With such rich heritage – her dad the president of an international publishing corporation – Kate was able to afford a designer condo on Manhattan Island. It was a block down from the nearest pizza outlet and a ten minute stroll from Central Park; my idea of a fantasy home.

Her apartment building was deluxe; the stairwells had polished white floors, pure white walls and smelt like fresh cut grass and lemons as opposed to pee. No damp sunk the corners of the hallways, no dents were in the bannisters and no dirt was on the floor.

She unlocked the door with a jab of the key in the lock and a twist to the left. I was hit by a gust of crisp cool air conditioning, it felt like any icy embrace enveloping me.

She opened the door and I rushed into the open space.

Leather couches, glass coffee tables and framed David Bowie vinyls on the walls. The place was modernist, with splashed of colour in the form of feature walls and furniture accented purple; the sofas, the picture frames and the curtains.

I dropped my possessions by the door: weaponry and loot.

"Are those original Bowies?" I trod mud into her indigo rug and placed my grubby hand on the glass. "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and Life on Mars?" Brown fingerprints stained the glass.

"Yes, now please don't touch them!" Kate rushed over and pulled me away. "It's nothing personal, it's just that's not hygienic..." She winced and used the sleeve of her blazer to polish away the prints. There was an amusing squeaking sound as she scrubbed away, and I couldn't help but chuckle as she growled at the opaque smear.

I backed away and plonked on the sofa. "Hey, it's cool..." I sunk into the seat. Having had nothing but hay bales to sit on for the best part of two years, it was divine. Flakes of dried mud cracked off my soles and showered the cushions as I kicked my feet up and I left a murky mark like a shadow under me where I lay. It was like lying on a marshmallow.

"Clint, get off the sofa!" She flapped her arms at me like an owner trying to usher a cat off the furniture. "Please!" She half-sobbed, head in her hands.

She pulled me by the ankle and I rolled off, landing in a heap of shredded carnival costume and limbs, only shedding more mud into the carpet.

"That's it!" She fretted. "You're having a shower." She gracelessly hauled me to my feet and shoved me through a door into a bathroom. "Right now." She slammed the door and barricaded it shut, me cooped up inside with a cubicle and my whiffy clothes.

In the enclosed space I could smell myself. Christ. It was like wet dog. I had just gotten used to it, showers being as infrequent as they were.

Perusing the selection of shower creams and shampoos, I concluded I was going to smell worse after. "Katie, these are all girly shampoos! I don't want to smell like a walking strawberry!" I protested, hammering on the door. "Have you not got anything more neutral?"

"Don't be such a big baby, get in the damn shower; I'm not letting you out until you've had a wash!" She called back through the door.

Reluctantly, I twizzled the dial and the water came rushing down from the faucet. I evaded the waterfall of icy droplets and awaited the condensation on the glass as my cue it was hospitable. Stepping into the steaming stream of heat, my muscles became lax and a sense of relief overcame me. It was glorious.

At the carnival, showers were limited to buckets of cold water chucked over me outside, or if I was lucky, the water tank on my caravan would've been filled up and it was a cold shower in the cubicle.

Hunched over to let the jets blast the grime out of my greasy strands, I watched a dismal puddle of grey and brown dirt swirl down the drain, some clumps and particulates in the pool of filth. There was an odd satisfaction about washing myself clean.

The rivulets of steaming hot water running over my skin were like the trained hands of a masseuse, and the knots in my muscle departed with the grubbiness. Welcoming the commodity that was scented soaps and shampoos, I squirted a splodge into my palm and massaged it into my scalp. The perfume wasn't as bad as I had judged, and anything was better than what I was stunk of before.

I grabbed her sponge and put a liberal dollop of shower cream on that before scrubbing myself raw. When I turned off the tap at long last, I was greeted by a wafting wave of steam that dissipated into the air as I wafted it away. The smell of raspberries and strawberries was pungent in the air, and now I was clean, traces of the old musty smell were clear and it made me gag.

"Katie, I'm clean!" I called, snatching a violet towel from the hook and doing it up around my waist.

She peeped around the door, fanning away the steam. "Good, there's a stool with your name on it in the kitchen," she told me, flinging the door wide and beckoning me.

Still dripping, I took a wander across her apartment where she stood in the open plan space by the island in the kitchen. On the worktop was an inventory of supplies worthy of a barbers shop. Scissors, a comb, a razor, shaving foam, a selection of other hairbrushes. There were a few bottles of other inconspicuous hair products lined up like toy soldiers; and Kate armed herself with a can of deodorant.

"What the hell is all this?" I asked, dragging my fingers through my shaggy hair.

"This is me trying to make you like a respectable human being," Kate retorted, always brutally honest.

I pulled a face. "Should I be offended, little missy?" I cautiously sat down on the stool.

"You should be grateful! At least you're starting to smell like a decent human being," she quipped.

It was then that she squeezed my hip, causing me to throw my arm up in the air at the ticklish sensation. She sprayed deodorant onto one underarm, then repeated the action on the other side. "You could've just given me the can, you know?" I grumbled.

"You refused to take a shower ten minutes ago, you really think I trust you to put deodorant on?" And to be fair she had a point.

Kate slicked my cheeks up with shaving foam until I looked like a caricature of Santa Claus and then began carving away the fluff on my chin, paying extra attention to my hectic sideburns.

"Why does a girl have shaving foam anyway?" I asked, foam seeping into my mouth as I spoke.

"Don't move!" She hissed, slapping me on the hand. Her tongue was poking out of one corner of her mouth with concentration as she shaved me. "Girls do shave their legs you know? We don't just wake up hairless and silky smooth!" Kate tutted me.

"Girls are hardcore if they shave their legs without getting a single cut," I remarked. Looking down at my hairy legs and knobbly knees, I had to admire the artistry.

"Don't get me started on underarms!" Kate giggled, grinning properly for the first time since I'd seen her.

Her smile was infectious and I tried not to grin to broadly back, knowing I'd earn another playful scolding. "Talking of hardcore women, how are you? How's your family?"

Kate intook a sharp breath. "The best I've been in two years now you're here," she chirped merrily and then her happiness dulled.

I probed deeper, trying to provoke a smile back onto her sunkissed face. "And your family? The sister I met for the first time today? Hell, your nanny – Maria, was it? – how is she?"

"My sister is getting married next month, so she's chipper." Kate carved away another dense mound of foam, revealing clean-shaven smoothness beneath. "I haven't seen Maria for the best part of those two years..." Her tone was sombre, but I pressed on.

"Why not?" My brows drew up sorrowfully.

"Kids grow up, Clint. Just like you and me. Nannies can't stick around forever; and my diapers haven't needed changing for over a decade." She moved onto the other side of my face, trimming down the sporadic whiskers to match the other half.

"Talking of not sticking around forever; how come you're out here, in big old NYC which you allegedly didn't care for? Living the sweet life with a suite of your own at seventeen?" I gazed around at the luxurious space, the epitome of the upper class. Beyond the windows I could see into the packed streets, busy as an ant's nest – forever moving.

Kate's hand trembled and she halted her shaving. She placed the implement down and fell down onto a stool opposite. "My uh... My mom died," she said. "And dad said he needed the space... And six months of leave, apparently; hence why uh... Sue and I are running the company... A-and it turns out a widows pension pays for a lot."

I felt like I'd received a crippling brow. The pain she strived to hide so evident and an echo of my own. "Oh, Katie. I'm so sorry..." My condolences were worthless, I knew that. No amount of apologies, pity and consolation would bring back Eleanor. "I shouldn't have asked-"

"No, no – it's okay." She falsified a smile, her eyes brimming as a grin stretched across her face. "I'm okay," she breathed, dabbing her eyes with her sleeve.

"Okay doesn't mean fine. Trust me, I'm the king of okay..." I placed a hand over hers and she dropped the act, two tears tracing a line down either cheek. "If it's not too much to ask, what happened?" I dreaded to think what fate the charitable woman had suffered; though I disliked her initially, there was more to Missus Bishop than met the eye.

Kate drew in a sharp breath, her breathing stuttering as she did. Her chest fluttered as she sighed. "One of the homeless people at the soup kitchen," she choked, her voice strained as she tried to talk around the lump in her throat. They held her at knifepoint for her watch..." Kate's composure shrivelled and she swatted away more tears. "She handed it over!" Kate cried. "But they still..." She couldn't say it; instead she hiccupped out a sob and traced a line over her throat. "... All because she could pick their face out in a police line-up..." Kate crumpled, putting her head in her hands.

I picked up the razor and with a few clean strokes, cleared my face of the remaining foam – chin, jaw and upper lip – so I could hug her without covering her in the stuff.

"All I could think about was how you felt when you lost your mom. I know how much you loved her. And even though my mum was a sour bitch who didn't bother to raise me, my god, I miss her... And I feel so guilty for hating her when she was alive." Kate spilled her heart out to me, and I smoothed a hand up and down her back as she cried. "I needed you, Clint. You'd been through it. You could've helped me. But you weren't there!" She sobbed angrily. "You weren't there, Clint!"

Guilt; it stung at me like a wasp, a pain under the skin that I couldn't cure. I pressed my cheek to the top of her head, my own tears dripping into her ebony strands. "I'm here now, Katie. I'm here right now."

A jug of black coffee – heavenly, it was, you have no idea how good it tastes after being deprived of it for so long; I needed my caffeine hit – and a box of Kleenex later, Kate got around to trimming my hair. And for someone who claimed never to have taken lessons in hairdressing, she cut it pretty damn well. I was pampered a while longer with 'leave-in conditioner' and 'hair gloss' – none of which sound like real things – before I was presented before a mirror.

I looked like me again. And I don't just mean 'me, the deaf orphan boy who left Waverly two years ago', I meant, me before any of the drama; during the halcyon days with Kate when the summers were long and besides my dad, I was careless.

"So where are you living now? At the carnival?" Kate questioned, holding the mirror up so I could bask in vanity a little longer.

I swallowed thickly and I tried not to look too shifty. I didn't fancy recounting the palaver any time soon; it stirred up far too many things I wasn't willing to deal with within me. "Uh, no. Long story short, I was kicked out..." I scratched the back of my neck, my cheeks starting to flare with heat.

The humiliation mapped out on my face, Kate respectfully navigated away from the topic. "I'm not gonna ask," Kate said, much to my relief. "Look, if you need a place to crash until you sort out your financial situation..." She began, a modesty about her posture. "... And can find a place of your own..." Her gaze was sweeping the disinteresting floor. "You can stay with me..." Kate offered, looking slightly embarrassed for the first time in her life. "I'd like that," she confessed, meeting my eyes.

The invitation was something I couldn't decline. Being in Kate's company felt like a perpetual embrace and I grinned until my cheeks ached.

"Financials aren't a problem, girly. Whatever's in that pillowcase; it's all yours." She eyed it with suspicion. "Thank you, Katie."

I couldn't wipe the smile off my face for the rest of the evening. And I didn't want to. Not ever.

A/N - Sorry not much happened in this chapter; but I felt I needed to ground the setting, reintroduce you to how the characters interact years on - even with empathetic regression in play - and what's been going on in Kate's life since Clint fucked off to the circus!

Also, Happy Birthday to me! 

Dedication goes to SweetLorettaMartin! x