iBoy

'You'll soon find out. Do you want me to go first?'

'OK.'

I climbed the ladder, pushed open the hatchway and stepped out onto the roof, then I reached back down to help Lucy up.

'All right?' I said to her.

'Yeah ...'

'I really like your hat, by the way.'

She grinned at me. 'Do you always do this when you're trying to impress a girl? Give her a ladder to climb, then compliment her on her choice of hat?'

'It usually works for me.'

As she reached the top of the ladder, I took her hand and helped her up through the hatchway onto the roof.

'Wow,' she said quietly, getting to her feet and looking around. 'This is amazing. You can see for ever ... I mean, I know I've seen it all before, but...'

'It feels different up here, doesn't it?'

'Yeah ...' She looked at me. 'You're full of surprises, Tom Harvey.'

'I do my best,' I said.

She smiled at me.

'Are you hungry?' I asked.

'Why? Is there a restaurant up here or something?'

'It's a picnic, remember? I invited you to a picnic.' I pointed towards the middle of the roof. 'See?'

She gazed over at where I was pointing, and when she saw what was there, her eyes lit up and her face broke into the most wonderful shining smile. 'Oh, Tom,' she cried. 'That's fantastic ... it's so beautiful.' She turned to me, still smiling like a child on Christmas morning. 'Did you do all that for me?'

I looked over at the picnic table that I'd set up in the middle of the roof, and although it was a pretty ramshackle affair — an old fold-away table and chairs I'd found in the spare room, a red and white tablecloth, a candle on a saucer, some paper cups and plates, sandwiches, crisps, a big bottle of Coke, half a packet of chocolate digestives and the remains of a fruit cake that Gram had made the week before — I had to admit that Lucy was right, it really did have a certain kind of raggedy beauty to it.

'Yeah,' I said, turning back to Lucy. 'Yeah ... I did it for you.' I could feel myself blushing slightly now, but I didn't mind. 'Do you really like it?'

She put her hand on my shoulder, leaned in towards me, and kissed me lightly on the cheek. 'I adore it,' she said, looking into my eyes. 'Really ... I absolutely love it. Thanks, Tom.'

She kissed me again, another quick peck on the cheek, and then we just stood there for a while ... just the two of us, high above the rest of the world, alone together in the dying light of a crimson sunset...

It was everything I'd ever wished for.

And in that moment, nothing else mattered.

It was just the two of us ... just Lucy and me.

Just like it used to be.

Lucy smiled and said, 'Shall we eat?'

I bowed my head. 'If Madam so wishes. Table for two, is it?'

'Please.'

'Follow me, m'lady.'

I led her over to the picnic table and held out the chair for her to sit down.

'Thank you, I'm sure,' she said.

'You're very welcome.'

I sat down and reached for the bottle of Coke. 'Coca-Cola?'

'Don't mind if I do.'

I poured a small amount into a paper cup and offered it to her to taste. She took the cup, sniffed the Coke, rolled it around in the cup for a while, then took a tiny sip.

'Mmm ...' she said, swallowing. 'Delightful, thank you.'

She held out her cup and I filled it up. I poured myself a cup, then offered her the plate of sandwiches. 'There's cheese,' I explained. 'Or ... cheese spread. Or, if you'd prefer, there's the sandwich of the day.'

Lucy grinned. 'And what might that be?'

'Cheese.'

She laughed and took a couple of sandwiches. 'Did you make these yourself?'

I nodded. 'Cheese is my speciality. It was also the only thing left in the fridge.'

I opened a packet of crisps for her.

'Cheese and onion?' she said.

'Yep.'

'Excellent.'

For the next few minutes, we just ate. It was really nice ... just sitting there in the growing darkness, eating and drinking, not having to say anything, both of us unable to wipe the stupid smiles off our faces. The night was getting a little colder now, with a chilly breeze drift­ing across the roof, but we both had our coats on, and I don't think either of us were really bothered.

After a while, Lucy took a rest from chewing and said to me, 'So ... what have you been doing recently? I haven't seen you for a while.'

'Yeah, I know ... I'm sorry, I kept meaning to come round, but stuff just kept getting in the way.'

'Stuff?'

I touched my head and shrugged, kind of ambiguously ... which I knew was a pretty crappy thing to do. But I just didn't know what to say, and I didn't want to lie to her ... and, in a way, it was the stuff in my head that had got in the way of me going round to see her.

'Right...' Lucy said, nodding uncertainly at me and slowly putting a crisp in her mouth. 'Right... I see.'

She chewed quietly on the crisp for a while ... which baffled me. I mean, how can anyone chew quietly on a crisp? And then she looked at me and said softly, 'It's really quiet up here, isn't it?'

'Yeah,' I agreed. 'The whole estate seems pretty quiet at the moment.'

She nodded, and for a moment or two she was silent again, concentrating on getting the last few crisp crumbs out of the packet. She licked her finger and ran it round the inside of the packet, sucked the bits off her finger, then upended the packet into her mouth.

'Finished?' I asked her, smiling.

She grinned. 'I don't like wasting any.'

I watched her as she twisted the empty crisp packet into a bow and placed it under the Coke bottle to stop the breeze blowing it away. She stared at the table top for a few seconds, thinking about something, then she looked up at me.

'Can you keep a secret?' she said.

'Yeah ...'

'Well... you know all this stuff that's been going on round the estate, all the arrests and everything?'

'Yeah.'

'And you know there's all kinds of rumours going round that there's some kind of vigilante out there ... some guy in a costume?'

'Yeah.'

She looked at me. 'Well ... I think it's that kid I told you about, the one who calls himself iBoy. Remember?'

'The one who tried to throw Eugene O'Neil out of the window?'

'Yeah ...'

'The MySpace guy?'

'Yeah. I think it's him.'