I perched awkwardly on the end of my bed from where I could check on the crack of light coming from beneath their door. Once it went out I waited until I had convinced myself they were both asleep. Then I finished dressing and crept down the open tread stairs, careful not to step on the third one down which always creaked, even though the house was new. Outside the still air fragrant with a heavy natural aroma. I breathed in deeply, feeling a little cold in just my shirt. I wasn’t going back for a jacket now. Once I got going I’d soon warm up.
My bike was still propped against the garage wall where it had been left. I had wondered if it would have been moved inside where it belonged, but my father was so used to my untidiness that by now he had mostly given up, apart from a steady stream of nagging. The long leather saddle was a little damp from the first signs of dew, but I was in too much of a hurry to find something to wipe it down.
Leaving the Close was not a challenge for it was steeply downhill and I freewheeled, controlling my speed with the brakes. The main road at the end was also empty: this was not a time that anyone in Gatton was usually awake. A meniscus of moon behind thin, night-purple clouds threw out a little light, but actually I knew the road so well that I could have followed the curves in the pitch black.
It didn’t take me very long get to her house and, taking off the front lamp, I laid the bike quietly down between shrubs on the drive,. I pointed the light towards her bedroom window, switching it on and off several times
At first, nothing. Then, the curtains twitched and the window swung open. “I thought you were joking about tonight, Tommy,” she said in a faint, croaky whisper, fresh from sleep. “I’ll come down, wait there”.
After what seemed far too long to get from her bedroom to the front door, she appeared, barefoot in almost-white floral pyjamas with a blue school cardigan hurriedly wrapped around her shoulders. She offered her cheek, not her lips, for an expected kiss.
“Shall I come in?”
“Better not, I don’t want Mum to wake.”
Silently we walked out to the pavement and along a bit so we were out of sight of her house, beneath a tree already in full leaf.
“I didn’t think you were serious.”
“I know, you said. I’m dead serious…” and I took her hand, pulling her into me.
It was the softest, gentlest, tenderest kiss I had ever had and I was overwhelmed.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, moving back. “I’ll see you tomorrow…
”And with that she was gone, still barefoot, back through the front door, acknowledging me with the smallest wave of her hand.
I stood by the tree for some time. When I had found a semblance of calm, I went back and picked up my bicycle and started back, no downhill this time, until it got too steep for me to do anything but push.
I left the bike where it had been alongside the garage wall turning it around first so that he wouldn’t see that it had been moved. At the front door I quietly turned my key, let myself in and went skulking up the stairs, again stretching across the noisy three-from-top, and into my room.
Undressed, I lay awake for quite a while before sleep captured me, too briefly.
Then it was morning. I was up but still lost in contemplation, unavailable to the family conversation all around me. Suddenly, his breakfast bowl conspicuously cast aside, my father demanded: “So, where did you get to in the middle of the night?”
Author Notes: A work of fiction
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United Kingdom • 68 years old