Foreword

In this fictitious story, I have changed the names and dates to protect innocent people, others are characters taken from my book, “Paranoid Schizophrenia, My Label My Life,” to provide continuity.

Innocence Meets Vulnerability

 How we started our relationship

I met Carol Xia Tian, meaning Summer, after a free lunchtime concert at the University of Southampton’s Turner Sims Concert Hall. We’d both gone down to the stage to examine the harpsichord that had been used in the performance. On the way out we continued chatting, talking about our interests in music. I felt I would like to get to know her better so I invited Carol to join me and Vũ, my Vietnamese friend for our regular Friday meal at my home that evening. I was surprised by her eager response. She jumped at the opportunity. We made arrangements to meet. I would show her the bus route.

She didn’t live far from the University and was on her way home for lunch. I walked with her as far as the bus terminus. She waited with me for my bus allowing us to continue our conversation.

After I mentioned I hadn’t eaten yet, she invited me to have lunch with her. I’d told her not to worry,

“I usually eat after 3:30 pm, the time I reach home when I come to the concerts by bus.”

“No,” she insisted, “come home with me and have something to eat.”

At the house she shared with three other Chinese students, two male, one female, Carol made us each a plate of spiced pork mince with noodles. Although I was still a strict vegetarian and the meal was too fatty for my taste, I was too hungry to turn down her kind offer of hospitality. I surprisingly relished every mouthful. It was only years later that I started to eat pork again. I had not been eating pork for a long time, a throw back from my days in the Worldwide Church of God. It seemed I had missed a lot.

My hunger assuaged, I help Carol wash the dishes. I was shocked to see the squalid, messy kitchen that the students shared. Dirty dishes lay scattered everywhere. The floor was dangerously wet with spilled water. I couldn’t even see where it was coming from.

Dishes done, she left me in their equally messy lounge to work, while she went upstairs to her room to study. Fortunately, I had brought work with me, a habit I had made, to occupy myself when I arrived early for the concerts. Being able to sit and work, using their Wireless Internet connection was a convenient luxury I couldn’t have enjoyed in the University’s library. Only bona fide students had that privilege. Waiting and working at saved me a trip back home and a second rip to fetch her again for our meal. I didn’t mind the inconvenience of working in their lounge in exchange for the time I’d saved. We spent the rest of the afternoon before we needed to take the bus to Eastleigh for supper.

I had already cleared a place for myself between empty appliance boxes which littered the two seater sofa and surrounding floor space. The room smelled strongly of discarded cigarette butts, unemptied ashtrays, other dirty plates, abandoned bowls of food, rice and noodles as well as leftover pieces of pizza from previous meals.

That’s how we started our relationship, on this Autumn day in 2014, full of hope and excitement, ready to enjoy each other’s company before her year-long sojourn in Southampton would draw to a close, when she was due to complete her Master’s degree in Music composition.