Many years ago when she was 18 and a new employee at a cybernetics research establishment, we met at my lab, where I was employed dating fossils as a young scientist. She was then called Mary, "the only girl at a boys school". She was thought to be a boy and was sent to one. The boys found out different, she was stripped and tied to the clothes pegs where the headmaster rescued her!
We were friends and dated. We walked together in the directors garden and had our encounter at Cookmere Haven. At the seaside place we swam together, but she was weak and as a stronger swimmer I had to pull her out and ensure she was breathing. Then we had our affair on the beach, in the dunes.
We tested the brakes of her bubble car by me lying in wait as she drove along and then jumping in front of her, in my ignorance the brakes were put out of adjustment.
At her home her father, who had been a Battle of Britain Spitfire Pilot at Kenley, considered me a bad lot and told me not to see her again.
I complied.
She later became an accomplished psychiatrist and her family name meant "potter", to her men and women were clay.
She had a road accident and forgot who she was and because she had had a baby her family rejected her but I recognised her from her photo in the paper and identified her. She had had a thing about "Kim Novak" and insisted her name was "Kim".
She married are fireman and raised a family. Later while working as a psychiatrist a patient head-butted her and further damage was done to her brain. She needed help walking and standing and lost a bit of her faculties.
She then took an interest in Photography and through this I re-connected with her, by this time she was 50, we immediately became friends and she remembered Cookmere Haven. During the summer break in our course, she fell down the stairs at home and died (I understand she had been forced to undergo brain destruction because of what she knew). I was also ill and left the course.
Chris.