Northamp­ton, UK

2nd Kin­dle Edi­tion pub­lished 2021 by Park­land In­de­pen­dent Books

Text, Copy­right 2021 Marc Nobbs

Cover Art, Copy­right 2021 Marc Nobbs

Kin­dle Edi­tion, Li­cense Notes

This is a work of fic­tion. Names, places, char­ac­ters and in­ci­dents are ei­ther the prod­uct of the au­thor’s imag­i­na­tion or are used fic­ti­tiously, and any re­sem­blance to any ac­tual per­sons, liv­ing or dead, or­ga­ni­za­tions, events or lo­cales is en­tirely co­in­ci­den­tal.

The right in UK Law of Marc Nobbs to be iden­ti­fied as the au­thor of this work has been as­serted by him in ac­cor­dance with sec­tion 77 and 78 of the Copy­right, De­signs and Patents Act 1988

All rights re­served. No part of this pub­li­ca­tion may be re­pro­duced, stored in a re­trieval sys­tem, or trans­mit­ted in any form or by any means, elec­tronic, me­chan­i­cal, pho­to­copy­ing, record­ing, or oth­er­wise, with­out the prior per­mis­sion of the copy­right holder.

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Ma­ture Con­tent

This ebook con­tains sex­u­ally ex­plicit ma­te­rial and is in­tended for free‐think­ing in­di­vid­u­als over the age of 18. By down­load­ing and open­ing this book, you are stat­ing that you are of le­gal age to ac­cess and view this work of fic­tion and that do­ing so is le­gal in the ter­ri­tory where you re­side.

This book uses un­com­pro­mis­ing adult lan­guage to de­pict un­com­pro­mis­ing adult ac­tiv­i­ties. If that is likely to of­fend you, sorry, but you down­loaded the wrong book, please go and do some­thing else.

Love doesn’t make the flow­ers smell sweeter.

Love doesn’t make the morn­ing bird­song or the sun­rise and sun­set any more beau­ti­ful.

Love wakes you up to ex­pe­ri­ence the world for the first time.

“Bet­ter not to ask than get em­bar­rassed by the knock back.”

Life in the Sixth Form came with priv­i­leges at King George’s. For ex­am­ple, stu­dents no longer had to wear the aw­ful grey, white and bur­gundy uni­form—al­though they were still ex­pected to dress smartly. Self-study pe­ri­ods, or ‘frees’ as the stu­dents called them, were an­other priv­i­lege. But for those who’d cho­sen to con­tinue their ed­u­ca­tion be­yond the legally man­dated age of six­teen, those priv­i­leges were cou­pled with re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. The head­mas­ter called his Sixth Form stu­dents The Cream of the Crop. And he ex­pected them, as the old­est stu­dents in the school, to be­have like young adults, dress like young pro­fes­sion­als and do their best to look af­ter, and set an ex­am­ple for, the rest of the stu­dent body.

And that was the rea­son that Will Brown and Bobby Ed­wards found them­selves alone in the en­trance foyer on a bleak win­ter morn­ing. Mo­ments ear­lier it had been crowded with pupils rush­ing to their classes fol­low­ing the mid-morn­ing break. It had been their turn to su­per­vise the traf­fic and try to keep the youngest chil­dren from be­ing tram­pled. With the break and the rush, over, they stood and ex­am­ined The Won­der­wall be­fore re­turn­ing to the com­mon room for their ‘free’.

“How many names do you recog­nise?” Will asked.

“One or two. Not many,” replied Bobby.

The var­nished oak board bore the names of some of the school’s for­mer stu­dents. It had been erected dur­ing the Christ­mas hol­i­day and took pride of place in the foyer, along with some of the cur­rent stu­dents’ art­work.

“What the hell is the point of this thing any­way?” Bobby said.

“The head says it’s sup­posed to in­spire us by giv­ing us an ex­am­ple to fol­low.”

“Yeah, okay, but it would help if we knew who any of these plebs were, wouldn’t it? Or what they’ve done that’s so bril­liant.”

“Wasn’t Gareth Jenk­ins school foot­ball cap­tain a cou­ple of years ago?” Will said.

“Yeah, he was. Come to think of it, he’s on the books at Walmin­ster City, isn’t he? But he’s not bro­ken through into the first team yet. I don’t reckon he ever will ei­ther. He wasn’t that great.”

“Andy Vans­man. That name sounds fa­mil­iar.”

Bobby nod­ded. “He plays for cricket for West­mouthshire. He got a call-up to the Eng­land B squad last month.”

Will gave him a con­fused look.

Bobby shrugged. “He was on West­mouthshire Tonight the other day. I re­mem­ber be­cause it was the same day the head was on af­ter that fire by the bike sheds. ”

The two boys con­tin­ued to scan for names they recog­nised.

Will shook his head. “See any more?”

“Sally White­house,” Bobby said. “I think she’s on the stage in the West End. In the cho­rus line of some mu­si­cal.”

“Hardly a set of shin­ing ex­am­ples, is it? A cou­ple of low rate sports­men and a West End wannabe.”

“What do you ex­pect, Will? We’re not West­mouth Gram­mar for God’s sake. We’re King George’s—worst school in the county. No—worst school in the coun­try.”

“Oh, come on, this place isn’t that bad.”

“You can’t tell me you weren’t dis­ap­pointed when you failed the en­trance exam for the gram­mar school.”

“I didn’t fail it.”

“You didn’t? You never told me that. What are you do­ing here then?”

“I didn’t fail it, be­cause I never took it.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“My grand­dad had just died and my Mom was in the hos­pi­tal. I guess it got over­looked.”

“Over­looked? For fuck’s sake, Will. That over­sight has cost you seven years in this dump. Brain as big as yours, you would have walked it, I’ll bet.”

“Maybe. But is it re­ally worth get­ting the bus out to West­mouth ev­ery day? Be­sides, this place has its com­pen­sa­tions.”

“Like Amy?”

Will didn’t an­swer. “Hey, there is one fa­mous name miss­ing from here.”

“Who?”

“Phil Jeav­ons. He’s hardly a good role model, though. He robbed Bar­clays and got sent down for ten years.”

“Still fa­mous though. Should we carve his name on? I’ve got my Swiss Army Knife in my locker.”

One of their class­mates ap­proached and they nod­ded to him and grunted a greet­ing.

“You two are ex­am­in­ing The Won­der­wall, I see,” Ray said.

“Stupid name for it,” Will said. “Won­der­wall. I ask you. What’s it sup­posed to mean?”

“It’s a wall of won­der­ful achieve­ment. I think it’s cool,” said Ray.

“You would,” said Bobby.

Ray ig­nored him. “Do you two know what?”

“What?” Bobby asked.

“Some­day, I’m go­ing to get my name on The Won­der­wall.”

Bobby sti­fled his laugh­ter. “Oh, yeah, what as? Walmin­ster Sumo Cham­pion?”

Ray huffed. “No. Some­day, I’ll be a mil­lion­aire.” He wagged his fin­ger at them. “You’ll see. I’ll be one of the most fa­mous busi­ness­men in the coun­try. And in twenty years they’ll be beg­ging me to come back here as a shin­ing ex­am­ple of school suc­cess. And do you know what I’ll tell them?”

Will sighed. He’d heard this from Ray be­fore. “What?”

“I’ll tell them to stick it. I’ll be a suc­cess de­spite this dump, not be­cause of it.”

“That right?”

“That’s right. And I’ll tell you some­thing else, when I’m rich, there’s no way that Amy won’t go out with me.”

“Oh, come on, Ray!” Will shook his head. “How many times have you asked Amy out?”

“I don’t know, five or six. But at least I have asked her out. You haven’t got the brass bol­locks to do it. Ev­ery­one knows you fancy her, you know.”

“I haven’t asked her be­cause I know what she’d say. Why would any­one from the posh es­tate go out with one of our lot, huh? Bet­ter not to ask than get em­bar­rassed by the knock­back.”

“It wouldn’t be em­bar­rass­ing,” Ray said.

“Not for you, maybe. Be­sides, she’s a mate. It’d only make things awk­ward if I asked her out and she said no.”

“I don’t reckon she would say no, you know,” Bobby said.

Will rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Don’t be daft. Of course she’d say no. She keeps say­ing no to him, doesn’t she?” Will pointed at Ray.

“Yeah, true,” said Bobby. “But you ain’t him.”

Two more of their peers passed through the re­cep­tion. John Nu­gent and James As­bury ap­peared to be head­ing for the li­brary, but Will sus­pected they weren’t plan­ning to study.

“Hey,” Nu­gent called. “What you three tossers do­ing? Dream­ing about be­ing sad enough for the Wall of Shit?”

“Why don’t you go fuck your­self, twat­face.”

Nu­gent huffed. “Oh, just fuck off, Billy-boy. Fuck­ing wanker.”

“Gen­tle­men!” Mrs Ri­ley, Will’s Eng­lish teacher, en­tered the re­cep­tion at that mo­ment. “That’s hardly ap­pro­pri­ate lan­guage, now is it? Mr Brown, I’d have ex­pected bet­ter from you.”

“He started it.” Will pointed at Nu­gent.

“I don’t care who started it. I’ll thank you both to clean up your filthy mouths. De­ten­tion. Both of you. I’ll let you know when. Now, don’t you have some­where to be, Mr Nu­gent?”

Will waited un­til Nu­gent and Mrs Ri­ley had left and said, “That fuck­ing bas­tard.”

“Yeah, but the girls all like him for it,” said Bobby. “I don’t know why, but they do.”

“Not all of them do.”

“Oh, Will, I nearly for­got,” said Ray.

“Nearly for­got what?”

“Mr Thomp­son wants to see you.”

“What does he want?”

“It’s prob­a­bly the same have you thought about your op­tions when you leave school talk that I had,” said Bobby, rolling his eyes. “I know it’s ages away, but he wants as many peo­ple to ap­ply to uni­ver­sity as pos­si­ble. I think he thinks he’ll get paid more if we do. Fuck­ing id­iot.”

“Are you go­ing to ap­ply?” Will asked.

“No point,” said Bobby. “Un­like you, the only uni­ver­si­ties that my shitty grades will get me in are, well, shit. I’d rather go out into the real world and start earn­ing than spend an­other three years do­ing home­work and rack­ing up huge debts.”

“Where is he?” Will asked. “In his of­fice?”

Ray nod­ded. “He’s wait­ing for you. He knows you’ve got a free pe­riod, so you’ve got no ex­cuse.”

Will sighed. “Great. See you later, Bob.”

“Yeah, see you. I’ll be in the li­brary. And re­mem­ber, don’t let the bas­tard talk you into shit you don’t want to do.”

Will didn’t hurry on his way to Thomp­son’s of­fice, which was on the first floor next to the sixth-form com­mon room. He knocked even though the door was open. “You wanted to see me, sir?”

The Head of Sixth-Form looked up from his pa­per­work and smiled. “Will, yes. Come in and take a seat, my boy. Oh, and shut the door, would you?”

Will closed the door be­hind him and sat down. Thomp­son reached for some pa­pers at the back of his desk. He searched through them and picked one out. Will guessed it must be his last set of school re­ports. Thomp­son read the pa­per silently and then looked up.

“Splen­did re­port again, Will. Splen­did. I see that your sub­ject teach­ers have all pre­dicted straight ‘A’s for you this sum­mer. Quite a feat.”

Will tried and failed to hide his em­bar­rass­ment. “There’s a long time be­tween now and then, sir.”

“Not as long as you might think. Not as long at all. Now, have you thought about what you plan to do af­ter­wards?”

“I was think­ing of ap­ply­ing to uni­ver­sity, sir. I’ve al­ways wanted to be a lawyer.”

Thomp­son nod­ded. “Good choice. Good choice. Lot of money in the le­gal pro­fes­sion.”

“I’m not re­ally in­ter­ested in the money, sir. I just want to help peo­ple who can’t help them­selves.”

“Very no­ble. Al­though a whack­ing great salary can’t hurt, can it?” He roared with laugh­ter.

“Guess not.”

“Of course, you un­der­stand that choos­ing such a ca­reer makes your choice of uni­ver­sity all the more im­por­tant? Law firms tend to place great stock in the her­itage uni­ver­si­ties, you know.” Thomp­son put the pa­per down and leant for­ward. “With these grades, you’d stand a good chance of get­ting a place at one of the Ox­ford or Cam­bridge col­leges. There’d be an in­ter­view, of course, but you’d have no trou­ble with that, I’m sure.”

“I don’t know, sir. Aren’t they for posh, pub­lic school boys?”

“Tra­di­tion­ally, I sup­pose they do have that im­age. But these days they’re ex­pected to take their fair share of state school can­di­dates too. Times change and, like it or not, the Oxbridge es­tab­lish­ment has to change with them.”

“I don’t know. I don’t think it’s re­ally for me, sir.”

“Well, it’s your choice, of course. But think about it, okay? You’re com­ing on the trip to West­mouth Uni­ver­sity, aren’t you?”

Will nod­ded. “Yes, I am. I’m look­ing for­ward to it.”

“Good. Good. Well, I think that’s all.”

Will left the of­fice and looked in on the com­mon room. The only oc­cu­pants were Amy Robin­son and Lizzie Archer who were stand­ing at the vend­ing ma­chines a few feet from the door. “Coke or Sprite?” Amy asked.

“I don’t care,” replied Lizzie. “Just pick one and let’s go. We’re al­ready late. Old man Hub­bard will do his nut. I could kill that bloody Ray Turner. Why hasn’t he got the mes­sage that you don’t want to go out with him.”

“Beats me. You think that the phrase, ‘not if you had a mil­lion pounds’ would be clear enough, but nooooo.”

Lizzie laughed. “I can’t be­lieve his re­ply. The cheek of the boy.”

“Why, what did he say?”

They turned around at Will’s words and no­ticed him for the first time. Amy beamed. “Oh, hi, William. I thought you’d be in the li­brary.”

“Just had a meet­ing with the boss-man.”

“About what you plan to do next year?” Lizzie asked.

Will nod­ded. “That’s the one.”

“Bet that was a waste of time,” said Amy. “With your grades, you’ll be off to a top uni­ver­sity, while the rest of us will have to make do with what we’re of­fered.”

“I don’t know where I’m go­ing yet. I haven’t re­ally thought about it. Any­way, what did Ray say? He was boast­ing ear­lier that you’d have to go out with him if he was a rich busi­ness­man. I bet you took the wind right out of his sails.”

“Not re­ally,” said Amy. “I said not if he had a mil­lion pounds and he said what about two mil­lion, or three. He just doesn’t get it.”

Will half-smirked. “What did you say to that?”

“Me? Noth­ing. I just walked off.”

“How many times is that he’s asked you out now?”

“Eight, I think, if you count that time at the Christ­mas Party when he got drunk and asked al­most ev­ery­body out.”

“He didn’t ask me out,” said Lizzie.

“Lucky you,” said Will. All three of them laughed.

“Sorry, William, but we have to go,” said Amy. “We’re al­ready late. See you at lunchtime? Save us both a seat?”

Will nod­ded. “Sure.”

“It must be great to be so in love. To have some close to you like that.”

At eight-thirty the next morn­ing, Will and Lizzie hud­dled un­der an um­brella in the school car park, await­ing the ar­rival of a fifty-seat coach. It was al­ready a quar­ter of an hour late. As Chair and Vice-Chair of the stu­dent com­mit­tee, Lizzie and Will were of­ten called upon to per­form such tasks. The sky was dark grey, the wind howled and there was a re­lent­less driz­zle—a fine mist of rain that per­me­ated ev­ery fi­bre of the body.

The um­brella wasn’t even pro­vid­ing them with much pro­tec­tion from the mis­er­able con­di­tions since the wind blew the rain side­ways.

“Here it is,” Lizzie shouted over the wind. She pointed to­wards the school gates. “You go and tell Mr Thomp­son and I’ll go meet the driver.”

“Do you get to keep the um­brella?”

“Of course. I’m the Chair, af­ter all.”

“By one vote.”

“Still beat you though. Go on. Please. You’re quicker than me, you won’t get as wet.”

“I don’t sup­pose it’ll make any dif­fer­ence. I’m al­ready soaked.” Will shook his head and raced back to the school. Af­ter telling Mr Thomp­son that the coach had ar­rived, he re­turned to the car park. Lizzie was al­ready on the bus.

“Will,” she called when he climbed aboard. “I’ve saved us the back row. You, me, Amy, Bobby and Julie.”

“Great! I know Nu­gent wanted it, so any­thing that pisses him off is fine by me.”

As he sat look­ing out of the back win­dow to­wards the school, Will saw that Nu­gent and three of his cronies were first out of the re­cep­tion doors and he watched with a smirk as they raced to the bus.

“Oy, Billy-boy! Shift,” Nu­gent said when he saw him sit­ting in the seat he wanted. “Back row’s ours.”

“Who said?”

“I did. The back row is al­ways ours. Get it?”

“Well, we were here first,” said Lizzie. “So tough.”

“Tough? What d’you mean, tough? I’ll—”

“Take a seat, please, Mr Nu­gent. Quickly. The rest of us are get­ting quite wet out here,” said Mr Thomp­son from the en­trance.

Nu­gent grunted and flung him­self into a seat a few rows in front of Will as ev­ery­one else got on. Lizzie waved to Amy, Bobby and Bobby’s girl­friend, Julie, when she saw them climb on board. There were six seats across the back row. Lizzie sat at one end by the win­dow, Will sat in the mid­dle. Amy planted her­self down be­tween the two, while Bobby sat at the other end with Julie leav­ing an empty seat be­tween them and Will.

Nu­gent knelt up on his seat, rested his arms on the back and growled, “First one on gets the back row, right? I swear, it’s fuck­ing well ours on the way back.”

“I don’t know why he’s com­ing any­way,” Amy whis­pered to Will as Nu­gent sat down again and they set off for West­mouth. “It’s not as if he’s likely to pass the ex­ams, let alone get good enough grades for a place at uni­ver­sity.”

“I think he heard they sell beer in the Stu­dent’s Union at lunchtime,” replied Will.

“That would ex­plain it.” Amy smiled her broad smile. Of all Amy’s qual­i­ties, her smile was close to the top of the list of things that Will liked about her. It wasn’t just that it was wide and ex­posed her per­fect teeth. It was that it spread across her whole face, es­pe­cially to her eyes which twin­kled and be­came an even more strik­ingly deep blue than usual. Amy’s smiles were never faked. She only smiled when she was happy.

Thank­fully, she was happy a lot.

King George’s was on the north-west­ern edge of Walmin­ster, less than a mile from the bor­der of one of Lon­don’s most de­prived bor­oughs. Rather than drive through Walmin­ster to get to the mo­tor­way east of the town, the driver set off in the op­po­site di­rec­tion and took them on the wind­ing coun­try roads. Will watched the lush green coun­try­side slip by wear­ing a wry smile. Walmin­ster, and the area around King George’s in par­tic­u­lar, was grey, grimy and de­press­ing. The in­dus­trial build­ings pumped out a con­stant flow of smoke that cov­ered the build­ings with an ever-thick­en­ing layer of grime. It was a stark con­trast to the farm­land, mead­ows and woods that sep­a­rated the town from its coastal neigh­bour.

“What are you think­ing about?” Amy asked.

“What?” Will shook him­self out of his trance. “Sorry, what?”

Amy grinned. “You’ve got that far off look again. The one you get when you’re think­ing about some­thing.”

Will had been think­ing how won­der­ful it would be to spend some time just walk­ing through the coun­try­side with Amy, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “Just… I know it’s only twenty-five miles to West­mouth, but it’s like a dif­fer­ent world or some­thing.”

“I know. I love it there. I love the sea and the park and the Win­ter Gar­dens. It’s a great place. We were go­ing to move there in­stead of Walmin­ster when Daddy got his pro­mo­tion, but he said it was too ex­pen­sive. Too many rich old peo­ple push­ing up the price of the houses. He said we could get a much big­ger house for less money in Walmin­ster.”

“Do you re­gret mov­ing to Walmin­ster?”

She of­fered him a sweet, sub­tle vari­a­tion of her dy­na­mite smile. “No. Not re­ally. There are some good things about the place.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. One or two.”

West­mouth Uni­ver­sity, sit­u­ated atop West­mouth Hill over­look­ing the town and the bay, had over a cen­tury of aca­demic tra­di­tion, whereas Walmin­ster Col­lege was less than ten years old. That was the rea­son the King George’s sixth-for­m­ers were taken on a half-hour coach ride to the coast in­stead of vis­it­ing their home town Col­lege. It was still rain­ing when they got off the coach in one of the cam­pus car parks and were led to the Stu­dent’s Union build­ing. Once there, they spilt up to tour the aca­demic de­part­ments they were in­ter­ested in, their ob­jec­tive for the day be­ing to gather as much in­for­ma­tion as they could about the par­tic­u­lar cour­ses they might ap­ply for. For Will, this meant a morn­ing spent alone in the Law de­part­ment. He met up with his friends back in the Stu­dent’s Union build­ing at lunchtime and they planned to tour the rest of the cam­pus to­gether in the af­ter­noon.

While Will and his friends waited pa­tiently in line for their free meal with the rest of the many vis­i­tors to the cam­pus, he couldn’t help no­tice that not only did John Nu­gent push into the queue to get served quicker, but he also bought a bot­tle of lager to go with his meal.

Even­tu­ally, they col­lected their meals and found a ta­ble.

“So,” Amy said, “Where have you all been this morn­ing?”

“Maths de­part­ment,” grunted Bobby through a mouth­ful of food. “Dead bor­ing re­ally and all the teach­ers are just as geeky as you’d imag­ine.”

“You re­ally shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, Bobby. It’s dis­gust­ing.”

“Sorry.” His mouth was still full.

“What about you, William?”

“Law. It’s a de­cent de­part­ment they’ve got here. They have a re­ally high grad­u­ate em­ploy­ment rate. Not as high as the top places, but still pretty good.”

“So you think you might ap­ply here?” Lizzie asked. “Stay close to home?”

“Dunno,” said Will. “I sup­pose it’s time I made my mind up.”

“I’d love to go to Ox­ford,” said Amy. “Like my Un­cle Fraser. But you need straight ‘A’s and I’m not go­ing to get them. I sup­pose West­mouth is a good sub­sti­tute. It’s lo­cal, and the busi­ness school looks re­ally good from what I’ve seen to­day.”

“Hey, Will,” said Bobby. “You’re a big-brained bas­tard. Why don’t you ap­ply to Ox­ford?”

“Thomp­son said some­thing sim­i­lar,” said Will. “Only he didn’t call me a bas­tard.” He grinned at his friend.

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he,” said Bobby. “He doesn’t know you like I do.”

“What­ever. But I don’t think Ox­ford’s re­ally for me. I wouldn’t fit in with all the rich kids.”

“Don’t be silly, William,” said Amy. “Of course you’d fit in. Af­ter all, with no par­ents around, you’d all be in the same boat. I think it’s a great idea. You should ap­ply to Ox­ford. It’ll stand you in good stead for when you leave.”

Her smile seemed to be telling him he was eas­ily ca­pa­ble of get­ting into Ox­ford and her eyes seemed filled with ad­mi­ra­tion. Or was Will read­ing too much into her ex­pres­sion? Still, he felt his chest swell with pride at her words. They held each other’s gaze for a mo­ment longer than was nec­es­sary be­fore he looked down at the ta­ble. “I dunno. I’ll have to think about it.”

They were free to wan­der around the cam­pus and visit of some of the uni­ver­sity’s fa­cil­i­ties af­ter lunch. This in­cluded the vast li­brary, the new sports cen­tre, and some of the stu­dent ac­com­mo­da­tion on cam­pus. Will’s group was one of the last to re­turn to coach and, sure enough, they had lost their place on the back seat to John Nu­gent and his gang.

“Ha, look at Billy-boy hav­ing to sit on his own,” Nu­gent called as Will flopped into the seats in front of Amy and Lizzie. Bobby and Julie were in front of him. Nu­gent’s fol­low­ers bel­lowed with laugh­ter un­til a stern look from Mr Thomp­son shut them up. Will didn’t care. He didn’t mind sit­ting on his own. He wanted to re-read the es­say he’d writ­ten for Eng­lish be­fore he handed it in the next day any­way.

He leaned back in his seat and started read­ing but he hadn’t even fin­ished the first page when Amy leaned through the gap be­tween the seats and tapped his shoul­der.

“William, look at these.” She handed him some post­cards. Each one was copy of an old fash­ioned paint­ing and al­most all of them were of naked or par­tially clad women.

“What are these?”

“What do you mean, what are these? It’s Bot­ti­celli.”

Will gave her a blank look.

“Bot­ti­celli?” she said. “San­dro Bot­ti­celli? The Ital­ian painter? Oh come on, you must have heard of him.” She got up and skipped around the seat to sit next to Will. “Four­teen forty-five to fif­teen ten. He painted some of the most fa­mous paint­ings in the world. This one—” She picked out a post­card. “— The Birth of Venus. And Venus and Mars—” She found an­other post­card. “This one.”

Will looked at them. “Very nice.”

She punched his arm. “You have no ap­pre­ci­a­tion of art, do you? We’re study­ing him this term. He was a ge­nius.” She started to give Will a pot­ted his­tory of the Re­nais­sance mas­ter. He wasn’t par­tic­u­larly in­ter­ested, but he did love lis­ten­ing to her voice. It had a rich, warm tone un­like any­one else he knew. It re­minded him of a hot choco­late drink be­fore bed­time—com­fort­ing and fa­mil­iar, but also a lit­tle bit naughty. “—Any­way, my next project is Bot­ti­celli based.”

“You mean you have to paint one of his pic­tures.”

“I think we’re sup­posed to in­ter­pret it as do­ing some­thing in his style, but what I’d like to do is my own ver­sion of this one.”

“Venus and Mars, right? ”

“Yeah. I’d like to do it as a pho­to­graph. Of course, that means I’d need to find a cou­ple of mod­els.”

“Who­ever you get to be Mars will have to be brave. You can al­most see his… You know.”

She raised her eye­brows and gave him that ir­re­sistible smile. There was a fire blaz­ing in her eyes—some­thing that she al­ways she got when she wanted some­thing—and her irises had dark­ened so that they were more vi­o­let than blue.

“No,” said Will. “No way.”

“Oh, go on. You know on-one else will be up for it. Ex­cept for Ray, maybe, and he’s hardly pho­to­genic, is he?”

Will didn’t an­swer.

“Oh, go on. Please. Pretty please? With cher­ries on top.” She put her hands to­gether as if in prayer.

“I’ll think about it.”

She grinned. “Thanks. I knew you’d say yes.”

Will shook his head. “I’ll never un­der­stand your sub­ject com­bi­na­tion. I mean, Art, Eng­lish and Eco­nom­ics. It’s not very… er… Tra­di­tional, is it?”

“And Eng­lish, French and His­tory is, I sup­pose?”

“Well, yeah. It’s what I was rec­om­mended to do by the ca­reers guy.”

“Yeah, well, what do they know? Hey, speak­ing of French, did you see what Lizzie bought?” She leaned back over the seat and re­trieved some­thing from her friend.

“Es­sen­tial French Phrases? Why did you get this, Lizzie?” Will asked. “You don’t do French.”

“We’re go­ing on hol­i­day there this sum­mer.”

Amy flipped through the book. “I was never very good at French, which is why I dropped it. But you’re go­ing to get an ‘A’, so let’s test you.” She coughed to clear her throat. “Voulez vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?”

“My God!” said Will. “What sort of phrase book is that?”

Amy laughed and play­fully slapped his arm. “Only kid­ding. It’s from that song. You know the one I mean.”

“Yeah, I know. Do you know what it means?”

She shook her head. “What?”

“Would you sleep with me tonight? Well, you know, not just sleep with but sleep with. ”

“Oh. Re­ally? Well, I’ll have to be care­ful who I say it to in fu­ture.” There was some­thing in her tone and the twin­kle of her eye that made Will think she knew ex­actly what the sen­tence meant.

For the rest of the jour­ney back to Walmin­ster, Amy read out phrases from the book for Will to trans­late. They weren’t dif­fi­cult, but it was use­ful re­vi­sion for him and at least it meant that Amy sat next to him all the way home. And that couldn’t be a bad thing, even if she wasn’t wrapped up in his arms like Julie was wrapped in Bobby’s in front of them.

“Look at those two,” Amy whis­pered as Bobby and Julie started kiss­ing just be­fore the coach en­tered the sub­urbs around the school. “It must be great to be so in love. To have some close to you like that.”

“Yeah,” Will said, wist­fully. “It must.” He was think­ing it would it great to be as close to Amy like that—even though he knew it would never hap­pen.

“There’s noth­ing worse than liv­ing with re­grets.”

Will was named for his ma­ter­nal grand­fa­ther, which had caused some con­fu­sion as soon as Will was old enough to recog­nise his name. If the two were in the same room to­gether and some­one called out the name, they would both an­swer. So, as a so­lu­tion, Will’s grand­fa­ther be­gan in­sist­ing on be­ing re­ferred to as William.

Un­for­tu­nately, Grandpa William died shortly af­ter Will turned eleven. Per­haps the death of her hus­band was the rea­son Will and his grand­mother were so close. She cooked a full roast lunch for the whole fam­ily ev­ery Sun­day and he of­ten went out of his was to visit her dur­ing the week just to talk. He found he was able to talk to her with­out feel­ing as fool­ish as he did when he talked to his par­ents. He told her things that he didn’t want any­one else to know, safe in the knowl­edge that she would keep his se­crets.

He called in on her that evening as he walked home on the pre­tence of ask­ing if she wanted him to fetch any­thing from the lo­cal shops. It was an ex­cuse he could feed to his friends when they asked what he was do­ing.

“William, my favourite grand­son!” She greeted him with a smile, a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She’d taken to call­ing him William soon af­ter her hus­band’s death. She was the only per­son in the fam­ily who did.

“Nana, I’m your only grand­son.”

“I know. I know,” she said, wav­ing her hands at him to en­ter. “Come in. Come in. Go and sit down.”

He eased past her and, as she closed the door be­hind him, Nana cocked her head and looked at him with all the love she had. “You know, young man, you’re look­ing more like your grand­fa­ther ev­ery time I see you.”

Will went through to the lounge, which was such an ex­plo­sion of chintz that it al­ways made his eyes hurt. From the wall­pa­per and cur­tains to the soft fur­nish­ings and table­ware, ev­ery­thing was cov­ered with clash­ing flo­ral pat­terns. There were two large arm­chairs and one sofa po­si­tioned on three sides of a small cof­fee ta­ble. On the fourth side was a large fire­place in which a fire cur­rently looked as if it might soon burn it­self out. Will sat in one of the arm­chairs while his Nana, in her flo­ral dress and slip­pers, shuf­fled in be­hind him, threw a log on the fire and poked at it with a brass stick un­til it roared.

“I’ll get you a drink,” she said. “What would you like? Coca Cola? Lemon­ade? Tea?”

“Coke, please, Nana.”

She pat­ted him on the shoul­der and bus­tled out of the room, re­turn­ing shortly with a can taken from the fridge in one hand and a tall glass with two ice cubes in it in the other. She handed both to Will and sat on the sofa so that she was as near to him as pos­si­ble while he popped open the can and poured the con­tents into the glass. He’d nor­mally have drunk straight from the can, but Nana didn’t like that.

She smiled kindly. “So? What’s on your mind?”

“Noth­ing,” said Will as he waited for the bub­bles in the Coke to set­tle so he could take a sip.

“Come now, William. Some­thing is wor­ry­ing you. I can see it in your eyes. Tell your Nana.”

Will thought for a few sec­onds be­fore an­swer­ing. “You know I’m plan­ning to ap­ply to uni­ver­sity?”

“Oh, yes. I’m thrilled. The first in our fam­ily. Your grand­fa­ther would be so happy. And proud.” She paused, frowned and said, “You haven’t changed your mind have you?”

“No. Oh God, no. I still want to be a lawyer. I still want to help peo­ple.”

She smiled. “That’s good. Your grand­fa­ther would be de­lighted to hear you say that. He thought it was im­por­tant to help peo­ple.”

“It’s just… At school, they think… Well, Mr Thomp­son thinks that I should ap­ply to Ox­ford or Cam­bridge.”

Nana’s eyes widened. “Re­ally? That’s won­der­ful.”

“But what if I don’t get in? What if I make a fool of my­self and lose out on a place some­where else?”

Nana sat back in her chair. Presently, she said, “William. Dear, dear William. Do you know why your grand­fa­ther fought in the Sec­ond World War?”

Will shrugged. “To stop the Nazis from tak­ing over the world, I sup­pose.”

She gave him a kindly smile. “Well, yes, there was that. But it was be­cause he be­lieved that Britain is a coun­try where if a man works hard, he can make a bet­ter fu­ture for his chil­dren. He be­lieved in the British way of life and he wanted to fight to keep it alive.”

Will sipped his Coke and set­tled in to lis­ten. Nana loved to talk about her hus­band and Will loved hear­ing her talk about him.

“He was eigh­teen when war broke out—I was six­teen. We al­ready knew we’d spend our lives to­gether, but I was ter­ri­fied when he went away that he might not come back.” She smiled “But he did. He came home to me. We mar­ried straight away and I had your mother a lit­tle over a year later.” Her eyes glazed over as she got lost in her mem­o­ries. “Your grand­fa­ther worked so hard to make sure she wouldn’t have to strug­gle the way we did. He worked twelve or thir­teen hours a day be­cause he be­lieved that hard work paid div­i­dends. When he started in that fac­tory, he was a labourer. He learned skills, im­pressed the man­age­ment and be­came a fore­man.”

Will knew all this. He’d heard it many times. But the look on his Nana’s face as she spoke was so one of such hap­pi­ness that he knew he’d never have the heart to in­ter­rupt her.

She leaned for­ward, wagged her fin­ger at Will and con­tin­ued, “He in­stilled his be­lief in hard work in your mother. And she has in­stilled it in you.” She sat back again. “Who’d have thought that in just three gen­er­a­tions, a work­ing-class fam­ily like ours could be send­ing their child to the best uni­ver­sity in the coun­try, if not the world? Who’d have thought, that the grand­son of a man who earned a pit­tance, could be about to start on the path to a pro­fes­sional ca­reer and the fi­nan­cial re­wards that go with it?” She smiled again and shook her head. “William, you are an ex­am­ple of just what your grand­fa­ther be­lieved in. Don’t you see that? Your hard work will pay off. If those at school, who ought to know, think you can get at place Ox­ford, then you can. I know you can.”

“But what if I don’t fit in? Won’t they all be posh? Bet­ter than me?”

“Bet­ter than you? I’d ask who’s worked the hard­est to get there and then ask who’s bet­ter than who.”

Will smiled at his grand­mother. She al­ways knew what to say. “But—”

“No buts, William. The truth is that if you don’t try, you’ll never know.”

“I sup­pose.”

“There’s no sup­pose about it. Lis­ten to me, William. If you don’t at least ap­ply, you’ll re­gret it later. Per­haps for the rest of your life. And there’s noth­ing worse than liv­ing with re­grets. You need to grab this chance with both hands.” She jumped for­ward and snatched an imag­i­nary ob­ject out of the air. “Make the most of it. It’s what your grand­fa­ther would have wanted.” She sat back again. “And speak­ing of grab­bing chances with both hands, what about this young lady of yours?”

“Which young lady?”

“The one at your birth­day party.”

“There were lots of girls at my birth­day party.”

“Don’t try and fool your old Nana, William. I know you too well. Blonde girl. Blue eyes. Lovely smile. She wore a short skirt and had very nice legs. You danced with her twice—you only danced with any of the other girls once. Don’t look at me like that—I no­tice these things.”

“You mean Amy.”

“Yes, that was her name. How is your young Amy?”

“She’s not mine. Un­for­tu­nately.”

“But she could be. I saw the way you looked at her, William. And, more im­por­tantly, I saw the way she looked at you.”

“And how was that?”

“The same way I used to look at your grand­fa­ther.”

Will shook his head. “No. You’re wrong. She doesn’t like me like that. We’re just friends.”

“Are you sure, William?”

He shrugged. “But we’re friends. I couldn’t… She wouldn’t… It would just spoil things be­tween us.”

“It might. But it might not. It might make things much, much bet­ter. As I said, William, if you don’t take the chance, you’ll never know. And you’ll re­gret it later. And like I said, there’s noth­ing worse in this life than liv­ing with re­grets. Trust your Nana on this. Now, tell me about your trip to the coast to­day. You didn’t get very nice weather for it. What did you do all day?”

“You’re go­ing to do it. Aren’t you, William?”

Two days later, Will, Bobby and Julie sat at their favourite desk in the school li­brary do­ing some school work. Julie strug­gled to get to grips with an es­say on Wuther­ing Heights for her Eng­lish class. Bobby tack­led some Maths home­work and Will checked the gram­mar struc­tures and tenses in an es­say for his French class.

“Oh, arse,” said Julie. She slammed the book on the desk. “This doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s a stupid book.”

“It’s a clas­sic,” said Will. It was the same es­say he’d tried to read through on the bus back from West­mouth be­fore Amy started quizzing him in French. It was due to be handed in at the end of the week, but Will had turned it in early. “I would’ve thought you’d have loved it.”

“God, no. Give me a good Cather­ine Cook­son any day.”

“Julie, pur-lease…” He rolled his eyes.

“Well if she’s so bad, why does she sell so many books? And have you ever ac­tu­ally read one?”

“If I’d been cap­tured by ter­ror­ists, and they of­fered me two forms of tor­ture, hav­ing my go­nads elec­tro­cuted or be­ing forced to read Cook­son’s en­tire works, then I’d tell them to fire up the gen­er­a­tor.”

Julie and Will laughed.

“She’s not that bad,” Julie said.

“No. She’s not,” Will con­ceded. “But still…”

Bobby slammed his pen­cil on the ta­ble and snapped his text­book shut. “I’ve had enough. Cal­cu­lus does my fuck­ing head in. What time is it?”

“Quar­ter to one,” Will replied.

“Good. Nearly lunchtime, I’m fuck­ing starved.”

“Bobby, do you have to swear?” said Julie. “You know I don’t like it.”

“Sorry, babe.” He packed his books into his bag and then got up to re­trieve one of the day’s news­pa­pers from the rack by the li­brary en­trance. The door opened as he got there and Amy and Lizzie walked in. Will watched the three walk to­wards him. Or rather, he watched Amy walk to­wards him. She wore a tight white blouse and short skirt that showed off her curves and legs to max­i­mum ef­fect. Bobby re­took his seat and turned the news­pa­per over to read the sports head­lines at the back. Amy had a clip­board in her hand while Lizzie car­ried a Tup­per­ware box and a small bun­dle of green cards. The two girls sat down on ei­ther side of Will.

“Have you three got your tick­ets for Sat­ur­day night?” Lizzie asked.

“Nah,” said Bobby. “I’m wait­ing ‘til the last minute to­mor­row. You know what I’m like; I’ll lose it if I get it any ear­lier.”

“But what if we sell out? You could give them Julie to look af­ter.”

“Don’t lis­ten to him,” said Julie with a sigh. “I brought the tick­ets yes­ter­day. If I left it to him he’d for­get.”

Amy looked down the list of names on her clip­board. “Yep, I’ve got you marked off. You must have got them from Smithy. It’s typ­i­cal of him not to say any­thing.” She looked fur­ther down her list. “You’re not marked off, William. Smithy must have for­got­ten.”

“No, he hasn’t. I haven’t got one yet. I don’t think I’m go­ing.”

“What?” said Bobby. “Mate, you’ve got to come. It’ll be a blast. Be­sides, you’re vice-thingy, you know. What-you-call-it. Isn’t it your job to be there or some­thing?”

“I know, but I got a shit ton of work to do this week­end.”

“Bol­locks. You’ve got no home­work or you’d be do­ing it now.”

“No, not home­work. I got to fill my uni­ver­sity ap­pli­ca­tion in.”

Lizzie looked con­fused. “But the dead­line isn’t for an­other month.”

Re­al­i­sa­tion quickly spread across Amy’s face. She smiled. “You’re go­ing to do it. Aren’t you, William?”

“Do what?” said Lizzie. “Amy…?”

“Do you re­mem­ber we were talk­ing over lunch at the uni­ver­sity the other day? I said how much I’d like to go to Ox­ford, like my Un­cle Fraser, but how I didn’t think I’d get the grades. You need straight ‘A’s and I’m only go­ing to get ‘B’s at most, well, maybe an ‘A’ in art, but that still won’t be good enough.” She paused for breath. “Any­way, Bobby said to William that since he’d be get­ting straight ‘A’s, what with be­ing the clever­est out of all of us, that he should go to Ox­ford. He thought it was a stupid idea at the time, but I said he should.” She looked at him. “What changed your mind?”

“My Nana. She said that if I don’t at least try then I’ll re­gret it later. She also said that if I don’t try, I’ll never know, and that if I’ve got the chance I should grab it with both hands.”

“She doesn’t half go on, your Nana,” said Bobby. “So is it true? Are you go­ing to Ox­ford?”

Will nod­ded. “I’m ap­ply­ing at least. I prob­a­bly won’t get in, but you never know. That’s why I have to do my ap­pli­ca­tion this week­end. They have to be in early for Ox­ford and Cam­bridge.”

“You can still come out on Sat­ur­day night though,” said Amy. “It won’t the same with­out you there. Just don’t drink very much then you’ll have a hang­over-free Sun­day to do your ap­pli­ca­tion.”

“I don’t know.”

“I tell you what. If you come out on Sat­ur­day, then I’ll look at your ap­pli­ca­tion on Mon­day morn­ing and see if you’ve missed out any of your good points. I mean, there’s so many, you’re bound to, aren’t you?” She smiled at him again and her eyes took on that vi­o­let hue he loved so much.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll come.”

Amy grinned. “Ex­cel­lent.”

“That’ll be two quid then, please,” said Lizzie. “What? If you don’t get your ticket now, we might sell out.”

Will handed over his money and Lizzie gave him a ticket. “Don’t lose it. It’s the club’s bouncer on the door, and they won’t let you in with­out it.”

“I won’t.”

Bobby looked at his watch. “Lunchtime. About bloody time. You com­ing, Will?”

Will shook his head. “I’ve got that de­ten­tion with Ri­ley, re­mem­ber?”

“What de­ten­tion?” Amy asked.

“I had a run-in with Nu­gent and she caught us.”

“You weren’t fight­ing with him, were you? He’s not worth it, William.”

“We just had an ex­change of words, that’s all.”

“Oh. Okay. Well, I’ll see you af­ter lunch, then.”

“Yeah, too bad, mate,” said Bobby. “See you later, I’m off for some grub.”

When Will ar­rived at Mrs Ri­ley’s room, Nu­gent was al­ready wait­ing out­side, lean­ing against the wall. He glared at Will. “This is your fuck­ing fault, Billy-boy, you bas­tard. I’ll get you back for this, you know.”

“Gen­tle­men.” Mrs Ri­ley had opened the door and stood in the door­way with her hands on her hips. “Don’t start again or you’ll be com­ing back here ev­ery lunchtime for the rest of the week. Now in­side, both of you. Sep­a­rate desks.”

They did as they were told and sat in si­lence as the el­derly teacher lec­tured them on the evils of foul lan­guage and on ap­pro­pri­ate be­hav­iour. “You re­ally are sup­posed to set an ex­am­ple to the younger chil­dren. I’m just glad none of them were around to over­hear you. So, gen­tle­men, you can write two thou­sand words for me on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of role mod­els in mod­ern so­ci­ety and have it on my desk by Mon­day morn­ing.”

“But Miss,” said Will, “I’ve got to do my uni­ver­sity ap­pli­ca­tion this week­end.”

“In that case, I sug­gest you do it be­fore then, Mr Brown. The li­brary is open late ev­ery night. That will be all gen­tle­men. I wouldn’t want to de­prive you of your lunch for any longer.”

Will and Nu­gent left the room in a solemn mood. Will silently fumed that a few poorly cho­sen words had landed him ex­tra work. He knew it was his own fault and he was an­gry with him­self. They were well away from the class­room be­fore ei­ther of them spoke.

“Two thou­sand fuck­ing words. How the fuck am I sup­posed to do that?”

“Shouldn’t take more than a cou­ple of hours,” said Will.

“A cou­ple of hours? Oh, thanks a fuck­ing bun­dle, Billy-boy. This is all your fault, you fuck­ing twat.”

“And you had fuck all to do with it?”

“Like I said, all your fuck­ing fault. I’ve you’d have kept your fat gob shut…”

“You started it.”

“Oh, just fuck off.” Nu­gent stormed off in the op­po­site di­rec­tion. Will guessed he was go­ing for a nico­tine fix. Be­fore he turned the cor­ner, Nu­gent shouted, “I’ll get you back for this. This Sat­ur­day. At the party. I’m ask­ing Robin­son out. I’m ask­ing her out, and when she says yes, I’m gonna take her out­side, fuck her twat and come in her mouth.”

“She wouldn’t let you.”

“Wanna bet? She might be a stuck-up tart, but I reckon she’s a dirty lit­tle slut too. She’s beg­ging for it, I tell ya. Fuck­ing beg­ging for it.” Nu­gent turned and walked away, leav­ing Will stand­ing in the empty cor­ri­dor.

“She wouldn’t let you,” he said qui­etly. “I won’t let you. She’s not beg­ging for it. And she’s not a slut.”

He traipsed to­wards the din­ing room, ex­pect­ing his friends to have al­ready fin­ished eat­ing. So he was pleas­antly sur­prised to find Lizzie and Amy sit­ting chat­ting, empty plates in front of them, when he sat down.

“That was quick,” Amy said. “I’m glad I waited.”

Will gave her a half-smile. “Got a two thou­sand word es­say.”

“Too bad,” said Lizzie. “Just don’t use it as an ex­cuse not to come on Sat­ur­day. I’m count­ing on you to walk me home.”

“Hate is a strong word.”

Will couldn’t face the pun­ish­ment es­say and waited un­til af­ter school that Fri­day be­fore he started it. He didn’t think it would take him too long—if he could get a run at it. Af­ter half an hour of re­search and half an hour of writ­ing, he’d writ­ten fif­teen hun­dred words.

“Hi, William.” He looked up. Amy stood on the other side of the desk. She grinned and sat op­po­site.

“What are you do­ing?”

“That es­say for Ri­ley. Two thou­sand words on Role mod­els. It’s easy ac­tu­ally. There are tons of ex­am­ples in to­day’s pa­per alone. Here, you want to read what I’ve got so far?” He handed her his notepad.

She took it and scanned over his work.

“Your hand­writ­ing is ter­ri­ble. I can barely read it.”

“It’s just rough. I’ll type it up on Dad’s com­puter on Sun­day.”

“What about your ap­pli­ca­tion? Aren’t you do­ing that on Sun­day?”

“Well, yeah, but that’s not go­ing to take too long, is it?”

“If you say so, but you’d bet­ter write neater than this. Or are you go­ing to type that too?”

Will looked at the desk. “Ac­tu­ally, I was go­ing to ask…”

“Yes?”

“Well, you’ve got re­ally nice hand­writ­ing, and since you’re go­ing to look at my ap­pli­ca­tion be­fore I fill the form in any­way…”

Amy sighed. “If it was any­one else I’d be in­sulted by some­thing like that. But since you’ve al­ways helped me with home­work, I will write it out for you. But you owe me a drink to­mor­row night.”

“Okay. Why are you still here, any­way?”

“I went swim­ming. That’s why my hair’s a mess.”

“It looks okay to me.”

“Yes, but you’re a boy. I wouldn’t ex­pect you to no­tice the dif­fer­ence.” She handed back the notepad and Will con­tin­ued writ­ing. Amy pulled a book out of her bag and be­gan read­ing. The com­fort­able si­lence be­tween them was only bro­ken by the scratch­ing of Will’s pen and Amy turn­ing the pages in the book.

“Shouldn’t you be get­ting home?” Will asked. “Not that I’m try­ing to get rid of you.”

She shook her head. “I’m in no hurry. I don’t like be­ing in the house on my own.”

“Why would you be?”

“Daddy won’t be home un­til af­ter seven and Mom’s away for the week­end. That’s why he’s tak­ing me for a Mc­Don­ald’s when he gets in. He’s a ter­ri­ble cook. Hey, why don’t you join us? He could tell you what it’s like to be a lawyer.”

“I don’t know…”

“Oh, go on. Don’t be such a stick in the mud. Fin­ish your es­say, then walk me home and phone your par­ents from there to tell them what you’re do­ing. Daddy will drop you off when we’ve eaten.”

Will shrugged. “Okay. Why not?”

He was de­lighted to see that won­der­ful smile of hers when he agreed. She was happy and that made him happy. She went back to her book and he be­gan writ­ing again, but he kept snatch­ing glances at her as of­ten as he thought he could get away with. He could only cope with quick glances be­cause look­ing at Amy was like star­ing at the sun—do­ing so for more than a few sec­onds hurt the eyes and left you weep­ing.

She had al­ways looked great. Be­fore they joined the Sixth Form, Will had thought that Amy was the only per­son he knew who made the school’s hideous uni­form, with its bur­gundy and white striped blazer, white shirt and grey skirt, look good. But the lim­ited sar­to­rial free­dom that came with sixth-form life al­lowed her to pull off the smart-ca­sual look with el­e­gant ease. She put the rest of the girls in the sixth form to shame. It had been an un­sea­son­ably warm day and she’d taken ad­van­tage of it by wear­ing a thin pale yel­low blouse and short white pleated skirt that showed off her legs. She had great legs—long and slim and toned.

Will adored her. He tried to con­vince him­self that he didn’t, but he did. And the more time he spent with her, the more he adored her. He couldn’t bear to think of her with John Nu­gent. The thought of his filthy hands on her body made him an­gry. His ha­tred of Nu­gent welled up in­side him and got stuck in his throat mak­ing him cough and splut­ter.

“Are you all right, William?”

“I’m fine,” he stam­mered. “Fine.”

She smiled—a sweet, know­ing smile—and re­turned to her book.

“What are you read­ing?”

She held the book up so he could see the cover. “Pride and Prej­u­dice. It’s about a girl who—”

“I know.” He smiled. “I’ve read it three times. It’s a good book.”

“Yeah. One of my favourites.”

They lapsed into si­lence again. Will wrote an­other sec­tion of his es­say, telling the story of how a pro­fes­sional foot­baller had re­cently con­fessed to al­co­holism and vowed to help the young­sters in his com­mu­nity stay away from booze. He’d writ­ten less since Amy had ar­rived than at any other point. He found her dis­tract­ing, but in a nice way. He had to look at her ev­ery few sec­onds. She was too beau­ti­ful not to.

He made a de­ci­sion. He couldn’t let Nu­gent de­file her beauty and the only way he could stop him was to ask her out him­self. This was it. The mo­ment he’d been build­ing to ever since he’d first set eyes on her.

“Amy?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t sup­pose…” He didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t nor­mally lost for words, but the last thing he wanted was to sound corny or, worse still, like a school­boy.

“Sup­pose what? Come on, William. Spit it out.”

“I… I… It doesn’t mat­ter. It’s noth­ing.”

“You sure?”

Will nod­ded.

“Oh, well. It can’t have been that im­por­tant. Are you nearly fin­ished with your es­say? It’s get­ting late. I don’t want to keep Daddy wait­ing.”

“Are you sure he won’t mind me tag­ging along?”

“Of course not. Are you fin­ished or not?”

“Five more min­utes.”

She nod­ded. “Okay.” Af­ter a short pause she said, “What is it be­tween you and John Nu­gent any­way?”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you mean, what do I mean? You hate each other.”

“Hate is a strong word.”

“Come off it, William.” God, he loved the way she said his name. “It’s more than just mu­tual dis­like. You can see it in your eyes when­ever he’s men­tioned. Like now. And hear it in your voice when you talk about him. And I know he’s mean and in­sult­ing to just about ev­ery­one, but it’s al­ways worse with you. More vi­cious.”

Will shrugged. “I don’t know.”

“The thing is, if I re­mem­ber right, you two used to be best of friends. I joined this school in the third year—”

“They call it year nine now.”

“I joined in the third year and you two were in­sep­a­ra­ble. What hap­pened?”

“Things change, I guess.” He put his pen down and started to clear away.

“Fin­ished?”

“Yeah.” He hadn’t, but he wasn’t get­ting any­where. It could wait un­til later that night. He stood up and packed his things into his bag. “Come on, let’s go.”

“You’re a bet­ter man than he’ll ever be.”

“Tonight’s the night, Billy-boy.” Nu­gent and As­bury had ar­rived at the club mo­ments af­ter Will.

“What are you on about?”

“I told you. I’m fi­nally go­ing fuck Robin­son tonight. Have you seen her? Man, she’s look­ing hot. I told you she was a dirty lit­tle slut, didn’t I? I mean, she’d have to be to wear an out­fit like that in pub­lic. I tell you, she’s beg­ging for it and I’m go­ing give it to her. You know, I might even take her up the arse. Her twat’s prob­a­bly too loose any­way.”

“For some­one with a tiny dick, maybe,” said Will, un­der his breath.

“What was that? Come on, if you’ve got some­thing to say, say it.”

The club’s bouncer stepped be­tween them. “Any trou­ble and you’re both out. Un­der­stand?”

“It’s not me,” said Nu­gent. “I ain’t do­ing noth­ing, mate.”

Will scowled and stomped away. He found a seat alone in a dark cor­ner and scanned the room. Amy was sit­ting with Lizzie at a ta­ble by the bar. He tried not to stare, but it was hard when she looked as fan­tas­tic as she did. Her golden hair hung in large, bouncy waves around her face. She wore black suede trousers that clung to her curves be­fore flar­ing out from the knee, mak­ing her legs look even more spec­tac­u­lar than they did in the short skirt she wore to school on Fri­day. To con­trast with the trousers, she had plumped for a sheer, white chif­fon shirt over a black camisole.

Bobby plopped him­self down in the empty chair next to Will. “About time you got here. What’s the story, morn­ing glory?”

“Just fuck off and leave me alone, will you?”

“What the fuck’s up, face-ache?”

“Fuck all.”

“Fuck­ing sounds like it. It’s great night. Shame you didn’t get here sooner.”

“If you say so.”

“Oh for fucks sake, Will, cheer the fuck up, mate. You’re like a wet week­end in West­mouth.”

“I could’ve asked her, Bobby. Yes­ter­day af­ter­noon. In the li­brary when I was do­ing that stupid es­say. I was there. She was there. And I fuck­ing bot­tled it. I even went to Mac­cyD’s with her and her dad and still said noth­ing.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake! You’ve been on about that all day. You didn’t ask her out ‘cause you’re too quick to lis­ten to fuck­wits who say she’s too good for you.”

“But they’re right, aren’t they?”

“Like fuck they are.” He leant closer to Will and pointed across the room. “Look at her over there with Lizzie. Your best friend, for God’s sake. Apart from me, ob­vi­ously. Thick as thieves, aren’t they? When we started at KG’s, Lizzie’s dad had run off with a tart and left his wife and kids pen­ni­less. When she joined, Amy was a stuck-up bitch from the posh es­tate who thought she was bet­ter than the rest of us. She had her head so far up her own fuck­ing arse that she could lick her own ton­sils. Who’d have guessed they’d wind up bezzie mates, eh? It don’t mat­ter where you’re from, mate. It’s who you are what counts. And you’re one of the good guys. I’ve never un­der­stood what you see in her any­way. Too much like a fuck­ing Bar­bie doll for me. Get a bit too rough with her and she might break. Know what I mean?” He nudged Will’s arm.

“It’s too late now any­way. Nu­gent is plan­ning to ask her out.”

“How’d you know?”

“He told me. He’s do­ing it to spite me—pay­back for get­ting him into trou­ble with Ri­ley.”

“Yeah, well. I’ve a fiver in my pocket that says she tells him to fuck off.” Bobby stood and re­turned to the dance floor where Julie greeted him. Will watched for a while as they danced and kissed. Then he got up and walked over to the bar. He’d been in such a foul mood af­ter his run-in with Nu­gent that he hadn’t even had a drink yet. He passed Amy and Lizzie on the way and smiled at them. Amy re­turned it with in­ter­est.

“Hey, William. You owe me a drink, re­mem­ber?”

“Why’s that ex­actly?” The words came out more ag­gres­sively than he meant them. Nu­gent had re­ally got to him.

Amy placed her hands on one knee and flut­tered her eyes. “Be­cause I’m just so gor­geous.” She and Lizzie burst into a fit of gig­gles. “Se­ri­ously, if I’m go­ing to look over and fill in your ap­pli­ca­tion for you, the least you can do is get me a bot­tle of lager.”

Be­fore Will could ask Lizzie if she would like a drink too, Nu­gent ap­proached. He caught Will’s eye, grinned and snapped his fin­gers. “Time to dance, Robin­son.”

“Re­ally,” Amy an­swered, look­ing around. “Who with?” She and Lizzie started gig­gling again. Some­thing they both did a lot af­ter a few drinks.

Nu­gent gave her his look, which made most girls putty in his hands.

“Oh. I see. Well in that case…” She stood and brushed some imag­i­nary dust from her legs, then stepped to­wards Nu­gent un­til her face was inches from his. There was no sign of drunken gig­gles now. “There’s about as much chance of me danc­ing with you as there is of you pass­ing your ex­ams. In other words, no chance at all.” She turned to the bar. “William, I’m go­ing for a game of pool, bring my drink over and you can be my dou­bles part­ner.” She strode away and winked at Will as she passed. Lizzie fol­lowed, shak­ing her head and still gig­gling.

Nu­gent waited un­til the girls were out of earshot and then said, “Fuck­ing stuck-up tart. She’s turn­ing me down to play pool with you. She’s fuck­ing nuts ‘cause you’re a fuck­ing loser, Billy-boy.” He stomped away.

Will bought three bot­tled lagers and took them to the pool ta­ble on the far side of the room. Amy had al­ready set up the balls. “William, Lizzie can’t find a part­ner so do you mind if it’s us two against you. I mean, you’re bet­ter than ei­ther of us any­way.”

“No, I don’t mind.”

“Good.” Amy started the game and pock­eted a striped ball straight from the break. They’d only been play­ing for a short while when Vicky Moor strode past, closely fol­lowed by James As­bury.

“Vicky, lis­ten to me.”

“Why should I?” She stopped in her tracks and turned around. “You’re still deny­ing do­ing any­thing with that tart.” She was right next to the pool ta­ble, pre­vent­ing Will from shoot­ing.

“That’s be­cause I didn’t.”

“Liar! And these three all know ‘cause they saw you. Didn’t you?” She stared at them, but no one an­swered. “Well?”

“All right, Vic. We saw him. Okay? Now can you shift out the way? I’m try­ing to line up a shot.” Will sighed. James and Vicky’s re­la­tion­ship was stormy at best. He’d seen this too many times be­fore.

“Oh thanks, Brownie,” As­bury said. “At least I’ve got a girl­friend.”

“Had a girl­friend,” Vicky cor­rected.

“Oh, re­ally? Well, maybe I think it’s time for a change any­way.” As­bury slid up to Amy and put his arm around her. She looked dis­gusted.

“You’re wel­come to him, Amy,” Vicky said. “But don’t ex­pect too much, if you know what I mean.” She wig­gled her lit­tle fin­ger and stomped out of the pub.

Amy tried to push As­bury away, but he held her to him. Will guessed that he hoped the dis­play would carry some weight with Vicky.

“Let her go, As­bro,” Will said.

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Brownie. I don’t know any girl who wouldn’t want me to hold her. Isn’t that right, Amy?”

“No,” she said, firmly.

“Aw, come on, don’t strug­gle. You’ll en­joy it. I prom­ise.”

“Let her go. Now!”

“Or what? You’ll make me? I’d like to see that.”

“Yeah? Try me.”

“Let me go!” Amy pushed As­bury away with all her strength.

“Fine!” As­bury marched back to­wards the dance floor, no doubt to tell Nu­gent how he’d dumped Vicky again.

Will re­laxed once he was gone and fi­nally took his shot. He missed.

“You shouldn’t let id­iots like him get to you, William,” Amy said when he stood up to let Lizzie shoot.

“You’re a bet­ter man than he’ll ever be.” She pecked his cheek. “But thanks for stick­ing up for me any­way.”

A new song be­gan, a bal­lad, and on the dance floor cou­ples came to­gether and sin­gles left in search of a part­ner, re­fresh­ment or both. The song was Eter­nally and Ev­er­more by some Amer­i­can coun­try singer that Will had never heard of un­til the song hit the top of the charts.

“I love this song,” said Lizzie.

“Me too,” said Amy.

Will shrugged. “It’s al­right, I sup­pose.”

Amy cocked her eye­brow at him. “Dance with me?”

He pointed to his chest. “Me?”

“Well, I wasn’t ask­ing Lizzie.”

“I… Well… Okay.”

As she took his hand and led him to the dance floor, Will’s heart thumped as loud as the song’s bass line, threat­en­ing to break free from his chest. They’d danced to­gether be­fore, of course they had. He’d danced with lots of girls at his birth­day party ear­lier in the au­tumn. But this was Amy’s favourite song. That had to mean some­thing, didn’t it? No. He was read­ing too much into it. She just wanted to dance and he was the near­est avail­able guy. If she’d been next to some other guy when the song started, she would have asked him.

Wouldn’t she?

Still, he had trou­ble con­trol­ling his breath­ing. And that wasn’t to men­tion the rise in his trousers that he knew would be in­evitable when her body pressed up against his. So he took up a for­mal stance in­stead, his right hand on her hip, his left hold­ing her hand and an ocean of space be­tween them.

“You’re not danc­ing with your grand­mother, William,” Amy said with a smile brighter than all the lights of the disco com­bined. She let go of his hand, grabbed his waist and pulled him close. “That’s bet­ter.”

His hands set­tled on her flared hips and her arms went around his neck. She rested her head on his shoul­der and they lost them­selves to the gen­tle beat, the sweet melody and the pow­er­ful voice of the south­ern songstress. The other cou­ples danc­ing around them faded to noth­ing more than ghosts. The disco lights dimmed and Will’s whole world con­sisted of only the song in his ears and the feel of Amy pressed up against him. Only the ma­te­rial of their clothes sep­a­rated their bod­ies. If this song, this dance, could go on for­ever, he couldn’t con­ceive a bet­ter way to spend the rest of time.

It felt so right hold­ing Amy in his arms.

He felt whole.

Com­plete.

Her breath burned his neck and sent shiv­ers down his spine. Her heart beat pow­er­fully against his chest in time with his—as if they were some­how joined. As if they were one. She sighed and sang along.

“It’s al­ways been you,

And al­ways will be, be­cause,

You’re the only man I want,

And the only man I need.

You’ll be in my heart,

Eter­nally and ev­er­more.”

She was singing to him. She was telling him what he wanted to hear. That he was hers and she was his and it would be like that for­ever. Eter­nally and ev­er­more. But she wasn’t. Not re­ally. He knew that. Just like he knew that she wasn’t re­ally grind­ing her­self against his erec­tion. Even though it sure felt like she was.

She sighed again as the song fi­nally ended and they parted. The world around them came back into fo­cus and the peo­ple be­came whole again. She held his hand and looked at him with those huge ex­pres­sive eyes, shin­ing brightly and re­flect­ing the disco lights, yet more vi­o­let now than he’d ever seen them and said, “Thanks. I en­joyed that.”

“Yeah, me too.”

They stood awk­wardly in front of each other as she swung his arms gen­tly be­tween them. Some­thing had changed. That song, that dance, had changed things. Will knew it had. He could feel it. He could sense it in his soul. He knew that if he stepped for­ward and kissed her, she’d let him. But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He al­ways said that she was his friend and he didn’t want to jeop­ar­dise that.

So in­stead he asked. “Want a drink?”

She looked down­cast for the briefest of mo­ments. But she bright­ened again so quickly that it could eas­ily have been missed. The usual fire in her eyes—now back to their more nor­mal shade of deep blue—burned brightly. “Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go get a drink. Then let’s see if the pool ta­ble is still free. This time, I swear I’m go­ing to beat you.”

“He’s not worth it.”

“There you go.” Amy pushed the ap­pli­ca­tion form across the ta­ble. “You just need to sign and date it.”

Will took a pen from his pocket and put it on the pa­per. “Aren’t you go­ing to read it first?” Amy asked with a raised eye­brow.

“No need. I al­ready know what it says.”

“What if I changed it?”

“I trust you.”

“You shouldn’t.”

“Why? Have you changed it?”

Amy shook her head. “Noth­ing ma­jor. One or two small gram­mar cor­rec­tions.”

Will picked up the form and scanned it. He spent more time ad­mir­ing Amy’s neat, pre­cise hand­writ­ing than ac­tu­ally read­ing what she’d writ­ten. It was el­e­gant and at­trac­tive—just like Amy. He put the form on the ta­ble and signed it with a flour­ish. “Thanks for do­ing this, Amy. I know I stand more chance of get­ting in if they can ac­tu­ally read the state­ment.”

“No prob­lem. Ac­tu­ally, I en­joyed writ­ing such nice things. I don’t get to do it very of­ten. And I think I’ve picked up a few ideas for my ap­pli­ca­tion.”

“So you’ve de­cided where you’re go­ing then?”

“I want to stay lo­cal so I’m ap­ply­ing to West­mouth. Fail­ing that I’ll try Walmin­ster as a backup.”

“Well, best of luck.”

Amy smiled. “Thanks. You too. Not that you’ll need it with a state­ment like this and top grades.”

Will put his ap­pli­ca­tion in a large brown en­ve­lope and stood up.

“Go­ing so soon?” Amy asked.

“Need to take this up to Thomp­son. He’s got to write his ref­er­ence.” He looked at his watch. “Then I’m head­ing to the din­ing room be­fore the fifth years get there. You know what a greedy lot they are.”

“Tell me about it. I made the mis­take of go­ing to lunch af­ter them once. Never again—there was al­most no food left.”

“So are you com­ing then?”

She stood. “Yeah. May as well.”

They dropped the en­ve­lope off at Mr Thomp­son’s of­fice and then hur­ried to the din­ing room even though the school’s lunch hour didn’t start for an­other five min­utes. Early lunch was an­other of the priv­i­leges of the Sixth Form.

Will and Amy were amongst the first to be served and they took their food to a prime ta­ble by the win­dow over­look­ing the school play­ing fields and sat op­po­site each other. As Will tucked into his meal, he felt un­usu­ally un­com­fort­able. He looked up. Amy was watch­ing him and didn’t ap­pear to have touched her own food. “Not hun­gry?”

She shrugged, stabbed one of her chips with her fork and held it up be­tween them. “It’s not ex­actly Miche­lin star cui­sine, is it?”

“It never has been. And no one ever claimed it was. Or if they did, they were ly­ing.”

“Yeah, I know.” She put the chip into her mouth. Will watched her chew slowly and then swal­low. She was even sexy when she was eat­ing.

“You know,” she said as she speared an­other chip. “I’m half hop­ing you don’t get go to Ox­ford.”

“Why?”

“It’s self­ish of me, I know, but I no­ticed you’ve put West­mouth down as your sec­ond choice. It’d be nice to still have you around.”

“Re­ally?”

“Yeah. I mean, I know it’d be great for your ca­reer and ev­ery­thing when you do get in, but I’ll miss hav­ing you around. Be­sides, who will I have to pro­tect me from creeps like John Nu­gent?”

Will smiled. “I’d miss you too.”

The din­ing hall had started to fill up. Will saw Bobby, Julie and Lizzie in the lunch queue.

“Will?” Amy said.

“Yeah?”

“I… I was… I mean…”

“What?”

She shook her head. “Noth­ing.”

“It must have been some­thing.”

“It was noth­ing. It’s not im­por­tant.”

“Amy. Tell me.”

“It’s noth­ing. For­get it.”

Bobby put his plate on the ta­ble and sat next to Will. “You could’ve said you was com­ing down. I’m starved.”

“You’re al­ways starved,” said Julie as she sat op­po­site him.

Lizzie sat on Amy’s other side. “Has Amy men­tioned to­mor­row night?”

“What about it?”

“We’re go­ing to see that new Sam Brad­well movie and thought you three might like to come.”

“Fuck­ing A,” said Bobby. “I’m up for that.”

“I think that’s a yes from us,” said Julie.

“What about you, Will?” Lizzie asked.

He stared at Amy, who stared back. This must have been what she was try­ing to say to him ear­lier. “Yeah, I’ll come.”

“Great. We’ll meet up at mine at about six. Okay?”

Will and Lizzie were neigh­bours. They’d lived next door for as long as ei­ther of them could re­mem­ber. It was the rea­son they were such good friends. And Lizzie’s friend­ship with Amy was the rea­son Will was friends with her too. He’d never have been able to ap­proach her oth­er­wise. When Will walked through his front door and up the gar­den path, Amy, Lizzie and Julie were wait­ing for him at the gate. Bobby was sit­ting in his car with the en­gine run­ning.

“Hi, Amy,” Will said.

“Hi—”

“No time to chat,” Bobby called out of the open win­dow. “We need to get a shift on or we won’t get in. They reckon it’ll be packed tonight.”

“It’s Tues­day,” said Will. “Why would it be packed?”

“It’s two-for-one night, in­nit?”

Bobby drove a bat­tered old, pale yel­low Ford Capri. Julie held the pas­sen­ger door open and pulled the front seat for­ward so that the other three could clam­ber into the back. Lizzie got in first, fol­lowed by Amy. Will tried very hard not to stare at her arse as bent over. He got in next and Julie slammed the front seat back into place and sat down.

There was lim­ited space on the back seat. Will’s thigh nudged against Amy’s. She pat­ted his leg ten­derly and smiled at him. “I still can’t be­lieve we’re trav­el­ling in this pile of junk.”

“You’re wel­come to get the bus,” Bobby said. “Since no one else has a car, that’s your only other op­tion. You know, I should charge you petrol money. But you know why I don’t? ‘Cause this car’s a clas­sic. You should be priv­i­leged to be rid­ing in it.”

“That’s an in­ter­est­ing def­i­ni­tion of clas­sic,” Will said. “I didn’t know it meant held to­gether by rust. ”

“Ha, bloody, ha.” He put the car in gear and sped away.

“Could you slow down please, Bobby?” Amy said. “I think I left my stom­ach back at Lizzie’s.”

“I’m just mak­ing sure we’re not late.”

They ar­rived at the town’s brand new mul­ti­plex less than ten min­utes later. It was on a new re­tail de­vel­op­ment by the mo­tor­way junc­tion to the north-east of the town.

“Why can’t we go to the one in the town cen­tre?” Amy asked.

“Nowhere to park,” said Bobby. “Be­sides, this one’s nicer. Big­ger seats, bet­ter pop­corn and the car­pet doesn’t squelch when you walk on it.”

“Eww, Bobby. That’s gross,” said Julie.

“Yeah, but it’s true.”

“This place will put the old one out of busi­ness be­fore long,” said Will. “I mean, twelve screens? They’ve only got three in town. The Palace will be bust be­fore the year is out.”

“I give it three,” said Amy. “It’s cheaper, so some peo­ple will still go. But not for long.”

As it was two-for-one night, Amy paid and Lizzie got in free, Bobby paid and Julie got in free, leav­ing Will to pay for him­self. They bought snacks and drinks and went into the au­di­to­rium hop­ing to sit on the back row, but were dis­ap­pointed to find it was al­ready taken.

“Told you we’d be late,” said Bobby.

They sat a few rows for­ward in­stead and chat­ted through the ads un­til the trail­ers started. Amy sat be­tween Lizzie and Will, with Bobby and Julie on Lizzie’s other side. Af­ter each trailer, Amy leaned close to Will and whis­pered her opin­ion of the ad­ver­tised film.

As the film started, Will felt some­thing hit him on the back of the head. It wasn’t painful—more of an an­noy­ance. He looked around, but couldn’t see any­thing. As he faced the front again, Amy put her hand on the back of her head and turned around.

“Bas­tard,” she said as she faced the for­wards again. It was the first time Will re­called her us­ing such strong lan­guage.

“Who?”

“John Nu­gent. He’s sit­ting in the back row and throw­ing pop­corn at us.”

“At these prices, I reckon he’d only be able to af­ford a small box, so hope­fully he’ll run out soon.”

Amy shook his head. “I didn’t get a good look, but I think he’s got the mega-tub.”

“He must have been sav­ing up.”

Amy gig­gled. “Yeah. Must.” She strained to look at the rest of the au­di­to­rium. “There are some empty seats down the front. Shall we move? At least he won’t be able to reach us.”

They stood up to leave.

“Where are you go­ing?” Lizzie asked.

“Out of his way.” Amy jabbed her thumb be­hind and Lizzie looked back to see Nu­gent. “He’s throw­ing pop­corn.”

“He’s an id­iot. Al­ways has been. I don’t know how you could ever have been friends with him, Will.”

Will shrugged.

“You com­ing?” Amy asked.

Lizzie shook her head. “I just got com­fort­able.”

“Okay. See you later.”

Will and Amy hur­ried away to find seats closer to the screen—alone and out of Nu­gent’s reach.

The movie was an ac­tion thriller star­ring Hol­ly­wood’s lat­est big-name star, Samuel Brad­well. The story was sim­ple—Sam’s char­ac­ter had to save the world from ter­ror­ists and res­cue the gor­geous blonde hero­ine from cer­tain death. Dur­ing the tense clos­ing se­quence, Amy grabbed Will’s hand and squeezed tight un­til the ac­tion was over and the hero and hero­ine en­joyed a long, lin­ger­ing kiss. She looked at him when she let go and mouthed the word, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he mouthed back.

Af­ter the film, Will and Amy met up with the oth­ers in the foyer be­fore go­ing out to find Bobby’s car. On the way, a fa­mil­iar voice be­gan to taunt them.

“Hey, Asb, look, it’s that tosser Billy-boy and his lezza girl­friend. What’s the mat­ter Billy-boy? Why d’you move seats? Can’t take a lit­tle pop­corn on your nog­gin? Did it hurt? Did it? Aww, poor lit­tle man.”

Amy must have read the look on Will’s face be­cause she said, “Just ig­nore him.”

Will clenched his fists and tried his best as Nu­gent con­tin­ued taunt­ing. But it was when he started on Amy that Will snapped.

“And look at the lezza, Asb. I tell you what, I reckon I had a lucky es­cape there. Do you think she ac­tu­ally is a girl? Or do you reckon she’s hid­ing a tiny dick un­der that skirt?”

Will turned around and stormed to­wards Nu­gent. “That’s it. I’ve had it with you!”

“Ooooo, I’m so scared.” Nu­gent held his hands out in front of him and wig­gled his fin­gers. “Look at me, I’m shak­ing.”

Will stood so close to Nu­gent that their noses al­most touched. “Take it back.”

“Pro­tect­ing your lit­tle lezzie girl­friend? Very no­ble.”

“Take it back.” He pushed Nu­gent in the chest, forc­ing him to take a step back­wards.

Nu­gent stepped for­ward and pushed Will back harder. “Make me, wanker.”

Will drew his fist back to throw the first punch, but Amy grabbed his arm. “No, William! Don’t.”

Nu­gent had stepped back but now he laughed. “Good job she’s here, mate. She’s saved you from a kick­ing.”

Will pulled his arm free and ran to­wards Nu­gent, but Amy grabbed him again and pulled him back.

“William! No! William!” He stopped strug­gling and looked at her. She shook her head. “He’s not worth it.”

He took a deep breath, then turned his back on Nu­gent and started to walk away.

“Yeah, that’s right. Walk away, cow­ard!”

“Just ig­nore him,” said Amy. “Just walk away.”

“We’ll set­tle this some other time, Billy-boy,” called Nu­gent. “When the lezza’s not around to save you.”

“I think this is the part where you kiss me.”

“What was all that ‘lezza’ crap that Nu­gent was spout­ing last night?” Bobby asked. He and Will were in the com­mon room play­ing pool. Ray Turner was sit­ting close by watch­ing and munch­ing on a choco­late bar.

“It’s be­cause she turned him down,” Ray said be­tween mouth­fuls.

“How the fuck do you know?” said Will.

“He was brag­ging about it the other day. He reck­ons the only rea­son any girl would turn him down is be­cause she’s a les­bian.”

Will huffed. “And it’s got noth­ing to do with him be­ing un­cul­tured and thick as pig-shit, not to men­tion misog­y­nis­tic, rude, cal­lous and just a down­right nasty piece of work.”

“You re­ally don’t like him, do you?” said Bobby. “What went on be­tween you two?”

“I told you. We fell out. We dis­agreed about a few things.”

“What things?”

“Just things.”

“It makes sense,” said Ray.

“What does?” said Will.

“Amy be­ing a les­bian.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Well, think about it. How many boyfriends has she ever had? None that I can re­mem­ber. And it would ex­plain why she keeps turn­ing me down.”

“She keeps turn­ing you down be­cause you’re fat and ugly,” said Bobby.

“Ha Ha,” said Ray. “You both know I’m right.”

“Amy should have let me smack him,” Will said. “He’s had it com­ing. It would have shut him up.”

“It would have landed you with a bloody nose,” said Bobby. “Nu­gent’s pretty handy in a ruck. Re­mem­ber the mess he made of James Stock­well?”

“Yeah. I sup­pose you’re right.”

“There is one way to prove she’s not a les­bian,” Bobby said.

“What’s that?” asked Ray.

“Will needs to ask her out.”

Will shook his head. “I told you be­fore. I can’t. She’s a mate. It’ll make things too awk­ward.”

“Bull­shit,” said Bobby. “She’s as hot for you as you are for her. And you know it.”

“She is?”

“Of course she is. It’s bloody ob­vi­ous, mate. Have you seen the way she looks at you?”

Will shrugged. “I’m not con­vinced.”

“Yeah, well,” said Bobby. “Like I said, there’s only one way to know. And if you had any balls, you’d do it.”

Dur­ing the last pe­riod of the day, Will, Julie, Lizzie and Amy sat in the li­brary and worked on an es­say for their Eng­lish class. As usual, Will and Amy had writ­ten far more than ei­ther of the other two by the time the bell rang to sig­nal the end of the school day. Julie quickly packed her things away and hur­ried off to meet Bobby, who’d had a maths class.

“Are you two com­ing?” Lizzie asked as she packed her books into her bag. Amy and Will were both still writ­ing.

“I’m stay­ing,” said Will. “I’m nearly done with the first draft. I’d like to fin­ish it.”

“Okay. Are you do­ing any­thing tonight?”

“I don’t know yet. Give me a shout if you’ve got any plans.”

“Yeah, okay. What about you, Amy? Com­ing?”

She shook her head. “No. I’m nearly fin­ished too. It’s prob­a­bly not as good as William’s, but…”

“Fine. I’ll walk home by my­self then.” She faked in­dig­na­tion then gig­gled. “I’ll call you later and see what’s what.”

She left Amy and Will alone as they kept writ­ing. Will put his pen down and stretched. Their favourite ta­ble was by a win­dow which most pupils had to pass on their way home, so there was a lot of bus­tle and noise at the end of the day. When­ever he stayed late, Will al­ways found it hard to con­cen­trate for these first few min­utes af­ter the bell rang.

“Fancy a drink?” he said. “I’m go­ing to the vend­ing ma­chine for a Coke.”

“Thanks. Coke would be nice. Here—” She pulled her purse out of her bag but Will held his hand up.

“It’s okay. I’ll get it.”

She smiled her ra­di­ant smile at him. “Thanks. That’s kind.”

When he re­turned with two cold cans, the hub­bub had died down and he was able to con­cen­trate again. Within half an hour, he’d fin­ished. He put his pen down and picked up the man­u­script to read through it.

That was a preview of Eternally & Evermore. To read the rest purchase the book.

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