After The Fire

1. Beginnings

Oh, you might long for Christmas, or for snow, but Suzanne kissed Joe on a warm dinnertime in the first truly sunny week of March. The snow had melted into slush a month before and Christmas was impossibly far off whichever way you looked at it.

This dinnertime Joe was flying through the low hills at the back of the playground. He was alight with the thrill of the hunt, hearing the first notes of the delicious theme that obsesses, delights, and ruins so many people over their lives. Kiss Chase was his favourite game, and it had been for a week now. It was simple enough: the boys chased the girls. If they caught them, they could kiss them on the cheek, more daringly on the lips. Joe was an outsider, uninterested in most of the other children for most of the time, but he wanted to play this game, and for once they let him.

At this minute the excitement was high. Because the real magic, the treasure that jolted Joe's stomach with pleasure, was that sometimes the game switched round and the girls chased the boys. This was gold, because if a girl chased you that meant something. And this playtime Joe was being chased by Suzanne Devlin.

Like every boy, Joe was in love with Suzanne, and he had been all year. She was the prettiest, everyone knew that, and she was too pretty for Joe. If he saw her in the school corridor, he walked the other way. Once she asked him if he had seen her friend Corinne and he shook his head and blushed dark red, for which Sean Garner and Michael Bluff had mocked him for days. Yet when he was walking home, or watching telly waiting for his tea, or shivering in his bath before bed, he escaped into daydreams. In those dreams he was the only one who realised she had been kidnapped, so it came to him to rescue her. Sometimes he scored winning goals while she watched. Sometimes he simply walked up to her and took hold of her hand.

So today he was on fire. First the thing on the bus. Then Kiss Chase. A great day, and it made him bold. Rather than escaping, he slowed as cleverly as he could so Suzanne could catch him without realising he was letting her – and then her hands were on his arm, and she had him and she was pulling him toward her.

He froze, waiting in a glorious terror ...

For Suzanne the playground was an ever-changing adventure. One week everyone would be skipping. Ropes made of knicker elastic or hundreds of rubber bands swarmed across the tarmac. Another week they'd all be singing. The winter she was six her best friend Corinne Ayr taught her the whole of the song 'Two Little Boys'. They stood in the playground by the railings, and line-by-line Suzanne got hold of the words. Then it might be hopscotch. You'd find a chunk of chalk, mark out the squares, and use the chalk as a marker as you hopped and jumped up and back down the grid. Some girls spent hours playing at horses, skipping round and pretending to hold reins. Some stood and talked all they could. That was Suzanne. In those first few years at school it was so exciting to talk to each other. You'd get up early on school days because you couldn't wait to be there, you'd be excited to see your friends walking up the road, and when you got chance you'd laugh for a whole playtime.

The boys were different. Suzanne watched them sometimes. They didn't do so much talking. They did more shouting. Spent more time in motion. Sean Garner would get his gang going, and they'd start a war. Soon all the boys and half the girls would be involved every playtime in a battle that ebbed and flowed round the old Victorian school buildings for a day or two. The biggest crime you could commit was not taking your shots. If someone bren-gunned you and they got you fair and square, you had to die – and you couldn't lie down for a moment and then jump up, you had to do it properly.

Suzanne understood war because singing 'Two Little Boys' so many times had shown her what happened. It was sad, and heroic, and about being the best friends you could be, helping each other through to the end, whatever went wrong. You did have to watch Sean Garner and his friends though. Sometimes while you were talking, or singing, in your group, and you thought the boys were off somewhere shouting and fighting, they surprised you by running in and lifting up your skirts.