George smelt his father’s wrist as he stood under his outstretched hand. He smelt of paperclips somehow. His father always carried his office with him. They both remained close enough for intimacy until a sigh from his father released George and he walked away across his Aunt’s beloved blue carpet and escaped downstairs into the back garden.
Only cousin Alice was left there now, looking across the flowerbed to some allotments over the wall. Alice nodded at the small boy but did not speak as she had not felt the need to speak for fifteen years so they had told him in whispers. George saw that her laces were untied and stared down at her suede desert boots wondering if boots on a woman were a sign of madness as his father had said. Alice turned to look at Freda’s boy who was standing nearer to her than anyone had all year and noticed the blotches of red spattered across his pale serious face. She nudged him with her elbow and pointed at her watch. Nearly 4 pm. How long had he been in the wardrobe then? He glanced at his own wrist and then frowned into the clearest pair of blue eyes he had ever seen. Miraculously they were smiling across at him through long lashes that reminded stupidly him of a llama he had recently seen at the zoo. Her watch hand now sat next to his: surprisingly more warm skin than parchment pensioner. And then the hands on his watch started to move, to copy hers, swirling slowly in some ballet over which he had no control.