Lucy laughed, shaking her head and wagging her finger at me. "Now who's getting their characters and actors mixed up?"
"What?" I said innocently.
"It's Kirsten Dunst's rain-soaked shirt that you care about, not Mary Jane's."
I shrugged. "Same thing."
We both started giggling then, and it felt really good — just sitting there, looking at each other, laughing and giggling like two little kids ... but then, after a while, I think we both slowly realized that the stuff we'd just been talking and laughing about was the kind of stuff that maybe we shouldn't have been talking and laughing about. Because although we'd only been messing around and enjoying ourselves, and although we'd only been talking about sex in a totally superficial and unsexual way, that still didn't change the fact that we had been talking about sex. And now that she'd realized it, that, for Lucy, was just too much.
It was too close.
Too raw.
Too confusing.
And now she was just sitting there, not smiling any more, just looking down sadly at her hands in her lap as she twisted and picked at a paper tissue.
"I'm sorry," I said quietly, i should have realized ..."
"It's OK," she said, trying to smile at me. "It's not your fault. I just..." She shrugged. "Sometimes it goes away for a while, you know? I actually forget about it... at least, I'm not aware that I'm thinking about it. But then ..." She shook her head. "It always comes back. It's like it's never not there. And even when I do forget about it for a few minutes, there's always some thing that brings it back to me. Something on the TV, you know, a sex scene or something, or just some guy in a hood who reminds me of them ... I mean, God, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to watch TV without seeing a guy in a hood." She smiled shakily at me. "They're everywhere."
I self-consciously pulled down my hood.
Lucy laughed. "What did I tell you?"
"Sorry ..."
"Actually, I hadn't even noticed yours until now."
"Sorry," I said again.
"No, it's fine. Really." She frowned to herself. "It's weird that I didn't notice it before, though ..."
"It's probably just the way that I wear it," I suggested, smiling.
"What — on your head, you mean?"
We were starting to get back to each other again now. It didn't quite feel the same as before — we were quieter now, less boisterous — but that was OK. In fact, I really quite liked it. It somehow made me feel as if we knew each other a lot better. And I think Lucy was OK with it too.
"All right?" I said to her.
She smiled. "Yeah."
"Do you want anything else to eat?"
She shook her head, "I'm stuffed."
"Do you want to go for a walk?"
"Where to?"
"How about the edge of the roof?"
Lucy looked over at the edge, then back at me. "You sure it's not too far?"
"I can call a taxi, if you want."
"No," she said, "It's a nice enough night. Let's walk."
I'd never had a girlfriend before ... well, not a proper girlfriend anyway. I mean, I'd been out with a few girls, you know, I'd gone on a few dates — to the pictures, to see a band, that kind of thing. But although I'd quite liked the girls I'd been out with, I hadn't been absolutely crazy about any of them or anything, and so I'd never really given all that much thought to what I was expected to do with them, or to what I thought I was expected to do ... and, no, I don't mean that in a sexy/sexual/sexist kind of way. I just mean the stupid stuff, you know ... like knowing if it's OK to hold hands or not, and whether it's expected ... and, if it is expected, when do you do it? And how? And what if you make the first move, but it turns out that it's not OK ... what do you do then?
That kind of stuff.
And it was that kind of stuff that I thought I'd be thinking about as I got up from the picnic table and walked over to the edge of the roof with Lucy. Because I was crazy about her. I always had been crazy about her. And now here we were, finally on some kind of date together ... although, admittedly, it wasn't the most traditional of dates. But still, we'd had a meal together, and we'd talked and laughed and suffered about stuff together, and now we were going for a walk together ... and I'd dreamed of this moment so many times. I'd pictured it, imagined it, lived it ... worried about it. Should I hold her hand? Should I put my arm around her? Should I try to be cool about things? Should I do this, or do that, or try this, or try that...?
But the strange thing was, now that it was actually happening, none of this stupid stuff even entered my mind. I just got up and walked across the roof with Lucy, not worrying about anything, not caring about anything, just knowing that we both felt OK — walking side by side, as close to each other as we wanted to be ... it all felt perfectly natural.
"What are you smiling about?" Lucy asked me.
I looked at her. "Was I smiling?"
"Yeah, like an idiot."
I grinned at her.
She smiled back at me.
"Careful," I said, reaching out and touching her arm.
She stopped, realizing that we were nearing the edge of the roof.
"Wow," she said softly, "It's a long way down."
"Are you OK?" I asked her. "Not dizzy or anything?"
She looked at me. "Is that meant to be a joke?"
"No," I grinned. "Honestly ... I mean, some people don't like heights, do they? I was just checking that you were OK, that's all."
"Yeah," she said, smiling, "I'm fine." She looked down over the edge again, not saying anything, just looking and thinking.
"Shall we sit down?" I suggested.
"Why? Are you feeling dizzy?"
"You know me," I said, lowering myself cross-legged to the ground. "Tommy the Wimp."
She smiled and sat down beside me, and then we just sat there in silence for a while, both of us gazing out over the estate at the distant lights of London. Streetlights, traffic lights, headlights ... office blocks, tower blocks, shops and theatres ...
It was all a long way away.
"Is that the London Eye?" Lucy said after a while.
"Where?"
She pointed into the distance. "There ... by the river."
I couldn't see it, and just for a moment I thought about logging on to Google Earth in my head to help me find it... but that was iStuff, and iStuff didn't belong here. So I didn't.
"I can't even see the river," I told Lucy. "Never mind the London Eye."
She smiled, but I could tell that her mind was on something else now. She'd stopped looking into the distance and had turned her attention to the more immediate surroundings of the estate down below, gazing around at the streets, the towers, the low-rises, the kids' playground ...
"It's funny, isn't it?" she said quietly, her voice full of sadness.
"What's that?"
"Knowing that they're all out there somewhere ... you know, the boys who raped me. They're all out there ... living their lives, doing whatever it is they do ..." She breathed out wearily. "I mean, they're all just out there ..."
"Some of them will be in cells now," I said. "Or in hospital."
Lucy looked at me, her eyes wet with tears. "You know, don't you?" she said. "You know who they are."
I nodded. "Most of them, yeah."
"How do you know?"
I shrugged. "People talk, you know ... you hear rumours. It's not too difficult to work out the truth."