ARMS OF RYAN

She had her first ever proper kiss in the back row of the cinema with Ryan Burgess in the summer of '89, watching Tim Burton's 'Batman'.

The kiss itself was prompted by the scene where Vicki Vale stays over at Bruce Wayne's mansion for the night and carried on until the film's final scenes where the Joker's threat to Gotham City became impossible to avoid, more on an audio level than a visual one.

Emma could barely remember the film now, but the kiss with Ryan had remained with her forever.

First times are often what we remember, she thought: first tastes of ice cream, first days at school, first attempts at sex obviously, but first kisses were somehow even more memorable than all of those to her mind. There was just something about that first strange sensation of co-ordinating her mouth with another person's and trying to settle into a rhythm that didn't end up with a clash of teeth that made a profound impression on her.

Emma was curious why it was that some memories just turned up unnanounced after so many years of forgetting, like that univited guest at a dinner party. Then she remembered that this whole first kiss thing with Ryan must have been prompted by the Spotify playlist "80's Underrated" she had stumbled upon a few evenings ago that included the song 'Arms Of Orion' by Prince and Gloria Estefan from the Batman soundtrack. It hadn't occured to her that this would be the link until she realised days later she had been infected by its earworm quality with its soppy, saccharine sentiment and had been singing it repeatedly around the house without thinking.

"What is that stupid song you're singing, mum?" her youngest and most precocious child, Harry, asked her repeatedly.

"I don't know," she said, denying her knowledge of it to her son as if he was an accusing husband.

But eventually, after she'd finally got all the kids to bed, she played the song again on her headphones in the study with a glass of white wine and remembered how she'd received a mix tape from Ryan all those many summers ago, decades even, which had that exact song she'd been singing sequenced four times on repeat on side one as if he was attempting to hypnotise her with it.

And in some ways it appeared he did.

In the heart of a sleepless moon
I'll be with you forever
This is my destiny
'Til my life is through

Emma wondered where Ryan Burgess was right now - probably a road gritter with no teeth and fifteen kids. That made her sad. How different it seemed back then when they were teenagers. He was like a god at the time and even Batman struggled to compete for her attention that night at the Regal cinema in Gloucester.

Maybe he wasn't a road gritter. Maybe he lived up to the god-like potential she saw in him. Or at least felt in his kisses with her. She was wary to do a search on him onine in case he had some paedophile conviction or had changed gender and her cherished memories were destroyed. She didn't want to take any chances with her precious past.

Could it be that kiss was the closest Emma had got to immortality in her entire life back then with Ryan in the back row of the cinema, in the darkness while the light of the projector appeared above them like a ray from heaven?

Probably.

Everything since then seemed kind of dull, though she loved her husband and her kids.

"Damn you, Spotify!"