. . .continued
"Ah," said Stevie. There seemed to be nothing else to say.
"Oliver and I are going down to that cafe on Prior Road to get a cuppatea," Simon continued, "Well, I'm getting tea, but Oliver prefers coffee in a saucer, with milk but no sugar. He's a strange fox. Would you care to join us?"
Stevie almost said yes, but just before the word passed his lips he remembered his camera and the film he needed to develop. "Sorry, I can't," he said, slightly surprised to discover that he really was sorry. "I've got to develop my film," he explained.
"No worries," Simon said easily. "We'll probably be there for awhile, though, if you want to join us later. Oliver drinks coffee very slowly," he added conspiratorially.
Suddenly shy again, Simon mumbled a thank-you and a nice-to-have-met-you and took off down the road with his camera, leaving Simon and Oliver heading off to the cafe.
Although Stevie fully intended to go home and enclose himself in his makeshift darkroom, he found himself walking past his road and heading instead towards the river. He had spent many hours walking along the river when he was younger and playing in the rather shabby park beside it, but he hadn't been there in a while and was surprised by how much it had changed. Someone had done a "Clean Up Our Parks!" campaign (there were still some signs advertising it) and planted new grass and trees, picked up all the empty lager cans and rubbish, and added some wooden benches. It looked nice, but Stevie was suddenly struck by the artificiality of it all. The park looked clean and manicured, but Stevie felt that underneath it was a park that wanted to be scruffy and dirty. He walked along the river, avoiding the trash bins and the gleaming wooden benches, until he came to a bridge. This had not been restored: the wood was grey with age and looked like it would fall apart any minute. The bridge was not very big, and it spanned a secluded curve of the river, shaded by trees. Stevie stood in the middle of the bridge, in the single patch of sunlight there, looking down into the muddy water. He was somewhat gratified that the "Clean Up Our Parks!" people had not managed to Clean Up the river much; it was still the same muddy water that he had stared into countless times. As he stared, Stevie thought about the girl he loved and about the picture he had taken of her, and about seeing her retreating down the street. He thought about Simon and Oliver, and about an empty seat at a cozy table in a cafe back in town, and a hot cup of tea.
Stevie began to smile. He looked down at his camera, and opened the back of it, the part where you put the film in. Stevie began pulling film out of his camera and tossing it into the river. It gleamed in the sunlight as the current took it away. He pulled and tossed until all the film was in the river. Stevie watched until the film had floated out of sight, then walked back into town.
