06 . Sproston Green

I like looking at Platt Fields Park from the road. It’s so dirty and busy where you are, with buses zooming past that should have been retired years ago, you can practically chew the bits of carbon between your teeth and all the houses are dark and hidden behind out-of-control shrubbery, and then you come up to the park, just after the takeaway mess of Fallowfield and on one side it’s still the same, but on the other there’s suddenly this escape valve stretching out (on the left side if you’re headed into town) and inviting you to lift your head up and run and jump and spin round with your arms outstretched, and fall over and not care. As I looked across the clipped grass, with its formal promenades and mounds of geraniums basking in the sun I felt really clean. I knew it was the right place to come right then. We jumped over the low wall and down onto the soft grass. It was dry, but till green, with that lush English feeling that they reckon you only get in Oxford or Cambridge. The horse chestnut trees round the edges were huge and dense and still, gently guarding the people skipping about, or lolling underneath them, of the whole perfect August scene.

Jane walked ahead as usual, selected a place and flopped down, stretching her legs out and leaning back on her hands, looking up at us.

“This do you?”

I nodded, and joined her. She lay back, slid her hand down into her front jeans pocket and fished out a small bag of grass.

“Bought that last night. Didn’t need to open it.”

She chucked it over to Em to start building up while we chugged the rest of the pop, which was warm and too sweet by now, but at least it was liquid. I felt it hit the top of my stomach and make it lurch, like there was no more room, and I stopped then and passed it on.

The weed was light and mellow after the black stuff we’d been smoking the night before. It tasted of warm evenings and camp fires and pine woods. It spread a gentle hand rght to the tips of my toes and my fingers and I uncrossed my legs and stretched them out to feel it better; arched my back and then lowered onto the ground, slowly, placing each vertebra down in turn, feeling my muscles relax and thank me until I was down.

We lay on the grass looking up at the sky with the sounds of kids and Saturday football drifting over our heads. I could feel the whole world at my fingertips, seeping up my arms into my head and heart. I remembered coming here with my mum when I was little and thinking the other kids were so big, so grown up and I would never be like them. She used to put me on the baby swing and sing to me but Dad would let me go on the big swings and push me so high I thought I would take off and I’d scream for him to stop.

I felt something touch my arm and turned my head to look. It was Jane, who’d wriggled over to my side. She had the whizz in her hand and she passed it over for me to dab into.

“Do you want to see something cool?” she asked in a whisper.

I nodded and sat up, she shushed me and pointed to Em, asleep on the grass, already a faint blush of sunburn on the cheek she’d turned to the sun. She had her thumb in her mouth. I looked around for something to cover her face with but there wasn’t anything.

We stood up and started to walk away. Just then I remembered the letter and ran back, taking it out of my pocket as I reached Em. Her skin was so soft, a blonde down covering her cheeks, which usually looked so milky pale against those rosy lips. I bent down quickly and kissed her gently, then carefully balanced the envelope across her face to make a little shade and ran back to where Jane was waiting.