Kirsty Bosley: The Shining - my first foray into the world of grown-up literature

I crept silently through the aisles like a much slower, much smaller ninja, clutching the contraband in my tiny hands.

Surrounding it were a number of decoys, just in case; a sickening, saccharine teenage romance novel, a copy of The Twits, some other book I hadn't read nor had any intention of doing so.

My eyes shifted across the library to where the staff were helping people use the computers. Further in the distance, much smaller children than me sat on plastic bucket stools staring at Spot the Dog panting silently on thick, card pages.

A glance over my shoulder told me that I was quite alone over on this side of the building, the risk of being seen with the forbidden fruit of my smuggling mission was minimal, for now. That hadn't stopped my senses from heightening though, and the smell of pages that betrayed a thousand tales filled my nose.

My favourite smell.

I walked further down the aisles of stories I was far too young to read or understand; yellowing books with stamps that pre-dated by own birth only 12 short years before.

I wouldn't be able to take this one to the counter and check it out, I knew that. For years I'd taken six books a week home with me, but this time was different. There was no hope of running back to my house to hide in the back bedroom and devour this as I'd done so many times before.

I was like a teenage boy with a top-shelf jazz mag, coveting the title like a dog with a bone.

I needed to read it here, I knew. I needed to skulk away to a corner of the little library and bury myself in it like a less magical Matilda.

Finally in a spot where I felt was safe, I opened a work of fiction and used it to cover the dust jacket of my chosen novel. Successful decoy.

When it was time to leave, I closed the book and took it to a cranny of the library I thought few people would go. My tiny stature meant I had no chance of stashing it away to hide on a top shelf, so there in the factual section, I stashed the precious book behind others where I hoped it wouldn't be seen, moved or checked out by an adult that could actually fully understand its contents.

On the walk home, I thought about the book and worried ceaselessly that I'd been caught reading it. That when I returned the following day, with other children running through the neighbourhood with sticks, riding their bikes, that I'd be reprimanded by the librarian for messing with things I shouldn't.

I needed a dictionary, I realised. I wanted to understand the terms I'd never before heard.

In bed when I closed my eyes, my eyeballs were flitting left to right, left to right, as though desperate to read something I couldn't see. Etched into the blackness of the back of my eyelids I could see letters, serifs and more. I began to wonder whether I'd ever be able to switch off.

It was the first time I'd ever read Stephen King, and though I had no true idea as to what The Shining was about, it was my first foray into the world of grown-up literature. I loved it ever after.

I still do.