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on summer Saturday or Sunday nights down on the riverside where there’d be some intermingling. The boys, when it came to the question of who’d spilled whose drink, would occasionally intermingle to the extent of throwing a puny punch. A girl might get up enough social courage to ask a stranger either a) where she’d bought that skirt or b) what did she think she was looking at? Mel had a harsh bawdy laugh that Claire said was loud enough to shatter Kookai’s shop window and sometimes on hot nights, when Natasha was battling with maths up in her bedroom, she was sure she could hear it above the high-street traffic.
    There was music coming from Eddy-up-the-road’s house. As she walked towards it she recognized the twangy, dated guitar sound of his one big hit. According to her mum he’d been famous in his time, a singer with some tired Seventies group called Spidercrunch that Natasha had never heard of. He was retired now, which she considered good news: his seemed to be one of the few wrinkly old bands that wasn’t forever trying to relight a burned-out career, cluttering up the charts and making themselves look stupid trying to seem cool on Top of the Pops . Her dad had said Eddy existed on ever-decreasing royalties topped up by occasional revival concerts, Internet reissues and once, cringe-makingly, she’d seen him on the Who-Did-He-Used-To-Be? line-up on Never Mind the Buzzcocks where he’d been dressed in a frilledpirate shirt, introduced as Never-Ready Eddy and looked as if he was about to weep. Eddy’s windows didn’t have any curtains at all, not even in winter, as a kind of anti-suburbia style statement. There wasn’t a single resident of the Grove who didn’t slow their pace to stare into the purple-walled, knocked-through sitting room with its scarlet piano and cowhide-and-chrome-trimmed bar, complete with a full range of spirits in proper optics. Now, as Natasha hauled her burden past Eddy’s, she could see the back of her father’s head through the window. He was sprawled on the pink paisley sofa and she could tell by the way his shoulders shook and his head went back that he was laughing. He didn’t often laugh like that at home. Perhaps, she thought, it was something to do with not having a job any more. She could quite see that not having to go to work would make you very, very happy.
    The boy from the railway was leaning against the gatepost outside number 46, almost opposite Natasha’s own house. She felt a lurching pang of shock when she looked up and realized it was him. Did he, she wondered immediately, know that it was her ? Had he ever actually noticed her? As she drew level she slowed down, keen to make contact of some sort but unsure how not to make a complete idiot of herself. He was taller than she’d thought he’d be, dressed completely in black (ancient-looking leather jacket that looked like he’d stolen it from a dead biker, scuffed combats, black Converse shoes, all noted to report to Claire).
    ‘Hi.’ His voice was so quiet that for a moment Natasha wondered if she’d imagined that he’d spoken. She stopped and turned to look at him. He wasn’t smiling. He was still leaning on the gatepost, his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched as if it wascold, though it was a bright spring day with a lazy late-afternoon warmth.
    ‘You live over there?’ The boy’s head indicated her own house across the road and she looked over at the vase of purple and white stocks that her mother had put on her desk in front of the window. The room would be full of their scent.
    ‘Yeah.’ Natasha could feel her face turning pink. He must have seen her looking at him. She stared down at her feet, willing the blush to disappear.
    ‘I’ve seen you,’ he said, ‘up at your window. You were watching me.’
    ‘Not really.’ She felt offended by his conceit. ‘I mean if you muck about on a busy railway line you can’t expect people not to watch, can you?’
    ‘What, in case I