Joshua could hear David playing out in the street. He'd dug up a pair of mismatched tennis rackets from somewhere and had decided to try for Wimbledon with Ben from down the road. The fact that neither of them could find a tennis ball was no obstacle in the face of preteen ingenuity. Whilst Ben had gone home for lunch David had fished into the kitchen drawers, looking for all the rubber bands they had in the house. He had then made his own tennis ball, though he could only find enough rubber bands to make a ball the size of a ping pong ball. It hadn't lasted them long either. Gifted with more bounce than a conventional tennis ball, Ben had hit it too hard with an over-arm serve and it had bounded past David, over Mrs Murphy's fence and out of sight. Neither of them dared go and ask for it back. They came to Joshua expecting him to go for them but he just laughed and returned to his garden chair.

The boys were playing with a football now. Football with tennis rackets. The football they'd found needed a good pumping up so it wasn't going to bounce away from them, nor was it going to do much damage to the tennis rackets. Joshua brushed the fallen blossom from the open page of his newspaper and smiled as he listened to David and Ben disagree over the rules of their newly invented sport. The first sign of summer wasn't the disappearance of the daffodils; it was the sound of the kids emerging to play outside.

Beyond the fact that it left Holly unsatisfied, Matt's biggest issue with coming too soon was that he felt like he hadn't earned it. He'd only been able to last more than three minutes on one occasion, and Holly had come by then, so it actually felt like he'd achieved something. If he came before he was ready then it wasn't a climax, as far as he was concerned, it was an accident. Holly couldn't have been more supportive. He would always offer to make her come another way, but sex was over after he'd climaxed. Sucking her off wasn't sex. It wasn't even cheese and biscuits and a glass of after dinner brandy. It was just sucking her off.

Matt hugged Holly and Holly hugged him back. She liked to hug. She'd told him. The first time they had sex, he kept stopping to give her a hug. He also wanted to calm down and make himself last longer, but she'd quickly indicated that every time he stopped it was prolonging the experience for her as well, so she was never going to catch up with him that way. Matt had thought sexual frustration was when you desperately wanted sex, not when you just couldn't work out how to do it right. One of these days Holly would stop saying, "The only thing more natural than sex is worrying about sex" and move on.

Matt needed a glass of water. His lips and throat were dry. They always got that way. He didn't know why. It's not like he had particularly exerted himself. But he always found he held his breath and tensed his muscles. And he always broke a sweat. He'd been uncomfortable about that at first. Now he always kept a glass beside the bed. Sometimes he felt like stopping in the middle for a sip. It couldn't be nice for Holly to kiss him and find his mouth all sticky. She'd noticed he was reticent to kiss her once but she hadn't said anything. Matt could tell from her look how she felt and that just made him feel bad. Even when he tried to make it better for her he only ended up making things worse.

Sex simply wasn't enjoyable.

Holly had her arms tucked beneath his, resting across his back with a hand lightly hooked over each shoulder. She squeezed gently. She could always tell when something was wrong. Matt lifted himself away from her and sat on the side of the bed. He tipped a corner of the bed sheet over his lap, took a sip from the glass and scratched an itch behind his ear that wasn't really there. He didn't look back at her for a while. He felt guilty. He guessed he looked sheepish. She ran both hands over his back. He wanted to turn round, smile, jut out his jaw proudly like he'd just blown her away. But she was still waiting for that.

"How many fingers?" she asked.

She was pressing her fingertips into his back, at different locations along his spine. He smiled. She always did this when he turned his back on her. She'd told him once that even though it's home to the central nervous system, our spines aren't very sensitive at all. She was a veritable mine of such trivia.

"Seven," he said.

"Nine," she said. "How many now?"

"Three."

"Yeah! You earn a kiss."

She slid out of the bed to sit beside him. She was so close he could feel the warmth of her thigh against his own. Then she touched a hand to each cheek and moved in with his prize. For the better part of three seconds, everything was okay.

"Oh, crap," went Ben.

"Go and ask for it this time."

"No. You go."

"You hit it over."

"Only because of your crap serve."

"You hit it too hard."

"Go and ask your dad."

"He won't do it."

"I'm not doing it either."

"I'll go in."

And David wasn't referring to Mr Baxter's garden, either. None of his arguments with Ben lasted longer than a few comebacks because one of them would always threaten to go home and then the other would back down. Ben screwed up his face at not getting there first.

"I'll go if you go too," he said.

"Okay, but I'm knocking. You're talking."

"No, you talk. He doesn't like me."

"I'm knocking or I'm going in."

Ben screwed up his face again, shouldered past David roughly and deliberately and went up to Mr Baxter's front door. Then, before David could reach him, he bounced the knocker against the door twice.

"You're still talking," said David.

"I'm just gonna stand here and be quiet."

"Then you'll never get the ball back."

"It's your ball."

It hadn't occurred to either of them that Mr Baxter might not be in. Their parents had told them they always had to knock and ask for their balls back, even if those balls had rolled into the front garden and going to knock on the front door was an extra trip. They'd also been told they'd have to be patient and wait if nobody was in. They never took heed of that instruction. Ben looked relieved when Mr Baxter hadn't come to his door even after he'd knocked a second time.

"He's not in. Let's go get it."

"We don't know where it landed."

"It's in the back garden. It can't be that hard to find."

"What if it landed in the pond?"

"Then put your wellies on."

"I'm not going to get it."

"Well, let's look first. We don't even know it's landed in the pond."

David couldn't argue with that. He followed Ben around the side of the bungalow. There was a gateway in the passage but there was no gate attached to its hinges. Instead, the gate rested against the wall, as it had been for as long as David could remember. Anybody could sneak into Mr Baxter's back garden, and not all of them would be after wayward footballs.

"I can see it!" hissed Ben.

It was at the bottom of the garden.

"See? You hit it too hard," David whispered.

Ben looked pretty chuffed.

"You could never hit it that far," he said.

David waited at the end of the passage, wary of going any further into the open and exposed garden. He knew full well that next door could see into Mr Baxter's backyard. His was the last bungalow in this row. From there to the end of the street were houses. Crouching in the shadow of the fence between the two gardens, David peered up at the upstairs window to see if anyone was watching.

"Hurry up," he murmured.

Ben had gone to fetch the ball of his own accord. He obviously wanted to make it especially clear to David just how far he had managed to strike it. He strutted back with the ball tucked under his arm as if it were his own garden. He got as far as the patio, then something grabbed his attention, he froze and his face lit up. His grin just grew and grew.

"What are you doing?" asked David.

"Shut up!" Ben hissed, smacking his lips with a finger.

"What are you looking at?"

Ben didn't reply. He just crooked a couple of fingers on each hand. David frowned and slipped out of his hiding place, uncomfortable though it made him feel. Ben, meanwhile, crept on tiptoes across the patio. He had both hands on the windowsill by the time David reached him. He was peering inside.

"What?" David whispered.

Ben turned an electric expression on him, then returned to looking through the window. David snorted. Ben was both older and taller than he was. He didn't have to stand on his toes to look through windows. As soon as David had, though, he ducked right back down, his heart thundering in his chest. Now he knew he was shorter for a reason, and should never have looked.

Mr Baxter's daughter was lying naked on the bed with somebody heaving on top of her. She had her arms wrapped around his flushed and bony back, and was kneading it like sticky cookie dough. It was only when he saw Matthew's coat draped around the back of a chair that David realised what he was watching.

But Ben didn't know.

"Aww, look now!" he breathed.

David shook his head.

"Go on, look! Look!"

Half of David wanted him to run and tell somebody Matthew was killing Mr Baxter's daughter. But the other half made him stay and look again.

Joshua was getting an in-growing toenail. The big toe of his left foot had been feeling funky all morning but it was only now that he had got his sock off and was rubbing the skin around the cuticle that he could tell.

"Do you have to do that at the dinner table, Josh?"

He'd had one before, back in his student days, and hadn't told anybody about it at the time. He hadn't fancied going to the doctor and having him tear it out. Instead he just kept his socks on all day and night, pretended it wasn't there and hoped it would go away. And it did. It took the better part of the third year but the nail had re-established itself and the old nail had grown out ahead of it. That's how Joshua knew that it took an entire year for a toenail to grow out, an observation both David and Matthew had been delighted to hear when they had gone through that stage of fascination with all things grotesque.

When David appeared at the table, Joshua slipped his toes back into his sock and his foot back into his slipper. Then he unfolded his napkin and tucked it into his collar. David was being very quiet. A few moments later the front door opened and shut without the customary bang, then Matthew came in and slid into his seat. He slumped forward on one elbow and began to crush salt crystals with his fingernail. At least they were on time for dinner, thought Joshua.

"I've got an in-growing toenail," he announced over dessert.

NOTES:
After the disappointing marks I got from Andrew Garvin for my work in the autumn semester, it took almost three months for me to actually sit down and write again. With this freestyle exercise I just sat down at my keyboard and wrote whatever came to my head. Yes, I was surprised I managed to write 2000 words without reference to the Nazis as well. I didn't deliberately shape this piece, hence why it doesn't really have a story to speak of. It's more a juxtaposition of characters and scenes. I've edited out most of the original character names because I pinched them all from people I know, or used to know, and don't want any connections drawn. It's a complete fiction, even if many of the little details are drawn from life.