Dreams

Waking from a luminous dream, I lie on my bed, almost dazed by the insight I've gained in my sleep. The freedom of the dream domain, the release of inhibition, has allowed my mind to range into areas that I would never traverse in my waking moments, with all the pressure from without and within, to conform, to do, to be, what the world expects me to do and to be, to suppress my real self. But why should I conform, why should I carry on forcing myself to be the square peg in the round hole, as long as I defer to the laws of the land, and, more importantly, as long as I don't harm anyone, why shouldn't I be the person I've known myself to be for so many years?

But, as the luminescence in my head fades, going out of focus and becoming nothing more than a melange of colours, without pattern or meaning, all the fear, all the pain, flows back into my conscious mind, telling me you can't, you can't, you've got responsibilities, you'll hurt your family, you'll attract the attention of the haters, the narrow-minded, those who wouldn't choose to understand even if they could, submit to the restrictions of society, who are you to think you could ever break free from the chains that have been forged for you since childhood? There's nothing for you outside of your hiding place except the rightful hatred and disgust of the right thinking world, no matter that you've never allowed your foetid longings to break surface, just thinking about such things is enough to condemn you to an eternity of damnation, vile, evil, perverted wretch that you are....

NO!!

No, I'm none of those things, I'm the person of my dreams, who has so much love to give, who would never knowingly hurt anyone, even at the expense of my own happiness, but who can't pretend any more, can't waste what remains of my life in denial of who I really am.

It's time to live the dream. It's time to be me.

****

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Gift

Christmas Eve, and snow is on the ground, as it has been for several days, very unusual for our mild and damp part of the world. As I sit on a cold wooden bench on the platform of this quiet, small town station, waiting for my train home from work, darkness has already fallen, and a scatter of stars have begun to become visible, as the last light of the day fades from the clear skies. Another frosty night in prospect, ice crystals already beginning to form and glitter on the ground, reflecting the station lights like a scatter of tiny diamonds. Fascinating and beautiful, but another reminder of how cold the weather is - it's hardly been above freezing point all day, despite uninterrupted sunshine, and now that the sun has gone, the mercury is falling rapidly once again. No sign of the train, either, the level crossing should be closing by now, so it looks like I'm going to be delayed, just what I need to start the holiday weekend. I pull my coat more tightly around my body, thrusting my gloved hands into my pockets to try and keep the circulation going for as long as possible, although it seems my feet are already beyond hope - I feel like I'm carrying a couple of frozen steaks around inside my shoes. Then an automated announcement echoes around the otherwise deserted station.

"The 17:45 departure is delayed by approximately 30 minutes, this is due to a technical fault on the train. We would like to apologise for the inconvenience this delay will cause to your journey."

Wonderful. Another half an hour freezing my arse off. There isn't even a waiting room available, it's permanently locked up because of vandalism, since the train company did away with the station staff to save money. I might as well walk around a bit, I think, at least it might help me stay warm. I wander down the platform towards the level crossing where the station exit is, muttering under my breath, or so I think, about the shortcomings of the train service. I must be a bit louder in my complaints than I'd imagined, because as I reach the exit, keeping my eyes to the ground to try and avoid slipping on the small patches of ice and frozen snow, I almost walk into someone. I look up, and meet the eyes of a person I know so well by sight, but who I've never spoken to, never had the courage to speak to in the four years I've worked in this small town. The eyes are in the face of someone who's trying hard not to laugh, but can't help smirking. The face of someone who I'm more attracted to than anyone else in the world. The face of a 13 year old boy.

"I....I'm sorry," I manage to stammer out, "I wasn't looking where I was going."

"Too busy moaning about the trains, too!" the boy said with laughter in his voice.

"Yeah, well....It's Christmas Eve, freezing cold, and I'm stuck here until the train turns up. Apart from that, everything's fine!"

The boy laughed out loud this time, a happy, almost summery sound in the frigid winter evening.

"You catch the train every day, don't you?" the boy asked.

"Every working day, yeah. I haven't got a car, so it's the only way I can get to and from work."

"I've seen you, lots of times." The boy hesitated, as though somewhat embarrassed. "I've seen you....watching me, as though you wanted to talk to me. Why?"

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings, I thought. You could try looking in a mirror, sweet boy. How was I going to answer as straight a question as that, without having him running off screaming. It was my turn to be hesitant.

"I....I....look, if I tell you the truth, will you promise not to get upset," I blurted out.

A momentary silence fell between us. The boy looked concerned.

"W....why? Is it bad?"

"Some people would probably think so, but you've asked, and I don't want to lie to you."

"I don't know....I'll try." The boy was looking distinctly worried by now.

"Look, don't be frightened - I promise you I'm not going to do anything other than talk. I wouldn't....couldn't hurt you. The thing is....I've never seen anyone like you in my life. I can't help watching you, because, to me, you're just gorgeous and special. I first saw you when you were a pretty little boy, still at primary school, and now here you are, almost grown up, and just so....so....oh, I hate this word, but I can't think of another that I can use about you...." My voice tailed off, almost to a whisper. "You're so....beautiful."

The boy just stood there, it was obvious that nothing that had happened in his previous life experience that could even begin to help him form a response to what I'd said to him. He didn't look upset, angry, shocked, just....bewildered.

I looked at him a little longer, drinking in the perfection of his features, while he stayed, unmoving, exactly where he was when I'd made my little speech.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said what I did, but....I've waited so long to speak to you, and I couldn't help but tell you the truth." I turned away, and began to walk back along the platform, tears in my eyes. I slumped back down on the bench where I'd been sitting before, buried my face in my gloved hands, and really broke down, sobbing uncontrollably on the cold, empty station. All that time, all that pent-up emotion, had fractured the dam wall, and it simply gushed out of me. I knew how ridiculous I must look, but I couldn't help myself. Isolated in my world of grief and self-pity, I didn't hear the footsteps approaching me, and started violently when a gentle hand fell on my shoulder.

"Don't cry, please don't."

I looked up, startled, to find the boy standing beside me.

"Look....I....I'm not....gay, but....no-one's ever said anything that nice about me before. Don't spoil it by crying....please."

I dug around in my pocket until I found a handkerchief, and used it to give me a few seconds to compose myself while I wiped my eyes and drew a couple of deep breaths. The boy looked relieved as I brought my feelings back under control, and I smiled wanly at him.

"Sorry....I don't want you to think I do this sort of thing all the time. It was just that I'd let a lot of stuff build up inside me, and....it all....came out." I sucked in another gasping breath, barely managing to contain another outburst of emotion. "I never thought for a moment that you were gay - I don't even think I'm really gay, it's only you that has ever made feel this way. Look....it won't happen again, I'll try my best not to look at you any more, the last thing I want to do is upset you. You know which train I catch, if you don't come by the station at this time of day, I won't see you any other time, unless it's by accident. All I can do is say that I'm sorry again. Anyway, it's Christmas, you don't want to be hanging about the station with a loony like me, go and enjoy yourself."

The boy smiled, but stood his ground. "I don't mind you watching me, but don't get yourself all upset, that would worry me. I was thinking about it being Christmas, too - maybe I can give you a present, sort of."

I took my turn at looking nonplussed. The boy smiled again, stepped forward, and planted a brief but deliriously wonderful kiss on my lips. Almost as soon as I had time to register the contact, it was over.

"Happy Christmas."

"That....was the nicest Christmas present I've ever had. Thank you so much. Have a really lovely Christmas, I hope you get everything you want."

"Thanks. I'd....better go now. See ya."

My eyes were glued to the boy's back as he walked along the platform. I could barely believe what had happened, it could all have been a dream. He turned as he reached the level crossing, and waved briefly. I waved back, and then he was gone. The warning sirens for the crossing began to sound, my train must finally be on its way. I was still on my own, it was still freezing cold, but somehow none of that mattered. If it was a dream, it was a dream come true. A happy Christmas, indeed.

****

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Absence

Love, loss.
What's left.
Memory, misery.
Pictures in my head.
Pain in my life.
But nothing of you.

****

Miss you J, Happy Christmas, sweet boy.


****


Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Lucid & Lucent: republication

Author's note (December 2010) - I hope my longer term readers will forgive me a little self-indulgence in reposting a pair of stories I wrote some months ago, but this time in a rather more user-friendly format. 


****

Lucid

I'm hovering on the scumbled border between sleep and consciousness, not knowing which way I'll go next. Forward to face the day, or back into the warm embrace of dark comfortable oblivion. Back seems best at first, it looks like finishing that bottle of wine last night wasn't the best idea I've ever had in my life, mild hangover symptoms are creeping around the edges of my awareness. I haven't opened my eyes yet, but I've got a feeling that the sunlight which will be washing through my bedroom window on this summer morning will feel like shards of glass being pushed into my brain...then I'm wide awake, because of...

"Hello."

Who? How? When? A plethora of questions all flood into my mind simultaneously, short-circuiting each other and leaving me devoid of the power of rational thought. I turn towards the voice, but I still can't focus either my eyes or my brain on its source.

"Not woken up yet, then?" Gentle laughter.

Suddenly, a clashing of mental gears. There's a boy in my bedroom, what the hell is going on? My wife should be here, my daughter in the next room, but here, as I start to process the scene, is a boy, an early teenage boy, a very good looking boy, and he's wearing...a pair of my daughter's pyjamas, unless I'm mistaken. The first question is on my lips, the "Who?" question, and then it all clicks into place. Leaving the station yesterday morning after dropping off my family to catch the train to the Midlands, they're visiting my wife's family, I couldn't go because of work later in the week, leaving the station and walking back to the car, I saw a boy, on his own, at the bus stop, a boy crying as a bus pulled away, looking...desolate, that's the only word that came to my mind. I stopped and looked, my first reaction to walk away, not to get involved, if you go up to a child in the street you don't know you're immediately a potential if not actual child molester. Then he looked back at me, saw me looking at him, and he was, I don't know how I knew this, but I knew it with certainty, asking me for help.

"What's the matter, young man?".

The tears were still running down his cheeks, as he said "They've left me behind."

"Who?"

"My mum and dad, they've gone to grandma's and left me behind."

"Didn't they know you wanted to go?"

"They told me I couldn't go, they didn't want to be anywhere near me, they said I wasn't fit to be their son."

He slumped against the bus shelter and huge sobs wracked his body. This boy was about the same age as my daughter, and he'd been dumped, on the face of it, at a bus stop by his parents.

"Can't you go back home and wait for them to come back?"

"They've locked me out, I haven't got a key and my dad told me he'd changed the burglar alarm code anyway. They don't want me anymore, I haven't got any money or anything." More sobs.

Something this boy had done had seemingly been so anathema to his parents that they'd just abandoned him, but what on earth could it be? He was, in my limited experience of boys, at least since I was a boy myself, just a normal looking kid, albeit one whose face was reddened and contorted by his anguish. I sat down on the bus shelter bench, and the boy came and sat down beside me.

"What happened?", I asked, "Can you tell me?"

He sniffled, and shrugged. "I don't know. If I tell you, you'll hate me too."

"I don't do hating people, especially those I've only met two minutes ago." I tried to sound reassuring, but doubted that I was making a very good job of it. He was just about to speak again when an elderly couple walked up to the bus stop, looking at the obviously distressed boy sitting beside me and then at me with suspicious eyes.

"Shall we let these people sit down?" I said, standing up and walking a step or two away. He stood up as well, and we walked a little way down the street, the eyes following us.

"They think you've done something to me, don't they?"

"It certainly looks that way. You don't know them by any chance, do you?"

"No, we only moved here a few weeks ago. Apart from some people at my new school, I don't really know anyone round here." He began to cry again.

"Look, I know you've probably been taught not to speak to strangers and especially to stay away from their cars, but would you come and sit in my car while we work out what we can do for you? You've got no reason to believe anything I say, but I promise I won't do anything horrible. I just feel like everyone's watching us out here on the street."

"OK."

The car was parked in a side street a couple of minutes walk from the station. I opened the passenger door and he climbed in. I walked round to the driver's side and joined him. He was looking across to the back seat where some of my daughter's bits and pieces were lying - a magazine and a hairbrush, and an empty sweet wrapper.

"Have you got children?"

"One daughter, she's gone with her mum on the train this morning, that's why I was at the station."

"Which school does she go to?"

I told him - my daughter had passed her 11-plus last year and had started at the local girls' grammar school.

"She's clever, then."

"Yes, she's a bright girl."

"You're proud of her?"

"Yes, very much."

"I go to the boys' grammar, my parents were proud of me when I passed my exams where we used to live, they said we wouldn't move here unless I could go to this grammar school, but now..." His voice tailed off and more tears seeped from under his half-closed eyelids.

"Look, before Mr & Mrs Pensioner interrupted us at the bus stop, I asked you if you could tell me about what had happened..." It occurred to me that I didn't even know his name. "Here I am asking you about your life story, and I don't even know what you're called. I'm Dan."

He smiled wanly, the first smile I'd seen, a smile that almost transformed his face - he was a really handsome boy, I couldn't help but notice. "I'm Alex."

"Well, Alex, do you want to talk about what led up to you being so upset as that bus left - it's up to you, just tell me to mind my own business if you like".

"I dunno - like I said, you'll probably be the same as them", the way he spat the word out, it sounded italicised, "if I tell you."

It was an awkward moment - he seemed to want to talk to me, but, without knowing what had taken place, I was finding it hard to work out how I could facilitate that.

"Alex, I can't promise not to react to what you tell me, if you choose to tell me anything, but I promise I won't dump you on your own at the side of the road with no money, whatever you say."

He closed his eyes again, apparently gathering himself for a decision. "It's my friend."

"What's wrong with your friend?"

"Nothing, I...I really like him, and he really likes me."

"That's how friends should be."

"He's gone away on holiday today, so yesterday was the last time I was going to see him for over two weeks, and he came round to my house. My dad was at work, and my mum said she was going out shopping for an hour, but if we behaved, we could stay on our own until she came back. We hadn't been on our own together before, I've only been here a few weeks, like I said, we were in my bedroom, and..." He faltered again.

"It's OK, Alex, don't get upset, I'm still listening - if you want to carry on, that is."

"She came back. My mum came back, she'd forgotten her purse, or something...and..." Suddenly it all came out in a rush. "We didn't have any clothes on, we didn't hear her come in, she came into my room, we were touching each other...she called us filth, sluts, she told Lawrence to get out, never come back, she wasn't even going to let him put his clothes on before she threw him out, I had to stand between him and her to give him the chance to get dressed, once he'd gone she rang my dad at work and told him to come home. She told him what had happened, he rang Lawrence's parents, I heard him shouting at them on the phone, telling them they'd raised a queer, a whore, he wasn't having his son corrupted by their scumbag offspring. Then they must've told my dad that they knew Lawrence was gay, because he started shouting again, about letting their son near other boys when they knew what he was like, it was disgusting, Lawrence should be locked up, they should be locked up. Then he came and started yelling at me, what was I doing with this queer, he didn't go to work to pay for his son to grow up a homo, it was unnatural, what did I have to say for myself? I didn't know what to say, except to tell the truth - my parents have always gone on about me telling the truth - I told him I loved Lawrence, I knew I'd been gay for a couple of years, but I'd never found anyone before that I wanted to be my boyfriend. He started shouting again, saying if that was what I wanted, I was no son of his, and to stay in my room until he told me I could come out. Then this morning, he told me to get dressed and go and wait for him in the garden. We've had talks in the garden before, so I didn't think too much about it. When he came out with my mum, that's when he said that they were going to grandma's and I couldn't go, and that he'd changed the alarm code. They got a taxi to the station to catch the bus, I ran down there but the bus was leaving by the time I got there...and that's when you found me."

I didn't know what to say - you hear words like dumbstruck, but they don't have much real meaning until it happens to you. Alex looked at me, and when I didn't respond, his face began to screw up again, and he made to get out of the car. "I knew you'd hate me."

"Wait, Alex, please wait,"  I managed to say, "I've just never heard anything like this before, not in real life, give me a minute to think." He closed the car door again, but looked ready to run at any moment. "You're telling me that your parents have thrown you out with nothing, no money, no clothes apart from what you're dressed in, a 12 year old boy..."

"Thirteen", he corrected me.

"Sorry, a 13 year old boy, because you're gay?"

"I don't know, I think so."

"Have you had any breakfast?" I asked Alex.

"No, I haven't even thought about it."

"Do you want something - my treat."

He hesitated, then said "Yes, please." The pale, but beautiful smile reappeared briefly.

There was a supermarket with a decent cafe near where I lived, and I suggested this to him.

"That would be great, Dan, thank you".

Half an hour or so later, and a portion of cereal and two bacon rolls heavier, Alex was starting to look far more like an everyday teenager than the distraught waif I'd come across at the station. We hadn't talked much while he was eating, which suited me, because I still didn't have a clue what to do about him, and his preoccupation with food gave me time to think a little. The obvious answer was to simply take him to the local police station, tell them the story and let them sort him and his parents out. As we walked across the supermarket car park, I told him that was what I was thinking of. He looked horrified.

"NO, no way, they'll put me in a children's home!" He looked like he was going to run again.

The vehemence of his reaction and the evident fear in his voice brought me up short, it immediately smacked of a bad memory. I tried to be the logical adult to his, as I saw it, irrational child.

"Maybe overnight or something, until they can contact your parents. It's not as if they've left the country."

"NO. I'll sleep at the rubbish dump before I go to one of those places. My friend at my old school, his mum and dad were killed in a car crash and he had to go to a home. He got beaten up and all his stuff was stolen, and no-one did anything about it, and he wasn't even gay. They'll kill me if I go there." The panic was almost palpable.

"OK, I can understand why you're worried, but you need to understand something about my position. Can you calm down and listen to me for a minute?" He nodded uncertainly.

"Alex, if I keep you with me and don't tell anyone, I could be charged with abducting you."

"What does abducting mean?"

"Kidnapping, basically. Keeping you against your will, keeping you away from the people who are supposed to be looking after you."

"But you're not keeping me against my will, I'd rather be with you than sitting at that bus stop or in my garden."

"That's not how the law would see it, I'm afraid. Anyway, I haven't asked you yet, isn't there anyone else who could look after you, aunts, uncles, that kind of thing?"

"There's only my grandma, and my mum and dad are there - I don't want to go and have them shouting at me and calling me names all over again, and anyway, I haven't got any money to get there."

"They wouldn't call you names in front of your grandma, surely?"

"They might - I've heard my grandma talking about 'queers' like she hates them, it frightens me, because I know I'm one of those people she hates."

This was becoming more difficult by the moment - I was standing in a supermarket car park with a child I'd only met about an hour earlier, who was in a very fragile emotional state, who was terrified of the authorities and almost equally terrified by his own family, probably more justifiably in the latter case than the former, if everything he said was true, and I had no reason to disbelieve him. I did what many others have done in the face of difficult decisions - I vacillated.

"Alex, I live near here. Are you all right if we go to my house to give us more time to decide what to do? The same promise I made you when you first got in my car still applies."

For the first time that day, I was treated to the full-on Alex smile, dimples and all. I think I knew the answer to my question at that point.

****

Lunchtime had come and gone, the afternoon had passed in a mixture of chitchat, video games and TV, he told me about his school, his old school, his primary school, his friends, with the pointed exception of Lawrence, his life, interests, hobbies, I told him about my family, my job, all of the same kinds of things that he talked about, all pretty inconsequential and certainly not getting us any nearer to the resolution of the basic problem - what the hell was I going to do about this boy who was sitting in my living room as though it was the most natural place in the world for him to be. I knew my wife would ring me at some stage, probably the early evening, to let me know that she and my daughter had arrived safely and to catch up on the news of our respective days, so I asked Alex if he could be quiet while I was on the phone - I felt guilty about misleading my wife, but I couldn't see any way at that point of explaining to her what was going on - and he was as good as gold, he would've put the proverbial quiet mouse to shame.

"Thank you," I told him when I hung up the phone, "it could have been a tricky moment if I'd had to tell the unexpurgated story of who was here, and why."

"Un-what?" he giggled.

"Unexpurgated, it means nothing left out."

His face fell noticeably, as though a cloud had just passed over a sunny landscape. "Sorry, I'm causing you a lot of trouble, aren't I?"

"Nothing we can't cope with, sunshine, at least at the moment" I said, as light-heartedly as I could manage in the circumstances.

There was another hurdle approaching, after I'd cooked an evening meal for us, and Alex broached the subject while I was still thinking about how best to deal with it.

"Dan...can I stay here tonight?"

Given that it was almost 10:30, it was a question that almost answered itself - I wasn't about to throw him out onto the street, and the only other option would've been to revert to Plan A and take him to the police station, which I knew wasn't on any realistic agenda of Alex's, and, in any case, I'd had a couple of large glasses of wine and wasn't really in any legal state to drive.

"I guess that's the only sensible thing we can do at this time of day - you can sleep in my daughter's room. The only other problem is what you wear - you don't want to sleep in your outdoor clothes, and there's nothing of mine that won't be way too big for you. I know boys get very sensitive about this kind of thing - I was a boy myself, about a million years ago, so I really do know - but how about wearing some of my daughter's pyjamas, she's about the same size as you?"

Alex wrinkled his nose, but he didn't really have too many other options. "You won't tell anyone, will you?"

"Yeah, I'll get hold of the Town Crier and tell him to announce it on the Guildhall steps!" Luckily, he realised I was pulling his leg and the Alex smile lit up his face, something that had happened more and more as the day had progressed. Once again, though, the darkness caught up with him for a moment, and I could tell he was about to say something.

"Dan...thank you for what you've done today, I don't know what I would've done if you hadn't helped me."

Then he did something that took me completely unawares - he threw his arms around my neck and kissed me full on the lips. I was stunned, both at what he'd done, and at how delightful it felt. I couldn't remember ever kissing a boy before, in my whole life, but it seemed like something that was just perfect, tailor-made for me. It was unbelievable, two seconds of physical contact that had the potential to change everything for ever. Alex looked at me, and a slight smile, Mona Lisa-like, pervaded his face.

"Dan...I think I've done something for you now." My God, if only you knew, I thought. But he did know, how he knew, I've no idea, but he knew. He leant towards me and there was that sweet, so sweet gentle pressure again, longer this time, I would have guessed at hours' worth of bliss, but it must've been only a few moments, I could taste the soft drink he'd had earlier, he could no doubt taste the Chardonnay I'd been drinking. The timeless moment ended, one entity became two. I closed my eyes and sighed.

"Nice?" he asked.

"What do you think? I've never, ever, been kissed like that in my life."

Alex chuckled, the sound like a stream bubbling over rocks on a moorland hillside. "Lawrence taught me that, he's so sexy." The first mention of Lawrence since Alex had told me the story of their being caught in flagrante. "You're not bad yourself, either." the boy continued. What was he trying to say, trying to suggest?

"Alex, it's been a long day for both of us, why don't you go and take a shower and get ready for bed - I'll go and sort you out some towels and bedding and find the least girly pyjamas in my daughter's wardrobe."

There was an unspoken question in his eyes as he looked up at me when I stood up, but I shook my head very slightly, bringing tears close once again for him. "Save yourself for Lawrence. You're very special, but it just wouldn't be right." He nodded, he understood. That slight, enigmatic smile returned, at the same time as a single teardrop rolled down his cheek.

****

"Not woken up yet, then".

"Alex, hi. Sorry, it just took me a few seconds to get my head round why there was a boy in my bedroom."

"Shall I open the curtains?"

"OK - just give me a minute, though, I think I've got a bit of a headache."

"You were a very good boy last night, Dan - I would've got in bed with you if you'd let me." He reached out and gently held my wrist - odd, that, my wrist, as though he was about to take my pulse, then the curtains were pulled aside, and my world exploded into oceans of pain.

"Some indications of consciousness, a good sign, after the injuries he suffered. A little more sedative might be in order until we can assess the brain damage more accurately, and some extra analgesia - we don't want him waking up with the worst headache of his life."

"What happened to him, anyway, I wasn't on duty yesterday."

"He stopped a father beating up his son outside the station, saved the boy's life by all accounts, the father had gone berserk, something about the boy being gay. The boy ran off, but the father picked up a road worker's shovel and beat this poor sod about the head with it. It took four or five men to haul the father away, too late for our man here, though. Can we have the sedative, please?"

The blessed darkness returns.

****

Lucent

Author's note (June 2010):  This is a sequel to my story 'Lucid'. There wasn't originally meant to be a sequel, but thanks to a kind comment by 'A Wandering Pom', I saw a way there could be. Thank you, Mark.

A mini-disclaimer as well - I don't want to offend anyone, so please note there is one use of the dreaded 'F-word', close to the start of the story. It's the only one, and, in my humble opinion, it isn't used gratuitously, but if you're likely to be offended, please note that it is there.

****

Sometimes, when you least expect it, life can write a postscript. This is mine.

My life had changed, in a moment. That moment had been on a summer morning, a bright, beautiful summer morning, three years ago, on the unlikely stage of the forecourt of the railway station in my home town. A classic example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or, dependent on perspective, the right place at the right time. Each day, each moment, you make decisions, and those decisions ramify in ways that you can't begin to calculate, still less understand, eventually making you a completely different person in a completely different situation than you would have been had you chosen to follow an alternative path. There is a version of quantum physics where each of those decisions is like a fork in the road of history, every firing of every neuron in every brain, every random decomposition of a nucleus in a radioactive element creating a new, parallel universe, infinite bifurcations ranging from the almost identical to the unrecognisable, all according to the random occurrences or conscious decisions that make up each instant of time. In my case, the immediate series of events that led me to this particular point in the continuum of multiverses were, amongst, no doubt, myriad others : that my mother-in-law had been ill, and that my wife wanted to visit her; that I hadn't been able to go because of work commitments, which meant that my wife and daughter had to catch the train rather than us going together by road; that I hadn't been able to park close to the station because of road works, and had needed to leave the car a few minutes walk away; that a few minutes earlier the same morning, a 13 year old boy had chosen to tell his parents that he was in love with another 13 year old boy; that, unbeknownst to anyone, the boy's father had a brain tumour which left him vulnerable to fits of uncontrollable anger, but which had never manifested in that way until that moment: that the father caught up with his son, who had run out of their house when the man had turned into a screaming maniac, and had begun to beat the boy with the apparent intention of killing him, immediately outside the station just as I walked out of the main doors of the building.

"Dad, stop it! Dad, it's me, Alex! Oh, Lawrence, help me, I love you!" the boy choked out between gut-wrenching sobs and cries of pain as the blows rained down on him.

"You filthy little bastard, I'll kill you and that other little pervert!"

The man, in the intensity of his rage, obviously didn't see me approach him, so that when I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him up and away from the boy, he was taken completely by surprise, stumbled back and almost fell over the plastic fencing protecting the road works. The boy, aware that something had changed, even if he wasn't quite sure what, looked up, looked straight into my eyes for two, maybe three seconds, before instinct kicked in, he jumped to his feet and ran for his life, almost being knocked down by a bus in the process. In the few seconds it took for the bus to pass, the boy had completely disappeared, presumably through the alleyway opposite that led towards the town centre. I was drawing breath for a sigh of relief when it felt like a tree had fallen on me, such was the ferocity of the blow to my head.

"You queer-loving bastard, you should mind your own fucking business!"

Then another massive blow, then darkness.

****

Any account of my next few weeks is, perforce, a combination of what I remember, what I was told later and what I could reconstruct. I was taken to my local general hospital, which, to my good fortune, had a unit which specialised in head injuries, mostly because of the considerable number of military installations in the area. Of the immediate aftermath of the incident, I remember almost nothing, except intermittent bouts of terrifying pain in my head, interspersed by periods of complete oblivion which could have lasted for seconds or months, so utterly dark as they were. Almost the only thing which I clearly recall from those early days was...it's difficult to know how to categorise it...an experience, let's say, dream or hallucination could cover it, I'll leave that to the psychologists, but an astonishingly vivid experience, like watching a high definition, almost 3D, film - no, not watching it, but living it, that's how real it seemed - about me and a boy called Alex, who was having trouble with his parents because of someone called Lawrence, who seemed to be his boyfriend. The names, the situation meant nothing to me, I didn't know any boys by the name of Alex or Lawrence, or indeed any boys at all - my daughter went to an all-girl school, wasn't really old enough to have a boyfriend herself, none of my friends had school age boys, although there were one or two toddlers around. There was one other thing that stuck in my mind about the dream, or whatever it was, though - Alex had kissed me, twice, delightful, never before or since in my life kisses that seemed to go straight to some deep place in my psyche that I hadn't even known was there, then looked at me with what I can only describe as 'bedroom eyes', an implicit invitation that it had taken every ounce of resolution I possessed to decline.

I'd never bothered about dreams, I didn't often remember them, and when I did, they didn't seem to make any great sense. I'd read that they were the brain's sensory processing apparatus trying to make sense of random firings of neurons during sleep, and presenting sounds and pictures that were a 'best guess' based on the input, and that anyone purporting to 'analyse' your dreams was basically a charlatan. This dream, though, was so different in quality, in intensity than anything I had previously experienced, that I asked my neurologist about it, some weeks into my rehabilitation, although I didn't go into the subject matter in any great detail.

"Bright lights and medication, in a nutshell. It's nothing to worry about in itself - many people report similar things, I'm convinced it's where most of the stories you hear about 'near-death' and 'out-of-body' experiences come from," he explained.

If that was nothing to worry about, there were plenty of other things that were. I'd found out what had happened at the station, my wife had told me on one of her first visits when I was reasonably conscious and able to hold some sort of conversation.

"You were a hero, Dan."

"I don't feel very heroic, I just pulled this guy away from the boy he was attacking, felt a massive bang on the head and woke up in here."

"You've been a celebrity round the area, you've been on the local TV news and in the local papers, you know,  'Have-a-Go hero saves boy from brutal attack', that kind of thing. It turns out that he was ill, though, the father, he has a brain tumour, inoperable, he's not expected to live more than a few weeks, and when he came to his senses he was so upset about what had happened, trying to kill his son, and you as well, and then finding out he's going to die on top of that. Poor man."

"Poor man?! He tried to kill me with a shovel!"

"He couldn't help it, though, his tumour meant that he couldn't control himself. I mean, if you had that illness and found out that Lucy was a lesbian, what would you do?" Lucy was our daughter.

"What has Lucy got to do with this?"

"Nothing, but it turned out that the reason that the man had flipped out was that he'd found out his son was gay. Still, at least if the boy had been killed, it wouldn't have been any great loss to the world, there are plenty of other gays about."

"Is that meant to be some kind of joke?"

"What difference does it make to you? You don't like gays any more than I do."

"I've got nothing against gays, I know at least one at work and he's just one of the lads. If you met him in the street, you'd never know in a million years that he was gay, unless he told you. I certainly wouldn't think it acceptable for someone to be killed, just because they're gay."

"Well, I know you've had a bang on the head, but I didn't think it would mean you were signing up for the Gay Liberation Front."

"If that's the smartest thing you can think of to say, I think you'd better go. I'm due to see the psychologist shortly, anyway."

"If that's your attitude, I will go. I was going to bring Lucy down after school, but I don't think I'll bother now, we'll come tomorrow instead. You might have calmed down a bit by then."

Looking back now, that conversation was the beginning of the end of our marriage. Liz and I had been together for almost 20 years, we met in our late teens, she wasn't a local girl, she was from the Midlands, at college in the area studying tourism management, she never did use her qualifications, we fell in love, boyfriend/girlfriend, engaged, big white wedding, 2 or 3 years after the wedding when it was just the two of us, then, just as it was starting to look as though we might be fated not to have children, the positive pregnancy test and its inevitable upshot at the end of the regulation nine months. The ideal child, pretty from a baby, nice personality, intelligent. Sold our first house for a pretty good profit, used the equity to move up to something nicer, so far, so conventional. But then something unconventional, unforeseen happens, things are said and done, and the person you thought you knew and expected to spend the rest of your life with turns out to have facets that you'd never seen and wished you never had. I couldn't believe how callous she sounded, let the boy die like a rat in the gutter, and then use access to our daughter to get at me because I'd said something she didn't like. If she didn't like that, how much more would the contents of my dream upset her.

We drifted apart pretty rapidly after that, especially as it soon became obvious that I wasn't going to be able to go back to my old job, it was classed as safety critical, and no-one in authority in my company was going to take the risk of passing me fit when I suffered from blinding headaches on a weekly, if not a daily basis, and when I was prone to lapses of concentration, even to the extent of sitting for 20 or 30 minutes at a time staring vacantly into space. The company were very good about it, they didn't want to be seen to be treating the 'Have-a-Go hero' shabbily, bad for PR, of course, so I was given a reasonable severance package and a pension, I also had some critical injury insurance and received some criminal injury compensation, so money wasn't going to be an immediate problem. The issue of what to do next, still in my thirties and having effectively taken early retirement on health grounds, turned out to be a game breaker, however.

"Now you haven't got your job to tie you down around here, Dan, we can move nearer to Mum and Dad. It's not as if you've got any family to speak of locally," Liz said one day not long after I'd come out of hospital.

"I don't want to move to the Midlands, our life is here, we've got a nice house, Lucy's happy at her school, all her friends are around here. What's brought this on?"

"Well, you can't drive any more, and if anything happened to my parents, I wouldn't be able to get home, and if you were to...if anything was to happen to you, I'd be stuck here on my own. It's not my part of the world."

"It's easy enough to catch a train, and, anyway, you know how to drive, it's just that you normally chose to let me do it, when...when I was able to. You've lived down here for nearly 20 years, nearly half of your life, you've got more friends here than you have in the Midlands."

"You're just being selfish, you've never liked my family."

"What's given you that idea? I've never had a cross word with any of your family. And as for being selfish, I've lived here all my life, Lucy's lived here all her life, you've lived here for years, and now you want to uproot us all on a whim - I reckon you should think about what you're saying before you start throwing words like 'selfish' around."

"Whim!" she shouted, "You call wanting to look after my parents a whim? You've changed, Dan, I can't seem to talk to you any more."

Physician, heal thyself, I thought, but I just wasn't in the mood to argue. I withdrew into myself, into silence, perhaps the change I'd most noticed about myself since I was injured was that withdrawal, even from myself, certainly from the world, as though I was becoming a hermit of some kind. It was as though I was looking for something that my current life couldn't provide. I'm a bit young for a mid-life crisis, I thought with wry humour.

As winter approached, I spent most of my time at home, lacking the motivation to go out into the world as it became colder and wetter with the season. Liz and I were becoming more like 2 people who happened to share a house than a married couple. One outlet I was finding and enjoying was through a programme run by the hospital, a kind of an occupational therapy course where I was learning to draw and paint. I'd always been terrible at art when I was at school - I remember one especially humiliating experience when my art teacher had made me hold up a particularly inept painting in front of the class, as an example of how not to do it, presumably. Whether it was anything to do with my injury, or whether it was just a case of finding the right teacher, I don't know, but, all of a sudden, I found the techniques of art falling into place, and progressed very quickly from pictures that might have shamed an infant school class to some which looked almost professional. I became very enthusiastic about my twice weekly sessions, though whether Liz didn't notice, or did notice and didn't care, I'm not sure, but it led to another deterioration in our relationship after one particular lesson.

"I'm really getting into this art course - I've never been able to draw or paint before, but I've surprised myself with how well it's going."

"Oh yes," she said, non-committally.

"The teacher even thinks that I might have a real talent, that I could paint professionally."

"You, a painter! You can't even paint the bathroom wall without making a mess of it. Your teacher must be blind!"

"Thanks very much for the vote of confidence," I said bitterly. "You accuse me of not wanting to do anything, then when I find something I enjoy, you just want to shoot me down in flames."

"Be realistic, Dan, you're nearly 40, you can't just expect to wake up one morning and be the next Picasso."

"I'm not suggesting I'm the next Picasso, but then neither are the artists who sell their stuff to the tourists down in Cornwall."

"If you think I'm going to live in Cornwall, think again, mister. I'm already far enough away from my family without moving to the ends of the earth. Anyway, speaking of my family, I've got something I've been meaning to tell you. I'm taking Lucy to Mum & Dad's for Christmas, she hasn't seen them for ages."

"And I have no say in this, evidently".

"Look, you're not exactly sparkling company, are you? All you do is sit around all day like some kind of zombie. It won't make much difference to you whether we're here or not."

"Has it occurred to you that this might have something to do with my head injury? If I act like a zombie, it's because you seem to treat me like one. Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't you the one who said the person who tried to kill me was a 'poor man' who 'couldn't help himself' because he was ill? Now you're treating me like I'm a criminal!"

"You're getting hysterical.  We're going away for Christmas, get used to the idea. You can go to Cornwall, or Timbuktu if you like, just don't do anything to spoil it for us."

She got up and stormed out of the room. I sat staring fixedly ahead for a few moments, all I could think was that the last vestige of the person I'd loved for almost the whole of my adult life had just walked away. Then, for the first time since that fateful summer morning, I broke down and cried.

****

The ringing of the telephone woke me. It was just before 9:00, Christmas morning. I let it ring a couple of times, so that I wouldn't sound half asleep when I picked up the receiver.

"Hello."

"Merry Christmas, Dad!"

"Merry Christmas, Lou. Have you opened your presents yet?"

"Just now. Grandma & Grandad said I couldn't open any until after breakfast, so I made them breakfast in bed at 8:00!" Ever my bright and practical daughter.

"Did you like what I bought you?"

"Yeah, it was really pretty. Thank you, I love you." I'd bought her a gold watch, very delicate and grown up, just right, I hoped, for a 12 year old little lady.

"What are you doing later on, anything good?"

"I'm going to church with Grandma in an hour, then we'll be having dinner this afternoon, I'm going to help Grandma with the cooking. Aunty Julie and Uncle Sean are coming, with Katie and Siobhan." My sister-in-law and her family, Lucy would be happy to see them, I knew, she always got on well with her cousins, one a year older than her, the other a year younger. I was the only child of two only children who had married late and had both died relatively young, so I had very little in the way of family.

"Well, you have a good time, sweetie, I might speak to you again later on."

"You have a good time too, Dad - I hope you're not feeling lonely."

"I'm fine, Lou, don't worry about me. Just get busy enjoying yourself."

"OK, I will. Mum's here, she wants to speak to you."

There was a longish pause, broken only by a stage whisper from Liz to Lucy "Close the door on your way out, please."

"Dan?"

"Hello Liz, Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas. Did Lucy wake you?"

"Yes, but it was time I was up, anyway."

"Sorry, I told her it was too early. You know what she's like. Why did you buy her such an expensive Christmas present?"

It wasn't the next question I'd been expecting. My reply was probably a little sharper than it should have been, especially on Christmas Day.

"Why, am I not supposed to spend money on our daughter? It wasn't that much, anyway, it probably looks dearer than it actually was. I just thought she'd like it."

"There's no need to jump down my throat, I was only asking. You always seem to read more than there is into everything I say these days."

"Sorry, I've only just woken up. Have you got any news?"

There was a long silence, much longer than I would've expected after a superficially simple question.

"Yes, Dan. I have," she said slowly. "You remember Suzanne?"

"Your schoolfriend who came to our wedding? I don't think I've seen her since."

"That's her. I've only seen her a couple of times, she moved to London. I bumped into her in town when I was doing some last minute shopping for Mum the other day, and we went out for a drink the night before last, she came back here and we ended up talking until 2:00 in the morning."

"You had a lot of catching up to do."

"You could say that. She's a millionairess now, she owns a chain of travel agents, built the business up herself from nothing. She's back home for Christmas, to see her family, but she's on business as well, apparently her firm is taking over a local travel company, coach hire, coach holidays, that kind of thing. She's offered...."

The flow of words stopped abruptly.

"Go on."

"She's offered me the job of managing the company, and...and I've accepted. You've always said I should have used my qualifications, so now I'm going to."

"Where are you going to be based?" I had to ask the question, even though I was 99% certain I already knew the answer.

"Here. The depot and offices are just on the edge of town. It was an old family firm, Suzanne has bought it lock, stock and barrel, so there's even a house for us to live in on the site, at a peppercorn rent."

"Us?"

Another awkward hiatus. "Lucy and I. I didn't think you'd be interested, you said you didn't want to move up here."

I teetered on the brink of completely losing my temper, of shouting down the phone, asking her who the hell she thought she was to pull the plug on our marriage and take my daughter away from me, but it suddenly struck me that, firstly, she'd just hang up on me, and, secondly, I wasn't that bothered. It was as though a light had been switched off in my mind, or another, brighter one had taken its place.

"What does Lucy think about it?"

"She doesn't know yet. I wanted to talk to you first."

"Well, don't you think it might be a good idea to tell her?"

"Of course, I'm going to speak to her later on today. Dan, I'm amazed that you're taking this so calmly."

"Frankly, so am I. I told Lou I might speak to her again later, but I think it would be better if you get her to ring me when she's had time to digest everything. It's going to be a big upheaval for all of us."

"Dan...I'm really sorry." The tone of her voice had changed, softened, the old Liz I'd been in love with for so many years was somewhere near the surface. "If it hadn't been for...what happened to you..." her voice tailed off, and I heard a stifled sob.

Tell me about it, I thought. So there it was. I'd woken up at 9:00 a husband and father, and by 9:45 I was, apart from the legal niceties, an ex-husband and parent with access rights to be decided. Merry Christmas, indeed.

****

It was all pretty amicable, our parting of the ways. Over the winter, Liz and Lucy moved to their new home, and new job and school respectively, our house was put on the market, we had a big going away party, mostly for the benefit of Lucy's friends, and I began looking for my new 'bachelor pad', with the vague idea that I might like somewhere that could double as an artist's studio. After what had been a pretty disastrous old year, the new year began with a huge stroke of luck. I happened one day to be reading our regional daily newspaper, something that was far from being a regular occurrence, when I spotted a classified advertisement for a forthcoming property auction. One of the lots caught my eye, a holiday cottage, 'in need of renovation and modernisation' , as the estate agents' jargon had it, in a village on the North Cornwall coast. Given that I still couldn't drive, it led to a tortuous journey by public transport, two trains and two buses each way, a fourteen hour round trip, to go and have a look at it, but as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the place. It was the end house in a row of five cottages, presumably fishermen's cottages when they were originally built, on a steep hillside overlooking a sandy bay well known for surfing. It had belonged to a company that had used it to give their managers the perk of a weekend break by the sea, but the company had gone into liquidation - too many weekend breaks, and not enough work, I guessed! - and the cottage, along with the company's other assets, had been put up for sale. Apart from the basic 'two up, two down' cottage accommodation, the hillside site of the house had brought another benefit, from my perspective - a large cellar, on the downhill, garden side of the house, which had been converted into a sun room with huge picture windows opening onto a decked patio, to take advantage of the sea view. My studio, I thought. The elephant in the room, of course, was that it would probably sell for way above any price I could realistically afford, especially as the 'renovation and modernisation' that was required was actually fairly minimal, but I contacted the selling agents and registered my interest. I had to pay a deposit of 10% of the estimated selling price, and that was as close to 'my' house as I expected to get. On the day of the auction, as I'd decided not to attend myself because of my still less than robust health, but bid by phone using an agent, the call was set up and I sat, literally on the edge of my seat in the living room of our soon to be sold family home as the auction progressed, until, to my astonishment, my last bid wasn't trumped by anything higher, I heard the sound of the gavel falling over the phone line, and then heard the agent say "Congratulations, you're the new owner of Guillemot Cottage."

It was another couple of months before everything was finalised, but the big move was set for the beginning of April. That had given me the chance to finish my art course, towards the end of which the teacher suggested that I enter one or two of my paintings in a local exhibition for amateur artists. I'd found that landscapes were my best subject, so I put a couple of those forward, and was surprised and flattered when not only did one of them receive a 'highly commended' award in the landscape category, but that the exhibition organisers had received a few enquiries as to whether my pictures were for sale. Thus encouraged, I spent more money than I probably should have done on buying equipment and materials for the studio, but it kept me occupied during those early days at the cottage.

Lucy made her first visit to the cottage during the Whitsun half term holidays, despite her mother panicking that she wasn't old enough to make such a long journey on her own, but it passed off successfully and she came down fairly regularly from then on, although the distance meant that it wasn't worth her coming just for a weekend, so I didn't see quite as much of her as I would've liked. That, and the fairly perfunctory and more or less amicable divorce proceedings Liz and I went through apart, I spent my first summer in Cornwall as a virtual recluse. The other 4 houses in the same terrace as mine were all rented out as short stay holiday cottages, so that I was the only permanent resident in the 'street'. By the time I'd got onto nodding terms with my neighbours, they'd be gone and replaced by another set. I had to go to the general hospital in Truro every 3 months or so for physical and neurological tests, but apart from my 'zombie' moments, which were becoming less common as time went on, I was living a reasonably normal life, apart from the fact that I still couldn't get my driving license back. I'd got to know a local art dealer, who had a gallery in the village aimed at the relatively well-heeled tourists, weekenders and second home owners who shared the area with the surfer dudes, and he'd taken a few of my landscapes, and one or two more abstract things I'd started to experiment with, for sale - with a handsome commission for him, of course. I would've been starving in my garret if I'd been relying on the money from the pictures I sold to live, but I was making enough, when taken with my pension, to be comfortably breaking even.

So life rolled on for the next couple of years. I was becoming better known as an artist, some of the second homers' friends began to ask where they had bought their pictures, so that by the third summer, I was starting to receive an occasional commission. My health, while it was never going to return to what it had been, was good enough not to cause me any insurmountable problems, and my neurologist was even starting to concede that "we might get you back behind the wheel, sooner rather than later." Even that wasn't too much of an issue, I didn't really want or need to go anywhere else too often, and when I did, a combination of the intermittent local buses and the taxi company based in the nearest town five miles or so away rendered the necessary service. Anything I couldn't buy in the handful of shops in the village, I simply ordered on the internet, mostly my artist's materials and birthday and Christmas presents for Lucy. Life was, not to exaggerate too much, pretty idyllic, and nothing seemed as though it was going to change. Until the Sunday morning in August when the past arrived on my doorstep.

****

Saturday was the changeover day for the rental cottage next door to Guillemot Cottage, and most weekends in the season, and sometimes even in the middle of winter, there would be a flurry of activity in the morning as the outgoing tenants departed, then the cleaners would arrive at around lunchtime, followed by another session of car door slamming and luggage transference in late afternoon as the new people arrived. This particular Saturday, the first in August, the lady who organised the cleaning service tapped on my door as she was leaving.

"I'm sorry about this, but the landlord has asked me to let you know that the people taking Puffin" - the next door cottage - "this week are going to be arriving very late tonight, something about having to work today and not being able to set out from home until early evening. If it's any consolation, they're here for two weeks, so at least you won't have to put up with the hubbub next Saturday!"

"Thanks for letting me know, I'm sure they won't make too much noise - if they do, I'll let their tyres down!"

We parted laughing. In the event, their arrival must have been very late indeed, as well as very quiet, because I didn't go to bed until almost midnight, I hadn't heard them by that time and they didn't disturb me at whatever time they did eventually turn up. Arrive they had, though, because a fairly new and fairly upmarket estate car had appeared in the bay across the road, next to my unused and uncared for parking space, when I got up at 8:30 on the Sunday morning.

Not surprisingly, there were no signs of life from Puffin Cottage, even though it was a spectacularly beautiful morning, not a cloud in the sky and crystal-clear visibility as I looked out across the bay and out to sea. Far too nice a day for an artist to waste, so it wasn't long before I'd set up my easel on the patio and was setting about what was probably about the hundredth version of the view from my garden since I'd moved here, nearly two and a half years ago. After about an hour, next door began to stir. I heard the back door open, and, to judge by the voices, two teenage boys emerged into the garden, brothers, presumably.

"Wow, Lar, that's some view! It was too dark to see last night.".

"Great, isn't it. Is anyone surfing yet?"

"Nah, there's no wind, the sea's as flat as a pancake. I want to try surfing while we're here."

"You, surfing! You have trouble standing up when you're walking down the street!"

"Sod off! I'll be better at it than you, I bet! Hey, look, Lar, that guy next door is painting the view."

"Sshh. You'll disturb his concentration."

I was used to people watching me paint from over the fence, as my patio was a few feet lower than the garden of Puffin Cottage, and didn't find it a problem, unless someone fancied themselves as an art critic and started pontificating about technique.

"That's really good, look. He must be a professional. I wonder if he does portraits, I'd love one of you, Lar - as a sexy surfer dude!"

Oops, not brothers, then, or probably not, anyway! At that moment, I found I needed something, I can't remember what, from the studio. As I got up, I turned towards the right and faced towards the two previously disembodied voices next door. Two boys, both about the same height, head and shoulders above the top of the low fence, which meant about my height, 5 foot 9 or 10, as I knew from previous experience, one with fair hair, the other slightly darker. As I glanced towards the fair haired boy, on the right as I was looking, his mouth fell open and he looked like he was going to faint. I looked again, more closely, and then I saw the eyes, eyes I'd seen before, in reality and in a submerged, but now reawakened dream.

"Xan, what's the matter," the brown haired boy was saying, "Xan, talk to me, sweet."

"It's him," he whispered, almost inaudible to me, although he was only about six or seven feet away, "it's him".

"Who, sweetheart, who is it?"

"The man from the station, the man who saved me."

Five seconds later, we were both in floods of tears.

****

"It's unbelievable."

"My love, you've only said that 15 times in the last 20 minutes."

"That's because it's true. It must be more unlikely than winning the lottery three weeks in a row."

This exchange was between Malcolm and Jackie, who I'd met about 20 minutes earlier, when they dashed into the garden of their rented holiday cottage to find their son's boyfriend crying his eyes out, and a strange man in the next door garden, also sobbing uncontrollably. We were now sitting around the kitchen table in Puffin Cottage, while the two boys were snuggled in a rocking chair in the corner of the room, the dark haired boy cradling his friend's fair haired head against his chest.

"Don't you think it's unbelievable beyond words, Dan?" Malcolm asked me.

I'd only just about calmed down enough to be able to speak, so that coming up with a coherent answer to any sort of question beyond my name, rank and serial number was almost beyond me at that moment.

"I don't know what to say. It certainly wasn't what I was expecting when I got up this morning."

Malcolm turned towards his son. "How is he, Lawrence?"

"I think he'll be OK in a few minutes, he's stopped crying now." He stroked the fair head gently, lovingly.

"I'm alright now, I think." A muffled voice from the depths of the rocker.

The boys unfolded themselves from each other and from the chair, and inched towards to the table.

"I don't think we've been introduced," I said gently.

"I'm Lawrence, and this is Alex."

"And I'm Dan."

There was a moment of complete stillness, as though everyone in the room was afraid to even breathe. Then Alex took three purposeful steps, bridging the gap of time and space between us in less time than it took to think it, put his arms round my neck and, yes, he was kissing my lips in that familiar but somehow unknown sweet way, flavoured this time by the salt of his tears, feeling as though he was going to melt his way into the centre of me, that I was going to melt into him, and then he was gone, I opened my eyes half expecting to find myself in that hospital bed with my head swimming with pain, but, no, I was still in the kitchen of Puffin Cottage, Alex was just a step away from me, grinning from ear to ear.

"That wasn't the first time I've kissed you, Dan."

"I don't know how or why, but I know you're telling me the truth - tell me the story, please, soon."

"I will. Dan, thank you. Thank you for my life."

****

The five of us spent the most of the day together, I gave them the guided tour of the village, which took all of about ten minutes, before the boys wandered off to have a look at the beach. I gave Malcolm and Jackie a potted history of how I'd come to be living in Guillemot Cottage, sitting at a table outside the beach café, before asking them if they minded some questions about Lawrence and Alex.They assured me that they were happy to tell me pretty much anything, trusting to my discretion that I wouldn't ask anything too personal.

"Did you know Lawrence was gay before he met Alex?"

"Yes, we were pretty sure about Lawrence from when he was about 11. His cousin used to sleep over quite often, they were the same age - actually, they were in the same class at primary school," Jackie said. "One Friday night, I wasn't feeling well, so I went to bed early, only about ten minutes after Lawrence and Tim had gone upstairs. Lawrence's bedroom light was still on, and the door was ajar. I was going to tell them to settle down for the night, but as I got to the door, I could see what was happening - the boys were kissing, and had their hands down the front of each other's pyjamas. I talked to Malcolm about what I'd seen, and we decided to ask Lawrence about it gently."

"It seems odd, looking back," Malcolm added, "when we asked him, after Tim had gone home, about what had happened and how he felt about it, he seemed surprised that we'd had to ask. He just said 'I like boys, I don't like girls like my friends do', as though it was simply an everyday thing, like we'd asked him what his favourite flavour of ice cream was. We found some books, sex education books, appropriate for his age, and talked about the subject with him, but his outlook never changed. He just wasn't interested in girls, only boys. Then shortly before his 13th birthday, he came home from school one day waxing lyrical about this new boy who'd just started in his class, could he come to his birthday party, could he come for a sleepover, Lawrence showed every sign you could think of that he was head over heels in love."

"And that was Alex?"

"That, indeed, was Alex."

"Do you know anything about what had happened on the day I was...attacked?"

"The first we knew of it," Jackie said, "was when the phone rang at about 9:00 that morning. It was Jayne, Alex's mum, asking if I'd seen Alex. She sounded really agitated, but, of course, I couldn't help her - it was the school holidays, as you know, Lawrence was still in bed. She asked...if we knew Alex had a crush on Lawrence. I said, I don't know if I should have, but it all happened very quickly, that yes, we knew the boys were fond of each other. Then she asked, straight out, if Lawrence was gay - all I could tell her was the truth, I said yes, we think so, she called me a bitch, and slammed the phone down."

Malcolm continued. "Jackie rang me at work, I'd only just arrived. My office is quite close to the station, and I saw a police car and then an ambulance heading that way, blue lights flashing. It was obvious something was going on, though, of course, we had no idea what at that point. Jackie said it looked as though something had happened with Alex, but she didn't know any more than that. Then about 15 minutes later, she rang again, telling me I'd better come home straight away, Alex had turned up on our doorstep, absolutely hysterical, saying that his dad was trying to kill him and that he was going to kill Lawrence as well. We called his mother, we called the police, and. for the rest, we only know what was in the local papers and on the TV."

"But the boys stayed together, even after what had happened?"

"It was pretty difficult for a while, as you might imagine," Jackie replied, "Jayne was being pulled all over the place, her husband was under arrest, then collapsed at the police station and was rushed to hospital - I believe he was in the same Intensive Care Unit as you, at one point - her son was refusing to go home, refusing to visit his dad in hospital, he basically just hid in Lawrence's bedroom and wouldn't budge for anyone, not even Lawrence, then they had the diagnosis, that Derek, Alex's dad, was almost certainly going to die within weeks, at which point Alex demanded to be taken to the hospital - it was all very fraught for quite a few days. As time went on, Alex pretty much moved in with us - his mother had all the problems with her husband, and his illness, and then his death - he lasted about six weeks, in the end - and, on top of that, having to come to terms with the fact that her only son, her only child, was probably gay. Officially, Alex was still living at home, and still does, but, in reality, he's probably only spent, in total, a couple of months' worth of nights sleeping in his own bedroom in his family home in the last three years. He has his own room at our house, we're pretty strict about the boys not sharing a room, certainly on schooldays, but now that they're both 16, in legal terms, at least, the choice is theirs as to what they do. They've been together for well over three years now, and, as far as we can tell, they've made a long-term commitment to each other. They're still very young, of course, and no-one can predict the future, but we certainly wouldn't be surprised if they spend the rest of their lives together. Jayne, I think, has come to terms with what Alex is and what he wants, even if she doesn't like it very much, but we think, ultimately, that she'll take the same attitude that we have towards Lawrence - what's important is not what would make us happy, but what makes his life happy."

"That is such a wonderful, magnanimous attitude to take towards your child and their life - thank you both for sharing that with me."

As that Sunday came to its end, I found myself sitting on my patio with Alex and Lawrence, Malcolm and Jackie having retreated to Puffin Cottage to read and relax. Lawrence's parents had said it was OK for the boys to have a couple of bottles of beer, in which I joined them, and we sat and chatted about anything and everything that came to mind. I told them about my life and work in the cottage, about my daughter and how I missed her, while they told me about the joys and difficulties of their lives - they got by at school, most people knew they were a couple, although they never flaunted the fact - they didn't want to be expelled, apart from anything else - they had to put up with a certain amount of verbal abuse and the odd veiled threat, but that was as far as it went, although they had both taken self-defence classes, just in case. What came through above all, though, was the fact that they genuinely loved each other, and the fact that they were young and both male was irrelevant to that fundamental point, their love was just as real and sincere as anyone else's.

"Alex, I don't want to you to think I'm being a nuisance, but you owe me a story."

"Story?"

"About a kiss."

He grinned self-consciously, and blushed a little. "Oh yeah." His smile suddenly vanished, as though another, much darker, memory had intervened. His change of mood was so obvious that Lawrence immediately took hold of his hand.

"Sorry, Alex, I shouldn't have asked."

"No, Dan, I want to tell you. It just reminded me of my dad, that's all."

"Only if you feel you can, Alex. I don't want your holiday spoiled by bad memories."

"I'm fine. There's not that much to tell, really. I didn't want to go to the hospital at first, after what happened, but when my mum told me that my dad was...as ill as he was, I changed my mind. I was really scared, but I thought that it was the right thing to do. Dad was in the intensive care place, all sorts of tubes and monitors everywhere, but he just looked like he was asleep. Then someone said, kind of in the background - I think it was one of the nurses - how it was strange that all three people who were involved 'in that business at the station' had ended up in the same room the next day. I realised you must be there as well, but I didn't know why, I didn't know you'd been hurt when you helped me, so I looked round, and saw you - well, I guessed it was you, you were so smothered in bandages and equipment, but the only other patient in there was a lady, so I knew it must be you, you were there all on your own, no visitors or nurses or anything. So I went over to your bed, and you were lying there with your eyes closed, but your face was kind of twitching, you reminded me of our old dog, he used to twitch a lot in his sleep, my mum used to say that he was dreaming of chasing rabbits. That made me think you must be dreaming, and because you'd saved me, I wanted you to have nice dreams, so I leaned down and gave you a little kiss, like my mum used to give me sometimes when I was small. It looked like you smiled a bit when I did that, so I gave you another one, a bit like the one this morning, and this time you really did smile, but then my mum saw what I was doing and told me to leave you alone. So that's it, that's how I'd kissed you before today." He blushed again, but his dark moment seemed to have passed, and he even had that little enigmatic half-smile I remembered from my dream.

"You were right, I was dreaming, a really vivid dream - I was dreaming of you, or, at least, that was how I remembered it afterwards, and I dreamed you were kissing me as well, and that they were the nicest kisses anyone had ever given me." He lowered his eyes, and really did blush, deeply. "Sorry, I shouldn't have said that, I didn't mean to embarrass you. I was right about one thing in my dream, though - I told you to save yourself for Lawrence, and you have, and it's turned out to be the right thing for both of you, from what I can see."

****

That August Sunday morning, over two years ago now, was the start in a new phase of my life, a phase where things really started to go my way. Alex and Lawrence did begin to learn to surf during that holiday, and while neither of them are ever likely to cause too many sleepless nights for the professionals over at Fistral Beach, they both really enjoy it. They spent many weekends at Guillemot Cottage, even more after Alex passed his driving test a couple of months after his seventeenth birthday and they could get down in about 4 hours rather than the 6 or 7 it took by public transport - my weed-strewn parking bay was finally seeing some use! I even travelled up to my old home town to visit on odd occasions - Malcolm and Jackie were very generous with their hospitality - and I got to know Jayne, Alex's mum, although our dealings were characterised more by politeness than any real warmth. I also caught up with Vickie, the art teacher who'd done so much for me in the early days after my injury, and took her and her husband out for dinner - it was the least I could do in the circumstances.

****

As far as my own career went, the spring after the Alex and Lawrence fortnight was when it all began to take off. I was in my dealer's gallery in the village, chatting and showing him a portfolio of the work I'd been doing over the previous couple of months, when a guy I thought I recognised, but couldn't place, came in. He gravitated towards one of my seascapes which was hanging in the gallery, at which point my dealer, with his salesman's instincts, intervened.

"Excuse me, Sir, if you're interested in that particular canvas, you might like a word with this gentleman - he's the artist."

I chatted with the potential customer for a few minutes, he asked to have a look at my portfolio, we chatted some more, and then he went on his way.

"Do you know who that was?" my dealer asked.

"He looked familiar, but I couldn't quite place him."

It turned out that he was a TV celebrity chef who owned a chain of high class restaurants around South West England, and the upshot of our chance meeting was that I was commissioned by him to paint both conventional seascapes on canvas and a series of murals for several of his restaurants. The murals were a problem on two fronts - firstly, I had almost no experience of painting them, although, as luck would have it, I seemed to have the knack when it came to the crunch, and, secondly, I still didn't have any transport of my own to get to the various places where I needed to work. The school Easter holidays were approaching, which gave me an idea. I rang Alex.

"How do you fancy a holiday job in Cornwall?" I knew Lawrence was due to be away on a language exchange trip during the Easter break.

"Sounds good. What would I be doing?"

"Driving me around to various posh restaurants so I can decorate their walls with my expensive daubs!"

"Any posh food thrown in?"

"You never know your luck!"

"I'm there! You haven't got a car, though."

"I'll buy one - I'd hire one, but you wouldn't be old enough to drive a hire car yet. With a bit of luck, my accountant should be to offset it against tax as a business expense."

"Free food, and a tax dodge, you'll be a millionaire yet!"

We had a great couple of weeks, got lots of work done, and did get some gourmet seafood for free, although not as much as Alex would've liked. We were sitting in the studio late one night, after a long day driving and painting - it was a bit chilly for the patio.

"Back to school on Monday, then."

"Thanks for reminding me, Dan. Still, this time next year, I'll just be getting ready to start my A-levels."

"Got any plans after that?"

"No, not really. I've kind of drifted into doing the subjects I'm doing, without thinking too much about what happens next. Media Studies seems to be going the best - I like photography, and then playing about with the results on the computer. It's not exactly much that you could put on a C.V., though."

I'd seen some of his graphics work, and it was pretty impressive. "Unless you want to be a photographer and computer graphics artist, of course."

"I guess. Not the sort of thing you find much in the local Job Centre, though."

"Why don't you come up with a portfolio of some of your stuff? I'm starting to get to know a few people here and there who might be interested in looking at the sort of thing I know you can do - I've seen some of the work on your laptop, don't forget."

"Maybe. It won't be tonight, though," he yawned expansively, "I'm knackered! You're a slave driver!"

"Last day of work tomorrow, and it's pretty local, only in Padstow, then we'll have a chill-out day on Saturday, go for a meal - even if we have to pay for it ourselves! - before you have to go back on Sunday."

On the Saturday afternoon, the weather was as warm as it had been that spring, so Alex took the opportunity to surf for an hour or so. He arrived back at the cottage, and was soon out on the patio, wrapped in sweat gear and towels.

"I'm glad this is a suntrap, Dan, I'm freezing."

"Well, if you will go surfing in the North Atlantic Ocean in April, you impetuous young man, what do you expect?"

"You're warm enough, dressed like that." I was wearing a t-shirt and shorts.

"That's because I'm not so daft as to go in the sea."

"I could do with a hug, that would warm me up more quickly."

"Your hug bunny is on his way back from France, though - it looks like you're out of luck."

There was a pause in the banter. I wondered what was coming next.

"You could give me a hug, Dan."

My first instinct was to carry on with the light-hearted repartee of the last couple of minutes, but the tone of Alex's voice had changed, and I knew another airy remark wasn't what was called for.

"You're right, I could. There are all sorts of things we could do in life, but they're not all necessarily a good idea."

"You do so much, have done so much for me, Dan, but I never seem to do anything in return."

"Of course you do. You're my friend, probably my best friend, although Lawrence would be a close second. I don't want anything else from you, that's more than enough."

"Maybe...maybe I want more from you, though. I'm very greedy."

"Alex...I could recite a litany of reasons 10 feet long as to why I shouldn't get involved with you, I'm old enough to be your father, my health is pretty fragile, it would be breaching the trust of your mum, after she's let you stay here with me, and numerous other things, but, when it comes down to it, there's only one word I want to say to you...Lawrence."

"Do you think we haven't talked about it? Lawrence has known for weeks that I was coming down here to stay with you, he doesn't expect us to be like monks."

I'd reached the point where I'd been in my dream, but this time the question was far from unspoken, and Alex wasn't a child any more.

"I don't think I can, Alex. You're very special to me, more than anyone in my life apart from Lucy, but that's different, she's my flesh and blood. But Lawrence is special to me as well, and you two are way beyond special to each other. I could never forgive myself if I did anything, or allowed anything to happen, that would jeopardise that."

"It wouldn't, I promise. I can prove it to you." He pulled his mobile phone from his pocket, pressed a few buttons, and handed it to me. "Press the 'Play' icon, and watch."

I pressed, and watched. It was a short video, lasting about two minutes, and had been made, according to the date and time stamp in the corner of the screen, that morning. After the video finished, I pressed the 'Replay' icon and watched it again. Then a third time. Then I closed my eyes. Alex's light footsteps sounded on the wooden decking. I felt his hand rest gently on my shoulder.

"You see, Dan. That's what we want. Lawrence can't tell you personally, because he's probably on a Eurostar at the moment, so he recorded the message earlier and e-mailed it to my phone. But we've been thinking and talking about it for months - it's what we really want."

"What will your parents say?"

"Malcolm and Jackie will be fine with it. We know, we've already spoken to them. My mum will hate it, but she hates me being with Lawrence, although she'd never say so. She'll just have to get used to it."

What was in that message? In effect, the words that Lawrence spoke, on behalf of himself and Alex, constituted a 'marriage' proposal. From both of them, jointly, to me. The last two sentences, spoken by Lawrence looking directly at the camera, as though he was looking me straight in the eye, were "You've given Alex his life, and me mine through Alex. We want to live with you, happy ever after."

"Can I have my hug now, Dan? I'm still cold."

****

Later that evening, we were back in the cottage after having had a long, slightly boozy dinner in the nice restaurant in the village. Neither of us were drunk, but we'd shared a pleasant bottle of wine, and I'd finished with a brandy, so we certainly weren't 100% sober.

"Thank you for this evening, Dan, I've really enjoyed it."

"Me too - it must be the company."

Alex smiled broadly. "Time for bed, then?"

I knew from the way he'd said it that it was a question rather than just a statement.

"Yeah, you know where your room is."

He looked up at me - surprised?, disappointed?, relieved? It was difficult to tell.

"Dan..." he began hesitantly, "I thought...maybe I could sleep..."

"With me?"

"Yes...please?"

I heaved a huge sigh. "This is difficult for me, Alex."

"I know - it's what I want, though...what Lawrence and I want."

"Did you speak to him earlier?"

"Yes, I managed to get a signal on my mobile in the village, for once. I rang him from the Gents at the restaurant."

"Very romantic! How is he?"

"He's fine, tired after that long journey, though. And very nervous...about how you'd react, I mean."

Yes, I thought, I can relate to that. I was feeling like I had when I was a teenager, approaching my first date.

"When I say this is difficult for me, Alex, I don't mean just about the ethics of the situation - I mean about what's inside me, what I am myself. I haven't been to bed with anybody since I split up with Liz, but more than that, I've never been involved with anyone of my own sex before - as far as I can remember, I've only ever even kissed two males in my life, my dad when I was a little boy, and you. When you kissed me in my dream, it felt straight away as though something had changed in me, but that was, after all, just a dream, even if the kiss was real. This is difficult in another way, as well - as I'm sitting here talking to you, I'm desperately trying not to say the wrong thing, I don't want to you think I'm rejecting you, because I'm not, but it's such a big step for me, for us - all three of us - that I'm...afraid to make it. Once that step is made, there's no going back, ever, and I'm not ashamed to say that the prospect frightens me."

Alex moved from the armchair where he'd been sitting, and plopped down beside me on the sofa, close, but not touching. We looked at each other.

"There's nothing to be frightened of, Dan. It's only love, you love me and don't want to hurt me, I love you and don't want to hurt you. Lawrence feels the same way about you, and I think you feel the same way about him. Nothing more or less than that."

He leaned towards me and laid his head on my shoulder, I tentatively put my arm around him.

"How about a boring compromise, Alex. A halfway house that I can cope with as I am at the moment. We'll sleep together tonight, but just that, sleep. Keep our night clothes on, maybe just a hug or two. Then the next time you're both free, you and Lawrence come down for the weekend and we'll talk everything through. I'm sorry if that's not quite how you saw this evening panning out, but that's the best I can manage for now."

"Dan, that will be absolutely great. Come on, I'm getting cold again, you can warm me up!"

****

The boys came down to Guillemot Cottage for the May Day bank holiday weekend, which gave us an extra day for our conclave. The weather was rotten, cold, wet and windy, but it hardly mattered, because we spent virtually the whole weekend talking about their proposal, and what it would mean for all of us. By the Sunday evening, we'd got pretty much everything sorted out. Alex would turn 18 in November, Lawrence in the following February. They both had just over another year of school to complete, up to their A-levels, due the summer of the following year. After they finished school, Alex was going to come and work with me in a company we would set up to market our art, while Lawrence was aiming to go to university to take a degree in Business Studies and Modern Languages, hopefully at Plymouth, after which he would manage our company and leave Alex and I to look after the 'creative' side.

"I've got some good news on the commercial front, as well," I told them. "Mr TV Chef liked the murals we did for him so much that he's planning to use the designs on a range of merchandise, crockery, placemats, coasters, that kind of thing, and all at the top end of the market. We'll get royalties on every cup, plate and tea towel that he sells! We won't be rich overnight, but it'll get the company off to a flying start. It's a good job, too, because if we're all going to live together in our little commune, we're going to need something a bit bigger than poor old Guillemot Cottage."

"I like it here, though," Alex said.

"So do I, but it's a bit small for three adults to live in permanently. Don't worry, though, I'm hopeful, with this merchandising money on the horizon, that we'll be able to keep the cottage - it's all paid for, don't forget, we haven't got a mortgage or anything like that to worry about - and still be able to afford to buy a new, bigger place as well. Then, when we get sick of the sight of each other, we'll have a bolthole to escape to!"

"What are we going to do about telling the world about us?" Lawrence asked. "My mum and dad and Alex's mum know about some of it, what about your family, Dan?"

"Well, my family pretty much consists of Lucy, period. She's coming down here for half term at the end of this month, so I'll talk to her then. I'll speak to Liz just as a matter of courtesy, but I don't think she'll be too interested - she's too busy making money with her travel firm. As far as the rest of the world goes, how does a joint 18th birthday and commitment party, around the time of your birthday, Lawrence, sound?"

"Well, it would certainly be different from the average 18th party - 'We'd like to thank you all for coming, and, by the way, we're spending the rest of our lives with this eccentric artist' - should catch their attention, at least!" Lawrence laughed.

"Seriously, though, would you rather wait until you've left school before telling everyone anything quite so radical - I wouldn't want you to have problems because of me."

"It's not because of you Dan, it's what we want. It was us that proposed to you, don't forget," Alex said. "Anyway, Lawrence is a black belt now, they won't argue with him, and I'm big enough to look after myself as well."

The only issue that still hadn't been resolved was what, if any, physical relationship I was going to be involved in. As I'd told Alex at Easter, it wasn't something I was going to find easy to deal with. It had been nice sharing a bed with him for that one night, I'd enjoyed the warmth and closeness after so long sleeping on my own, but when I'd woken the following morning with him snuggled up to me and visibly aroused, I felt a nagging sense of wrongdoing, as though I'd taken advantage of him. It was a barrier that had to be crossed in some way, or it would risk driving a wedge into the heart of our interactions with each other. If we were going to make this unusual relationship work, it would have to be as equals. Lawrence was the one who made the decisive move.

On their last night of that weekend, Alex made his excuses and went to bed early - he had to drive back the following morning, Lawrence had only just started taking driving lessons. Lawrence and I talked for a while about details of how we would set up our joint business and how it would be run. As the time passed 11:00, the conversation started to flag a little.

"I think that's about as much management-speak as I can manage for one night, Dan. There's something else we need to talk about, anyway."

The purpose in his voice was obvious. I braced myself for what I guessed was coming next.

"We've agreed that we're all going to be equal partners in this relationship, Dan, but you're evading one really big issue. I'm sorry to be so blunt, but we need to 'talk about sex, baby', as the old song goes."

"I know, I did talk about it with Alex the last time he was here, we slept together."

"Yes, slept, and when he woke up with a hard-on, he said you left the room so fast, he couldn't see you for dust."

"I don't want to sound patronising, or worse still, prejudiced, but you've known you were gay since you were a boy, this is all a bit new to me. I also really care a lot about you and Alex, and I don't want to do anything to hurt either of you, in any way."

"You still see us, especially Alex, as little boys sometimes, don't you Dan?"

"I never knew you as a boy, Lawrence, I just had a picture of you in my mind's eye. I never really knew Alex, either, but I did have a real picture of him, lying on the ground, hurting, terrified, while his dad attacked him. And my dream, that was how I remembered him, the real life, frightened Alex was suppressed, I only thought of the pretty, blond boy who'd kissed me in my dream. I know you're not little boys, of course I do, but sometimes images are so deeply ingrained in your mind that it's hard to get past them."

"That's why it should be me you should go to bed with first, Dan." He smiled. "No ghosts in your head. Come on, I'll look after you, I promise."

He took me by the hand, and quietly led me upstairs.

He was so gentle with me that first time - he was gentle by nature anyway, and all the more so because he knew how fragile I was in this regard. I think he was afraid I'd run away if he showed any passion at all. Even then, I cried for at least half an hour afterwards, Lawrence was so patient with me, he just let me cry on his shoulder, as though I was the little boy who needed comfort and reassurance, which, in a way, I was. In the morning, Alex tapped quietly on the door, before coming in and sitting on the bed beside me.

"OK, Dan?" He must have been able to see I'd been crying.

"Yes, I think so. I still feel very emotional, though, I feel like I might burst into tears at any moment."

"There's no need to take it so seriously, it's supposed to be fun."

"I know, just give me a little while to get used to things, I'm sure I'll loosen up soon."

"I hope so, it's my turn next time!" He almost dazzled me with the brightness of his mischievous smile.

****

The final piece in our jigsaw fell into place just before Christmas. We'd been doing a bit of house-hunting, mostly online, but nothing we really liked had come on the market. Then one afternoon, I was working in the studio when the phone rang. It was Lawrence.

"I think I might have found one, Dan. It's a bit expensive, though." He gave me the details of the estate agent's website, and I told him I'd have a look when I'd finished what I was doing. The house he'd seen was indeed at the very top end, price-wise, of what we could afford, four bedrooms, large garden, sun terrace with sea views and a separate garage and workshop block which could be adapted as a studio. It was in a large village on the south coast of Cornwall, not as touristy as the village where Guillemot Cottage was, close to one of the restaurants where we'd worked on the murals earlier in the year.

Alex and Lawrence came down the weekend before Christmas, immediately after school had finished for the holidays, and we went to see the house on the Saturday morning. As it had been with me and Guillemot Cottage, it was love at first sight for all of us. Estate agents' descriptions usually exaggerate the charms of a property, but this one, if anything, undersold how good the location was. From the sun terrace, you could see something like 10 miles of coastline, arcing away in both directions. We put in an offer the same day, rather below the asking price, and after a little bit of haggling over valuation of fixtures and fittings, had a slightly higher offer accepted, which still left us with enough in our 'property fund' to afford to have the workshop converted to a studio for me, with a small computer suite for Alex as well. Everything was ready by the end of January, a few days after Lawrence had passed his driving test at the second attempt, and I moved in just under two weeks before the night of the big party.

****

We were all getting extremely nervous as the week of the party progressed. It was on the Saturday night of school half term holiday week, towards the end of February, a couple of days after Lawrence's actual birthday, and almost three months after Alex's. Malcolm and Jackie, and to a lesser extent Jayne, had made most of the arrangements, so I stayed in Cornwall until the Friday morning, using new house duties as an excuse. Lucy travelled down from the Midlands on the same day, and we met up in, of all places, the station buffet, just yards away from where Alex and I had been attacked, four and a half years earlier.

"Hi, Dad".

"Lou, lovely to see you, how are you?"

"Fine. How's the new house."

"Just about liveable now, although we've only got two of the bedrooms set up at the moment. We've got some more furniture due next week. You'll have to come down and see it soon, it's in a great spot."

"I will. How are the rest of the triumvirate?"

"Fine, thanks, they're running around getting stuff ready for tomorrow. We're going to meet up later on and then going out for a family meal tonight with the various parents, I don't think you've met Jayne, have you?"

"Alex's mum? No, she's never been down to Cornwall, has she?"

"No, she doesn't really approve, to be honest, but, to be fair to her, she's always polite, if not exactly overflowing with warmth. Come on, let's head over to Lawrence's house, that's where we're both staying this weekend."

As the day went on, everyone gradually got together - Lucy and I arrived, then Alex and Lawrence returned from their separate missions, and finally Malcolm got back from work. It was a convivial day all round, with everyone catching up on everyone else's news, before we went out for the evening meal to a local pub, within walking distance for everyone - Alex had gone home to walk his mum to the pub shortly before the rest of us set out. It all went very well, the only awkward moment coming when Malcolm made an off-the-cuff remark about me enjoying my last night as a single man, which Jayne didn't find very amusing, but, that apart, a fine time was had by all.

Then the night of the party, and I was as jittery as a kitten as we arrived at the function room, a feeling that got worse as the guests started to arrive, and rounds of introductions were made. Apart from a scattering of older family members, most of the guests were Alex and Lawrence's school friends and their assorted girlfriends, and people they knew from their self-defence classes and the like. A few of them remembered me from the local press and TV coverage after the attack, but most of them didn't, some regarding me with curiosity bordering on hostility. Lucy stayed close to me for much of the night, as she didn't really know anyone apart from our immediate circle, and helped to keep me on an even keel.

Alex, Lawrence and I hadn't really spent too much time discussing how we were going to phrase things when the time came to say our collective piece, and we found it hard to get together for more than a few seconds at a time at the party, with so many people wanting to speak to the boys, so, in the end, we decided to make it up as we went along.

The DJ started things when he announced  "Can I have your attention please, everyone. There are three gentlemen here who would like to say a few words to you."

Lawrence spoke first. "Four and a half years ago, some of you might remember, something happened that changed our lives. If it hadn't been for the way chance works, at least one, and probably two of us, wouldn't be here tonight. All I can say is that I'm glad that chance did work out the way it has, because I've found not one, but two wonderful people to love. Thanks."

Alex was next. "Some scientists say that at every moment, the universe takes one or other of two paths, probably pretty much at random. I'm glad that those random paths have led me here, I couldn't imagine being happier. I love you, Lawrence and Dan. Thanks a lot, everyone."

Then it was my turn. "On that day outside the station, my old life ended. Thanks to two very special people, my new life is even better. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say to Alex and Lawrence, I love you both very much, and I expect us all to live HAPPY EVER AFTER!"

****

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B