, I think sometimes, when you're in a couple, you don't see things as clearly as maybe someone can from the outside. Just sometimes.’

She nodded. ‘That's probably right.’

‘I don't want to interfere. But sometimes, just lately, I think Tommy's been quite upset. You know. About certain things you've said or done.’

I was worried Ruth would get angry, but she nodded and sighed. ‘I think you're right,’ she said in the end. ‘I've been thinking about it a lot too.’

‘Then maybe I shouldn't have brought it up. I should have known you'd see what was happening. It's not my business really.’

‘But it is, Kathy. You're really one of us, and so it's always your business. You're right, it hasn't been good. I know what you mean. That stuff the other day, about his animals. That wasn't good. I told him I was sorry about that.’

‘I'm glad you talked it over. I didn't know if you had.’

Ruth had been picking at some moulding flakes of wood on the bench beside her, and for a moment she seemed completely absorbed in this task. Then she said:

‘Look, Kathy, it's good we're talking now about Tommy. I've been wanting to tell you something, but I've never quite known how to say it, or when, really. Kathy, promise you won't be too cross with me.’

I looked at her and said: ‘As long as it's not about those T-shirts again.’

‘No, seriously. Promise you won't get too cross. Because I've got to tell you this. I wouldn't forgive myself if I kept quiet much longer.’

‘Okay, what is it?’

‘Kathy, I've been thinking this for some time. You're no fool, and you can see that maybe me and Tommy, we might not be a couple for ever. That's no tragedy. We were right for each other once. Whether we always will be, that's anyone's guess. And now there's all this talk, about couples getting deferrals if they can prove, you know, that they're really right. Okay, look, what I wanted to say, Kathy, is this. It'd be completely natural if you'd thought about, you know, what would happen if me and Tommy decided we shouldn't be together any more. We're not about to split, don't get me wrong. But I'd think it was completely normal if you at least wondered about it. Well, Kathy, what you have to realise is that Tommy doesn't see you like that. He really, really likes you, he thinks you're really great. But I know he doesn't see you like, you know, a proper girlfriend. Besides …’ Ruth paused, then sighed. ‘Besides, you know how Tommy is. He can be fussy.’

I stared at her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You must know what I mean. Tommy doesn't like girls who've been with … well, you know, with this person and that. It's just a thing he has. I'm sorry, Kathy, but it wouldn't be right not to have told you.’

I thought about it, then said: ‘It's always good to know these things.’

I felt Ruth touch my arm. ‘I knew you'd take it the right way. What you've got to understand, though, is that he thinks the world of you. He really does.’

I wanted to change the subject, but for the moment my mind was a blank. I suppose Ruth must have picked up on this, because she stretched out her arms and did a kind of yawn, saying:

‘If I ever learn to drive a car, I'd take us all on a trip to some wild place. Dartmoor, say. The three of us, maybe Laura and Hannah too. I'd love to see all the bogs and stuff.’

We spent the next several minutes talking about what we'd do on a trip like that if we ever went on one. I asked where we'd stay, and Ruth said we could borrow a big tent. I pointed out the wind could get really fierce in places like that and our tent could easily blow away in the night. None of this was that serious. But it was around here I remembered the time back at Hailsham, when we'd still been Juniors and we were having a picnic by the pond with Miss Geraldine. James B. had been sent to the main house to fetch the cake we'd all baked earlier, but as he was carrying it back, a strong gust of wind had taken off the whole top layer of sponge, tossing it into the rhubarb leaves. Ruth said she could only vaguely remember the incident, and I'd said, trying to clinch it for her memory:

‘The thing was, he got into trouble because that proved he'd been coming down through the rhubarb patch.’

And that was when Ruth looked at me and said: ‘Why? What was wrong with that?’

It was just the way she said it, suddenly so false even an onlooker, if there'd been one, would have seen through it. I sighed with irritation and said:

‘Ruth, don't give me that. There's no way you've forgotten. You know that route was out of bounds.’

Maybe it was a bit sharp, the way I said it. Anyway, Ruth didn't back down. She continued pretending to remember nothing, and I got all the more irritated. And that was when she said:

‘What does it matter anyway? What's the rhubarb patch got to do with anything? Just get on with what you were saying.’

After that I think we went back to talking in a more or less friendly way, and then before long we were making our way down the footpath in the half-light back to the Cottages. But the atmosphere never quite righted itself, and when we said our goodnights in front of the Black Barn, we parted without our usual little touches on the arms and shoulders.

It wasn't long after that I made my decision, and once I'd made it, I never wavered. I just got up one morning and told Keffers I wanted to start my training to become a carer. It was surprisingly easy. He was walking across the yard, his Wellingtons covered in mud, grumbling to himself and holding a piece of piping. I went up and told him, and he just looked at me like I'd bothered him about more firewood. Then he mumbled something about coming to see him later that afternoon to go through the forms. It was that easy.

It took a little while after that, of course, but the whole thing had been set in motion, and I was suddenly looking at everything - the Cottages, everybody there - in a different light. I was now one of the ones leaving, and soon enough, everyone knew it. Maybe Ruth thought we'd be spending hours talking about my future; maybe she thought she'd have a big influence on whether or not I changed my mind. But I kept a certain distance from her, just as I did from Tommy. We didn't really talk properly again at the Cottages, and before I knew it, I was saying my goodbyes.