“You are evil!” I told Ollie, giggling along with the two of them.

“Yes, but you love it!” He swore and patted my knee just as Madame Pennyweather rounded the corner. She stood in her black dress with her pointed shoes planted firmly on the concrete and gave the three of us such a stern look that we immediately jumped to our feet. I thought she was deciding on a reprimand, but instead she just glared at us. She shook her head and disappeared back into the wing.

“Wow,” Oliver muttered, “She let us go! You’re our lucky charm, Silvia!”

“Damn straight,” Alex added, “Can I rub your bum for luck?”

Oliver punched him in the shoulder. Hard.

That night, Oliver and I decided to have a stroll together after supper. It was quite cold, unseasonably so, and in a hurry to have him all to myself I had not worn anything other than my uniform jumper for extra warmth. I had my arms crossed tightly in front of me, shivering as we walked along. Oliver was chattering on about an out of control rugby match he was involved in once when he stopped and turned, “Cold, Sil?”

I nodded, allowing my teeth to click together, “I didn’t think it was this chilly!”

He pulled off his uniform jacket and put it around my shoulders. “Put this on. Better?”

“Oh, yes.” I could feel the warmth from his body inside it. I slid my arms into the sleeves and stretched my fingers to see if I could poke them out. I couldn’t. When he wasn’t looking I took a second to turn my head and sniff his collar. It smelled like soap mixed with the freshness of the earth after a good rain, with just a hint of burned wood. I closed my eyes and smiled. The scent of him made me cheerful. It was the essence of Oliver and a fragrance I would smell for many years to come; only I didn’t know it then. All I knew at that moment was that he was fantastic and smelled wonderful and I was in his school coat and that all things in the universe seemed correct and proper.

It was then that he held my hand for the first time. He rolled back the sleeve of the jacket, took my hand in his and looked at it carefully, “You have beautiful hands, Silvia,” He said simply, then he wrapped his fingers through mine as we strolled on. “Cold, but beautiful.”

With no fanfare, he continued to tell me about the game, giving a quick wave to his mates who were hitting golf balls into the water.

“Want a go?” Alexander called out.

“No, taking a walk with my Sil,” He shouted back, “Nice swing, though, Lance! You looked very tall when you did that!”

Everyone laughed, including Lance.

We walked on, around and around the lake until the bell rang for curfew. I was in heaven. Heaven! No boy had ever taken the time away from his mates to walk with me before, much less hold my hand in front of them. Oliver’s hands were large and warm and strong. Just the way I thought a boy’s hands should be. Every time we met from then my hand was in his as if it belonged there naturally.

We did have our differences. We discovered this one lazy, rainy Saturday as we sat at one of the tables in the fifth year common room. The topic of discussion was “I want to know everything about you”. Quite literally, as Oliver had wandered into the room, sat across from me and said, “Good morning, Silvia. Put your book away, because I want to know everything about you. Now, tell me exactly when and where you were born.” After that, our conversation had wandered all across the board.

“How can you only be Scottish? You’ve nothing else mixed up in there?” He asked.

“I’m just Scottish as far back as I’m aware.” I knew I had English and Irish in me as well a ways back, but I didn't say it, “I’m sure that there’s something else in there somewhere, though I don’t like to admit it.”

“Purist, I see. Well, I’m a couple of things. Welsh, primarily, of course. My mother’s side is Welsh, Irish, English and German. My father’s side is Welsh, English and French, but my great grand mum. She was from Egypt.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s where you get the dark skin and those dark, mysterious eyes.”

“Must be,” He paused. “Tell me something odd about you, Silvia.”

“Odd? I don’t know. I’m quite boring.”

“No, you’re not.”

“Actually, I am. Let me think. Oh! I don’t like purple.”

“That’s all right. I don’t like cake.”

“How in the world could anyone not like cake?” I was bewildered. “It’s soft and sweet even without icing. What do you eat on your birthday?”

“Mum gives Alex cake. I eat hot sausages.”

“You stick candles in hot sausages?”

“No, not in the sausages. In the ice cream.”

“You’re barmy!”

“So says my mum. What I can’t understand is why you don’t like the colour purple.”

“I hate purple!”

“How can anybody hate purple? Purple is the colour of kings and queens! It’s noble!”

“I hate purple because I knew someone once who was all about purple. I had to room with her at my old school and everything had to be purple. The twat was obsessed with bloody purple! Her bed, her lamp, most of her clothes…all purple! She went as far as having pencils that were purple and smelled of grapes! Ugh! I couldn’t stand her! She was a pathological liar as well! I mean, she lied so much she actually believed her own lies! She had really bad breath and she snored like an ogre! And she never brushed her teeth, either! She wore so much hairspray that her hair moved in one solid brick when she scratched her head! Oh! I still can’t stand her! To this day she makes me want to pass my lunch straight out my nose!”

Oliver blinked a few times, “That’s immensely disturbing.”

The one subject that seemed to create a problem for us we talked about only once in those early days. That subject was religion. Catholics had raised Oliver and I was brought up by Protestants, but I had thought the whole subject to be mostly rubbish.

“It’s barking,” I said passionately, “A man builds a boat and gets two of every animal? How’d he travel to every continent and how’d he feed them? Did he really go to Antarctica and make his way through the glaciers in a giant dingy to gather up penguins and polar bears? Why didn’t one eat him? Polar bears eat everything! Plus, do you have any clue how many species of animals there are on the planet, not to mention back then before we conquered the land and killed most of them off? And an olive branch? How did an olive tree survive the flood? They’re native to the Mediterranean coast! Oh, yeah, the bloody coast survived a flood and was the first to produce new, fruit bearing trees! And how did a flipping little dove carry a branch in its beak...”

“I think it was a twig, actually,” He interrupted my tirade, “And I’m glad you know so much about the origin of olive trees, but that’s not the point. God was with him. I agree that the bible stories may be a bit far-fetched, even some of the stories of the divinity of Christ are a little hard to handle in a logical sense. You have to believe in some sort of mysticism to accept any of it. It’s not about what you can see or know. It’s about believing in what you can’t see or know. It’s about faith. That set aside, though, how can you explain creation if there is no God?”

“Science,” I answered simply. “Quantum Physics. It’s all a system of natural events and mathematical equations and we don’t have the answer yet.”

He looked at me as if my response made him sad, “OK,” He said slowly, “But do you believe in God at all?”

“I haven’t gotten proof yet,” I answered, “But I’m waiting. I hope there’s a God, but I don’t think for one second God is what you think it is.”

Oliver sat for a long time just looking at me before he spoke again. When he did, his voice was quite soft, “I think that you have to believe in things at least a little to have them be a genuine experience. You have to open yourself up to magic to have any magic come to you. God is magic, I think, in its oldest and purest sense.”