Free Every Touch by Nerika Parke

playing with her though, even if it did make Enid think the little dog was losing her marbles.
       “What are you doing out there, ‘Nilla?”  Enid’s voice drifted from the kitchen and Denny wandered towards it. 
       The flats on the ground and first floors all had separate kitchens, unlike his flat on the top floor where they were all open plan.
       “Hello, Enid,” he said, walking into the small but neat and scrupulously clean kitchen.  Vanilla bounced around his legs.
       His neighbour was carefully mixing some kind of white mixture in a bowl, her long, dark hair pinned into a bun on top of her head and a frilly blue apron covering her jeans and black t-shirt.  A Metallica song blasted from a mini hi-fi on top of the upright freezer in the corner of the room.  Enid was a study in contrasts.
       He settled himself onto a tall stool, periodically reaching down to stroke the perpetually excited Vanilla as he watched Enid fill a piping bag with the white icing and pipe it onto the tops of twelve cupcakes which were sitting on a large wire cooling rack.  She added silver star-shaped sprinkles and loaded them into a pink cardboard cake box.  Denny was no stranger to Enid’s cupcakes.  He’d tried to restrict himself to a maximum of one box per month when he was alive, but when he did get them, they rarely lasted more than a couple of days.  They were one of the most delicious things he’d ever put in his mouth.  He hopped off the stool to take a closer look at them before she closed the lid of the box.
       “Ah, Enid, you’re killing me here,” he said.  Vanilla barked up at him and wagged her tail.
       After hanging around in Enid’s wonderful smelling kitchen for an hour or so, Denny went back to Eric’s piano and played until it was time for the kids to come home from school.  He wanted to be there when Alfie got home.  He’d be bringing his end of the school year exam results back today and Denny wanted to know how he’d done.  He’d been studying hard this year and Denny hoped he’d got the marks he deserved.
       He reached the Pierce’s flat on the ground floor just as Alfie was coming in the front door of the building.  In the three years since Denny had known Sarah Pierce’s son, he’d grown more than a foot and at thirteen was closing in on Denny’s height.  And, being a teenager, his constant enthused rush to get everywhere had morphed into a head down trudge with his thumbs glued to the screen of his phone.  Denny had to step quickly to one side to avoid being walked through.
       Once through the door to his flat, with Denny on his heels, Alfie headed towards his bedroom.
       “Alfie!”  A voice came from the kitchen.
       “Hey, mum,” he said, not altering his course.
       “Stop right there.”  Sarah appeared in the kitchen doorway and Alfie turned to look at her.  “Didn’t you get your exam results today?”
       He nodded, slipping off his backpack and rummaging for a few seconds, eventually pulling out a crumpled piece of paper and handing it to her.  Denny looked over her shoulder as she scanned the list of subjects and awarded grades.  He noted the list of Bs and even a couple of As.
       “Way to go, kid,” he said, grinning.
       Sarah squealed and threw her arms around her son.  “I’m so proud of you,” she smiled.
       “Mum,” he protested as she hugged him.  But he was smiling.
       “Was Mae on the bus with you?” she said.
       Alfie shook his head.  “She said she was going to study with Glen and she’d be home by dinner.”
       Glen was Alfie’s sister’s current boyfriend.  Mae had inherited her mother’s classic beauty and at seventeen she was very popular with the boys.  It drove Denny crazy and he didn’t know how Sarah managed to be so calm about it.  All he wanted to do was lock her in her room, preferably until she was thirty.  Glen seemed okay, the couple of times he’d seen him, and