Always nervous of ladders, I climbed another step up and peered into the loft. A layer of black dust coated the fibre-glass insulation between the joists. 'Shouldn't you be wearing a face mask?'
'Come on,' he said, ignoring my question, forcefully grasping my left arm and pulling me upwards, giving me no choice but to scramble after him, using my free hand to grab joists and rafters to steady myself. 'What about my leg?'
'You'll be all right.' He gripped my hand firmly to help steady me and guided me towards the hatch. 'Come and look over here, you can see for miles. Stand on the joists, not the insulation, otherwise you'll make a hole in the ceiling.'
'I have been inside a loft before. All this dust is awful.' The trap door was set in the slope of the roof, about a yard above the flat metal-covered area above the bathroom. He stepped out backwards, holding onto the sides of the hatchway as he lowered himself down over the slope. Balancing with difficulty on the joists I began to follow, but when I backed out of the opening my foot did not reach down far enough for me to stand on the flat surface below, and fear of falling made me freeze. He grabbed my legs. 'Come on, I've got you, let yourself slide down, you won't fall.'
Somehow or other I slithered down. He left me kneeling terrified by the hatch and went to the edge of the roof, where he stood like a mountaineer looking out from a rocky crag. Recovering my nerve with a few deep breaths, I stood up and took cautious steps towards him, and looked down into the Mews and the row of long thin gardens behind the terraced houses. We were no more than four or five feet higher up than if we had been in Darren's room, but that extra height was enough for us to see over the top of the nearby roofs. Row upon row of grey slate showed the extent of the Victorian suburb, and in the distance we could see the dome of the Royal Albert Hall and the Imperial College Tower.
This panorama, not visible from any of the windows of the rooms below, was completely new to me. The view was not one of London's finest, the City's office towers being hidden by a block of flats. Expanses of grey slate roof predominated in other directions, but the escapade of climbing out there was a good example of how much fun life could be when Tom was around. Without him I would probably never have gone up there to look.