The weather that year was so hot the ground practically baked beneath our feet. Weather that hot is virtually non-existent in Ireland, but not that year. We spent our days out in the sunshine and with my auburn hair and freckles I went up like a box of matches. Life was so easy then. Not like now. Now everything is cold and dank and even if the sun shines I don’t feel its heat. Nothing touches me anymore, not since then. Not since that day. Nothing touches me but you. I can remember the feeling of the first tingles as they ran through my legs and then into my arms. You were nearby only I didn’t know you then. Not like I know you now. I could feel you and it frightened me, I was twelve and I thought I was having a fit. The sun scorched along my skin and poured itself in through the top of my head. I don’t remember how I hit the ground, I must have fallen. And then everything shifted the world and my perception changed direction like a compass going in the opposite direction. You were there, watching me over the garden fence.
