From Coal Dust to Stardust. Gary Cockerill

dad’s a building contractor, does a bit of work with my old man. You’ve got no chance, mate.’

      I turned and grinned at him, then went straight over to where Kim was standing and introduced myself, with Robert trailing sulkily along in my wake.

      Kim was a year younger than me and lived in a village called Bessacarr that was only a few miles from where I lived but might as well have been on a different continent. I had known nearly all of the girls of my age in Armthorpe since infants school so there was an air of mystery about Kim, an alluring sense of the unknown that seemed almost … exotic. She knew nothing about me either, and I really liked the fact that I could reinvent myself when I was with her. I can’t say it had exactly been love at first sight, but cycling home from the party that night I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

      Although we hadn’t had a kiss that first evening – despite my best efforts – over the next few weeks Kim started to hang around with my group of mates and we gradually became closer. I knew that Robert fancied her too, and there was a bit of friendly rivalry over which of us could pull her first, but walking her home one night I took my chance, leaning in for a kiss, and from that moment on we were inseparable.

      Kim lived a half hour bike ride from my house, but I would bomb round to see her on my racer every afternoon after school. Not only did I love spending time with her, I really enjoyed going to her house too. Her family lived in a big detached house on a private lane – much posher than our little bungalow – and I got on brilliantly with her mum and little sister Clara. Her dad was away working most of the time so I would be in my element, surrounded by females.

      We had a really sweet, romantic relationship, always sending cards and leaving little love notes for each other, having cosy nights in watching videos or occasionally going out to local pubs and restaurants on double dates with our best friends Joanne and Martin. We had sex for the first time on her sixteenth birthday and – it being the first time I had slept with someone I had actually loved – it felt really special. I was experiencing that heady falling-in-love high of wanting to spend every moment with someone and I began to think that Kim could be The One.

      * * *

      One of the things that first attracted me to Kim was that she was a real girly girl; we bonded over our mutual interest in fashion and style. After we had been going out for a year or so she started highlighting her hair and experimenting with her look, and it was around this time that she first asked if I could have a go at doing her makeup. Although I had been sketching women’s faces for years, I hadn’t had much hands-on experience with lipstick and eyeliner beyond those early experiments on my sister’s dolls, but my artistic talent and lifelong obsession with glamour was more than enough to get me started.

      Well, after that there was no stopping me. I’d transform Kim into Madonna from her ‘True Blue’ video one day, Cyndi Lauper in ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ the next. Stylewise, the Eighties were all about bright, clashing make-up, trashy clothes and frizzy perms – and I certainly didn’t hold back in those early makeovers. The results are pretty horrific in hindsight, although it seemed fabulously cool and creative at the time.

      By the time I started college Kim had blossomed from a pretty girl into a stunning young woman with a gorgeous figure, and when I needed a model for the photography module of my course she was the obvious choice. She had left school by this point and was doing office temp work while she decided on her future direction, so when she turned out to be extremely photogenic and a natural in front of the camera it got her thinking about modelling as a possible career.

      As she was a good few inches too short for the catwalk, I suggested she might think about glamour instead; I remember showing her a picture of Linda Lusardi in the Sun and telling her: ‘You could so easily do that.’ Kim just had the right smile, the right look – that magical blend of sexy yet wholesome essential for Page 3 models. The thought of my girlfriend getting her kit off in front of the camera honestly didn’t bother me; having been at stage school I knew it was just a performance. In fact the idea seemed impossibly glamorous to both of us, and I happily took a few topless photos of her that she sent to a local agency in Doncaster who then snapped her up.

      I proposed to Kim on her 17th birthday. We had gone for a romantic curry at our favourite restaurant, the Indus in Doncaster, and I popped the question after we’d finished our dinner. I’d like to say that I hid a diamond in her saag aloo then toasted our future together with vintage champagne while a waiter played ‘Endless Love’ on the sitar, but the truth is rather less impressive. After our plates had been cleared away I got down on one knee and sheepishly presented her with a Cubic Zircona ring that I’d bought at Elizabeth Duke in Argos. Nevertheless, it was an incredibly special moment for both of us and we were in floods of tears as Kim sobbed out ‘Yes!’

      When we told our parents they pretty much laughed it off. They knew we were much too young, but I’m sure they assumed it would eventually fizzle out and so, to their credit, they didn’t kick up a fuss. Good job too: if they had, we might well have done something daft like running off to Gretna Green to get married – and God knows how that would have turned out.

      As far as Kim was concerned, there was never any reason to question my heterosexuality. I remember one day we were watching some frothy American drama on TV when I nudged her and said, ‘That actor’s really good-looking, isn’t he?’

      Kim made some non-committal noise and continued watching.

      ‘Don’t you think it’s a bit odd, babe,’ I persisted, ‘for me to think a guy is attractive?’

      I was genuinely surprised she hadn’t picked up on what I had just said; deep down, perhaps I was even hoping she might guess my secret.

      This time she stopped looking at the TV and turned to me, confusion etched across her face.

      ‘Why would that be odd, Gary?’ she asked. ‘I tell you if I think a girl’s pretty and it’s just the same thing, isn’t it?’

      ‘Um, yeah, I suppose,’ I said.

      And that was the closest we came in our whole six-year relationship to discussing my sexuality. Even towards the end, when I was having such a struggle to maintain the façade of being straight, she never seemed to have any inkling of the fact that I was, in effect, living a lie. My effeminate side clearly hadn’t gone unnoticed by others though …

      It was a Sunday morning and Kim and I had taken her Jack Russell Toby for a walk around the boating lake in Doncaster. It’s a nice little park, well maintained and popular with families, and on this particular day it was busy with parents pushing prams, young kids running around and elderly couples enjoying a post-lunch stroll in the sunshine. We were about halfway around the lake when I spotted a kid who I’d gone to school with sitting on the wall with a gang of mates.

      His name was Ted Peters and he was seriously bad news. He was always being suspended and constantly having run-ins with the police; everyone was scared of him – even the teachers. He even looked like trouble: well over six foot and built like a brick shithouse with close-cropped black hair and a jagged scar right down the side of his face. At school I’d always given him a wide berth and he’d pretty much ignored me in return; even so, when I spotted him in the distance on this particular day alarm bells started ringing and I immediately said to Kim we should take a different path.

      ‘Don’t be silly, babe,’ she scoffed. ‘He won’t even remember who you are.’

      I figured she was right; after all I hadn’t seen him for a few years. But as we walked towards him it became clear that he certainly had remembered me – and the uneasy truce we’d had at school clearly no longer held.

      ‘Oi, poofter!’ Ted shouted, nudging his mates, and then deliberately mispronouncing my name. ‘Cockerel, you fucking nancy boy! Cock-a-doodle-doo!’

      His mates started laughing and crowing along with him as he jumped off the wall and sauntered towards us.

      I was instantly on my guard, but was reassured by the fact that it was broad daylight and there were so many people around us. I grabbed Kim’s hand and started to walk