Dear Durrah,

Do you remember the summer of Year Nine? I remember it as a series of disjointed sights and sounds and emotions, apart from that, everything was vague.

One thing about that summer sticks out in my mind, it was the summer that the girl had an accident in the park and there was blood all over her face and blood all over your hands after you’d helped her. When the ambulance came we both walked home in a state of shock afterwards, but for different reasons. I was shocked over the blood, you were shocked over something else, but you’ve probably forgotten what and I won’t remind you.

The thing is I remember so much about that incident, about an hour before it happened, about ten minutes afterwards, but I don’t remember what I was doing five minutes before or even what the time was. Perhaps it was 3 o’clock when I left for the park because I was listening to the Charts on the radio and it had nearly finished, and that was the first and last summer I listened to the Charts. I remember I was wearing a light purple fleece and jeans and trainers as it was back in the day when I wore trainers and the temperature wasn't too hot, and I remember thinking that I loved this fleece but that it was getting a bit worn. I even remember the weather- it was a sticky, cloudy day and the sky looked like a reflection of the ground.

Then we were playing in the park and then there was the accident, and then the ambulance came and we walked home and you had blood on your hands and those are my only memories of the summer of Year Nine. Since then and especially now, whenever I’m in a shop or watching TV and We Belong Together or Ghetto Gospel plays, I automatically remember that day because those were the songs that were playing on the Charts just before I left for the park.

A lot has happened in the summers since then, but that summer was a transitional summer, and I know it because so much about me changed after. I don’t think that it was the incident that sparked a change at all, only it comes to mind because when I look back to that summer I can’t believe how different things are today to how they were then.