‘What do you think would happen if someone sewed your mouth shut?’ Christian asks.

He is young for his thirteen years ad with a mind that even he doesn’t always understand.

It’s a Sunday in the summer of 1983 and the sunlight sparkles on the lake before the two boys, bright light flickering on the surface of clear water so shallow that it would not reach their waists if they were to stand in it. The green grass of the bank is cool beneath their bare feet, their socks tucked into their trainers beside them and the legs of their stonewashed jeans rolled up to their knees. So self-conscious of their skinny bodies neither boy has removed his t-shirt and each has a line of sweat from the nape of his neck to the base of his spine.

Jack throws a stone that breaks the silence as it hits the water.

‘Why the hell would someone sew your mouth shut?’ he asks.

Christian shrugs. ‘It’s a hypothetical question,’ he says, though he doesn’t know exactly what ‘hypothetical’ means, but feels it’s fitting in this context. He’s grateful that Jack doesn’t challenge his language use.

‘It’s a stupid question,’ he says instead. He sighs, picking at a scab on his elbow. ‘God, I’m so bored. What are we going to do?’

‘Dunno,’ Christian says.’ Could go and explore in the copse?’

‘We’re thirteen.’

‘So?’

‘So we’re too old to go exploring. We’re in secondary school, Chris. Ran’s probably shagging with Emma Pepper while we’re sitting here like a pair of dicks. God, I wish I was having sex with Emma Pepper. Or Zoe Singfield. Her tits looked amazing on Friday, didn’t they?’

Christian nods in agreement and hopes that, in his tightened lips and frown, Jack doesn’t see the disappointment that he feels. Having always lived two doors apart from one another Christian and Jack have grown up side by side, so alike for all the years between then and now. But recently Christian has been aware that he’s not the company that Jack wants to keep anymore. In school they barely see each other since Jack is always with Ran Holyhead and his gang, smoking round the back of the bike sheds or flicking through a porn magazine that Fat Gary has stolen from his father’s wardrobe. For a while Christian went along with this, loitering in Jack’s shadow as if he would somehow pick up on Jack’s coolness by proxy. He hadn’t, of course, and eventually decided that he felt happier away from this crowd, seeing Jack on the weekends and during the holidays. It seemed to Christian that Jack didn’t register on Ran’s radar during this time, which was just as well, really, because otherwise who would Christian have to hang around with?

Jack stands up, rolling his jeans down to his ankles and slipping on his trainers.

‘I’m going home,’ he says, prompting Christian to stand too. ‘Wanna come?’

‘What you gonna do?’

‘Dunno. You coming?’

Christian nods. ‘Yeah,’ he says, since he has nothing
else to do.

‘We could walk through the copse if you want.’

Christian smiles. He knows that in a year or two this friendship will have died a death, but at the moment it’s all that he wants.

‘Could do,’ he says, acting nonchalant.
Jack, no doubt seeing through the bravado, shoves him and echoes his words.

‘Could do,’ he says. ‘Could do.’

‘Piss off.’

Jack shoves him in jest. ‘You piss off.’

‘Prick.’

‘Twat.’

‘Loser.’

‘Dickhead.’

‘Moron.’

‘Queer.’

Christian flinches on hearing this word and lands a play punch on his friend’s arm, denying the truth with which the word is loaded.