We don’t want to go home – we can’t leave each other, but tomorrow he and his parents are going to move, a long way away. We love each other. He’s my boyfriend, my first boyfriend. I don’t want him to go.

But it’s all set – his parents have got everything packed, these are our final hours, we sit on the bank in front of the building and don’t know what to say – I love you, I’ll never forget you, stay with me, what’s going to happen, you –

We sit at the top of the bank, just like we always do, like we have so many times, and see a woman in a raincoat who comes and rings at the door. What’s going to happen to us?

I don’t know, haven’t got a clue.

I hold his hand or he holds mine, we sit there, not knowing what’s next.

And then, a few minutes later, the woman in the raincoat leaves again, she’s agitated, confused, you can tell, she takes a few steps, stops, turns around, turns back again and takes a few more steps –

I can’t explain why, but I pick up a stone.

I pick up a stone and throw it at that woman. I miss.

I hear the stone land, smash on the pavement.

I pick up another stone and throw that but I miss her again. The stone bangs on the pavement. The woman stops and looks round. She’s puzzled by these stones bouncing around but she doesn’t see us even though she looks straight up in our direction. And then Andi lets go of my hand and he picks a stone up and throws it at her – neither of us knows why. He throws the stone just as she’s about to walk on.

We can’t go to his because the woman he hit on the head with a stone’s there and we can’t go to mine because my dad hates him. My dad says he’s got shifty eyes.

We meet as it’s getting dark at the top of the bank like we always do, and then we go to the cinema.

The film tells the story of a woman who’s got to find Pandora’s Box before it falls into the hands of a man who’s going to use it to threaten the whole world. The chase extends over several continents. It leads them from Greece to England and then on to Russia, China and finally Africa, the birthplace of humanity.

We follow our heroine in submarines, on motorbikes, in jeeps, by parachute, ship, on horseback, suspended from helicopters.

Then we get the bus home. It’s half past eleven and we’re back on top of the bank again, outside. It’s cold and I’m not dressed for it but it’s still too early to go to mine. By half past twelve it’s so cold I can’t stand it any more and we go to mine.

I go in the front door, Andi waits down in the garden by my window.

Everything in the house is dark, everything’s quiet, my parents are asleep upstairs, on the first floor.

My room’s in the basement. Andi climbs in through the window not making a sound. Everything’s quiet.

We lie side by side in my narrow bed in the dark in silence. No music. Above us and around us – like an ancient mausoleum – the house, a small bathroom, my room and the cellar downstairs, the kitchen and the living-room on the ground floor, upstairs my parents’ bedroom and a second bathroom.

Just as we are, naked, we start running through the house. Without making a sound we move through the rooms in the dark, along the hall, up and down the stairs. We stand still outside my parents’ bedroom and then go on, out of the front door and into the garden, naked despite the cold, onto the lawn and then back downstairs again to my room.

Suddenly my dad’s standing in the room in pyjama trousers and a top.

‘Out, get out now –‘ and he grabs hold of Andi and drags him, past my mother who’s screaming, up the stairs and throws him out of the house.

I run back down the stairs, lock my door from the inside and climb out of the window with our things. My dad shouts after us.

On the way to his parents’ Andi gets the pen out. We put our tag everywhere, on every wall, every drive, every garage door, his name and my name together. Andi and Tina together. The pen passes from him to me and back again. No and, no hearts, just our tag – exactly as we are, side by side, on everything all the way to his.

And then when we’re outside the door he says: well then –

Brief pause.

I love you but we’ll never see each other again. Yes, I say, I know. Take care. Goodbye.

He said we’d never see each other again. He said he loved me but we’d never see each other again.

Brief pause.

And then he vanishes inside the building. And I – I think he’s going to come straight back out again. He did say we’d never see each other again, but what’s he going to do there, in that flat. Where’s there’s no room for him. He’s put the light on inside – but I can’t see any more than that.

I stand there outside, waiting for him to come back, it’s cold.

Brief pause.

I wait five minutes, ten, but he doesn’t come.

I stand alone in the dark at the bottom of the bank, just beyond the light from the street-lamps. Everything’s sleeping. No cars. No voices.

Above me high in the air an aeroplane. What’s it like up there, right now, in that plane?

Nobody on the streets. I carry on waiting. And he doesn’t come back.

Hello?

Tina enters the apartment, shy and hesitant. Tina and Frank stand facing each other.

Tina seems surprised that no one else seems to be there.

I want to talk to Andi.

He – he’s not here?

He’s got to be here – he can’t be anywhere else –

I saw him come into the building –

Last night –

Yes he was – I saw him myself – and anyway:

Brief pause.

That’s his tag! He was here.

He didn’t.

Because I was waiting for him outside the building.

Since last night, ‘bout half past three.

Yeah – since he came in here.

(In tears.) Yes – but he didn’t come out again.

Tina looks into the empty room.

Tina runs away crying.

He must be, he’s got to be here.

I can’t leave – I can’t leave there, I can’t.

Brief pause.

I can’t leave the place where Andi must be and isn’t. Where can he have gone? He has to be there but he isn’t there. I run back and forth in panic, I wait at the top of the bank where we always used to meet, where we –

Brief pause.

Where we threw stones, I sit there, alone, I even throw stones, at nothing, because no one comes in and no one goes out, except for Andi’s mother who goes into the building and then I walk around again, back and forth, up and down, eventually I go all the way round the building, from the back, behind the building, you can see into Andi’s parents’ bedroom, with the fitted wardrobes and the big bed and suddenly Claudia, Andi’s mother, staggers into the room, she’s surprised or maybe even confused, she’s got a plastic bag in her hands, I get the feeling I’ve seen that bag before.

Brief pause.

She’s still standing in the doorway, undecided, uncertain, only then does she go into the room, holding the bag, there’s something she doesn’t understand, that much I can see. She reaches inside the bag, it seems to be empty from out here, at least that’s what it looks like through the window and the moment, the moment she reaches inside the bag, at least that’s what it looks like through the window, her fingers, her hands, her arms suddenly catch fire. There in her bedroom the woman catches fire all over, she’s burning, her whole body is burning, she burns so quickly so horribly – she doesn’t even seem to be able to scream – I scream, I scream as loud as I can but who’s going to hear me – and then Andi’s father appears in the doorway, he sees his wife on fire with the molten remains of the bag in her hand and he stands there not moving until he vanishes from the doorway again. I run. The removal van’s coming down the street and stops in front of the building. Where’s Andi -