Chapter five

That rain soaked birthday of my running away, I found myself in front of Simon’s home, sodden and exhausted. The decrepit old house glowed with a fantastical aura of imagination. I pushed my way in the broken-hinged door and it creaked with an agonised shriek that echoed against bare walls. Stepping cautiously over the littered debris on the floor I made my way through what I envisioned as a paradisiacal palace rivalling Eden. If the entire room had been made of gold and furnished with diamonds I would have found it no more inviting or wonderful as the desolate old house my friends squatted in, alone with his pipe. What I could see was utterly irrelevant, what mattered was how I felt and what I wanted to see. Simon and I had spent the summer creating our own reality; the trees of the park were kingdoms, castles and thrones; the benches were gloriously adorned carriages and dusty coffins; the air that drenched us was filled with angels who wished to guard us, mischievous demons that wished to bargain and all fantastical creatures known and unknown from fairytales and young hearts. The sky of course was an eternal red; a deep, indulgent red that soothed the most severe visions of fantasy and veiled mundane truth.
I moved as quietly as I could through the old house that seemed eager to speak with creaks and moans. Somehow I managed to enter the back room, once a living room judging from the ripped out fireplace and broken sofa, without alerting Simon’s attention. His back was to me, his hat on the floor near his feet, one foot further back than the other which he put most of his weight on as though to get a better view of the nothingness he stared at in the corner. My voice rasped from the salt of all the rain and tears;
“Good evening, Mr Graham.”
I laughed silently, crying still, as he spun around on one heel in surprise, inadvertently kicking his worn top hat across the room. He had little choice but embrace me as I grabbed him by his lapels, all at once forgetting and disregarding what I held and what little dignity I retained in my soaked, shaking and emotionally worn pre-pubescent frame.
Simon wasn’t angry as I had childishly assumed he would be; he was confused more than anything else. I knew he had been smoking; his pipe lay on the floor at the furthest edge of the sofa. I could only seem a gleam of the polished wood when I threw my head over his shoulder.
His arms, trying to find an appropriate place to be, stretched over my head and he stroked my drenched, chaotic hair like he always did and mumbled; “Abby, Abby, what have you done, eh?”
It’s the first memory I have of him when he didn’t assume a fake voice, when he spoke without calculating thought behind it and nothing more than genuine feeling within his words. That insignificant mumble made me cry harder even though there were no tears left. Leading me head first, without having removed his arms he moved me over to the sofa and sat me down. He wouldn’t look at my face as his head shook slightly, a twitch of disbelief.
“You’re mad, kid, you’re nuts!” He whispered this more to himself than to me. A few moments later and he shook himself harder, clearing away some of the blur. His eyes, brighter than I had ever seen them before, met mine and he took off his coat in a sudden flurry of inspiration. With a jerk of his head I understood I was to take off my own raincoat and he exchanged it for his. It was dry, thick and warm and while wrapped around me, held his warmth, his scent and the lingering taste of his habit.
“Go to sleep, alright? Once it stops raining I’m bringing you home, understand?” he said trying to sound angry and authoritative but failing so badly he had to laugh himself.
“Go to sleep,” he breathed, this time sincerely, with a sweetly sad smile. He said it as he knelt in front of my face where I lay, his eyes playfully teasing my stupidity. I smiled back at his smile, and at his eyes, happy to just curl up and fall asleep able to look at his face and know he was watching me at every breath. I fell deeply asleep with those eyes etched on my dreams. The eyes I ashamedly had fallen in love with