Such a sad sorry photograph: younger, thinner, less lined face, smoking a cigarette, grinning, gurning for all I’m worth at the camera.

Not knowing then that she, the girl taking the photo would be dead soon.

There were always those brimming with pathos songs trekked out for juvenile church hall discos, Leader of the Pack and it’s even more mawkish half bastard offspring to bring lumps to throat, tears to eyes of pubescent girls and boys seeking sympathy: ‘my mate died doin’ a ton-that song always reminds me of him’ 

If there were for real crashes for every lovesick puppy bawling to gain comfort in the colder times of their youth, none of us would see seventeen.

Anyway, death did happen. Maybe not in post-modern American 3-minute song formats, more slow English: colder, quieter and publicly silently unspoken.

Andy died of Leukaemia and me not speaking to him because he’d taken Janet away from me. At least that’s what I think her name might be, its all so long ago.

I can remember her smiles and taste of toothpaste but Andy shines on forever sticking his compass into my arse during lessons, telling dirty jokes involving knobs, dicks and tits to crack me up during assembly, smoking in break and sneaking his Dads booze out at Christmas.

And all this to not tell of how life is.

She was taking the photo after a disastrous trip to Wales, it rained, we were camping. That should be enough, but no: the car broke down, we ran out of cash and Wales was shut as it was Sunday.

Britain is a small place, anybody’ll tell you that; cross it in a day. Though Wales on a piss wet Sunday with a busted car and no money stretches time and space like only double homework could ever do.

By the end of it I was prepared to never see her again.

She nagged, moaned, created until I finally set off to get help, leaving her there wrapped in old clothes to keep warm. Wales is a great place or so I’m told but I’ve not been back since.

I know there’s mountains and valleys because I believe I walked lots of them until finding a garage with a house to the side. It was grey, wet and all colour washed away from the signs leaving only pastel to show where vibrancy had once held sway. Dogs barked as I knocked on the door and then muttering to replace sounding like curses in Welsh to quell them.

He noticed my dripping onto the seen better days welcome mat, gazed into my eyes as I spoke of breakdowns and to produce emotional tug, women back there a-ways.

Those eyes never faltered in mine as he spoke of ‘No can do’s and come back tomorrows’ though they hardened when his woman insisted he tow us in and for us to use the barn for the night. He drove slowly along the road, lights on now, wary of stray sheep I guess because he spoke not one more word to me.

Back at the car she was asleep, windows all steamed and wet. My new friend tied a rope and pulled us back while her eyelids fluttered in dreams. I moved our stuff to the barn before she woke, then she ran in, only to fall asleep again.

I lay next to her seeing only slight shape against lighter hay. Sometime during the night she woke to talk of tomorrows, better days and then needing to pee.

Later too I felt need, to walk out in dawn, pissing out over mountains of black and green wondering where the next hours would take us.

The car got fixed. We ate, found money at the village bank and set out again.

The rest of the journey was the usual traffic, shitty roadside food and getting lost in strange towns. We stopped in some place and she bought a Welsh doll ‘for luck’ now all smiles again, happy to have adventure as past experience rather than present.

I tried to smile too but my resents built as she complained of my smelling like a damp spaniel, wanting to say if you’d walked miles in the rain and your shoes were still wet you’d smell worse than any spaniel.

But not, what was the point of one more row now that we were on the home leg and she would be dumped soon.

She trying to cheer me up and me being in that pre dumping space of not wanting to be cheered up though feeling hornier by the minute. I Fucked her across the bonnet in a closed off old road now used as a lay by.

She frantic for me to come in case we were discovered, seen by the cars passing and I was past caring, knowing that this would be our last fuck, just putting it to her was enough.

She was silent after that for at least an hour.

 Then started on telling me of the nature of sperm. How sometimes it leaked immediately, like once at her mums when we’d shagged on the way there and she’d felt a damp patch on the sofa after she’d sat, how the dogs sniffed it and she couldn’t stop blushing.

Other times how it would take a day to appear and then not all of it. I listened to this closely as all men do, recognising initiation into the strange rites and rituals that make up post-coital women and wondering, again like all men, why chose now to share these inner thoughts.

Then we were home, she took the photograph, said her goodbyes and left. This isn’t one of those maudlin pieces where death is Greek tragedy, I saw her twice more, once to say goodbye and the next to pick up the doin’s we pass between us to signify relationship; borrowed books, music and clothes. She gave me the photo and said she could see in there how I was planning to leave her. How she was sad we were over and couldn’t I see how good we were together?

I said I didn’t, didn’t think we were and the usual gubbins of how I hoped we could be friends.

I never saw her again.

She fell off her horse, broke her neck and was found dead later by the next horseman along, her horse quietly waiting by nibbling on grass.

I went to the funeral, all dressed in black to be the bad man who’d dumped her, prepared to stay stony faced as her family ignored me.

Worse, they were friendly, polite, speaking their hopes of how we might have gotten back together, didn’t I think we made a great couple?

And I didn’t.

Though now possibly I’m beginning to build on it.

Neil Benbow

©neilbenbow2026