Birthday twins? Darlings, how can you be birthday twins when you're a whole year old than her? Honestly, dears, birthday twins, whatever next? - Freddie Mercury, 27th July, 1969
She couldn't remember that first meeting, that first birthday they shared. Of course she was there, the events having being relayed to her by her father and Roger's mother at least a thousand times - the date, naturally, ingrained in her mind - but still, it was the one event she always struggled to picture. Perhaps it was the deep-rooted trauma of being born that forced her to block the image out, or maybe it was the equally unsettling thought that she had suddenly appeared in this world from nothing, and would leave it as nothing.
The first birthday she could remember, without any prompting, was her fifth, the first she had shared with Roger Taylor, a boy exactly one year her senior, and already her bestest friend. Boisterous, loud and messy, he was an unlikely companion to the demure, painstakingly shy child who had been unable to face the prospect of having a birthday party to herself, yet he remained her most fierce and loyal protector. The faded, time-worn recording of Roger insisting that he would open her birthday presents too as his father attempted to wrestle him away from the petal pink wrapping paper still brought tears to her eyes.
She couldn't remember the moment they became inseparable, the moment their birthdays took that quasi-ritualistic status and custom decreed they would spend it together. As children, it had been an issue of practicality; a way for two impoverished families to split the costs in the financial hardships of the post-war years, but eventually it grew from there. When the parties, clowns and ribbons stopped, the tradition did not. Whether it was sitting around the Taylor's high table laughing over the same story every year - namely, how they met in the tiny King's Lynn hospital the day Jess was born, Roger having swallowed a halfpenny whole on his first birthday - or enjoying a fairly solemn birthday fish supper before the tv-set with her own father, the day was celebrated together. As they reached adolescence, their families filtered into the background, the day becoming reserved for Roger and Jess, safe from the memories of their deceased mothers and authoritarian fathers, protected from the outside world in the confines of Roger Taylor's bedroom, the radio perched between them in the bed sheets as they listened to the "I have a dream speech" and became immersed in that phenomenon known as Beatle mania. Maybe if she'd have paid attention at the time, staring a little left of the paper bag of sweets in the center of the comforter, she'd have noticed their entwined fingers.
Mundane at the time, of little import to the couple who yearned to be a little older and go out drinking, it took all Jess' self-control not to hark back to those moments before the congregation. Whilst their origins were sweet, their ending sweeter still, the story of them couldn't be told without heartache. The bringing home of strangers, of new dates, of old partners; people who were not each other. A strange phenomenon neither understood, but that both indulged in.
A phenomenon that started on her sixteenth birthday.
