I’ve been someone’s dirty secret, here’s what it feels like

A scene from BBC's Normal People — Normal People was released on BBC this week (Picture: BBC/Element Pictures/Hulu)

I needn’t have worried. My fears melted away as soon as I settled in to binge-watch the series, which I consumed with the same voracity as the book.

Unexpectedly, though, alongside the vague relatability that I experienced the first time round, the TV show shook up memories that had long lain dormant.

I soon realised that interwoven with the narrative was my own experience of being the girlfriend of someone who didn’t want people to know about me. And Marianne and Connell’s unfolding story forced me to confront the imprint that it left on me, even years later.

On day one of my A-Level French course, our new teacher shared a pre-arranged seating plan. Aged 16 and, like every other person in the room, I was new to the community sixth form college, which filtered in students from all the schools in a 10-mile radius.

Looking around nervously as I entered the room, there wasn’t a single face I recognised. I quickly sat down in my designated seat and introduced myself to my neighbours (in our best French of course).

The boy to my right was called Joe*, and was incredibly cute. I noticed his smile as soon as we first found each other’s gaze. He’d come from a different comprehensive school, five or six miles away from mine, and like my 16-year-old self, was obsessed with learning and speaking foreign languages.

Early on, we found that we were both also studying Spanish, although with different teachers, and shared a habit for messing around in class, as well as distracting each other instead of doing our work.

From the beginning we had a very playful relationship, and would always take the piss out of one another or try to get the other in trouble.

He was better at French than me, though I hated to admit it, but my Spanish was much stronger. We helped to patch up each other’s educational deficiencies. And we laughed.

Soon the edges of our social circles begin to bleed into each other. We’d spend free periods together, see each other at parties and started making plans to spend time together.

As one of the older people in my year, I passed my driving test comparatively early, and began routinely driving the 20-minute detour to drop him off ‘on my way home’.

We’d sit for hours outside his house. It was easy in the way that most young romances are — fuelled by a mutual craving that pulled us towards each other like opposite ends of a magnet.

But it was innocent too; lacking any real emotional experience, we were both at once fearful of these new feelings — and of the possibility that the other didn’t feel the same.

Rose when she was 16, with her friend. — Rose (right) at 16 with her friend (Picture: Rose Stokes)

We would spend hours on the phone deep into the night, whispering so our parents wouldn’t hear, talking and talking and talking — and then wake up the next day to go on long drives to deserted car parks where we’d sit for hours playing songs that reminded us of each other.

That was how I first discovered Boyz II Men.

From the off, we hid our relationship in plain sight. I’m not sure we ever discussed it, but I knew instinctively that he didn’t want anyone to know. An initial failure to disclose our intimacy to other people soon became habitual.

My parents had recently split and as the only child left at home, in hindsight my desperation for stability and comfort made me overlook irregularities in our relationship. I craved his attention badly and didn’t have the requisite emotional experience or awareness to understand that this had very little to do with him — and much more to do with me.

It was on a Spanish trip abroad that our growing affection tipped over into gestures of physical intimacy. Hands held here and there. Hips squeezed from behind as he walked past. Hugs that lingered way past their expiration date. Stolen kisses on each other’s cheeks when no one was looking.

I fell asleep on his shoulder on the flight home and felt we’d truly crossed a threshold. We were now boyfriend and girlfriend. In all but name.

The words ‘I love you’ began to bounce gently back and forth between us like a ping-pong ball. It felt like the most natural thing in the world.

I waited and waited for him to acknowledge this shift. I found new and creative ways to force the question. I assumed total responsibility for the burden of the issue and tried to find ways around it. I made friends with his friends, so that their respect for me would inspire enough pride in me for him to want to tell them.

Sometimes when searching inside myself for answers, I would even allow myself to believe they were behaviours designed to preserve our love, rather than confront the harsh reality of the situation: that he was ashamed of me.

He didn’t want people to know we were together because he felt shame. He was ashamed of loving me. And in my innocence, I allowed myself to absorb that shame until it was no longer just his, but mine too.

At the time, my self-esteem was so low that I didn’t see any fault with it — I was ashamed of myself too. My shame recognised his shame — as if they almost coalesced.

Eventually, after months of blaming myself for actions and behaviours I had no control over, Tom*, one of Joe’s friends that I had grown close to in the pursuit of furthering our relationship, made a move on me at a party.

He didn’t know anything. It wasn’t a betrayal. But his confidence in wanting to publicly claim me as his was powerful enough to make me realise that I could no longer live under the weight of Joe’s shame.

It didn’t even matter to me that I didn’t fancy Tom. His confidence was powerfully seductive. I distanced myself with Joe and hooked up with Tom in secret — before realising that I didn’t want that either. I didn’t want to be with either of them.

At first Joe was angry at my decision to distance myself — then he was sad. Our second year at college was punctuated by intense hormonal outbursts in the corridors and outside pubs. We never really recovered from it.

It hurt a lot at first, and then less.

We went to different universities and lost touch. A few years later, Joe wrote to me on Facebook to tell me that he’d found out about Tom and I, describing how much it had hurt him. We exchanged messages back and forth — it was the most honest conversation we’d ever had.

We were both in new relationships then, but every couple of years since, when life and circumstance has forced our paths to cross anew, we’ve taken long and meandering walks down memory lane.

He’s apologised sincerely so many times for the foolishness of youth — telling me it was simply that and nothing to do with my appearance, which is what I thought at the time. I’ve apologised too.

I think it’s fair to say that both of us have allowed ourselves to let the words ‘what if’ creep into our thoughts every now and then. Is it too late?

I often wonder what would have happened if I’d refused to swallow his shame. If I’d had the honesty or courage to ask — or demand — that he recognise me.

Would it have saved me from years of chronic self-doubt in the relationships that followed? Would it have made me like myself more? Or less happy to accept the mistreatment of others?

I’ll never know. But I do know that it took me another decade to understand that shame has no place in healthy, happy love.

And yet watching Marianne and Connell made me wonder how many other relationships slip through our fingers because of things we’re not able to admit to ourselves — or each other? Not because we don’t want to necessarily — but because we don’t know how.

It also reminded me to keep trying. I suppose that’s all we can do really.

*Names changed.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin @metro.co.uk