Watershed

It was a warm Johannesburg afternoon when the Andrews family moved in to the McDonald's old house next door.

I was sixteen going on seventeen, enjoying my final few weeks of summer holiday before term started, swimming almost hourly in our backyard pool and then sunning myself dry. I heard voices over our fence, a family discussing where to put the barbecue. Various opinions were voiced over what to do about the dilapidated lapa at the bottom of the garden.

One suggested an entertainment area, another a home office. A young female voice wanted it to be her bedroom - the others laughed, teased her gently about spiders and snakes and bats and owls as she squealed and laughed and protested her immunity to all these terrors.

I smiled as I slipped back into the water. They sounded nice. It would be good to have neighbours again - the McDonald twins had gone off to University and the parents had decamped to the coast to enjoy early retirement.

Later that evening, I was drying my hair in my room after my shower, watching a tall blond boy in their back garden as he assembled some sort of gym equipment with the well-intentioned but ultimately counterproductive assistance of an aged Labrador retriever.

He was thin, lithe and muscular, and I leaned against my window, watching him as he climbed onto the equipment's sliding seat and tested its movement back and forth.

A petite brunette woman came outside, and her words floated faintly up to me.

"William? Supper's ready."

"Thanks, mum, I'll be right in. Just testing the ergo."

"Don't be long, your food will get cold."

I watched her lean forward, kiss his head, tousle his unruly blond hair, and noted the broad grin he gave her.

Definitely a nice family.

.:.

School term started, and I got back into my routine. Most mornings Dad would drive me to school, some days Mum - when Mum took me, our timetable seemed to sync up with our neighbours. I'd watch them organising themselves, bundling their school bags and sports equipment into the family's big BMW, secretly amused at how William would herd his chaotic younger sister Sue like a dedicated sheepdog.

Our parents would nod, wave, say hello to one another, and as time went on, make small talk and arrange lunches and dinners. Sometimes William would look at me, smile a shy hello of his own. Sometimes, if I was feeling generous, I'd do the same.

William would spend an hour every evening working out on what I'd since learned was a rowing machine - in the open if the weather was fine, under their lapa if there was thunder.

I took to swimming in the evening during his workouts if the weather was good - I couldn't see him from our pool, but I could hear him, and the rhythm of his set pieces gave me a metronome for my own swim - not that our pool was anywhere long enough for a proper workout, but I did it religiously anyway.

And, besides, he was good company - quiet, disciplined, and reliable.

Summer became Autumn. Lent term ended, Michaelmas started after a short holiday. I made the senior B swimming squad at my school - a good achievement for me, about as far as I could go without dedicating my life to swimming. However, neither I nor my parents were prepared to make that kind of sacrifice. I loved swimming, I didn't live it.

William made the crew list for his school's first Eight. I learned this by eavesdropping on his family as they congratulated him one evening. It gave me another datum on the mental map I was slowly assembling of him. I dropped some passing congratulations one evening, and he thanked me with a genuinely warm smile that left me warm and slightly breathless for days.

My seventeenth birthday rolled around, and to celebrate it I had a small dinner at home with just a couple of my closest friends. I'd never liked socialising much outside of very small groups, and the idea of having a large party (even though my parents had suggested it) did not appeal whatsoever to me. So instead we ate ourselves to standstill on barbecued ribs and chicken prepared by my Dad, who stood outside in a May rainstorm to ensure that I had the birthday I wanted.

And, the next evening when I got home from school, my grinning mother showed me a small bouquet of blue Irises that William had dropped off. Attached was a plain white card, a neat cursive "Dear Tamsin - happy seventeenth. William" written dead centre.

.:.

"William?"

He straightened up out of the car boot and smiled at me. "Tamsin. Hello. How're you?"

"Fine, thanks. I... just wanted to thank you for the flowers."

"You're welcome. I hope you had a nice birthday."

"I did, thanks."

"Wills," his mother called from inside. "I need help, please."

"Gotta go," he said, as he closed and locked the car boot. "Um... see you around."

"See you later," I replied softly. I watched him carry the shopping bags indoors - he gave me one more brief smile before he closed their front door.

I went back inside, ignored my mum's amused look, and glanced again at the flowers I'd placed in a vase on our kitchen counter.

He really was a very good looking boy.

.:.

Bit by bit I learned about him through passing conversations before and after school. He and I shared a love for fantasy novels, though he also loved Sci-Fi. Before long we had a book-exchange going, swapping in and out of our libraries as the weeks and months trundled on. We started to have long rambling chats, perched on ladders leaned against our respective back garden fences.

Wills was frequently away over weekends for rowing camps, but was back for his eighteenth birthday - a loud, raucous back-yard party his parents had warned everyone might go on into the early hours. I'd watched the shenanigans with some amusement from my window before I went to bed and piled a pillow onto my head. Everybody loved the Andrews family, nobody minded the late night.

I don't know if anyone else in the street sent him a gift, and if they had, I believed my near-mint hardcover copy of the 'Chronicles of Amber' by Roger Zelazny would probably be one of the better ones.

Inside the cover I wrote a simple "Ex libris Tamsin. Happy Birthday, Wills".

According to him, it trumped everything else by a country mile.

Autumn became winter, winter became spring. I was seventeen going on eighteen, Will was coming to the end of school and starting to think about his matric exams and what he'd do thereafter.

"I think it's University of Cape Town for me," he said one evening, as we leaned on the fence between our houses, having one of our now traditional catch-up chats.

"At least you know where you'll be going."

"Yeah, but I'll miss home."

"UCT's very international, or so I hear. Lots of interesting people at least. My cousin says she loved it there - very outdoor lifestyle, and you'll have the ocean."

"Mm."

"Are you going to keep rowing?"

"For first year, maybe. Depends how hard my coursework gets."

"You're bright, you'll be fine."

He smiled at me, squinting slightly in the sunset reflecting down off my bedroom window. "Thanks, Tim Tam. Coming from you, that's a massive vote of confidence."

"Not like you need my cheerleading," I said with a smile.

"Tammy! Supper!" my dad called.

"Be right in!" I yelled.

"Catch you later," Will said, and I smiled back at him.

.:.

"Boyfriend all right?"

"Oh dad," I said, exasperated.

"Don't tease her," mum berated him. "Or I'll make you eat dinner outside in the cold."

"Yes love," he replied, contrite, and mum winked at me.

"Will's mum says he's thinking of going to UCT," Dad said.

"He was just telling me."

"It's a good University. You should start thinking about your choices, Tammy."

"I've still got a year of freedom," I replied tartly, and my parents chuckled.

.:.

Even under the most extensive torture I will not admit that I cried like a baby on the day that William left for University.

I'd pretended to be totally blasé about it, teasing him about becoming a filthy Southerner, how he'd turn into a lentil-eating hippie. He'd smiled at me and given me a wrapped package, with instructions to only open it once he was gone.

I'd tucked it under my pillow, and when my family had waved his family off on their trip to the airport I'd climbed deliberately upstairs to my room and torn open one of the neat lines of sellotape with a fingernail.

He'd left me his own personal copy of the Lord of the Rings - his name, William Patrick Andrews, written nearly on the inside cover in aged navy ink, a fresher "See you around, Tim Tam. Wills" curling gracefully under it.

And that was the trigger - I'd curled up into a ball on my bed, wrecking it with an extended bout of silent, brutal, muscle-straining sobs.

My parents had left me alone for a diplomatic period of time, and then my mum had quietly let herself into my room. She hadn't said a word, merely put an arm around me as I crawled half onto her lap and letting me find peace in my own time.

Neither mentioned my red eyes or quiet, interstellar distance over the next week, and I pretended very hard that nothing was wrong.

I'm good at lying to myself about important things.

.:.

My final year of school started - a swiftly-passing blur of swimming galas, provincial trials, exams, stress and frequent fretting about the future. Will and I desynced - any time he was home I'd invariably have something on; our few brief conversations felt stilted and artificial and left me depressed and unsatisfied. He'd always be happy to see me, and I'd always sink into a day or two of crippling melancholy when he was gone.

Blue Irises arrived on my eighteenth birthday, with a card reading, simply, "Still not eating Lentils," and I'd spent the rest of the day stuck in a slow grey lethargy that I'd only managed to shake by the next morning.

My parents and his parents had regular dinner dates - his dad joked at one point that they might as well cut a hole in the fence since it would save having to lock the front doors.

And then I matriculated, and went away to University myself, with only my mother around to cry over my departure - kind of melodramatic in hindsight given that I was still living at home. But I guess we're both emotional creatures, my mum and I, and it was childhood's end, in many ways.

First year and second year of university flew by as I dabbled in a commerce degree and experimented with relationships, which I found ultimately to be more trouble than they were worth. I lost the big V sometime in first year to someone who seemed on the face of it to be a relatively nice boy - whom I subsequently caught with a 'friend' a mere two weeks after I'd let him inside me. Disgusted and disillusioned, I retreated into my swimming and my studies, barely registered the coming and going of third year and my degree before I enlisted for honours and, somehow, graduated cum laude.

I found a job and a small flat and started working, driving home to visit my parents most weekends and sleeping in my old room overlooking the gardens.

William and I passed like ships in the night - I'd hear stories of him when I came over, and I grew into the habit of dropping in to say hello to his parents and his sister, who were always delighted to see me, always treated me like family, and who would fall over themselves to be the first to tell me what Wills had been up to - both good and bad and, sometimes, ugly.

It helped, somewhat.

.:.

I was twenty two going on twenty three. It was a bright Saturday afternoon, and I was floating quietly in the pool when I thought I heard his voice coming from next door. I stopped and listened for a moment, letting my ears confirm it wasn't a figment of my imagination. It was him.

I lifted myself out of the pool, reached for my towel, and knotted it around my waist. I dragged a chair to the fence and clambered up - and there he was, taller and better built than I remembered him, tousled blond hair falling over his face as he helped his father dig weeds out of a rose bed.

"Hello, stranger," I called.

He and his dad looked up in surprise, and both grinned at me.

"Tim Tam!" he replied. "Hi, what a nice surprise!"

"Afternoon, Tamsin," Mr Andrews called back. "Come on over, we have beer and wine and there's spectating and management work to be done here."

I laughed. "Be right there, Mr A."

I ducked indoors and grabbed my discarded vest and shorts. "Going over to the Andrews'" I told my mum. "Will's here, I'm going to catch up with him."

"Enjoy yourself," she answered with a nod and a smile.

I closed the door behind me, and vaulted over the low hedge between our gardens. Then I rang their doorbell and tried to straighten my hair a bit and make myself a bit more presentable.

William opened the door, and we stared at one another for a moment.

"Hello," I said.

"Hi," he replied.

"I was promised wine and beer. Are you going to let me in?"

He laughed and stepped aside.

I glanced up at him as I brushed past him, noting the stubble and the sun-bleached highlights in his hair. "Been spending lots of time outdoors with the hippies?"

"I never did take to lentils, you know," he retorted, grinning. He led me through the house and outdoors into the back garden, where a wine bottle was chilling in a cooler alongside a six-pack.

"Help yourself to some wine. I've still got some indentured labour to finish," he lamented.

"Labour," his dad snorted. "You don't even know the meaning of the word. Pass me the fork, Wills."

"Hi, Mr A."

"Charlie, Tamsin," Mr Andrews said as he tried to dig out a dead rosebush. "I always did hate these fucking plants," he muttered. "Thank god this one croaked. One less to prune."

William winked at me. "I suspect dad eased it on, but he denies everything."

"Don't give your mother ideas," Mr Andrews growled good-naturedly. "Or she'll make me replace it."

I grinned and helped myself to a glass of wine. And then I sat, watching the boys digging. Well. Watching one of them, mostly.

Will had clearly carried on rowing. He was whip-thin, muscled like a rock-climber, with a hard delta of lats rising to his broad shoulders. His calves bore the scars of hours on the water being chaffed by poorly-finished decking. His legs were sculpted, and he really did not look like he was carrying any spare weight whatsoever. A day's worth of stubble shadowed his chin - it suited him, gave him a roguishness that just added, in my opinion, to his already excellent looks.

He was sweating profusely by the time they finished, and as his dad went inside to wash off, Will elected to simply turn on the lawn sprinkler and stand in it for a few moments. The shirt clung to him, and did all sorts of extremely wonderful things to his anatomy before he shook himself like a dog and turned the water off.

I laughed at him, and then handed him a beer as he came to sit opposite me at their weathered garden table.

"Hello," I said again. "It's nice to finally get a chance to talk to you again. It's been so long, I've almost forgotten the sound of your voice."

"I feel like every time I arrived here you were leaving or had just left."

"Yeah, it was piss-poor scheduling on our part. What the fuck have you been up to, anyway?"

He took a long pull on his can, then set it down. "Bit of this, bit of that. Mostly work, some rowing. I represented UCT one or twice overseas, but then I expect you already know that."

"Yeah, your sister kept me up to date. How is Sue enjoying it down there?"

"Loving it. She's a born student. I suspect she'll never leave, she'll just gain an asset number at some point."

I laughed. "And you? Where are you working?"

He winced. "At a bank in Cape Town, for my sins."

"Suit-wearing lentil eating pansy!" I teased.

"Shut up, Tim Tam," he replied, grinning. "I heard about your cum laude. Congrats, Tamsin. I was super stoked for you. What are you doing these days?"

"Thanks. Mostly I'm just doing research at the moment. I work for a private security firm, advising international clients on travel and investment risks. Well, researching the advice that other, more eloquent, prettier girls then parcel up for our clients."

He rolled his eyes, dismissing my comment with a snort. "Prettier. Pah. And your swimming?"

"Recreational mostly now."

"Shame. Still keeps you in shape though."

I took a breath, touched by the compliment. "As does your rowing, clearly."

"I took up swimming too. Seemed a wise thing to do given the amount of time I spend in the ocean these days on a surf board." He grinned. "Got to be able to out-swim the great whites after all. Or at least swim faster than one other person."

"You are so totally a hippie," I laughed.

He stuck out his tongue, and I grinned at him.

"I've missed you," he said, after a period of silence.

"Ditto. My life has been devoid of entertainment. No one to talk to, all by myself," I sang softly, still grinning.

He snorted, then eyed me. "I doubt that. But, on that topic - since you're here, some mates of mine and I are going out clubbing this evening - you want to come?"

"Whereabouts?"

"Rosebank somewhere. Martin knows the place, says it's got amazing dance floors and good music."

I squinted at him. "Sure," I said, after a moment. "I could do with an outing. What time? Is it a complete sausage fest?"

"I'm leaving at nine, swinging through to pick up Martin. You can get a ride with me if you like. Entirely sausages, I'm afraid."

"You staying sober?"

"As a judge. Two drinks max."

"Dress code?"

"Marty reckons jeans and a nice shirt would do for us, so whatever the equivalent of that is."

"I'm there like a bear."

"Excellent," he grinned.

.:.

I selected a tight black halter-neck dress that fell to mid-thigh, and a pair of open-toed high-heels to go with it that gave me a little bit more height - good for vision in the confines of a club, and helpful when talking to Will who had always towered so far over me. I applied base and mascara, then rouged my cheeks ever so slightly. I elected to let my hair hang loose - it was still above my shoulders, and I knew the slight wave would set off my face well.

Then I kissed Mum and Dad goodnight, stuck a house key into my clutch bag, and closed the door behind me. Will was waiting in his mom's battered Audi, and he smiled and waved at me as he caught sight of me.

"Tim Tam, that's a lot smarter than jeans and a nice shirt," he said, amused. "You look great."

"I don't get to dress up much, so I take the chance when I can."

"I like what you've done with your hair. It suits you. Really highlights your eyes."

I flushed, smiled, glanced away. "So, picking up your friend and then clubbing?"

"Off we go," he agreed, as he eased the Audi into gear, and I leaned back into the leather seat, watching him.

.:.

It was dark, and loud, and I loved it. The four of us stuck to a standing table, watching the dance floor and everyone around us - I listened with one ear to the boys catching up on news and deeds, and laughed at the more raucous or raunchy ones. Martin and Guy were clean, nice men, but Will was still the pick of the three of them, and I derived a lot of evil pleasure from watching the speculative looks many other women were throwing his way - and even more from the glares I was harvesting.

By my third Bacardi I was buzzing, laughing, pushed up against Wills by a press of other clubbers. At one point he put an arm around me, dropped his hand to the small of my back, and I could almost hear the girls around us eating their livers in envy.

As for me, well... I ached in a different way.

.:.

I needed the loo.

"Be right back, need the ladies," I announced, drawing amused grins from the boys and comments about my lack of big match temperament. I gave them all a smiling middle finger, then forced my way through the crush near the bar, and from there into the passage towards the toilets.