TWENTY-NINE

He still enjoyed the music he’d loved when he was fourteen or fifteen; had never really grown out of it. He supported the same football team he’d shouted for back then too, and liked the same food.

Nothing strange about any of that, was there?

He’d started fancying girls like Jessica and Poppy around the same time, earlier even, back when he was twelve or thirteen. The girls a year or two above him at school. Most of the time they knocked about with older lads, wouldn’t give him the time of day, but he would watch them gathered together; whispering in the playground or exchanging gossip in the dinner hall. He would watch and find that he wasn’t breathing quite so easily and imagine what it would be like to do it with them. At night, fumbling beneath the duvet in the dark, he would construct each detail of it nice and carefully; what they would say to him, when and where it would happen. The very best part, always, was imagining that they found it every bit as exciting as he did, as much of an adventure.

Showing a younger boy like him the ropes.

Wasn’t that absolutely normal? Wasn’t that what kids his age thought about? He knew it was, knew very well that most of the boys his age felt exactly the same way, because they told him. Hormones kicking in and going mental all over the place. Doing the same thing he was, thinking the same things every night.

So, why should it be so normal to grow out of it? To stop thinking about girls that age when you got older. You fancied who you fancied, surely, and who the hell defined these things, anyway? He knew some men, older than he was, who liked to think about doing it with middle-aged women; who specifically looked for those sorts of women online. MILFs or what have you. GILFs, even. He remembered one bloke telling him about some granny-porn website he’d been looking at and saying it was more of a turn-on because it was a bit more realistic. It was far more exciting, he said, because it was more . . . achievable.

That was just stupid. That was not normal. Surely the whole point of a fantasy was that it was unachievable.

Usually . . .

When fantasy had not been enough, he had found ways to get closer to those girls, that was all. Different whens and hows. The Jessicas and the Poppys, the girls who would not give him the time of day.

Old songs, favourite foods, the team you’d followed since you were a kid. None of that was a worry to anyone or a problem to sort out. Other things though were a little trickier to arrange.

Tricky, but not impossible.