No-one could remember whose idea it was, but its genesis was moot anyway. There were four of us going to a music festival – two guys and two women – but we had only managed to book one “family room” at a local budget hotel. One double bed, one single, and one child’s single bed. So the girls had to stay in “the smelly boys’ room”, as one of them had put it.
Ours was an odd group. There was Chris, a mostly-harmless nerd with a unkempt black hair, a genius level IQ, and an aversion to social cues; and Ellie, extroverted, hilarious and oddly naive. The life of the party and when we’d been at school, just one of the boys.
Or at least, she had been when we were at school. We were in our mid-20s now and while she was still every bit as funny and charming as ever, she’d blossomed into a beautiful young woman and shaken off both the insecurities that made her dress like a 14-year-old skater, and the naivete that was so often a source of entertainment.