We went as far as the second dome that night. All the blocks in Peterborough Avenue were the same height but each about three feet from the next one, making two chasms to cross. We jumped. I don’t believe I could do it today, I’d no longer have the nerve. I shudder when I think of the two of us springing across a canyon forty feet deep, its depths lost in shadow, nothing beneath to save us if we fell, not even a twig on a branch, not a wire or narrow pipe. Silver went first, his hands stretched out to catch me as I followed. If I was afraid at the time, I don’t remember fear. The achievement was all, the successful leap, and to make it as soundlessly as possible. We giggled at the thought of people below us listening and attributing the thud of our footfalls to a bird landing heavily. I once saw a heron from Regent’s Park on a roof in Russia Road. Such a big bird would make a resounding thump as it landed on slates. We clung to each other and laughed in triumph, in the mild night and the soft moonlight sinking to our knees, and embraced, kissing feverishly, as happy as could be.

“Not here,” said Silver, laughing. “There are limits.”

“I bet Wim would do it on a roof.”

“I bet Wim has.”

So just beyond the tower of the winds we turned back, leaving the others to whatever their pleasure might be, and returned to ours.

Chapter 11

11

WE ALL WENT ON the roofs, the five of us and sometimes others too, Morna and a girl called Lucy and her boyfriend Tom, Morna’s friend Judy and an older man (too old, we thought him) called Owen. But we five were the real roof people, the Famous Five, Lucy called us. The others, in varying degrees, were afraid when they were up there. Basically, to enjoy the roofs, you had to be someone who loved heights, who was what Silver had a name for: “acrophiliac.” Morna and the rest weren’t among their number. Judy was almost the reverse, a girl who had problems with looking out of top-floor windows but who came onto the roofs once or twice in the hope of testing herself, of conquering a phobia by exposing herself to it. It didn’t work. The second time she went through Silver’s window and out onto the roof of No. 15, she squatted there, hugging herself Liv-fashion, her eyes tightly shut. Silver had to bring her down. She was tiny, not five feet tall, and thin with it. Silver carried her down, first in his arms, then in a fireman’s lift. And I, who was never afraid while up there, was terrified he might fall and I lose another lover to the heights.