now, when no one else but me seemed to bother to visit the bench any more, things seemed more equal. ‘We could have been friends,’ I told Jessica. ‘I used to be so unhappy as well.’ D.A.Y. My index finger traced the scars in the wood made by the letters.
So perhaps that was why, even before Tim arrived, I was feeling as if I might have a bit of potential too. I put my face down and brushed my hair back over my shoulder with the side of my hand like Jessica used to do. After Jessica died, I used to do it at home so often that my father banned hair-touching at table. I couldn’t have risked it at school either. It was definitely an in-crowd gesture, and might have drawn attention to me in a way my father wouldn’t have liked.
I must have been too busy doing the hair thing to hear Tim come. When I looked up, he was already sitting down on the other end of the bench, his head between his knees.
‘Are you OK?’ I asked.
‘Quick,’ he said. ‘Put your head down too. NOW!’
I copied him.
‘Don’t look up,’ he warned. ‘Shut your eyes if possible.’
I couldn’t. I looked at the ground instead. There were bits of chewing gum stuck under the bench. Cigarette butts, even a beer bottle. I made up my mind to tidy up sometime. For Jessica’s sake.
‘Wha. . . ’
‘Be quiet,’ Tim said. He put his arm round my shoulders to draw me closer to him. I could feel the heat of his body through his jumper. The outline of his fingers across my back burnt into me like infrared. He smelt of fabric conditioner and warm apples. I’d never been so close to a boy before. I tried hard to stop my body from tensing up, to relax more and enjoy the embrace.
‘We’re going to have to make a run for it,’ Tim said. He stood up and held out his hand, and I took it, clutching at his fingers as he pulled me into the bushes that lined the edge of the park. Just when I was thinking I couldn’t run any more, he stopped and we hid behind a tree for him to keep a watch out. He pulled the sleeves of his jumper down to cover my hands, holding on to my wrists so tightly. I did the same to him. It was as if we were grafting ourselves on to each other.
‘I know who it is,’ I said. ‘It’s my father. He’s found me.’
Tim hushed me. ‘It’s not,’ he replied. ‘I’ll keep you safe.’
I didn’t ask how he could be so certain. My heart was beating hard against his chest and the echo travelled up to my head. I wondered if Tim could hear the same noises as I could. The scuffle of leaves as a squirrel hunted for nuts, a dog barking in a garden somewhere near, the distant sound of a train announcement from the station. No one walking past us would be able to see us in our nest of leaves. I wasn’t sure how long we could stay there, not moving, but every time I tried to ask Tim what was happening, he put his lips down, hushing through my hair, his breath hot against my scalp.
We were so close, I smelt a flowery sweetness on his breath I couldn’t identify. It was the first time anyone had held me like that since my mother stopped touching me. Since the biology teacher business. I tried not to cry, but just rested my weight against his chest, my head lying on the soft pad of his shoulder.
We didn’t say anything. There didn’t seem the need.
Eventually, he let go of my wrists and we walked out on to the path together. Across the far side there were a few houses with their top lights still on, but apart from that there was no sign of life.
‘Will you?’ I asked.
‘What?’
‘Keep me safe?’
Tim nodded. ‘Tomorrow?’ he asked.
I smiled. He put one hand on my head, stroked my hair gently and then without saying another word, he turned. I watched him leave the park. He walked quicker than other people. He knew where he was going. When I couldn’t see him any more I sat back on the Seize the Day bench.
I wanted my heart to settle down before going back to Mr Roberts’s shop.
This is how I met Mr Roberts.
He caught me crying at one of the café tables they put up outside the Church on the High Street during spring and summer.
Despite the cold, I’d been sitting there for one hour, forty-two minutes refusing all offers of refreshments, even though I could see the volunteers pointing me out and tut-tutting amongst each other. Then a plump peachy woman came out wearing a white blouse and flowery skirt with one of those elasticated waists women her age wear for comfort although they’re always having to hoist the skirt back down from where it’s risen up under their tits. She told me I wasn’t to sit there any more. That the café tables were for proper customers only.
I started to cry, and suddenly this old man came up and told the waitress it was all right. That I was with him.
It was Mr Roberts, although of course I didn’t know that then. I was just relieved that everybody was now staring at him instead of me. He said nothing at first. Just bought me a cup of tea, pushed it over and sat there in silence until I raised my head.
‘What do they mean about being proper?’ I asked.
‘I suppose they want people who’ll pay,’ he said. ‘Although the Bible does have something to say about merchants in the temple.’
‘I might not want anything to drink,’ I said, ‘but that doesn’t mean I’m not proper. They should be more careful about what words they use. Words matter.’
‘I know that, pet,’ he replied. ‘You don’t want to worry about Church people. They’ve no taste. They can’t see how special you are.’
This made me cry even harder. Mr Roberts didn’t say anything, just got up so I thought he was leaving me too but he came back with a handful of paper napkins and handed them to me.
‘Dry yourself,’ he said. ‘And then we’ll sort you out.’
I wiped the tears away and looked up at him nervously, but he shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said, and pulled out a sheet of newspaper he had neatly folded away in the pocket of his tweed jacket. It was the racing pages and he started studying form closely.
He was right too. As soon as I realised his attention had wandered away from me, I started crying again, loud, gasping sobs. When he didn’t seem to mind, I ignored the sour looks I was getting from the Church woman and let it all come out. The pile of napkins was sodden by the time I was finished and his racing columns were full of little biroed marks and comments. He must have been about sixty, with steely grey hair cut forward over a bulging forehead. It was his mouth I noticed most. It was prim and womanly with perfectly shaped teeth he kept tapping his pen against. It wasn’t the first time I’d noticed that the older men get, the more feminine their mouths and chins become. It’s the opposite of women, who start to sprout bristles and Winston Churchill jowls. In fact, most long-term married couples look as if they’ve swapped faces from the nose down. Morphing into each other’s mother or father.
I coughed and he looked up. Then he looked again but slower, up and down my body. He even tilted
