I was silent for several moments, taking in the construction above me, while my brain was busy superimposing the sketch he’d drawn on the back cover of my Maths exercise book two decades before. It was hard to be certain, but to me the two seemed to be a perfect match.
‘Can we go up there?’ I asked eagerly, my frown deepening when I noticed that the first step of the spiral staircase was about four feet above ground level.
‘Wecan’t, butIcan. If you give me your phone, I’ll climb up and see if I can get better signal from up there.’
‘No way,’ I said determinedly, shoving my phone deeper into my pocket in case he had any plans of taking it from me.
‘Lily, the steps aren’t safe. I haven’t built the handrail yet, and the lowest tread is four feet from the ground. You’d never get up there.’ He had already approached the bottom step and had his arms braced on its wooden surface as he prepared to haul himself up.
‘What? So boys can climb trees and girls can’t?’ The words sounded awfully familiar, as well they might, for I had a feeling we’d had this exact same conversation about twenty years ago.
Josh paused, his weight still on his arms, as though about to exit a swimming pool. ‘What is it about scaling trees that makes you regress to a stroppy teenager?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said stubbornly, dropping the crutch to the ground and walking towards the tree. ‘But it’s the same thing that transforms you back to a juvenile delinquent.’
There was a long moment of silence as our teenage selves tried to outstare each other through adult eyes. I’m not sure who burst out laughing first. It might have been a photo finish.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Josh said, getting to his feet on the first step of the spiral staircase and reaching down to offer me his hand. ‘If you fall and break your neck, I’m going to have to bury your body in the forest and deny you were ever here.’
‘Sounds like a solid plan,’ I said.
Josh’s hand clasped mine firmly. I was about to remind him I was no longer a skinny eleven-year-old who weighed next to nothing, when he hoisted me through the air as though I was.
‘Wow,’ I said, seriously impressed with his strength.
‘You can compliment me on my gym skills when you’re back on the ground in one piece,’ he growled, almost as fiercely as Fletcher did at the postman. ‘For now, just concentrate on where you’re putting your feet, and don’t take your hand off the tree trunk.’ His voice brooked no opportunity to inject any levity into the situation. He was deadly serious, and a quick glance at his worried features told me he was already regretting having allowed himself to be goaded into letting me climb up to the treehouse.
‘Stay,’ Josh told Fletcher, who was whining dejectedly as he saw us ascending further up the tree.
Adam’s dog obediently dropped to his belly and watched us disappear into the leafy branches.
The climb was neither steep nor particularly arduous. If the handrail had been in place, it would have been a doddle. But my heart was still pounding like a kettle drum in my chest. It didn’t help having Josh’s right hand firmly planted on my backside.
‘You do realise that’s even more pervy than showing off your bits this morning,’ I told him, feeling the warmth of his palm against my right buttock. I knew he was laughing from the tremor that travelled through his hand and vibrated against me.
‘Just concentrate on climbing,’ he said tersely, as though I wasn’t perfectly aware that he was grinning like a Cheshire cat.
With a sigh of relief I didn’t bother trying to hide, I arrived on the platform and stepped away from his hand. Josh arrived beside me and reached for the handle of the glazed double doors.
‘Don’t you keep this place locked?’ I asked, as the door swung open and I stepped inside the treehouse, before every thought in my head was swept aside by a tidal wave of memories.
‘One day, I am going to live in a treehouse,’ I said, tipping out the last two pieces of gum into my hand and tossing one to Josh, who was lying beside me on the platform his foster father had built in the sycamore tree in their garden.
If we were on ground level, Josh would probably have attempted to catch it in his mouth, but with no walls around us, fifteen feet above Janette’s neatly tended rose bushes, that wasn’t such a good idea.
‘It will have windows on every side, and maybe even a skylight so I can lie on the floor and look up at the stars at night. And there’ll be a balcony that goes all the way around.’
‘No furniture in it, then?’ Josh teased, his smile warm as he positioned himself on one elbow and looked down at me. My teenage heart skittered in my chest, and for the hundredth time I wished I was prettier, with longer eyelashes, and that I had proper boobs like the rest of the girls in my class. Not that it mattered that I was a late developer, because I didn’t think Josh thought of me as a girl at all. Which really sucked, because for the last two years, he was the only boy I’d thought about.
‘No. It won’t need furniture. Well, maybe there could be a couch in the corner.’ I waved an arm towards the space at the edge of the platform. ‘Oh yes. It could have a big grey furry throw on it. And the floor would have shaggy sheepskin rugs everywhere. And there’d be gingham curtains at the windows. Red and white ones.’
‘I don’t even know what gingham is,’ fifteen-year-old Josh told me.
I guess somewhere along the line he must have found out, because as my eyes travelled the treehouse, they passed a comfortable-looking sofa with a grey throw draped over it and cheery, red-checked curtains at the windows.
‘You built it,’ I said in wonder, walking further into the room, being careful to avoid stepping on the sheepskin rugs with my damp boots. ‘You built my treehouse.’
Josh frowned so deeply his eyebrows formed a solid line.
