I can’t remember exactly when I had my first cigarette, but I remember roughly how I started. I was probably 13. I picked up one of my mum’s packets of ten Silk Cut, which was about half full. I slipped one out, put it in my pocket, saving it for later. My friends and I walked through the streets of Crouch End until we found a corner that was quiet and away from the prying eyes of our parents.
At funerals, everyone wants to smoke. People who gave up 20 years before and go jogging five times a week suddenly have a craving
We got our matches out, lit it, and passed it round. When the smoke first hit the back of my throat, I retched a bit and coughed but carried on. I got a head rush, felt dizzy, and within a couple of minutes it was gone. No, it wasn’t good for us. Those first times, it wasn’t even enjoyable. But we felt like we had entered a secret club.
After that, my secondary school friends and I often smoked. On our lunch breaks at school, we would go to one of the nearby shops and would buy illegal single cigarettes for 20 pence from under the counter. Then we would head to the park, often in the rain, and smoke. It made us feel older, more grown up, but it also brought us closer. We would sit in the park and gossip about life, flirt with boys, and moan about our parents, all in little clouds of smoke.
Later, I went to a trendy college that had a specially built smoking area in the playground by the sixth form block. It was still a couple of years before the indoor smoking ban came in. The smoking area was a dingy little thing – a pokey corner of the playground with two benches closely squashed together and a makeshift plastic roof. At lunch, the smoking area was heaving with us sixth formers. We would sit there, snuggled next to each other, sharing pashminas (the height of teenage sophistication at that time) and talk and smoke.
By then, I had moved on from my mum’s Silk Cut to my own Marlboro Lights. We talked about politics and the world. We hatched our plan to stage a big walkout in protest at the Iraq War. Me and my friend Hannah discussed the boys we thought we had fallen in love with – and the fact that they, sadly, had not fallen in love with us. And it was here that I first learnt about the intensity and joys of genuine female friendship. Girls I actually did love – and loved me back.
Technically, smoking had nothing to do with this. We had classes together. Those late teenage years are full of emotion and intense experiences for everyone. But for me, I learnt to navigate those years with a cigarette in one hand and my best friends’ in my other.
As I got older, my love of cigarettes ebbed and flowed. But there was one place where I always made sure I was stocked up with Marlboro Lights and plenty of lighters – when I went to my friend’s house in Suffolk. Her parents and siblings became a second family to me. They had lived near us in North London but moved when I was about 14. Both parents smokers. The mum smoked Café Crème cigarillos. Whenever I hear the sharp snap of the metal case Café Crèmes come in, I think of her. Her husband smoked full-on big cigars like a chimney. He always had one on the go and smelt, delightfully, of that rich tobacco cigar smell.
I looked after their children in the school holidays, and in return, they helped me grow up. They counselled me when I was struggling with my A Levels, gently prodded me to aim high when I was deciding which university to go to, and they were there to catch me when, after the Arcadian delights of Oxford, I struggled to work out what to do next. When the husband died suddenly, I felt like I had lost my own father. We were all distraught.
I rushed to Suffolk to help look after the kids while his wife, utterly heartbroken and shell-shocked, organised a funeral that came many years too soon. As I stood outside the little Suffolk church, I cried for my friend and mentor – and I lit a cigarette. At the wake, I was known as the girl with the cigarettes.
At funerals, everyone wants to smoke. People who gave up 20 years before and go jogging five times a week suddenly have a craving. The problem was, we were in a little seaside village and the only shop was closed. The people who ran it had come to the funeral. So I doled out my Marlboros to friends I knew – and plenty I didn’t – shared stories about him and grieved.
In my 20s and 30s, I fell in love with men. The early stages are the best; the stomach-churning thrill of meeting them, then the late-night chats – over too much wine and too many cigarettes. I listened to their secrets and told my own – invariably with a cigarette in my hand. When the outdoor smoking ban comes in, I’m sure I’ll smoke less. Who knows, maybe I’ll give up smoking altogether.
I’ll probably be a bit healthier thanks to cutting back. I might live a little longer. But I’ll miss making friends sitting in the rain in the smoking area, excitedly plotting the things we would do and the ways we would change the world. I’ll remember the tear-stained drags I took at the funeral of one of my greatest friends. And I’ll be sad that I can’t light up when gossiping and laughing with my mates in the pub. I think life will be a little plainer, and just a little sadder, with the prohibition.
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