The PROMISE

Laura and Nathan’s New Year pledge was just a bit of fun wasn't it?

- Eirin Thompson

Nathan Green was my oldest friend – fact. We’d first met in nursery, where he always made a beeline for the Batman outfit, and I always donned the Snow White gown and hairband. We both adored dressing up.

‘I love you, Laura,’ I remember Nathan saying as we sat side by side for story time.

He put his arm around my shoulders. ‘I love you too,’ I replied. Of course, when we started primary school, all such thoughts were forgotten. I made new friends to chatter to and hold hands with as we ran around the playground, and Nathan found his own crowd as well.

We didn’t completely grow apart, though. Nathan would smile at me in the dinner line and tell me jokes, and I shared the sweets I bought at the tuck shop.

‘Who’s that guy you walk home with?’ asked Debbie, my new friend at high school, one day. ‘He’s cute.’

‘You think so?’ I replied. I’d never really thought of Nathan that way – he was just Nathan.

‘Think you could introduce us?’ Debbie went on.

‘Sure, if you want,’ I said. Nathan seemed amazed that any girl would be interested in him, but jumped at the chance of me doing some matchmaking. Soon Nathan and Debbie were the first proper boyfriend and girlfriend in our year.

‘You really like her,’ I observed as Nathan and I ambled home one afternoon.

Nathan blushed. ‘Yeah.’ ‘She practises writing Debbie Green in the back of her jotter, as if you two were married,’ I divulged. I wasn’t making fun of her. I thought it was sweet.

Nathan and Debbie stayed together for months. Then Mark Trench, the captain of the rugby team, asked Debbie to go to the rugby club disco with him. She said yes, and that was that.

‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I asked Nathan on the way home.

‘I don’t understand,’ he confided. ‘If she wanted to dump me, why didn’t she say anything before? Was she just using me until someone better came along?’