Black coffee and laughter lines

The last night before I leave anywhere is always a strange one. Always invigorating. Exhausting. Filled with no sleep and black coffee in the early morning to get me aboard the train or the bus or the plane out and away from wherever it is to the next moment. There's the dilemma of packing - left til the last possible minute - before everything is crammed into splitting bags and broken suitcases to be lugged around the country. My breakfast always seems to consist of whatever is left over in the fridge - unappetisingly I remember beginning a trip to Rome a few years ago full of frozen brocolli. Maybe its harking back to my Grandfathers habit of feeding us ice cream for breakfast whenever we left Norway to return home.

This time there was no desire for breakfast - just black coffee and the prospect of that 9 hour train journey. This time I had packed the evening before. But this final night was indeed a strange one - blurry and drink filled. That night gave me a sensation of stepping back and watching the years closing up to incorporate and reflect back on each other - it was like watching separate Becky's from different moments of my life in St Andrews remembering each other. The person I was four years ago with my crazy Annie hair - short and permed and bleached from the sun of South America, the Becky who wanted to be everywhere and everything all at once - who was desperate and greedy for life and people - and yet so unsure of anything very much. The Becky who leapt without asking why and felt herself to be so independent that she didn't really need anyone else. And then there was the Becky of now who feels smaller, sturdier and even more aware of her uncertainty. And that night was rooted in that Becky and the potentials she posessed. And the risks she might follow.

It was not just me that I saw of course, I seemed to stand back and see the rest of us - each person that I've known in this claustrophobic grey village by the sea.

As the train pulled away carrying me and Sabina with it our friendship seemed to stretch itself outwards, expand beyond the confines of that place. Her familiar face seemed different. I looked at her, sat in comfortable companionable chatter beside me and suddenly she was an adult. We have lived together for three of the last four years now. I have watched her through decisions I have hated her for making, she has watched me through adventures she has known would end in failure. On the GNER train from Leuchars to Birmingham we sat, side by side, eating tangerines. I saw us as the people on the train saw us. Two young women, old suddenly.

Looking around the night before I saw it too. All of us have lines on our faces - around our eyes. The people I've known here are more beautiful the older they become. We seem to be more forgiving, more compassionate about failure. I suppose because we've all done it. We've all had our guilty moments, our regrets at something painful and silly and hurtful. About other things we're less compassionate, less forgiving. Selfishness. Lack of compassion. An inability to understand or put yourself in someone else's shoes. An inability to compromise.

I sound as though we're fifty and about ready to die. It's not that. But you see, in part, it was that. Because that night and watching all those Beckys of before was just the part of it. There were also all those Beckys of the future. And all of those beautiful lines that we are growing into the contours of our faces.