The Lost Boy - Chapter 9 – part one - A Pocket of Calm

The move to Bournemouth.

I’m pretty sure my girlfriend had a job lined up before we moved. Something at a fitness centre or a sports club — I can’t quite remember exactly. It’s strange, isn’t it? How some memories cling like glue while others slip through like smoke.

Some things from years ago feel like yesterday. Some feel like a lifetime. I’ve often wondered what decides that. What part of us chooses which moments get stored like photographs and which get blurred out like a badly developed film.

Feelings have a lot to do with it — that much I know. The moments that stir us the most, the ones that leave an imprint somewhere inside, seem to have a way of sticking around. But even that isn’t always consistent. I’ve got good memories that are sharp as day, hazy traumatic ones that my mind’s blurred out, and others I’ve replayed so many times over the years that I could relive them now with almost unnerving clarity.

Anyway — with her having that job, we had some sort of stability to land on. A bit of money coming in. I’m sure I didn’t have anything lined up, but that didn’t bother me. Back then my mindset was simple and maybe a little naive: “When you want a job, you’ll get one.”

And like so many other big moments in my life, I don’t actually remember the move itself. No boxes. No vans. No last-minute packing chaos. Just fragments. Little scraps of memory.

One of those fragments is linked to that job of hers — because I used to walk to meet her from work.

Her job wasn’t close by, and neither of us drove, so most evenings I’d set off to meet her. That walk has stuck with me in a way that a lot of other things from that time haven’t.

It wasn’t an extraordinary walk — nothing dramatic ever happened. But it was steady. Familiar. It became a rhythm. I can still see parts of it in my mind if I try: a stretch of high street, a Papa John’s, a school, a line of trees.

I can almost feel the way the air sat at the end of the day — that quiet time when everything starts to slow down a little. She’d come out smiling, tired from work, and we’d fall into that easy back-and-forth conversation that comes from feeling safe in someone’s company. We’d laugh, take the long way sometimes, and for that walk, the world felt a bit more normal — or at least what I thought normal should feel like.

Looking back now, maybe that’s why it stands out. It wasn’t loud or dramatic. It was calm. And calm was rare for me then.

Where we lived, the people were lovely for the most part. It was a house full of friends — and their mum. A kind of makeshift extended family, everyone just trying to get through their own lives but doing it together.

We didn’t have much, but there was always company. There was always someone about. Some nights it was laughter. Some nights quiet. But it felt like a little pocket of the world where we all just existed together without too many questions.

And it’s funny, but what stands out most from that time isn’t the big moments — it’s the tiniest, most ordinary ones.

Like the time I got “told off” for drinking milk out of a glass because it’s harder to wash milk out of a glass than a mug. It wasn’t even really a telling off. More of a casual request. But I felt it. I felt it like I was being scolded.

That’s just part of me. It still is, in some ways. I’ve worked on it over the years, but it hasn’t disappeared entirely. When someone tells me what to do, something inside bristles. I want to push back. Do the opposite. Even when I know it’s not someone having a go — even when I know it’s just a sentence.

Back then, it was worse. I remember actually feeling annoyed about the glass thing. Thinking, “What the fuck? Glass or mug — they both need washing.”

It’s almost ridiculous now when I look back. To have wasted energy on something so tiny. I could’ve just smiled, said “no worries,” and carried on. But my ego back then was a loud one. It didn’t need much of a spark to flare up.

Then there’s the tuna pasta bake. One of my friends making it in the kitchen, throwing raw red onion on top right at the end. I remember standing there thinking, “What the hell is he doing?” Then I tried it. And loved it. It’s funny the little details that lodge themselves in your mind, outlasting the bigger stuff.

And then there was Magic — the card game. The lads loved it. They’d go off to get weed and pick up packs of Magic cards from the same guy, buzzing with excitement about what they might pull. I used to watch and laugh, finding the whole thing absurd.

Years later, I ended up spending a small fortune on Pokémon cards and understood exactly what the buzz was about. I get it now. It makes me smile to think about it.

The rest of that time sits in my memory like a haze — warm and soft around the edges. A blur of smoky sheds, games, house parties, trips into town, walks to the beach. Nothing stands out sharply, but the feeling of it does.

Bournemouth has always held a special place in my memory. Not just this early part, but most of my time there. Back then, I only saw the surface story — friends, fun, laughter, chaos. But now, with hindsight, I can also see what was moving quietly underneath.

The emotions I didn’t have words for yet. The parts of me that were stirring, unsettled. It’s taken me years to even begin understanding some of that. But this chapter was a big part of it.