Years ago, when we were on a school picnic, a classmate showed me a small volume from the 1930s called Life-Long Love. It was a self-help book for engaged couples who were contemplating their wedding night. Thrilled with her spectacular jumble-sale find, my friend whispered its contents to me, half-insane with glee. It was about the time that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1978) was on television, and we were rather influenced by the Brodie set.

About the manual I remember two things: that the groom was to soothe the bride with a cold flannel applied to the forehead when she became hysterical, and every tableau of romance included that little known marital aid, the bedspread.

Formerly I had associated bedspreads with unwholesome unions: seaside boarding house slapstick, and the hotels in the streets near our house that rented rooms by the hour. Yet this book championed the bedspread to the highest degree. It seemed to me, as a girl on that picnic, that no marriage could possibly work without one. It was the magic carpet of the bedroom.

I thought of that scene today while shopping for fabric for an upholstered headboard. I have never in my life had a headboard but I plan to have one soon. I had listened to an entire phone-in radio programme about headboards the previous day. The presenter had spoken about her grandmother’s pale blue appliquéd headboard – a chinoiserie motif, I think it had – which had kept its plastic shrink wrap cover on until the day she died. Let a greasy human head next to that silk? Are you nuts? That was her point of view.

The callers to the show debated hotly whether this was the best-ever metaphor for a life half-lived. Would the lady in question have been proud to know she had died with her headboard, and perhaps her character, immaculate to the last?

I looked at some pretty sugared-almond coloured, slub-textured linens with the unpromising name “shabby”. I remembered a musical I once saw – I suppose it was by Sondheim – that had the lyric “yellow gingham on the bed”. I think I even stole this musical coverlet for a South of France love scene in one of my novels, my only ever literary venture “abroad”. Was Riviera chic the way to go? Would it flatter the pale and interesting complexion? I draped some fabric over my torso. I know! I could have a headboard and pyjamas that matched! I could go to bed feeling I was starring in a musical. It was one of the jauntiest ideas I’d had for weeks.

Then I heard the small whirring sound that indicates an e-mail has arrived on my telephone, and paused to check it:

“Hi Susie,

I’ll begin by saying that I am really sorry for the way I treated you at junior school. I would have done it sooner, but I had totally blocked out what a total shit I was then. I spoke to XXXXXX recently, and he told me of all the things that were done to you. I still am shocked by my behaviour. I really am sorry for what I did to you.

Regards etc etc”

I blinked a few times. Out went Doris Day brimming with golden cheer and in flew Joan Crawford. As an e-mail, it was very lowering.

. . .

I recalled the fellow straight away. We’d not seen each other for 30 years. He wasn’t so bad. Or was he? Such is the stigma attached to being bullied, I could hear myself deny the experience to myself. These things happen, I counselled roundly. Rough and tumble. Six of one and half a dozen of the...

The lady in the fabric shop was talking to me: “Sit down, let me get you some water.” I did as I was told. I was obviously a visibly shaky prospect. What does it mean to say you’re sorry if your words make the other person feel attacked?

It means the apologiser is probably in a 12-step programme, I thought, cynically. It means he’s on steps seven and eight, the ones that command you to make a list of all persons you have harmed and make direct amends to them wherever possible. The confidence of people! Why did he assume his grim apology would be welcome? Did it never occur to him I might be out buying headboards and feeling madcap and carefree, and he might spoil it all?

“I’m so sorry, I have no memory of you whatsoever,” I did not reply; nor, generously, “Please don’t give the matter another thought!” I toyed with the theatrically vengeful – “This is now a police matter” – and the pathetic: “Please make a donation of £20 to your local NHS psychiatric unit.”

A communication such as this had the power to rewrite a history I’ve long since rewritten myself. It was like the beginning of a bad film. Is it fair to expect one’s tormentors to correspond with intelligence and style? How would Pedro Almodóvar save the scene?

Who knows what the truth is?

The headboard lady was talking about matching bedspreads now. It was quite soothing. I told her about the Life-Long Love book and she was mildly interested. “Well, bedspreads are extremely popular,” she said, with a very knowing glance.

susie.boyt@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/boyt