The library was my fortress.

The great shelves towering high all around me were my battlements, impenetrable to even the most powerful foe. No battle ram, no army, no force could break through the row upon row of books that encased me, protecting me within their walls of paper and ink.

Here, I was the General. The King, even.

Here I threw off my armour. Here I could run my fingertips up and down spines, tracing gentle, soft patterns on tome after tome. Here I could lean in close and inhale deeply, feel comforted by the smell of old parchment that infused my soul almost as much as the words did. Whenever I opened a volume of something that caught my eye, letting my eyes caress the page, devouring sentences, paragraphs, chapters, I felt the power of this place that had become my castle.

Here, I could be myself.

Or maybe I could be someone else. I could be Stanley Kowalski. I could be Lennie Small. I could be Gandalf the Grey. Just for a brief moment in time I could be anyone that I wanted to be and go anywhere I wanted to go. I liked the idea of that. Liked the idea of escaping, of wearing somebody else's clothes and face, of doing anything that took me away from the back streets and knife fights and scrapping. Away from the bruises and the cuts and the desperate grubby struggle just to make something of myself, even though there was nothing much to make anything from to start with.

The library wasn't just my fortress. It was everything.

The large clock on the wall that hung above the double doors struck a dull almost-out-of-tune chime as it hit the hour mark and I looked up from where I was sitting, half-hidden down one of the nearby aisles, and sighed. Sometimes I hated that bloody clock. Even when I couldn't see it, the hourly chime seemed to taunt me as it resounded through the silence of the library, telling me that my time here was almost up. Stifling the growing frustration, I slouched down further in my seat and buried my head in George Orwell's 1984. Re-writing my history seemed like a good idea right then, wiping the slate clean and giving myself a new life – maybe even a new life where whiling away the hours in a library wouldn't make me a laughing stock among all my mates.

Reggie would have laughed if he saw me in here. In fact, he'd probably have pissed his pants if he even caught me within yards of the place. I could imagine him throwing back his head, spit flying from his mouth as it always did when he laughed, and that noise, like the hee-haw of an asthmatic donkey, right in my face.

A library? What are you? Some kind of fucking poof or something?

Then again Reggie couldn't read for shit, could barely even spell his bloody name right, so for him a library was for nancy-boys, girls and old people. It wasn't for the likes of us. We were meant to stick to the snooker halls and boxing clubs. We were meant to stick to the pubs and the streets.

Beer, brawls and birds, mate, that's all we bloody need, eh?

But the truth was I needed more and I knew that wasn't something Reggie would ever understand. It had always been just me and Reggie, you see, ever since first meeting as we found ourselves running together in short trousers and grey knee-high socks towards the Tube station shelter as the V1 engines screamed overhead. We'd huddled there, wide-eyed and dust-shrouded in the dark, damp tunnels as the sirens raged and the bombs had dropped, feeling every shake of the ground as if giants were pounding the earth with their great fists, desperate to rip and tear us all from our hiding place. Afterwards, emboldened by the fact the giants hadn't found us, we'd gone down to survey the remnants of the bomb sites down in Mile End, shared our first cigarette as we stared at the bones and the rubble and watched the mothers' tears streak their soot-covered faces as they clutched their dead babies to their chests.

Most kids form friendships over a shared love of football, or music or hopscotch, or whatever, but not us. Ours was formed over air raid sirens and death. Our friendship was born out of a mutual determination to not let the bastards grind us down. A refusal to submit. Standing there that day, we'd looked at each other, a connection and understanding that went beyond mere words and together we made a pact, a pact that said we wouldn't let anybody break us. We wouldn't let anyone or anything beat us. Not the bombs, not the war, nothing, because when you've seen that, when you've seen all the fucking hatred and hardship the world has got to throw at you, your skin thickens like an extra coat you put on every day before you walk out the door in the morning.

And that's what we did. We wore the coat and said fuck you to the world, to Hitler, to the ravaged slums and to anyone else who wanted to stand in our way. We spat right at their feet and bloodied our knuckles, and we did it together because it was the only way we were going to survive.

Together.

Not only had we shared our first cigarette together, but our first fight, beating the shit out of Tommy Doyle and Alfie Wainwright from the grammar school – we hated those smug toffee-nosed bastards – and our first ever time with a girl, me with Kelly McClean and Reggie upstairs with her twin sister, Daisy. Incidentally we both got chased down the street by their dad, Billy McClean, and got black eyes as a result, but both agreed it was worth it just to see the McClean twins in their underwear. Forming the gang too, not that we were big time or anything, but we had aspirations, me and Reggie. Together. Everything we did, we did together.

Except this.

This I did on my own. This was mine and mine alone and I liked that. I liked having something for me, something that he had nothing to do with, something that took me as far away as possible from the man I was expected to be out there.

And so, here I was, hiding away down the aisles in the desperate hope that no one I knew would find me here and discover my dirty secret, which was crazy really, after all, it wasn't as if Reggie or any of the others would ever step foot inside this place. But no matter how much I told myself that, I could never escape the fear that they might follow me here one day and then that would be it. No more library. No more fortress. No more row upon row of endless books and a sea of words in which to wade.

I was wading then when I heard the footsteps, treading the waters with Winston Smith in Airstrip One when I heard the faint tap of shoes on the tiled floor coming towards me. For a few ridiculously paranoid seconds, I imagined Reggie appearing around the end of the aisle, his face spotted scarlet with rage and disgust and betrayal. Because that's how he'd see it. Betrayal.

I held my breath, but not because I really thought it was him, mind you, but because I knew it was her. I'd know those footsteps anywhere, like the sweetest of staccato beats that seemed to resound in time with the pounding of my heart in my chest whenever she was near.

Cassie, or Cassandra as she made me refer to her - which I didn't mind as both sounded beautiful to say out loud – was one of the assistant librarians and she was like a flash of wild colour in a bleak, dusty grey world. With her polka dot dresses and hair ribbons colour-matched to every outfit, Cassie was the only thing that could distract me from my books. I suppose they say that you always want what you can't have, and all the others that I could have – and did - I didn't want. Not really. Not like I wanted her. None of them had her elegance. Her style. The gentle curve of her hips. The fullness of her lips. She was like a work of art. She was my Elizabeth Taylor. My Jane Russell. A touch of Hollywood right here in the chaos of London town.

She was out of my league, of course. I was nothing but a street rat. Raised as a slum-kid. Born of dirt and rubble, sweat and blood. I was the one all the girls' mothers would warn them about and the one their fathers would threaten to knock ten shits out of if you so much as looked at their daughter. Simply put: I wasn't good enough, never had been, never would be. I was trouble with a capital T and more besides. Besides Reggie, I was the one most likely to end up in the slammer. Or dead, maybe. Well, dead man walking or not, I reckoned Cassie was starting to warm to me. Cold stares and indifference had given way to surreptitious glances when she thought I wasn't looking. Curt replies and pursed lips had given way to the odd smile now and then. Enough to give me a glimmer of hope that all wasn't lost.

I quickly looked back down at the book when she turned the corner, hoping she hadn't seen the pathetic, expectant expression on my face that I was sure I must always wear whenever she was near. Stay casual, I thought, keep your cool. Which was a pretty bloody difficult task considering being around her always made the heat rise under my collar and my crotch stiffen.

The footsteps stopped and I was dying to look up, but I waited, Orwell's words blurring into an inky confused mess on the page.

'You here again?' she said, her voice barely more than a whisper – library rules, of course. 'What is it this time?'

Her accent was East London, but softer than the norm, as if she'd spent some time away from the city – an evacuee kid probably, educated far away from bomb-ravaged London and somewhere she could look out the window and see green fields and sunshine instead of demolished building, soot and death. I loved hearing her voice. I often fantasised what it would be like to hear her recite poetry to me, lying half naked in bed on a lazy Sunday morning, her with a book in hand, me with her hair entwined between my fingers, with the window open and the breeze dancing with the linen drapes.

Looking up, I caught the dancing amusement in her eyes, a glimmer of something... I don't know, something mischievous in her expression and I smiled, praying that my grin wasn't too full-on, too cocky-slum-kid and lifted the book so she could see the cover.

Her eyes widened briefly – bloody hell, if she didn't have the most beautiful warm hazel eyes – and she nodded with approval. 'It's a good one that, you'll like it.'

'Actually," I said, having to clear my throat because the word came out in an embarrassingly hoarse squeak. 'This is my second time reading it.'

'Is that so?' she replied, leaning against the bookcase and resting her hand on the shelf. Her fingers were long and slender and I was lost momentarily, wondering how it would feel to kiss her each of her fingertips, to taste her skin on my tongue. 'Well, aren't you just full of surprises?'

'Too many to mention, sweetheart,' I shot back and instantly regretted it when her smile wavered. Why the fuck did I say that? That was Reggie-speak. Arrogant East End cockney bravado. I gripped the book tighter in my hands and tried to focus on something other than her face, only to find that I was now staring at her tiny stockinged feet in her red patent shoes and wondering if she painted her toe nails the same colour.

'Okay...' she said, with a small disappointed-sounding sigh. "I really better get back to work. See you around, yeah?'

Ask her. Just bloody ask her.

'Um, Cass ...' I began, standing up quickly and tripping up the leg of the table in my rush to get up and stubbing my toe in the process. I winced, somehow managing to take a few steps towards where she stood, despite the fact my toe was throbbing painfully inside my boot.

She'd stopped, eyebrow raised and one hand resting coquettishly on her hip. Waiting.

Fuck.

'Cassandra, I was thinking... well, that is, I was wondering whether, maybe ...' My throat had gone dry. How was it that I could talk to any other girl, but I couldn't talk to her without making a complete bloody idiot of myself?

'Yes?' she said. Her glossy chestnut hair was pulled up into a short pony-tail, her fringe worn long and brushing against her brow. At the side, there were a few loose, longer strands which curled and rested against her jaw-line and I had an almost irresistible urge to reach out and tuck them behind her ear.

I raked my fingers through my hair in an effort to make better use of my hands and shifted from one foot to the other.

'The thing is, there's an American-themed night down at the dancehall on Fridays... it's meant to be pretty good, I've never been myself, but a few mates have gone and they reckon it's a top night ...'

'Shush!' The sound hissed across the room, the head librarian, who looked remarkably like a buzzard perched on her high stool behind the desk, glared over her spectacles at me, one finger pressed against her lips.

I felt my cheeks redden. I was making a right royal fuck-up of this.

'Are you asking me out on a date?' Cassandra said, that amusement glinting in her eyes again.

God, I was an idiot. How could I ever think I stood a chance with her?

I swallowed, feeling my shoulders slump in defeat. 'Well, yeah, but I understand...'

'I'd love to,' she cut in, a small smile playing on her lips. 'Only I can't do this week, I've got some family thing, my Aunt Margaret's birthday. All pretty boring really, but you know how it is? I've got to be there. But I can do next week if you're free?'

I stared at her for a moment, wondering if I'd magically jumped into the pages of some fantasy book and this wasn't real, this wasn't actually me, but some lucky fictional bastard who'd managed to score a date with the girl of his dreams. I wasn't sure I could even speak. Had she moved closer? She seemed closer. I could smell her perfume, could feel her body heat, see the delicate rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in and out. A small gold locket rested against smooth pale skin of her throat and I wondered what it would be like to kiss her right there. Fuck, I wanted her. I wanted to push her against the bookcase, lift her skirt up over her thighs and drop to my knees in front of her. I wanted to watch her bite down on her fist, stifling her cries in the silent hush of the library as everyone else carried on oblivious to what we were doing.

'Of course, if you don't want to...' she trailed off, pursing those perfect lips I wanted to crush my own against.

'Uh, yeah...' I whispered back quickly. 'Next Friday would be great. Really great. No problem at all.' Stop. Fucking. Babbling. 'Shall I pick you up, say about half-seven?'

'Sure. I live opposite the picture house. Flat 38.' She glanced down, smirking. 'Oh, and don't forget to put that in the right place.'

'W-what?' I stammered, flushing again. Please tell me it wasn't that obvious.

She laughed softly, a beautiful thrum of noise that made the head librarian glare at us again. 'The book, silly. Make sure you put it back in the right place.'

I looked down. I was still clutching the book, holding it in front of me like it was a bloody life-jacket or something and as if not holding onto it would mean sinking fast to the bottom of the ocean like a dead weight.

'Oh, yeah, of course I will. Cross my heart, hope to die.'

She frowned slightly, still looking bloody beautiful of course. 'Well, don't die, for goodness sake. We have a date, remember?' Turning, she went back to her trolley which was piled high with books to return to the shelves. 'I hope you can dance, by the way?'

She walked away then, leaving me standing there, slack-jawed as I watched the hypnotic sway of her hips and admired the gentle curve of her behind in that dress.

Dance? Me? Fuck.

*

I was still thinking about the whole dancing thing ten minutes later when I'd given up on the book, my head now too occupied with panic to focus on the words, and had wandered back to the fiction shelves to place 1984 back in its rightful home. Why had I suggested the dancehall of all places? We could have gone to the picture house, snuggled up in the darkened theatre so I could feel her shoulder brushing against mine and smell the sweet, intoxicating lure of her perfume, but instead I'd gone and suggested the bloody dancehall.

The thought of making a complete tit out of myself right in front of her, right in front of everyone, made my clumsy fingers tremble as I reached to put the book back on the shelf above my head and it tumbled from my hand, landing with a slap on the library floor.

Leaning down to pick it up, I jumped as another hand grabbed it before I did, seemingly reaching out of nowhere. Gasping, I stumbled back, almost knocking into the shelf and having to raise an arm to steady some books which threatened to come tumbling down on my head.

A man stood there, just inches away from me and I was alarmed to find him so close to my side when I hadn't even heard his footsteps. In fact, I hadn't heard him at all. It was as if he had just materialised out of thin air.

'Apologies, my friend,' he said, a half-smile on his lips. His accent was crisp, clear well-bred English, definitely not from round here, that was for certain. 'I didn't mean to startle you.'

He was only an inch or so taller than me, yet he had an imposing air about him, making me feel as if he was towering over me. He was probably as old as my dad would have been now if he'd still been alive and was dressed immaculately in a suit with a buttoned-down tweed waistcoat and a long, dark overcoat that reached almost to his ankles. His dark eyes wrinkled at the corners as he smiled, thin lips nestled in a short scruff of gingery-tinged beard.

Turning the book over in his hands, he studied the cover and ran his fingertips over the title font, tracing the letters.

'Orwell?' He nodded thoughtfully. 'A captivating insight into the authoritarian compulsion to crush and bend the masses to their will. And of course, on how we submit in return, in order to make life less exhausting, less... painful. How did you find it?'

I blinked, momentarily stunned by his words. Most people would have handed back the book and walked away and instead this man was striking up a conversation of literary critique. I struggled to find my voice. No one had ever asked my opinion of any book I'd read, apart from Cassandra that is.

'I... er, found it... frustrating I suppose.' I shrugged, feeling self-conscious and unsure of myself under his steady scrutiny.

'Oh?' The man raised a brow in response, but there was no mockery there, just a spark of interest in his eyes as if he'd discovered something he hadn't quite expected to find. Not that that surprised me. I'd gotten used to people not expecting much out of me other than a split lip, a broken bone or a quick fuck. 'Frustrating in what sense?'

'The ending, I mean. The fact that he just gave in to them. Settled for the life they laid out for him.'

'But to do anything but settle would have meant certain death for Winston?'

'So what?' I frowned. Something dark and angry stirred in the pit of my stomach. 'Sometimes death is better than submission. Sometimes death is better than giving up the fight. He gave up what he believed in, choose their way over his own, just to save his own skin.'

'Life is precious, is it not? Surely he was just seeking to preserve that life?'

'Yes, but what's the point in life if you don't feel... I don't know, alive I suppose. Towing the party line just to avoid death isn't enough. You've got to feel it. Everything. Passion. Love. Belief. Even hatred. Even pain. You've got to feel something to make it all worthwhile, otherwise it's just a waste.'

He raised his chin, his cool gaze assessing me but said nothing. Finally, when I thought he was either going to tell me I was a complete idiot, burst out laughing or do both, he leant forward, placing the book back in my hands but didn't let go himself. Instead, he leaned in even closer.

'Do you read Dickens by any chance?'

Dickens? What kind of question was that?

'Um, yeah, one I think. Great Expectations.'

This whole exchange was so strange that I half-expected to see the ghostly image of Miss Havisham, floating along the aisle in her wedding dress. I couldn't shake the feeling there was something wrong about all this, something that crept up my spine and made goose-bumps rise on my skin, and yet weirdly, inexplicably, the man intrigued me, the conversation intrigued me.

'Ah, a predictable starting point.'

Predictable? I felt burned. Had I disappointed him? And why did I even care?

'You should really read A Tale of Two Cities. I think you'll find something there that you're searching for. I really do.'

'How do you know I'm searching for anything?' The words came out like a sullen child. I might as well have finished it off with a pout and a stamp of my foot.

He glanced around slowly, gesturing to the bookcases engulfing us.

'We are in a library, are we not? And why else do we come to the library if not to search for something we crave? Knowledge. Answers. Many worlds exist between these walls. We can travel thousands of miles with one turn of the page. We can meet people from all ages, all cultures, all places. We can live a hundred deaths and be re-born again an infinite amount of times on ink and parchment. So many adventures to be had, so many battles to be won. We can find love that makes the heart beat in the chest like the most frantic of drumbeats or experience loss so deep that it makes the tears fall onto the paper as we read.'

He smiled again, and I was struck just by how much everything he said made perfect sense, how I felt all those things every time I opened a book.

'To read is to discover,' he continued. 'To learn. To search. And what better way to escape the monotony and hardship of our lives than to start searching within the pages of a book?'

The look he gave me then was so intense, so knowing, that I had this sudden fear that he was reading my mind, delving through the shelves in my head and seeing something he couldn't possibly know about me, unless he had some kind of psychic power.

Or, worse, that he knew me, or knew of me.

Reggie and I weren't big time, as I said, but we'd ruffled enough feathers along the way, made sure people knew our names and knew just what we were capable of. What if this strange man had been hired by someone to find us, to take us out of the picture before we got too big for our boots? I racked my brains frantically for some memory of who we could have pissed off enough for them to want us dead. Names and faces flashed in my head, but none that could lead me to the conclusion that this man was here on the order of someone we'd crossed.

'Do I know you? Have we met?' Sweat had risen on my palms and back, alarm bells resounding loud and shrill through my veins.

'No,' he said, his face blank with an unconvincing innocence. 'You have never seen me before.' He sighed then, but not through exhaustion, instead there was warmth in his expression, which did nothing but confuse me even more and set me on teetering on the edge.

'You have lived here all your life, have you not?' He had such an odd way of speaking, almost archaic in form that he sounded not just that he was from another place, but from another time. I'd not met that many posh folk before, and I guessed that must be how they were all taught to speak at those snotty boarding schools of theirs.

'Y-yes. Why?'

'I can tell. You carry the scent of these streets like it's a burden.'

I squared up my shoulders, offended. 'Have you seen these streets lately? I grew up here. I watched the bombs reduce everything to dust. You think London rose triumphant from the ashes? You might have, you and those like you, in your ivory bloody towers. But we didn't, not round here. We dragged ourselves broken out of the fucking ruins. What little we had was gone. Ever tried making something from nothing? I have to fight every single day just to keep hold of what I have.'

'And what do you have?'

I glared at him, gripping the book tighter in my hands. 'Myself. I have myself.'

The man smiled and raised a brow. 'Why, then you have everything. Remember this: we forge the chains we wear in life. That's Dickens too, by the way. You really should read more of his work, I highly recommend it.' He tapped on his forehead. 'The fist is nothing without the mind, my friend. You seek to escape? Then don't be like Winston Smith in 1984. You talk of needing passion and love and belief in your life and yet you settle for Airstrip One. Break the chains. Stop allowing this place to bind you to a life you do not want nor do you deserve.'

The silence in the library then was crushing, as if somebody had sucked all the air out of the place and the walls were collapsing in on themselves. I swallowed, feeling indignant at his words and yet simultaneously knowing that he was right. He was right about everything.

'What's your name, son?'

I grimaced instinctively, that same grimace I'd been doing most of my life whenever anyone asked my name.

'Bartholomew Parker.'

A flicker of amusement sparked in his gaze. 'You don't like your name?'

'Are you kidding me?' I rolled my eyes. 'I spend every day out there, having to watch my back, fighting every bastard that thinks I've looked at him the wrong way or who looks at me the wrong way. Being called Bartholomew doesn't do a bloody thing for my reputation. It's a joke.'

The man said nothing for a moment, but he studied me with a strange look on his face, like he was weighing me up, digging under my skin.

'Hmm, actually I like Bartholomew,' he said. 'Sounds quite distinguished. Now, Parker on the other hand ...'

I scowled. 'What's wrong with Parker?'

'Doesn't quite go, does it? In fact, it's quite forgettable.'

And with that he turned and walked away, his long overcoat sweeping out behind him.

I felt it then. Something I didn't understand, something that made me not want to say goodbye to this stranger and as I watched him start to walk away from me, I had the urge to call him back, to ask him not to go, to stay a while and speak some more.

'Wait!' I called out. 'You didn't tell me your name?'

He stopped, one hand resting on the end of the bookshelf, his head slightly turned to the side so I could see the profile of his face in the light.

'Benjamin,' he said, without looking back at me. 'Doctor Benjamin Garrick.'

Then he was gone, leaving nothing behind but an empty space and a name.

'Garrick,' I whispered, as if saying it out loud might conjure him before my eyes, magically appearing in a cloud of London fog so I could speak with him again. 'Garrick.'