#teenage-romance

#teenage-romance

He worked in construction and the sprawling transient accommodation for the hundreds of families who'd relocated to build an aluminium plant became our home. I was going on 16 and sulking about having to change schools, again. Then I met Paul. Back in those days people made their own fun. We often had huge parties at the caravan park, and Paul, an apprentice electrician, would volunteer to rig up the lighting.

At more than 6ft tall, Giacomo was hard to miss. He was also friendly, smiley and, while he didn't speak a word of English, I loved that he spared me the whole ciao bella swagger usually reserved for foreign girls. I wasn't foreign. Not really. My parents moved to Scotland in the 1960s, settling in the Borders town of Selkirk, but Atina had always been part of our lives, woven into every holiday, every dish on the dinner table.

The Netflix adaptation of Judy Blume's 'Forever...', created by Mara Brock Akil, treats the original material with sensitivity while allowing the story to resonate in a new medium.

Falling in love with a straight friend at 15 was both a rite of passage and a turmoil I thought I would never escape.