[patrick boo]

This is definitely his favourite part, the part that makes him feel best inside. He feels all at once prouder and harder than walking around at the gig hand in hand with her earlier, knowing everyone was looking at them, envying at least one of them if not both of them. They looked good anyway, but people are always secretly jealous of couples. He feels warmer and buzzier inside than ever, forever, after when something triggers her to reach slowly and tenderly back and place the palm of her hand on his thigh, and he reaches over and cups her tiny, virtuous cream tea breast in his hand, and it all leads....

Now is the best time, the time when that big word love becomes tangible and physical because everything it means is here. It's in the syrupy amber glow of surrogate moonlight from the street lamps which filters through the raindrops on the windowpane and paints her silhouette in treacle as she undresses. It's in the sounds, tiny imperceptible sounds which shouldn't exist but are there, airborne and lascivious. Sounds such as the electric swish of soft skin against soft skin, her schoolboy arms against her own body as she moves across the room to the bed, where he lays poised, ready, waiting, like a badly posed photo.

It's a tiny single bed, which most of the time they don't mind, although it can get very hot and sticky in the Summer as the sun shines in on them early in the morning. Their favourite position is with her on her left side, back to him, facing the wall. He will lie spooned against her, a physical echo, two as one, clinging like fetal twins. This is the best bit.

Sex, yes, sex is a good thing - a very good thing, but not now. Sex is best on long languid afternoons, when it feels like they are the only ones in the world doing it, as if the world depended on it, on a bed, in a bed when one should not be in a bed. Sex. Not 'making love' . That sounds so pedestrian. When you're in love you don't need to make love. You already have love.

But not now. Oh, all right then, now. But tomorrow afternoon? Good. We can get up and clean the house and feel all rosy and wholesome and self-satisfied, and then, and then, and then.....and afterwards a bath as dusk settles like dust. Another beautiful day wasted beautifully away, elegantly wasted. He feels invincible in the world they have here, their little terraced Anderson shelter in the war of Summertime lust in a teenage town. As long as he doesn't let her out of his sight when the bombs are falling around them they'll get through it intact.

He hates sleeping alone now; it just doesn't work. He'll climb into a cold hard bed and grasp and clutch for something that isn't there, gathering up folds of dirty sheet, unable to find a
comfortable resting position. He won't hear the faint sounds which comfort him so such as her breathing, smooth and sibilant, sometimes irregular and staccato when she is dreaming. Sleeping with her is fitful but content; he awakens every couple of hours or so and checks she's still there, perhaps kissing her forehead lightly but carefully so as not to stir her.

What is she dreaming of? He often gazes at her as her eyelids twitch and flutter, wondering what her unconscious mind does to exercise, what it throws out with the rubbish.

She’s locked in the bathroom. It's not her bathroom, but a great imposing room decorated with black marble and weathered brass. Above the door - she doesn't know why - is a gigantic brass plaque, engraved in cursive script with the word 'BURLESQUE'. She's in the bath, naked and wet, shiny and exposed, and she can't get out. She seems pinned down, unable to move her arms or legs. There's steam everywhere and she can't see a thing. The water is becoming cold and she is beginning to get a little uncomfortable, clammy, and a bit scared. She's been having a lot of similar dreams like this lately.

What he loves about her is that she is so good to sleep with. His last girlfriend would fidget and flap and probably end up edging him so he was hanging out of the bed, clinging for dear life. He can put his arms around her and hold her like the world is ending and she won’t move an inch the whole night. Not an inch.