I can’t get on the roof if the doors don’t open.

Here is the church, here is the steeple, open the doors –

but I don’t want the people. I just want him.

I could give the people a piece of my mind.

20 September 1957

Arthur

It feels like ages since I knocked. Long enough. I put my face up against the glass in the front door. There’s no movement inside. No sign of May. All I can smell is the roses. The bushes all staggered and spaced in the border around the lawn. Not the wild kind that used to grow in the hedges by the canal. Nothing like the ones Mum used to pick rosehips off in the autumn. These buggers have been pruned and coddled to within an inch of their life. The branches all stumpy where they’ve been cut back. More thorns than flowers. I check the bar of chocolate in my pocket. Move it across to the shady side so it doesn’t melt. Pull my jacket down, make sure my shirt is tucked in right. Knock again. I risk a postman’s special. Loud enough to wake the dead. Or, at the very least, Mrs Pye on Bird Street who’s deaf in one ear and drinks so much she doesn’t surface till the middle of the afternoon. And then I see her – May – coming to the door. The shape of her warped through the bubbled glass. Ask and ye shall receive, Mum used to say whenever we had a bit of good luck, taking the piss in her pretend posh voice, knock and it shall be opened unto you.

‘What are you doing here?’ she says opening the door just enough to hiss at me through the gap. Her eyebrows are all creased up. I want to laugh, or even better – kiss her and give the neighbours something to talk about. I hold up the chocolate like it’s an official pass.

‘I got sick of waiting for an invitation.’

She lets out a big breath. ‘I told you it wasn’t the right time, Arthur. I told you.’

‘Patience isn’t my strong suit.’

‘Who’s that?’ The voice comes from the back of the house, ‘who’s at the door?’

‘You’ve gone and done it now.’ She throws her hands up and opens the door wider. I step into the porch. The smell of furniture polish is so strong I have to hold my nose to stop it twitching.

‘It’s just a friend,’ May answers, and her voice is all high and polite, ‘I’ve asked him in for tea.’

There’s no reply. Just the sound of the clock ticking in the hall. The staircase winding up. The flowers on the carpet all faded and threadbare. If we were alone I’d get her to give me a tour. Just the thought of it. On our own upstairs.