'No, but I kiss my mum with it. Hullo, Mum. It's good to see you.'

Arlo wrapped his arms around his mother and gave her a long hug. It never ceased to surprise him that he was a head and shoulders taller than she. Though his upbringing had been liberal, lenient and laid back, the demarcation of parent/child had never been compromised. So, though Arlo had been allowed to say 'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks' and 'b.u.g.g.e.r' and 'b.l.o.o.d.y Nora' at home, to him his mum was his mum and he was her child and it always felt funny that he was grown-up enough to see over the top of her head.

'Go and unpack and check all your Action Men are where you left them,' his mother said brusquely and Arlo knew he wasn't to comment on the tears in her eyes.

'I haven't really got anything to unpack your Easter egg took up all the room.'

'Arlo, you're dreadful. I'm going to make a pot of tea.'

When she came back into the lounge, with tea for two on a tray, Arlo was revisiting all the family photos on the mantel-piece. She loved to see him do this; it was his little routine whenever he came back, saying a silent hullo to his family through the years. Hullo, Grandma. Hullo, Mum and baby Arlo. Hullo, Arlo aged six with the orange s.p.a.ce Hopper and terrible haircut. Hullo, Dad. And hullo, Dad and Arlo flying kites, hair and flares flapping cheerfully in some summer breeze thirty years ago. Hullo, Mum and Dad on your silver wedding anniversary. Hullo, Dad the Christmas before you died.

'Ten years next year,' his mother said quietly, knowing instinctively that her son was thinking the same thing.

'I know,' Arlo said, 'good old Dad.'

'You always called him "good old Dad".'

'I know it used to wind him up.'

'Not really.'

'I know.'

She poured the tea and they drank, wistful smiles easing the loaded absence of father and husband.

'Mind you, it used to really wind me up when you'd call me Mummy, good and loud in public. Especially as you were in your twenties at the time. I'm glad you've outgrown that, Arlo.'

'That was to even the score for the period when you wanted me to call you Esther.'

'You were a teenager,' she shrugged. 'I thought you'd like to.'

'You were a dippy hippy,' Arlo laughed. 'You still are, a bit. I was the only one amongst my friends who never had to sneak joss sticks up to his bedroom.'

'You never even had to buy your own.'

'Yeah, who needed pocket money when your parents let you have all the joss sticks you wanted, Esther,' Arlo teased.

'Can't stand the smell of them now,' Esther confided.

'Me neither.'

'I have quite a thing for expensive scented candles, though.'

'So I can detect,' said Arlo, thinking that the house smelt particularly fragrant and feminine and it was such a comforting and lovely ambience after weeks of eau de boys, photocopiers, floor polish, games kits and home-brew.

'Take one back with you,' she said. 'Every occasion I've visited, I've noted that your folly smells of moss and stone.'

'It's made of moss and stone.'

'Not on the inside. Mind you, I'm sure I have a Jo Malone candle that is called Moss or something.'

'Mum, if I start burning scented candles I'll get a reputation for being even more of a poof than they already think I am.'

'Darling you know it wouldn't matter to me if you were.'

'b.l.o.o.d.y Nora, Mother!' Arlo declared. 'Where's that come from?'

Esther looked mortified, though Arlo hadn't really taken offence. It had been such an Esther thing to say. Like when she'd told him she didn't mind if he wanted to be Jewish when he spent part of his gap year on a kibbutz. I think you have to be born to a Jewish mother, Arlo had told her. Well, I'll look into it myself, if you like, she'd told him.

'I just meant-' Esther said. 'Oh, I don't know what I meant. Here, let's crack this Easter egg.'

'What you meant,' Arlo said, having sucked thoughtfully on a full mouthful of divine chocolate, 'was, How's my love life?'

His mother feigned her mouth being too full to respond.

Arlo shrugged. 'It's difficult, Mum. After Helen. It's still difficult.'

'It's gone five years, darling.'

'But I flicked off that particular switch, I desensitized myself to the merits of romantic love. I can live without it. Quite happily, actually.'

Esther's eyes welled. 'But that's so sad. You're so good at it. You are your father's son and look how happy we were.'

His mother was the one person for whom Arlo's shrugs didn't work.

'You need to let Helen go, darling,' she said abruptly. 'It wasn't your fault.'

'That's easier said than done, Mum.'

'Letting go of Helen or believing it wasn't your fault.'

'You're right it's over five years ago. Nothing left to talk about.'

'But something to think about.'

'What if I have met someone?' Arlo said quietly, more to steer the direction of the conversation away from Helen and events of five years ago.

Esther let the information hang. 'Who?' she asked gently.

Arlo thought of Petra. In his mind's eye he didn't see the vision of the drowned Ophelia who'd dripped back into his life that morning. He saw Petra at fifteen, wrestling with a big clay pot in the playground of his school. Wearing Dunlop Green Flash and her summer uniform. Ringlets crying out to be pinged. Cheeky smile. Nice knees. 'A schoolgirl,' he said vaguely.

'A schoolgirl?' His mother's frown knitted her brow in such a way that she suddenly looked older than her age, as she might look in another decade.

'Someone I knew from when I was at school,' Arlo quickly explained. 'Someone I haven't seen or even thought of, really, for years and years.'

'And you met again?'

'This morning.'

Esther observed softness mingling with trepidation in her son's expression. 'How amazing,' she said.

'It is,' Arlo said, 'but I won't say more. I don't want to tempt fate.'

'You won't be tempting fate if you believe in it,' Esther said. 'If one has hope, one has the power to fulfil it.'

Arlo lies in bed, the single bed that's always been his, and he's glad to be home. In retrospect, today was a mad day; it was all a bit weird, really. Not so much the fact that he b.u.mped into Petra Flint in Suggitts, Great Ayton, having not seen her for seventeen years. But more, the feelings strong, soaring, unequivocal that seeing her has incited.

And Arlo feels a bit p.i.s.sed off, actually. Because he was getting on fine in life without thoughts of love. And now his mind is whirring with them. And his mind's eye is playing a slide show on a loop, of Petra now, Petra then, Petra today, Petra seventeen years ago. A drop of rain coursing down her face like a tear, this morning. Oh, to kiss it away. Dunlop Green Flash and a short summer uniform. Her legs. Her skin. The swell of unseen but imagined b.r.e.a.s.t.s demurely hidden by school shirts or a man's pea-green cagoule.

Arlo's hand goes to his c.o.c.k, straining with pent-up s.p.u.n.k which he w.a.n.ks away in seconds. He's been celibate, by choice, for five years, which isn't to say that he hasn't been aroused, hasn't m.a.s.t.u.r.b.a.t.ed; but for five years he's been satisfied with pneumatic anonymous fantasy women rather than anyone known to him.

He lies in the dark in his childhood bed, holding the duvet aloft while he wonders if there are any tissues. He laughs when he remembers how fastidiously prepared he was as a teenager for masturbation in this very room. Tissues. Magazines. Brilliant hiding places. Twice-, thrice-nightly eruptions of unharnessed p.u.b.escent l.u.s.t. The noiseless route to the bathroom. Silent comings and goings.

Twisting, he flicks on his bedside light. There are no tissues in sight. He tiptoes fast to the bathroom, knowing which creaking boards to avoid, and cleans himself. He regards the jars of his mother's lotions and potions. This is something new, just as her penchant for expensive scented candles is new. He remembers when he was young watching her ma.s.sage a little olive oil into her face, her neck. How she'd smile at him and dab a little on his nose. Good old Mum.

He's back in bed and he feels exhausted. His back is nagging. He's not used to driving such a distance. Nearly six hours from Ayton to London via Durham Tees Valley Airport. But he can't get to sleep. Which is baffling because a w.a.n.k is usually a good sedative.

And though he's spent, he can't stop thinking about her, seeing her.

What are you doing now, Petra? This precise moment in time? Are you in bed too? I feel I know the exact scent of your skin. But how the f.u.c.k can I? I've never got that close to you. Is this what love at first sight does, then? Imprints all your secrets, all of you, into me, in an instant?

Shut up, soft lad.

It can't be love at first sight because that would negate how I felt for her years ago. And I did love her then. At a distance. Gently. I remember.

But if I loved her then, where's she been all these years?

Where've you been all my life?

Stop it, idiot.

Is it love at second sight, then? Is that as good?

How will I know?

How can I find out?

Do I dare?

Chapter Twenty-two.

A drawback of a converted stone stables is the cobbled flooring. It would be a crime to cover it up but it makes positioning of furniture problematic, if not precarious. The wobble factor requires specific alignment of items, with minimal room for manoeuvre in their placing. Then there's the chill factor: fitted carpets would be anathema, however if areas of the floor aren't covered by rugs then a year-round coldness travels up through the soles of the feet deep into the bones. If you're a sleepwalker, though, you would be safer without the rugs. You are at greater danger sleepwalking inside such an abode than if you opened the door and wandered out into Stokesley. Out in the town, the only threat you might come across would be the stares and sn.i.g.g.e.rs from the kids loitering outside the Spar. Inside the Old Stables, however, your bare feet follow the undulations of the cobbles thus your toes can slide under a ruck in the rug, tripping you up and sending you down hard and fast; your hip catching the arm of the leather chair, your head whacking down on the stone slab of the fireplace. The pain will be so great that your subconscious tells you it's better to stay asleep than wake up. What would you do anyway call a cab to take you to A&E at the James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough and explain that b.u.mping into your first love had set you off crashing into furniture and fireplace?

Heart and hearth, in Petra's case, was not a homely combination.

It was the cold that awoke Petra just before dawn, when it's not quite light but nor is it night-dark; a wearisome time too early for waking up but too late to restore satisfying sleep. Petra scrambled up, which made her head spin. When that stopped, she noted that her jaw really throbbed. Gingerly she took her hand to her chin. The side of her face felt fat. Shivering and a little unsteady, she went to the bathroom to search for paracetamol and look at the damage. She had acquired a rather unbecoming jowl on the left side of her face though she couldn't quite tell if it was purple with bruising or with cold. Certainly, her lips had a bluish tinge.

'Arlo can't see me like this,' she told herself and was then simultaneously cheered but troubled that this should be her first thought.

'b.l.o.o.d.y Charlton,' she muttered, scrabbling around in his bathroom cabinet. 'Why can't he have something simple like paracetamol?'

But more than the discomfort of being so cold and sore was the disappointment of having sleepwalked in the first place. She was really, really vexed by this. She'd been so high, so happy, all day yesterday; with thoughts of Arlo and the serendipity of it all. Now, she lay in bed, desperate to sleep; concentrating on relaxing her body, not scrunching her eyes tight shut. She took the duvet from the bed and went back into the sitting room, glowering at the small but significant lift of the rug, like a little mouse hole, that had caused her to trip. Swaddling herself, she nestled into the sofa and tried to settle while night seeped away into day.

'Think nice thoughts,' she told herself which was what Eric always used to say to her, instead of sweet dreams, when they house-shared. She imagined herself regaling Eric and Kitty and Gina with an embellished version of how she had come across Arlo, embroidering it into a windswept tale of Bronte magnitude.

And did he take you in his arms and kiss you? she could hear Eric ask with a swoon.

And what would she say? What could she say?

No, she'd have to say, we didn't touch. We were too wet. Too surprised.

But what did he say? Gina, ever the pragmatist, would no doubt ask.

Well, he said I looked just the same.

And then what? Kitty would probe.

He said he'll find me!

How? Kitty again.

I don't know.

Find you? What tosh. How can he? Does the ice-cream lady know where you're staying?

No.

Did you tell him?

No.

Did you even say Stokesley?

I can't remember.

Well, I'm sorry for deflating your bubble of romantic delusion, but even if he wanted to find you, he couldn't. And if he wanted to see you, he'd have asked for a number or something. And if he wanted you, he'd have b.l.o.o.d.y well kissed you seventeen years ago. Popped your cherry way back then. Been your boyf. Your first love. Christ.

Easy, Kitty.

'I know I know I know,' Petra said out loud, covering her ears as if her Studio Three were actually there.