Rachel had thought long and hard about everything to do with the whole ‘Kevin issue,’ and concluded that he was probably not only living in Utrecht but also working in or in some way attached to the museum where the birthday cards had been bought. Although it was a hunch she felt fairly confident that when it came to her mother’s birthday he would buy her a card either in a shop like most people do or, if he spent a lot of time in a place that sold cards, he would buy it there. For three years he had sent a card stamped with the museum’s name and in Rachel’s mind that was good enough to try ‘number one’ on her list. She rang directory enquiries and very soon had the telephone number of the museum in front of her.
Emma sat at the table looking nervously at the telephone number and said, “I can’t ring it, what would I say? I can’t ring,” but Rachel said, “You don’t have to ring, I will do it for you but only if you want to me to. We can stop right now and not look for him anymore or we can take the next step and see where it leads us, it’s entirely up to you.” For about half an hour she kept changing her mind between ringing and not ringing but eventually decided they should do it and see what happens. She had got herself into a bit of a state and didn’t want to be there when Rachel made the call so she went to the shop to get a few things in for lunch.
The walk helped clear Emma’s thoughts and when she returned home a little later she was in a much better frame of mind. When she opened the door and saw the glint of success in Rachel’s eyes she knew instantly she had some news. The phone call had only lasted for a couple of minutes but in that time Rachel had proved her hunch to be right and that Kevin was working there as one of two archivists. She had been put through to the other archivist who explained in very good English that Kevin had just started two weeks leave and suggested that she rang back after that when he would be available to talk to. Rachel thanked her, said she would ring again but didn’t leave a message.
Over more coffee and still flushed with the success of her hunch being right, Rachel went through the other items on her list. Now they knew where Kevin was they had choices to make and things to do including letting his mother know where he was working. Rachel and Emma spent the afternoon formulating a plan and by the end of the day knew almost exactly what they were going to do. On the Thursday afternoon in just over two week’s time they would fly to Amsterdam from Manchester and would stay in Amsterdam for three nights before flying back on the Sunday. On the Friday morning they would travel to Utrecht to see Kevin. What they did for the rest of the weekend would very much depend on whether or not they actually got to see Kevin and if they did, how he reacted to seeing Emma again after five years.
That evening Emma rang Kevin’s mother and told her everything they had found out and how they were going over to visit him. She invited her to go with them but she declined. She couldn’t leave her husband and she didn’t have a passport but was very glad that Rachel and Emma were going. Between the tears she thanked Emma and reminded her to give Kevin the letter she had written. She promised she would and told her that once they were back she would ring again.
Finding Kevin: Part 2
Meeting Kevin:
Just over two weeks later Rachel and Emma set off on their journey to see Kevin. The drive to Manchester airport, the flight and the transfer to their hotel in Amsterdam all went very smoothly and to plan. Their room, though not large had everything they needed. There was a small en-suite bathroom, the twin beds seemed a little wider than normal singles and looked very comfortable, there was a television, tea and coffee making facilities and a mini bar. After unpacking, they decided to explore the area around their hotel and look for somewhere to eat and within a few hundred yards from the hotel they found parks, waterways and a host of small bars and restaurants. They spent an enjoyable couple of hours taking in the sights, having a meal and generally familiarising themselves with their surroundings. It was only when they got back to their hotel room later in the evening that Emma realised there had been hardly any talk of Kevin all day. Being with Rachel had lifted her spirits and reminded her of what ‘having fun’ felt like but by the time they were ready for bed, she was becoming anxious about possibly seeing Kevin the next day. Rachel reassured her as best she could and because their beds were so close together was able to hold Emma’s hand until she fell asleep. For a while Rachel lay there worrying about Emma but then she too, fell asleep.
The next morning they were up bright and early and by ten o’clock had arrived in Utrecht. By the time they reached the museum Emma was once again in a bit of a state but Rachel held her together and promised to help her through whatever situation she might find herself in. Rachel did all the talking to the receptionist, she gave her their names and explained how they had travelled from England in the hope they may be able to see Kevin Simpson on a personal matter. She was a friendly girl of about the same age as Rachel and Emma, her name was Yvonne and she spoke excellent English. After making two phone calls Yvonne asked them to take a seat for a few minutes and told them that one of the attendants would be along shortly to take them to see Mr. Simpson. Emma felt hot, her palms were sweaty and her heart was thumping. Moments later they found themselves following a man of about sixty along what seemed like a maze of corridors until he stopped at a door labelled 26. He knocked and without waiting for a reply opened the door and ushered the two girls in. Rachel went in first with Emma trailing a little way behind. The room was quite empty apart from an office table and a few plastic chairs. “Please sit down. Mr Simpson will be along shortly,” said the attendant. “Would you like some tea or coffee while you wait?” Rachel replied, “Yes please. Coffee would be nice.”
The attendant had just brought the coffee in when another door on the other side of the room opened and in walked Kevin. Both Emma and Rachel were immediately taken aback when they saw him. Emma instantly knew that she wouldn’t have recognised him if she had passed him in the street. He was nothing like ‘her Kevin’ and it was only when he spoke and said, “Hello Emma, hello Rachel,” that Emma was certain it was him. His voice was the same but his appearance had changed dramatically. His athletic figure had gone, he had put a lot of weight on; his hair was long and tied in a pony tail and his face was hidden by a very full beard and moustache. On entering the room he kept the table between himself and the girls, he didn’t hug them or even shake hands but sat down on a blue plastic chair behind the table as if in interview mode.
Kevin seemed to take their unexpected visit in his stride and for the first few minutes he did the talking although it was all very superficial stuff. He very politely asked how their journey had been, where they were staying, had they been to Holland before and so on. After spending some time answering his trivial questions Rachel took hold of the situation and explained why they were there and how they had discovered where he worked. She described very eloquently the effects his disappearance had on Emma and his mother and, albeit tactfully, she left him in no doubt that the time had perhaps now come for him to face up to those issues that he had left behind. Quite surprisingly, he agreed. For no more than another ten minutes Rachel stayed there until she was satisfied that without her support Emma would be able to ask the questions that had remained unanswered for so long. As she stood up to leave the room Rachel gently squeezed Emma’s hand and gave her one of her reassuring and affectionate looks.
For more than an hour Rachel wandered around the public galleries looking at the various exhibitions but found it difficult to focus on anything other than what her best friend might be going through. Eventually she went back to the reception area and waited there. After what seemed like an eternity Emma suddenly appeared being escorted by a different attendant. There was no sign of Kevin. Rachel could tell immediately that Emma had been crying but as soon as she saw Rachel waiting there she grabbed her arm, smiled and said, “Come on, let’s go,” and without saying another word they left the museum. Emma hurried them both along the street only slowing down when they had put a few hundred yards betwe
en themselves and the museum. Eventually she came to a stop by the entrance to a small park, she turned to Rachel, hugged her tightly and said, “Thank you for everything. Let’s find a café and I’ll tell you what happened.”
A Café In Utrecht: Part 1
There was no passion:
A few minutes later they were sitting in a quiet corner of a café looking out on to a well-tended garden and a children’s play area. Emma seemed in good spirits and her eyes, that before had been red from crying, now shone in a way that Rachel had not seen since their teenage years.
“As soon as you left the room,” began Rachel, “Kevin started talking about what he did after the argument with his father. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways for at least twenty minutes and even when I did, it was only for a second or two before he was off again on another long story. When he left his parents house that night with his father still shouting at him he didn’t go to Durham to look for me as he said he would, instead he went back to Oxford. The next day he rang his father to see if he was going to stick by what he had said about not supporting him financially at university or was it just something he had said in anger but not meant. He was told in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t getting another penny from him so he had no choice but to leave university as there was no way he could support himself. To cut a very long story short, one of his tutors helped him get a place on a scientific research team studying volcanoes in Iceland. For ten months he did a lot of the unskilled tedious stuff that had to be done but from that he got an offer of going to Utrecht to become a trainee archivist. The museum trained him and then funded him to get a degree in the history of art or something like that, which he got earlier this year. He has also become fluent in Dutch.”
“But what about you?” asked Rachel, “Did he talk about you and how he felt?”
“For the first half an hour or so he never even mentioned me,” said Emma, “and when he finally did he told me he was really sorry for what he did to me and sorry he had got me pregnant. Apparently he almost came looking for me a couple of times but because he’d been told that I had got rid of the baby and didn’t want to know him anymore he decided against it. In the end he thought it was perhaps best to leave things as they were especially as he believed that I had gone to university and would no doubt be enjoying life there. He said he missed me for the first few months but then with so much to think about in Iceland and having met new people he moved on. He had a number of short-term girl friends but then two years ago at a conference in the museum he met an art teacher called Katrien. They have been together ever since and they are getting married next year.
He was quite shocked when I gave him more details about the effect he had on me and of the years of turmoil I suffered because of him. He talked about how we had some good times together and said he was very sorry for the not so good times and especially for how I felt after he had gone. Then, quite bluntly, he said I had to put things into perspective and remember all of those things happened years ago when we were still at school and what we had was an immature teenage relationship that for him at least, revolved mostly around sex. He said that since being with Katrien he has discovered that real love runs far deeper than what we had and told me that when I find it I will know.”
Rachel said kindly, “Kevin might have a point there. Perhaps at sixteen or seventeen you were too young to know if it really was love that you felt and had you not gone through the things you did then perhaps you would have grown through that period in your life. Instead you had so much to deal with that your emotions were all over the place, you had a breakdown and in a sense became trapped in time, unable to move on.”
A few weeks earlier Emma may not have agreed with her but almost before Rachel had finished speaking Emma said, “I know. Ever since I understood the entries in the diaries my thoughts and feelings about Kevin have been changing. They have changed even more since we talked so openly on our journey back from St Albans. Then another very significant thing happened today. From the moment I saw him I knew whatever it was that I used to feel for him was gone. That person was not the Kevin I had thought about and wanted to see all these years and I am not saying that just because he looked different. I don’t think the Kevin that existed in my mind ever really existed at all and nor did most of what I thought were memories of our time together. I asked him if he remembered our first kiss, which he said he did but he remembers nothing about standing in the darkness searching the skies for a meteor shower or of being a true gentleman by trying to keep me warm. Instead, he said that just as we got off the train one night he told me he liked me a lot and asked me if I would be his girlfriend and if so, would I watch him play football at the weekend. When I said yes he said we should seal it with a kiss so we went behind the old signal box at the end of the platform where we thought we couldn’t be seen and had what he described as our first rather sloppy kiss. He said that as we kissed a little more, he tried to do what all boys of that age try to do with a girl and that was to have a bit of a feel but just as he was lifting up my skirt the lady from the sweet shop walked by with her dog and gave us a piece of her mind. She sent us both packing and that was more or less that except that as we left I noticed his trousers were sticking out at the front and when I realised what it was I, sniggered, hit it with my school bag and told him to keep it away from me. There was no meteor shower, there was no passion under the stars and there was no chivalry. Instead, he got an erection went for a quick grope but even that didn’t happen.” Rachel couldn’t help but chuckle and that set Emma off too. She saw the funny side of it even though it troubled her to think that from that small insignificant event behind the old signal box her mind had created a passionate, intimate and erotic experience under the stars that had never actually taken place.
A Café In Utrecht: Part 2
Where would I be without you?
As Rachel continued to listen to Emma telling her what Kevin had said and what she had said to him she knew that visiting Utrecht had been the right thing to do and the more she talked the more it seemed that a huge weight was being lifted from her. There were serious and sad moments such as her description of Kevin’s reaction to his mother’s letter and his father’s illness but there were also light-hearted moments and moments of importance such as Emma’s revelation that the feelings she thought she once had for Kevin had gone. Emma finished by telling Rachel that Kevin left the room without even shaking her hand let alone giving her a farewell hug but he did wish her well, he told her he would arrange to see his parents and he thanked her for coming. Then she explained that in the five or six minutes she waited for the attendant to arrive she burst into tears and cried for having stupidly wasted so many years of her life trying to clutch on to something that was never really there. She reached over to Rachel, took hold of both of her hands and said, “Where would I be without you? You have helped me get through this ever since my breakdown five years ago. And before that, for as long as I can remember, you were always there for me. In all the years we have known each other I don’t think I have ever said how grateful I am or how much you mean to me.” Rachel smiled and said quite simply, “You mean a lot to me too.” With that they finished their coffee and made their way back to Amsterdam.
Amsterdam: Part 1
Everything became clear:
For the rest of the day Kevin was barely mentioned, instead they enjoyed doing a bit of sightseeing, they had a meal in an Italian restaurant, a drink in the bar of their hotel, they each had a bath and then they washed and dried each other’s hair. Rachel had hers done first.
The last time Emma had her hair washed and dried by anyone other than herself was when her mother did it when she was just ten or eleven years old.
For more than ten minutes and wearing only a towel, Emma knelt on the floor with her head over the bath while Rachel went to work on her hair. Almost immediately, the brief unrecognisable feelings Emma had when Rachel hugged her in the hotel bedroom in St Albans were there again, onl
y this time they were much stronger. She closed her eyes and revelled in the pleasure of them and didn’t want them to end. Then, as she sat on the small bedroom chair to have her hair dried, the feelings intensified. Rachel said very little during the washing and drying of Emma’s hair but she too was finding the experience pleasurable just as she had done half an hour earlier when hers was being done. Wearing only thin pyjamas and facing Emma, Rachel stood astride Emma’s left leg to dry the front of her hair and as she did so their legs brushed against each other numerous times causing Emma to have little ripples of pleasure. Rachel’s pyjama top was quite loose and every time she bent down slightly Emma could see her breasts and though she didn’t understand why, she was excited by it. After a while Rachel went behind her to dry the back of her hair and she could sense how close her body was to hers and it pleased her.
Her mind, her emotions and her body reacted as if she was becoming sexually aroused and yet this was Rachel, her friend and another girl.
For the rest of the evening many of the feelings stayed with her and like the last time when in St Albans she felt warm and comfortable inside but wasn’t sure what it was or what it all meant.
Emma and Rachel had been together since they were four years old and in different ways had always depended on each other. Even so and after all their years together, they still didn’t quite recognise that Emma was the only person who could fill the enormous gap in Rachel’s life and Rachel was the only person who could lead Emma to happier days.
He Stole Her Virginity Page 6
