They headed off towards the thicket where Gareth had hidden his bike, between two piles of forgotten fencing stakes long ago wrenched from the ground, when small fields went out of agricultural fashion. There were no courteous pleasantries:

‘What do you like?’ Gareth asked.

‘This and that,’ the boy said, with a trace of discomfort.

‘I didn’t bring any condoms,’ Gareth said, gesturing that the boy take in the Lycra shorts and tee-shirt and realise he was on a cycle ride.

‘I’ve got some, but I’m not sure I want to do that,’ the boy said, unbuttoning his shirt and pulling it free from his shorts.

‘Do you give, or take?’

‘When it’s okay… with the right person, I mean, then I like both.’

‘I don’t take it. I like to be fingered really gently… but nothing inside! Do you like to be sucked?’

Gareth noticed the line of hairs down from the boy’s navel, cut sharply by the band of his shorts, and sensed his excitement at the prospect of what he’d find at their source.

‘Yes,’ the boy smiled, ‘that’s what I like best. And I like to suck too.’

In the cool heart of the thicket they stood naked before one another. The boy’s kissing was eager, but his hands clumsy, touching and stroking Gareth where his own had explored and delighted earlier, by the pool. Gareth felt the boy’s hardness on his thigh, then between his legs, joshing; teasing and delighting. And then the boy’s tongue sucked at his nipple.

‘I’m Gareth,’ he whispered into the boy’s ear.

‘I’m Dan,’ the boy whispered back.

Gareth’s gluttony for the boy’s body wasn’t near to being sated when the grunted orgasm spilled, surprising and disappointing him. He drew away without looking at Gareth, reached into the long grass for his shorts and pulled them on. Gareth, spitting out the bitterest semen he’d ever tasted, felt the frustration rise through him and he blurted out, almost angrily, ‘That’s pretty selfish of you… just to leave me like this.’ The boy looked startled and turned away.

And then, reaching for his own shorts, everything in Gareth’s mind fractured into a sequence of frozen frames. Dan was bent low. He raised a stubby fencing picket above his head, holding it with both hands. He seemed to be yelling at him but all Gareth heard was a whisper: ‘You fucking bastard of a cock-sucker.’ Then the jolting shock of realisation and a dull pain as the stake splintered and shattered over him. Then the surprise in Dan’s mean, blue eyes… the fear in his face as he turned and ran.