The first bus into town filled up after three stops. The one nearest our house was the second, and it usually meant that the queue was large and messily scattered across the footpath.

People chatted in groups, dotted incrementally in random patterns. They stood together in twos, not all of them couples, not all of them of mixed sex.

Some, like me, preferred their own company and suffered the sympathetic nods of recognition from bus stop acquaintances whose eyes met theirs as they passed each other by.

Me? I stood further away from the melée, my small tool bag over my shoulder and my packed lunch under my arm. At fifteen I was younger than most at the bus stop that day. On my way to work, trying and failing to ever be on time. My mother spent hours bitching about me being slow to get out of bed but I always caught the 7:50 bus. Always without exception.

So did Angela Lynch. Angela was my joy, my desire, my friend. We are a few weeks apart in age, she was younger. We both had an older brother and a younger sister so we appreciated each other’s place in the sibling hierarchy. We’d usually stand together but not that morning, she stared longingly into the eyes of Patrick Shaw, a tall blonde deejay with looks that leant him a Nordic look.

Patrick, stage name Ric Shaw, worked as a sales assistant in Connolly’s Shoes under the train bridge in Talbot Street. He was always spotless in freshly ironed clothes, shoes so highly polished they reflected the light..skin cool, white and blemish free and that fucking hairstyle.

He told us that the girls in the Peter Mark Salon across the street from where he worked, gave him a wash and blow dry for free every lunchtime. What he didn’t tell us was that he gave them free passes to The Rev, a disco that he worked in every weekend night, in return. He was pretty boring to talk to but he knew a lot about shoes and not just which shoe went on which foot, like me.

I could see Angela’s face becoming drawn beneath her straggled blonde hair and I laughed as she eyed me in mortification a silent plea for rescue inherent in her look. She made a face that threatened severe retribution, so I crept over to her side, gently shouldering Patrick to one side.

“Hey Angie,” I said.

“Ah there you are, Tony, I was looking for you,” she said with a smile.

“For what?”

“To sit beside me on the bus.”

“Right. What did you do on the weekend?”

“I went to Barton’s on Friday night and out to the Clare Manor on Saturday night.”

“Who’d you go with?”

“Bernie, my sister and Olive Jacobs.”

“Any good?”

“Barton’s was good, I got a wear off a fella from Grenville Street flats. Saturday was shit. That walk home’d kill you. By the way, Olive fancies you.”

“I don’t think I know her.”

“Ah you do, long dark hair all down her back.”

“None on her head?”

She laughed.

“She gets the half eight bus, she just works in the village.”

“Did Olive and Bernie get a wear?”

“Bernie did, he also dropped the hand on her. Olive didn’t, she was pining for you because I told her you’d be there.”

“I didn’t go.”

“I know. Why not?”

“I stayed in. I was tired and had a match on Saturday.”

“You should give that football up, Tony,” she said. “Did you go out on Saturday?”

“I went to the Zhivago with two blokes from work,” I said, “they weren’t gonna let me in.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m too fucking young. I only got in because the two lads I was with are in their third years.”

“When do you go into your second year?”

“October. Ten days before I turn sixteen.”

“Sweet sixteen and never been kissed?”

“That’s it, Angie, tell everyone.”

“I’ll give you a kiss on the bus, will that be good?”

“A pity kiss?”

“A spitty kiss,” she laughed.

She never did.

TBC