The Window Cleaner (revisited) (1984)

Lifting the dowdy grey net curtain, I peer through the window at our cracked concrete backyard. The uneven surface is puddled with dog piss and slimy with moss. My mum has made a half-hearted attempt to add life and greenery to the depressing scene, but as always, these efforts lack focus, and so the unkempt potted plants are either wildly over-grown or in various stages of death and decay.

Mum is not a natural nurturer or an enthusiastic homemaker. Our house is filthy and neglected; the decor is shabby and piles of old Express and Star newspapers and other detritus litter every surface. I am too ashamed to bring my friends home. If I do, then they are whisked quickly upstairs to the sanctuary of my bedroom; which smells of joss sticks and looks like a jumble sale. Sometimes I bring boyfriends back to my room. I don't mind this so much, as I know that they are too blinded by the sexual possibilities of my ripening teenage body, to notice the squalor and stench.

My current boyfriend is named Chris: a boy so beautiful, that I have barely managed to speak in sentences to him, in the fortnight we have been seeing each other. He doesn't seem to mind my reticence, he's usually too high on butane to notice.

The window cleaner is here with his mate, a young lad from my school. They are both friendly and chat to me as I fill their bucket with hot water from the kitchen tap. I recall the old window cleaner from years ago, with a wrench. He had the hots for my mum, but instead of giving him the cold shoulder, she would stand there lapping up his boring banter, while he gradually advanced on her, his rosy face distorted with lust, until she was backed up against the wall. I was terrified for her, and came to dread the sound of his ladders being dragged up the entry.

In a strange act of perversity, my mum persuaded me to act as her rescuer, telling me that if he held her captive for too long with his banal chit chat, then I should run to the phone box around the corner and dial our home number; thereby giving her the opportunity to escape his sweaty clutches. I put this plan into action many times, after which I would dash back to check that my mum was all right. Only to find her looking smug and the window cleaner looking crestfallen, dolefully wringing out his chamois leather, and emptying his dirty water down the drain.

My unpleasant reminiscences are interrupted by the sound of the doorbell and I run excitedly to open the front door. Chris towers over me on the doorstep, dressed in tight dogstooth check trousers and a Velvet Underground t-shirt. My mouth opens but no words form, my usual brash cockiness dissolves in his presence. I beckon him upstairs: mum is out, but she wouldn't care anyway.

We lie on the bed together and I feign interest as he tells me of the fourteen hole cherry red Doc Martens that he is saving up for. I hastily end this conversation by pressing my mouth to his, noting the familiar taste of cigarettes and lighter fuel. He showed me how to do it once, biting down on the nozzle, can cupped lovingly in his hands, but I felt no desire to try it: I've seen how stupid the boys at school are, when they've been sniffing glue during the lunch break.

"Can I put it up you, just to see what it's like?" Chris enquires gently as I stroke his broom handle stiff cock through his trousers. I know full well that he knows what it's like, as there was a big scandal last year, when he got a girl at another school pregnant. I decline, but we resume our snogging.

I am vaguely aware of the metallic clunk of the window cleaner's ladders and squeak of cloth against glass, but I am too absorbed in the rhythmic grind of Chris's body against mine to think much of it. We disentangle our limbs to remove some clothing, but as Chris unzips his flies, he stops suddenly, his attention caught by something across the room. I follow his gaze to the window and the window cleaner's grinning puckish face.

I sit up and pull my skirt over my knees in a belatedly prim gesture and Chris starts laughing into the pillow. This will be all over the school by Monday, thanks to the window cleaner's mate, but we will brazen it out, our reputations more enhanced than harmed by such salacious revelations.

The window cleaner gives us the thumbs up, and disappears quickly, back down his ladder.