night, when the dark sky seems so bitten by cold it might snap in half and leave darkness floating across the world forever, she leads me through the rites of my first clumsy coupling on the wooden floor of a gazebo in someoneâs back garden. One of her friends has turned eighteen, been allowed to throw a party; the house is crowded, but Kate finds a space for just the two of us.
I work Saturdays behind a fruit and veg stall on Market Square, and am moved to prepare for this consummation by the way her eyes beckoned the last time we met, the way she embraced me, the way she planted her hands in my pockets when we danced at the end of that evening. During my lunch break, I set out to buy condoms, and sidle up and down the aisles of three pharmacies, hoping to pluck up courage, but turn heel each time a shop assistant approaches.
âJust browsing,â I mumble and scuttle off.
Itâs a fruitless effort and I spend the afternoon weighing potatoes, onions, Brussels sprouts and rhubarb, cursing my cowardice.
Jumping off the bus in Abetsby that evening, onto a pavement of black ice, I know what Iâve got to do.
I march into the backyard of The Duke of York, past the stacks of empty kegs and crates, and into the Gents toilets â a weakly-lit bunker of cracked tiles, damp cement, a leaking cistern and a stained, stainless steel urinal. Shovelling a fistful of coins into the condom vending machine, I grapple with the handle, pocket the packets and march out again.
The stench of mildew, naphthalene, urine and bad drains stays with me, so I spit into the gutter and take a deep breath of icy night. Thereâs stuff-all romantic about these preparations, nothing uplifting â I feel shrivelled by the process â and, to cap it all, the crappy bus service has made me late.
Kateâll wonder where the hell I am, whether Iâve got lost or if Iâve stood her up. Too much can happen at a party in thirty minutes, and Iâve seen the way blokes look at her. So I clutch her scribbled map and run twenty paces, walk twenty, run twenty, walk twenty, until the stitch in my side makes me stop.
What really pisses me off is not that Abetsbyâs bigger than I thought it was, but that there are so many new housing estates beyond the town centre itâs a bloody labyrinth. Street after street of identical suburban boxes, accommodating all-too-familiar ingredients: the same old beginnings and endings of never-never dreams and recriminations, TV programmes, mortgage statements, the burden of nine-to-five jobs, the stale defeat of drained love, the prospect of a holiday to Costa Brava in a yearâs time and a retirement plan in ten or twenty or thirty â the cloned lives of Mum and Brian⦠from all of which Iâm feeling remote because Kateâs begun to breathe a different sort of life into me. As long as I donât get lost, as long as I donât lose her.
And then thereâs the house. I hear the pounding of a bass rhythm from the end of the road, and notice the garish pulsing of yellow, blue and red lights through the drawn curtains of a front room. I knock at the door, but thereâs no answer, so go to a window and bang on the glass.
âI was worried youâd missed the bus,â she says, skipping into my arms, her arms outstretched.
âIt was late. Couldnât find the house. Thought it was closer to the centre of town.â
âYouâre here now, though.â
I touch the inside pocket of my jacket and nod.
âYeah,â I say.
She leans closer, embraces me, pushes her hands into the back pockets of my jeans, speaks soft words next to my ear: âTonightâs a good night, Major Tom.â
But Iâm still wearing remnants of winter. âWhat for?â
âTo fly me to the moon,â she laughs and plants a brief kiss on my neck.
Itâs hard to thaw from the dayâs anxieties and the long dash through the maze of this