Lemons and longing, lingering kisses

"Can I ... erm ...kiss you?" he had asked intently, his clear, hazel eyes shining. Abbi's heart skipped a beat as she nodded tentatively. Then he leaned in and their worlds collided. It was electric, she was in love.

Later, they lay together on an old, cashmere picnic rug, bathed in the moonlight shafting in through the irregular slats of the old barn.

Abbi felt safe and warm in his arms. He looked like a lesser god...Apollo maybe, asleep as he was, gently breathing, defined jaw, mop of curly hair, a half smile on his face.

They'd snuck into the barn under the cover of twilight, giggling and sipping limoncello from a chunky glass bottle. Abbi had told me that after those nights, she couldn't smell lemons without being transported back in time to those heady days. Proustian, much!

Nowadays, lemons meant nothing to her. They were just another citrus fruit or more accurately a round, yellow thing that tasted sour.

You see Abbi, my best friend, was diagnosed with early onset dementia two years ago, a cruel progressive corrosion of her memories and more than that, a dictator which held her fiercely-fought-for independence and love of learning new and wonderful things, indefinite hostage.

At just 45 years old, she now couldn't remember her university graduation, her first job as a journalist, her wedding day, the births of her sons, her little hay bale house she'd built from scratch, nothing.

She's almost forgotten who I am and greets me like an acquaintance now, a thin smile and confusion flickering across her otherwise expressionless features.

She trusts me enough to let me take her shopping for tins of tomato soup and readymade meals she can zap in the microwave but that's about it. Our 30-year friendship is a one-sided memory and I mourn its demise daily and desperately.

So I took her back to the old barn. It was about a two-hour drive to her home town, a quaint, country hamlet by the sea.

I knew about the barn and her first kiss because it was one of her favorite, sacred memories which she had shared with me one night over cheap wine and cigarettes when we were both at the same residential college.

Her eyes had lit up when she described the lead-up to the kiss and the boy, Sebastian, a farm hand. He worked for her father on the family blueberry holding.

Abbi said she was mesmerized from the moment they had met. She was home from university to help with the harvest and they'd worked side by side in the fields by day and then basked in each other's embrace every night... in the old barn.

An Italian, he was on a gap year, and Australia had seemed the perfect place to earn some money and improve his English at the same time.

He'd taken her hand when they were introduced by her brother, Joe. "Ab, this is Seb, Seb, Ab... Abbi...Abigail," Joe had said before getting back to his work filling up the old, red tractor with pungent diesel.

Sebastian had held her hand for longer than expected and smiled warmly as he looked straight into her eyes. His gaze had seemed to squirrel its way all the way down and into her very essence, her soul. His hand was rough from the harvest but warm from the summer sun.

His dirty checked shirt was tucked half-in/half-out of his work shorts and his skin was as bronzed as hers. His sandy hair was tousled and his body lean and muscled. "Nice to meet you," she'd said awkwardly, "Where are you from?"

"Italia, Sorrento," he'd said with a half-smile. "Hey, do you want to take a swim after the work?"

"Oh OK," she'd said, somewhat taken aback by his forthrightness. Aussie men tended to rely on girls to do the chasing, a complacency borne out of being an island nation, blissfully isolated from the rest of the world for such a long time.

In contrast, Sebastian wasn't wasting a minute. He liked her from the get-go and she him. To him, she was perfection, tall, flaxen-haired and sporting the biggest bluest eyes he'd ever seen. The color of denim, he'd told her later. She was shy and unaware of her beauty which only added to the attraction.

The sea had been icy but still. They swam with black-and-white stippled fish which looked almost transparent at an angle. Seb stripped down to just his boxer's and Abbi her sensible boy-leg bikini and they swam out 500 meters until they were the only two heads bobbing above the gentle swell.

They'd floated on their backs staring up at the endless sky, spread-eagled with fingertips just touching.

"This is Paradise," he'd whispered.

Abbi told me this was the moment she had finally realized what life could be like. In that instant, the past and the future had been dissolved into the perfection of the present, of being young and alive, of feeling like anything was possible, pure, unadulterated joy.

Now, all of these years and dismal and devastating diagnoses' later, I don't know what I thought would happen when she saw the old barn again. I'm not overly religious but I guess in my heart of hearts, I was desperately hoping for a miracle.

Selfishly, I wanted Abbi to REMEMBER even if it was only fleetingly. I wanted to see reminiscence flash across her face. A knowing smile would be a bonus. I felt like crying but knew I mustn't. I swallowed hard and turned the music up. It was her favorite song, Lou Reed's "Perfect Day". I snuck a side-glance at her face as the chorus erupted but nothing.

We drove along winding roads with emerald fields stretching out to the horizon on one side and the sea blazing azure on the other. The sunlight was a welcome reprieve from days of dreary rain.

Black and white dairy cows grazed contentedly and a majestic sea eagle hovered overhead as we stepped out of the car. It was a five-minute walk to the barn, set back as it was from the road.

The ground squelched beneath our feet and I walked ahead. She was dawdling in that uncertain way again. She'd always been so purposeful, even in her gait, but not anymore.

"That's OK," I muttered under my breath.

"Come on 'hon, I want you to see a lovely place I've found," I said loudly now as I tugged at her hand.

We rounded a corner of wild hedgerow and there was the barn, dark wood in some disrepair, but still standing in all its rustic glory as it always had. The large, generous door was ajar.

I daren't look at Abbi so I instead drew her towards the opening. Suddenly she gasped and pulled away.

"What is it?" I asked, slinging one arm over her shoulder and hugging her close. She resisted, she didn't much like being touched anymore.

"I'm afraid," was all she said in a low whisper.

"It's OK," I said reassuringly, "we're just going to have a peek inside. It will be an adventure."

Abbi relaxed and this time she went ahead of me, bounding almost. In one movement, she had burst through the barn door and now stood, reverential in the striping afternoon sunshine careering through those slats.

As if in slow motion, she turned to face me, a delicious grin breaking across her face. "Lemons!" she cried.