Daisy chain

The paint was peeling, the window-panes were dusty and grey, but the garden house was essentially the same as Charmian remembered it. She could recall running and playing about it almost a decade ago when they were still flush-faced seven year olds, through the daisies in summer and snow in winter. The tender green jasmine and myrtle which their parents had planted had grown over the roof of the house, embracing and entwining. Next summer they would bloom fully and, sweet-smelling, spill out their beauty across the garden.

Charmian climbed the steps to the door, the faded blue paint cracking and splintering under her palm as she laid a hand against it. All those years ago they had never been able to locate the key, and she had never been inside. Curiously she moved her hand to the doorknob and tried it. To her surprise for a moment the door seemed to shift, but then stuck fast against the frame. In annoyance she rattled the handle and tried to force the door again, prising it out of its safe place. After a final push from her foot it fell open with a gasp, smoky dust curling up from the floorboards and grazed wood. With a small smile of satisfaction, Charmian stepped over the threshold into the secret house.

While all the windows were bare and curtainless it was still dim inside, so dirty was the glass. Stepping further inside Charmian looked around her. The wooden walls and floor were bare apart from a few childlike etchings. She traced with a tip of a finger one of a stick figure holding a bunch of star shaped flowers, that at times followed the grain of the wood while at others was scratched with intent childish determination. Apart from the thinning rug the hut contained only a simple metal framed sofa and the dusty remains of a child’s toy, misshapen and abandoned in one corner.

It felt good to be away from everyone at the party. After a moment’s glance back across the lawn, the sound of the adults laughing barely reaching her round the trees, Charmian quietly closed the door and took a seat on the sofa, turning around to the window behind to attempt to wipe off some of the years’ accumulation of dirt. After a minute it was possible to distinguish the clump of trees which marked the end of the expanse of garden behind the house. She leant back against the sofa, gazing out wistfully, letting her mind drift though the sun beams that spilled lazily through the cobwebs. Of those childhood friends she had stayed in polite contact with Isabella since her family had moved, but until now she had barely caught a glimpse of Seth since -

She was woken from her thoughts with a jolt when she suddenly heard the steps to the entrance creak and shudder again, and the sound of the wood of the banister splintering. There was a pause as Charmian leapt up, caught out by a mixture of a perplexing guilt and the embarrassment of her impending discovery away from polite conversation, sitting alone in a rickety children’s playhouse. Then the doorknob turned and as the door opened, more easily this time, she dashed forwards straight into the person who was stepping into the room.

It was Seth. In those first few moments they simply stared at each other, both surprised, Charmian flustered. The seconds passed and she was still looking up into his face, his dark eyes, dark hair. It didn’t seem to have occurred to him either to move first. It was hard to connect him with that small, serious boy she had known so long ago.

A section of black hair slipped across his face into his eyes. The moment was broken. It was time now to step back, apologise, and leave, exchanging pleasantries, maybe a witty remark if the awkwardness of reconciliation didn’t prove too much, before parting ways.

Yet the seconds passed and they found themselves still stood there. So, of course, they simultaneously and instinctively stepped forward and kissed, his hand at her neck, before absurdity had time to reach them. And in the next instant something rose up in them and they reached for each other more desperately as impossibility threatened, Seth pushing Charmian back into the door which slammed shut.

Outside flakes of faded blue paint fell onto the grass with the slam of the door, revealing a tiny patch of bright untarnished white that gleamed in the sunlight. The garden house stood silently as it always had, the two people inside suddenly glad of the neglected, opaque windows, shutting out their childhood selves, still dancing round the house on daisy-covered lawns.