‘I fell in love with my best friend’

Ten years ago the Telegraph launched the Cassandra Jardine memorial prize, in honour of our revered features writer who died of cancer in 2012. The competition is open to young female writers and this year the standard was higher than ever. 

Olivia Dunn, aged 21, a student from Hertfordshire, was one of our two runners up. 

I’ve always trusted my gut when it comes to falling in love. That is, when I meet a boy, and think ‘Oh, god’, I know I’m as good as gone. Like a piece of treasure I buried myself, the feeling can lie underground for weeks, or months, or even years, before I dig it up again and reveal it, untouched and gleaming.  

And so, as my chest pounded amidst the chaos of West London traffic, I repeated what I said: ‘You know how I love you? I think I love you’.

He stumbled into a rubbish bin, before pausing, and letting my hand fall loose. ‘I – …’ 

Retrospectively, the romcom director in me can only exalt, ‘The bathos! The suspense!’ But at the time, I felt a stream of shame flowing through my body, rising up to my cheeks, whirling towards the pit of my stomach. Because this moment was meant to be my moment, or rather, a reworking of the New Year’s Eve scene from When Harry Met Sally, when the two friends realise they’re meant to end up together, and Auld Lang Syne plays as balloons drop in the background.  

And, for a moment, I was certain that it wouldn’t work out the way it does in the film, because of course, that’s not what real life is; a nuanced, perfectly pitched narrative arc, with heart-wrenchingly tender lines supplied by Nora Ephron.  

Julia Roberts, in a recent interview with The New York Times, highlighted the craftsmanship upon which good romantic comedies depend, pointing out that ‘You don’t see all the effort and puppet strings because it’s fun and sweet and people are laughing and kissing and being mischievous.’ Indeed, the best films construct serendipity, rolling a weighted dice only to celebrate sincerely when the players win big. For 90 minutes, the motions of the universe are not dismissed as arbitrary happenings; rather, they are exalted as the work of Fate. And as the music fades, and the credits roll, we are left with the sweet, lingering promise that some things do happen for a reason. 

Growing up in an all-girls environment, where boys were amorphous entities, and romance as fleeting as the song used to signal the end of a disco, I looked to romantic comedies as the blueprint for my future; a how-to manual for a life filled with sincerity and connection and grand gestures in the rain. I hoped that if I laid my tracing paper just right, transferring the plotted points from one map to another, that I too would end up on a one-way path to paradise.   

The alternative option was to take advice from older girls as the gospel truth. Weird (and misleading) kissing techniques, hasty fumblings in a field during sports day; the best ways to continue a text conversation after four months had passed without seeing one another in person – these were all chapters contributed to a collective anthology, ‘How to Meet a Boy, and Maybe Generate Feelings Beyond Vague Intrigue to Keep it Going Until the Holidays when You Might Actually Meet Again’.  

In comparison to this backstreet library of folklore and fearmongering, romcoms were a well-worn collection of fairytales, which retained their magic long after the apparition of a crush faded away. It was to their fantasy worlds I would retreat every Friday night, where men with floppy hair and Hawaiian shirts roamed; where the weather was only bad if it aided narrative development, and conflicts could be resolved through reworked Shakespeare sonnets or karaoke alone.   

Even when the harshness of romantic reality eventually threatened to encroach, I remained, at heart, an optimist. Or more specifically, a squatter in Richard Curtis’s London. The greatest compliment my ex ever paid me was to compare a dinner party with my group of friends to a deleted scene from Four Weddings and a Funeral. The kitchen table was laden with lasagne and anecdotes; the bright overhead lights fading to an already-nostalgic golden haze, whilst tendrils of smoke entwined with the stars beyond the back porch.  

During the first heady months of our post A-Level gap year, we delighted in such scenes of domesticity, playing grown-ups in a world which stretched no further than the off-licence around the corner. Each night, aglow with intimacy and booze, we would stave off reality, and retreat into our own method performance of adulthood. Words could cascade freely in downpours of joy and fear and passion, mingled with giggles and flashes of lightning bickers. ‘Friendship is the purest form of love’, someone declaimed one night, brandishing a spoon whilst the pasta boiled over. Sharing glasses and glances around the cramped kitchen table, safe in the home we had all helped to build, it was impossible to disagree. 

And so, whilst the part of leading man remained vacant, it was this ensemble cast who took centre stage in my love story. Bright and brilliant, tenacious and sincere, they showed me what real love can feel like. It is having somebody else put aloe vera on the spots you can’t reach yourself, and doing the crossword together sprawled on the floor; it’s skimming stones under a Southbank moon, and rewatching movies because the other hasn’t seen it. This love knows where to put things in their kitchen once the dishwasher has finished, and how best to get them onto the dancefloor. The love I have for them is everywhere: at each stop on the District Line from Blackfriars to East Putney; submerged in the depths of the cool Aegean sea; on sticky pub tables, and train platforms in the rain.  

And unlike the games and tricks and façades of romantic love, which I had come to take for granted, there are no strings attached. They are them, and I am me, and that has been enough to guarantee a happily ever after. The shot may have faded, and the cinema lights turned up, but the story still goes on. 

The permanence, or at least, persistence of my friendships goes a long way in explaining why, and how, I stopped trying to find my someone. With a whole village to cheer and chastise me, to laugh at, and to weep with, my heart and house finally felt full. I was content. There was no need to cram another person in, even for a night. 

It was in this state of tranquility that the gut feeling I mentioned earlier first emerged. It was vague at first; an ersatz sparkle in the mud. But then I probed, and soon struck solid gold, exactly where I thought it would be. The most overdone cliché in the playbook. 

I realised, or rather accepted, that I was in love with my best friend, Will.  

Just like in a romcom, the once meaninglessly plotted points in our common sky came to form a constellation. Once, he was just a friend of a friend with a Cheshire-cat grin, and a questionable sense of rhythm. Then he ascended into an acquaintance who it was always fun to hang out with at a party. And then, the person who followed through on a pact, made in no fit state, to go to Paris together. And on and on we went, becoming so interlinked that the idea of us actually being together seemed almost tainting. Because that would introduce the threat of an ending. And I wanted us, unlike past dating supernovas, to last. 

But equally I had seen My Best Friend’s Wedding, and had no desire to participate in a live-action remake. The paradox that I might lose him, all because I was scared of losing him became unbearable to consider. And so I told him. Clumsily, incoherently, I told him how I felt.

There was no sudden burst of sunshine or applause from passers-by; no fireworks or tears. A single look from him, and I knew that it was right. Pushed together by the changing traffic lights, we rejoined hands, and took a step forward, side by side.

It has been over a year now since that scene on the street took place. Over a year since the dizzying montage of our first kiss, our first date, and our not-so-big reveal to friends and family, who had their suspicions long before. But unlike the brief ecstasy of a firework crush, or the blind adoration of puppy love, it still feels considered, stable, true. 

Being with Will is different to everything I’ve known before. Rash decisions and heady gestures have given way to the understated happiness which comes from having someone to lean against on the Tube; to send song recommendations to; to split pudding with. During her discussion of About Time on Love Stories with Dolly Alderton, Emma Freud poignantly articulated the beauty to be found in this everyday kind of love:

‘It’s just the fact that you snuggle into your pillow in the mornings when you don’t want to get out of bed; it’s the way that you brush your teeth, and the spittle fills into the sink – it’s just the absolute everydayness of being with someone that is the stuff of life, and that’s the bit to be revered. That’s the bit that if you only had a day left to live, you wouldn’t say ‘put me on an aeroplane and give me lunch at the Eiffel Tower.’ You’d say, ‘let me just go for a walk, eat in a café, and look at you, asleep in your bed’.

That is a love story to live by, as aspirational as its more overblown counterparts. To recognise the significance of insignificant moments is to celebrate the idiosyncrasies of love; how unique, yet oddly universal it can be. Love in all its forms is flawed and messy, but unmistakably pure. It is endearingly persistent in its affirmation of the strength of human feeling, in spite of all that seeks to break it. It is fragile, yet unfathomably tough. It is boundless, as present in the first swoop of a stomach as in the opening beats of a film score. A promise made, with blind faith placed in its fulfilment – that is Love.