Doctor Fox’s horse and cart clip-clopped by and Annie sighed. The crack of a whip and the horse’s neighing announced the dawning of another, ordinary day. The sounds soon echoed in the distance, further up Bath Road, leaving only the morning stillness behind them. Annie could hear very little except the plod of her own footsteps, climbing up the hill. Birds sung in the distance, far far away.

Pounding like percussion, her heart beat time with a new set of footsteps, lighter and brisker than her own. Their patterns blended, making music together as she struggled to keep in step with the wiry figure opposite. She knew exactly who those steps belonged to, no matter how she tried to forget him.

The roar of the number seventeen tram rattling past separated them briefly, and Annie tiptoed to a standstill. She heard the boy whistling, her ears bending defiantly to listen to his tune.

‘I still love you, Annie R’, sang the boy. Davey Grace, her next-door neighbour; her ex-best friend.

‘Father says no, Davey’, said Annie, without looking around. ‘Says I’m not s’posed to speak t’ boys no more now I’m at the girls’ school.’ She paused. ‘You should see what he done to me; “just in case you was thinking about it”, he says.’

‘Annie you know I’m gonna kill that man one day!’ said Davey, hurtling across the road, mindful not to step on the cracks in the new macadam surface. He continued to walk a good few paces behind her, but she could still feel his hot breath against her neck. ‘So has it got any better?’ he asked. ‘School, I means?’

‘I hate it’, said Annie, still facing up the hill.

‘How’s Joe?’

‘He’s gonna die Davey!’ said Annie, turning around at last, ‘and they doesn’t care! They don’t do nowt!’

Davey said nothing, but his beautiful eyes watered. Annie feared it was more than she could handle.

‘I’s got a secret, Davey!’ she said. ‘I’s burstin’ to tell you –’

‘And?’

‘And I can’t’, she said.

‘What is it?’

‘Meet me up the tobacco fields after school. Don’t make I wait’, she said, ‘and you’d best realize I’m history if they ever finds out I’m seeing you.’

‘See you, Annie R!’ said Davey. And she listened to his footsteps peter off behind her, down towards Hungerford Road and his own school. If only she were a boy too.

In the tobacco fields later, Annie told Davey her secret.

It was an amazing day, she told him, never walked out them gates smilin’ before. Not in all them months since we left Knowle Juniors...

An angel come to school! Tall, quiet, kind eyes - Reverend Archer – you know ‘im? Teaches up the village Sund’y School where Nanna took me once. He said I’s helpful, Davey! And ‘thoughtful’, and ‘respectful’. No one’s never said nothing like that before!

They were all lookin’ at me, all four hundred of ‘em! But I done it – I went up right in front them all and gets my ‘Good Samaritan’ prize. Might’ve been shaking like some scared rabbit but inside I were so proud, Davey, being chosen like that. Felt like I’s worth something, you know?

‘You wanna see my prize?’ she asked him.

Davey was nodding like a puppet on a string – she doubted you could even make muffin the mule nod that fast. Carefully, she removed from her satchel a miniature pillar-box, finished in immaculate bright red paint, with a little window on the front where she could change the collection time. It had an opening at the front for posting, and could be emptied by levering off a tin stopper on the underside. It gleamed and shined, as did Davey’s face on seeing it.

‘Been posting my thoughts inside, like’, she said.

‘What you written?’ he asked. Annie took out two little pieces of paper and unfolded them with care. She passed them to Davey.

If Joe dies, will he go to heaven?

Did I ought to run away?

‘That’s it?’ quizzed Davey. Annie smiled hopelessly. ‘Course Joe’ll go to heaven you silly fool! If he dies. But he ain gonna die, okay?’

‘Well Father says there ain no such place!’ said Annie, taking the question from him. ‘And I –’

‘Hey, Annie, what about – ’, said Davey, handing over the other piece of paper, ‘what about your answer to this ‘ere question?’

‘I don’t know, do I?’ said Annie. ‘That’s the whole point ain it?’ Then she looked at Davey for a moment and saw what she hadn’t noticed all this time, all this day, even through his lonely whistle that morning. Underneath his interest in the secret pillar-box, his joy at breaking the rules to see her, his hungry red eyes held sadness. He sat down on a felled log and Annie followed suit.

‘We’re moving’, he said. ‘We’re moving far.’

Never before had Annie seen Davey without a bold smile on his handsome face. Even when Father did his worst, Davey made it his business to put the world right again. Now the whole earth had fallen out of orbit.

‘We’re moving to London. My dad’s got a cousin there – says he can get him some work. Says there’s nowt doing here.’

Annie coopeyed^* down, her legs no longer strong enough to hold her. She felt like a piece of her was missing, a slice of her fragile soul falling out into the earth, splintering into bits.