Unbreakable: My life with Paul – a story of extraordinary courage and love

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‘Well,’ said Nicky, getting warmed up straight away, ‘they’ve been together since school, really. She’s a lovely girl, but they argue all the time. They often fall out before Paul goes away to tournaments and by the time he gets back, they’ve forgotten what they’ve argued about and get all loved up again. Paul’s been around a bit but they always end up back together.’

‘She’s very pretty,’ I said, and a voice in the back of my mind told me that if they’d been going out together since school, that wasn’t very long as they were still just kids now.

‘Isn’t she?’ answered Nicky, before going off onto another topic. I could hear her talking but, to my surprise, found that my mind had wandered back to the girl sitting beside Paul. She was kneeling on her seat, talking to someone behind her, and I could see that she really was pretty, with long hair and big brown eyes. She and Paul looked good together.

When we got to the club in town, everyone piled out of the minibus, paid their admission money, and went inside. As usual, Nicky and her friends made themselves at home by pulling lots of tables together and we all settled down in one place. There were long, velour couches against the back wall, with glass tables in front, and then individual chairs on the other side. I got myself a seat on one of the couches, quite a few spaces down from Paul and Gemma, and started drinking.

Before long, Gemma and Paul were arguing. Not loudly or badly, but enough that a few of us noticed. ‘God, Paul,’ shouted Nicky above the music. ‘Do you two ever manage to get through a whole night without falling out?’ She dragged me up to dance and by the time we got back, things seemed to have calmed down between Paul and Gemma – although only to the extent that they weren’t talking at all.

I didn’t know either of them particularly, so I couldn’t make any judgement about what was going on, but I did think that I wouldn’t be able to carry on like that if he was my boyfriend. I liked things settled and straightforward – I’d run a mile from complications. To be fair, neither of them seemed particularly bothered, which presumably meant that this was just a pattern for them. I didn’t really care because I was having a good time with a few drinks inside me, and there were plenty of people to dance with.

The night went quickly, with nothing much different from any other night out, but at one point when I came back from the loo, I walked straight into the middle of Paul and his girlfriend having another of their rows. There were lots of hissed comments to each other as well as some shouting, and I slipped into my seat beside Nicky, who was watching it all with interest.

‘Nicky,’ I said, trying to get her attention away from the argument, ‘do you think my skirt’s too short?’ ‘Is that possible?’ she said, glancing at it. ‘Come on, Lindsey, you’re young, you’re gorgeous – stop worrying.’ I tried to ignore the continued bickering from the side of me, at the same time as pulling my top further up and my skirt further down.

As I busied myself with my clothes, the very public, very heated row between Gemma and Paul ended with her storming off to dance without him. Nicky draped herself across me to talk to her cousin. ‘Paul Hunter!’ she said. ‘When you two are like this, I can’t believe you’re supposed to be each other’s first loves! You’re on and off all the time! What’s it about now?’

‘Can’t remember,’ said Paul, despite the fact that the argument had still been going on minutes before. ‘I’ve got other things on my mind.’ With that, he leaned over to me, smiled a bit and said, ‘Are there any more like you at home, but a bit younger?’

What a cheeky little rat! ‘Are you saying that I’m nice but old?’ I asked him. He looked at me all serious for a minute, then winked and went back to chatting to his friend on the other side.

Nicky was laughing, having heard it all, and I said to her, ‘I feel self-conscious enough tonight about what I’m wearing without someone telling me I’m old as well!’ She kept laughing and got me to have a giggle when she said, ‘Oh, you’re ancient, Linz, absolutely ancient! You should have said and you might have got a discount on your entry fee here – maybe they give cheap rates for pensioners!’

We all headed back to the minibus soon after. When Gemma got on, she made a point of not sitting beside Paul and I was left on my own when Nicky decided to go and keep him company. While I was sitting there, I kept thinking about what he had said to me – and every time I did, I couldn’t help but smile. When I remembered Paul saying that I was looking good when I first got on the bus that night, I had an even bigger smile.

We all got dropped off at our houses in the early hours of the morning and when I got in, I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened that night. I knew it wasn’t much, but Paul Hunter was so different to other boys that I had known that I had to admit he had made an impression on me. He was certainly on my radar now. I was used to Dave being attentive to me all the time, predictable even, but there was something about the way Paul had looked at me and joked with me that had already got under my skin. This was a boy with a lot of life in him – and that was something I was beginning to be drawn towards.

It was another few weeks before I met him again. Nicky and I were fast becoming best friends who wanted to meet up most nights. Neither of us could afford to go clubbing all the time, so we hung around each other’s houses a lot; fortunately we both had friendly parents who always made us welcome.

All the Hunter cousins lived on the same estate and Paul and Nicky’s family were especially close, going on holidays and for nights out together. She looked after him, and had done since they were kids; in turn, he adored her. He used to come round to Nicky’s mum’s house all the time and, over the next three or four months, I started to get to know him a bit better because of that. I’d be there to see Nicky, he’d pop round to see his cousin and auntie, and we’d just hang out together casually. He was still going out with Gemma – they’d got back together the day after falling out at that nightclub – and they were stuck in the pattern of falling out then making up over and over again.

I did like him – there was no doubt about that; and I was a bit attracted to him, I suppose, but I would have liked him anyway even without that. Paul was just great fun to be around. He lit up any room he was in, and everyone thought the world of him.

When he was round at Nicky’s house, we’d all have a laugh together. We’d watch films, eat loads, have a natter and muck about. Looking back on it, we weren’t more than kids even though we were all working (I had to accept that snooker was a job now!), and we got into the habit of play fighting. Nicky and Paul would shove each other around, and I got drawn in. We spent hours in Nicky’s bedroom or their front room rolling about the floor together, and, because they were family, I never thought much of it. I was close to Paul without there being any major stress on our blossoming relationship. In fact, I didn’t even recognize it as that.

Away from Paul, I was having a great time with friends but I hadn’t been seeing any particular lad seriously, preferring to just have a dance and a drink when I felt like it rather than rushing into another long-term relationship. On top of that, as I got to know Paul more and more, I was finding him easier and more fun to be around than any other boy I knew at that time. Because he was clearly still with Gemma despite their on-off behaviour, I could allow myself to have a little daydream about him without having to do anything about it, since he was spoken for.

One day, just as summer was beginning, I was round at Nicky’s house. We were sitting out in the garden with her mum, having a nice cold glass of wine, when Nicky said, ‘Here, Mum, tell Lindsey what you were talking about earlier.’ Her mum shook her head and got the giggles, but it didn’t stop Nicky. ‘You like our Paul, don’t you?’ she asked. I tried to stay very nonchalant and said that I hadn’t really thought about it, but they claimed it was obvious.

‘Come on, Linz!’ said Nicky, and she shoved me just the way Paul did when we mucked about. ‘What about all that play fighting you always do?’ she asked. As she said that, Nicky kept pushing me just like Paul did, and I collapsed in a heap of giggles, knowing that she was right – we did that sort of thing a lot. ‘But you do it too!’ I protested. ‘Yeah,’ she admitted, ‘but we do it because we’ve done it since we were kids – you and Paul do it because it’s a chance to have a cuddle and a sly feel without admitting it!’

Slowly, it dawned on me that I did like him, but I didn’t admit it to them. Not then.

How could I? He was still someone else’s boyfriend.