I’ve never told anyone this story. It’s not the most pleasant or impressive story in which I feature, and I’m not proud of myself. I was young – that’s my only excuse. It begins with my dad in his arm chair shouting: ‘There’s a bloke at the front door for you. He looks like a garden gnome. Tell him to go away.’

I wasn’t allowed friends round. I was seventeen, but rules were rules and my dad was very clear about us mixing with people in the village.

So, I’ll start with the knock at the front door and my father shouting. The ‘garden gnome’ was one of my best friends, Stevie[1], five feet six, red curls and a wicked grin. He was calling for me to go out with him for the evening and I intended to go, even though my dad did the shouting, the hands on the hips and the don’t you dare bring any trouble here thing.

From then onwards, I’d meet Stevie at the old Rec at the end of the village on Fridays at six o’clock. He’d arrive in an orange mini with his best friend Robbie and the three of us would go off somewhere miles away and stay out for hours.

My mother wasn’t happy either. In her mind, if a seventeen-year-old girl stayed out after ten thirty she was up to no good. At ten-twenty-five, she’d be perfectly well-behaved, but by midnight she’d be a shameless hussy. So when I wandered in at two in the morning, my name had been mangled for hours. It didn’t matter. I didn’t care.

Of course, the three of us were always up to no good: me, Stevie, and Robbie with his dark hair that wouldn’t lie flat. We were musketeers. We had a pledge – all for one and one for all, especially if it came to having fun. We’d drive to see bands in towns miles away – Hawkwind, Genesis, Quo, The Edgar Broughton Band – and come back singing along to the cassette player. We’d often be stopped by a lone police officer who’d ask us all to get out of the car and then he’d search the tiny boot with a torch and show us a sombre face. ‘Does this car belong to you, sir?’ he’d say to Stevie, and Robbie would put on an anxious face and say ‘Why, officer? Are you looking for drugs?’ and we’d burst into peals of laughter.

There were no drugs. Maybe the occasional bottle of cider. The one with the woodpecker on the label. Robbie drank a big bottle by himself one night and felt sick as we were driving along a bouncing country lane on the way home. We stopped so that he could gulp fresh air and he rolled out of the car into a hedge and fell face first into a deep ditch full of water. Stevie and I waited for him in casualty for four hours until he emerged with his head bandaged, and we three giggled all the way home.

Then there was Aiden Bentley’s party. The parents, Major and Mrs Bentley, had taken themselves off to the Canaries for some winter sun and their son threw the manor house doors wide for an orgy. It was a spicy celebration. Claire Dunn and Ollie Phillips occupied the parents’ bedroom all night, writhing under the gaze of several stuffed foxes. Sid Watts was upstairs with his marijuana gang in a sweet-smelling smog, but the coolest people there were me, Stevie and Robbie, huddled together inside the chest freezer with our shoes off, spooning ice cream into each other’s mouths.

Friends marvelled at our ménage à trois. Stevie was my boyfriend, sort of – we held hands and kissed sometimes – but I always had an arm round Robbie and kissed him too. I was in the middle and we three were a concertina. Others were both perplexed and jealous. We didn’t care. We were best friends and we loved each other.

We drove back to Robbie’s for a coffee at one in the morning, drunk on ice cream from Aiden’s fridge – chocolate chip, raspberry ripple and pecan. Robbie’s mother had locked him out. Like my parents, she wasn’t having her wayward child doing as he pleased. So we broke in.

Of course, I was the smallest, so I was heaved onto shoulders so that I could wriggle to a top kitchen window, crawl through the gap and then open the large window for the boys. I dropped silently onto the floor and, before I could look up, Stevie was standing in the sink, laughing. Robbie joined him, two tall shadows chuckling softly, up to their ankles in dirty dishes, and then Robbie said ‘Shit. Otto!’

There was a snaffling, yapping sound and then a full-throated barking. Robbie leapt out of the sink ‘Down, Otto. Down.’ and threw himself to the floor, wrestling his dog. The room flooded with light so bright we were blind for seconds. When vision returned, Robbie’s mum was in the doorway, in dressing gown and curlers, grimacing through her teeth while Robbie writhed on the floor with a growling Chihuahua and Stevie stood in the sink, a curly red-haired joker, flapping his arms and laughing.

We stayed together, the concertina trio, for a year. Winter gigs led to summer festivals and autumn parties. We were inseparable. My parents weren’t pleased that I was out so much, but I told them I was revising with my school friend Helen, the farmer’s daughter.  Of course I wasn’t. She was somewhere else with her serious boyfriend

But with changing seasons came new opportunities. I went out with Biff, a singer in a local rock band. Without ever mentioning it, Stevie, Robbie and I knew it was time for us to move on. We’d beam at each other from a distance in village halls, while Biff howled from the stage and grinned in my direction. Months passed and we were older. Stevie had a new girlfriend. I’d started to date an intellectual who was into politics. I was a different person. The concertina was broken, and the boys drove new girls around in the orange mini. We communicated with smiles, the occasional hugs, but something had changed.

Then I left home to be a student. I was studying English Literature. I was on the train to the city, looking forward, without a second thought, without saying goodbyes. The term began – freshers, new friends – I immersed myself in Alexander Pope and parties, Nabokov and nightclubs, Beckett and live bands. I belonged: I could invite whoever I liked. My dad wasn’t there to tell me his rules.

Then one Saturday they turned up at my door. They drove the orange mini to see me, well over a hundred and fifty miles. I was busy with new friends and Stevie and Robbie tagged along to a house party. They stood out among the pretentious students, a red-haired joker and a shy boy with dark hair that wouldn’t lie flat. I hardly spoke to them all night. When they left at two in the morning, we brushed cheeks and I said ‘I’ll see you soon.’

Of course, I didn’t see them soon. I returned for the Christmas holiday and Helen, the farmer’s daughter, told me the news. They’d been driving home from a party in the orange mini and there had been a huge accident. They’d hit a lorry. Another huge vehicle had hit them at speed from behind. They were sandwiched.

A concertina.

I held it in, like a prayer, like shame. For so many years, I thought of the good times we’d had without dwelling on the unfairness and the tragedy. They were twenty-two years old.

Passing years bring past mistakes into sharp focus, but they also bring understanding and time for reflection. I loved them both but I was young and self-centred. And like any loss, it stays with you. You never get over it. Not really. One day I’ll go to where I think they are laid to rest, and I’ll say goodbye properly.

I still miss them.

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[1] Names are changed…