didn’t want to tell him but something about him compelled me, even now.
‘Vimto,’ I admitted, and he burst out laughing.
‘I’m not sure I even know what that is,’ he said. ‘It sounds quite dangerous. Lucy-in-the-Sky-with-Vimto.’
‘It’s a secret blend of fruit juices, herbs and spices,’ I told him, hating myself for getting lured into conversation like this but somehow unable to shut my stupid mouth.
‘How exotic. No alcohol?’
‘Nope.’
‘I can slip a vodka in there if you’d like.’
‘I wouldn’t like.’
‘Fine. As Madam wishes.’ The barman approached and Joss gave his rather extensive order. ‘Anyway,’ Joss resumed, turning back to me while the barman pulled the pints, ‘how are you?’
I shrugged. From the corner of my eye I could see, to my considerable chagrin, that Minna was flirting with the table full of toffs.
‘Left school, I take it?’ He was dogged in his pursuit.
‘Just finished A levels.’
‘Going to university?’
‘Yeah.’
He looked at me with this ‘I need a fuller answer than that’ look. Again, I was compelled.
‘London. English.’
‘Damn. I was hoping you’d say Oxford. I could show you around.’
‘I couldn’t be bothered with all the Oxbridge crap.’ Because I knew you were there.
‘Well, I’m sure you had better things to do. Come over to our table. Is she a friend of yours?’
He glanced at Minna as he put his legion of pint glasses on a tray to carry across the room.
‘Not really. Somebody’s visiting niece, that’s all.’
I narrowed my eyes at her. She was leaning over some Hooray Henry, giving him a faceful of her cleavage in its tight, skimpy vest top. It was plain that Joss’s friends had about as much respect for her as they had for the pub dog stretched out by the fireplace, but she was an amusement for them, so they tolerated her.
‘Minna, we should go,’ I said, avoiding taking my place beside Joss on the oak settle.
‘What the fuck?’ she whined. ‘Don’t be such a killjoy, Luce. Sit down and have a drink. You might even enjoy yourself.’
She looked around the group, lapping up their approval and their nodding heads and eager grins.
I wanted to kill the lot of them.
But I sat down.
It was one of the most excruciating half-hours of my life. Minna and I were exhibits in a zoo – look at the Local Girls in their Natural Habitat. They asked us questions and laughed at our answers, no matter how dull or ordinary they might be. Within five minutes, one guy had his hand on Minna’s thigh. We were just there to provide a bit of entertainment, like tavern wenches in ages gone by when the men of quality deigned to refresh themselves.
Joss, though, didn’t seem to be joining in with the heavily veiled barbs and slights. He tried to temper his friends’ increasingly drunken enthusiasm, remonstrating with them when they approached the verge of Going Too Far, and he defended me from all questioning with a flat ‘Lucy’s got more sense than to talk to the likes of you oiks. Leave her alone.’
The pint glasses emptied, one by one.
‘Would you ladies care to accompany us back to the Hall? We’ve got more beer and wine than you could imagine in your wildest dreams, and the lord and lady are on a yacht somewhere, so the place is ours?’
‘Yeah?’ Minna was wide-eyed and breathless. ‘Like, for real?’
‘No, thanks,’ I said.
Joss and his friends spent the next ten minutes trying to persuade me but I held out.
‘Well, we’ll walk you home, anyway,’ he decreed. ‘Come on, gents.’
They walked ahead with Minna while Joss hung back, not letting me away from his side.
‘I can understand why you don’t want to,’ he said.
‘Good.’
He looked up at the darkening sky. He was carrying a stick, broken off from a hazel bush, and he whacked it into the hedgerow as we walked, as if it helped release some nameless tension.
‘I’ve grown-up, you know, Lucy. I’m not the same person.’
‘Congratulations.’
A sigh and a pause.
‘How’s your mother?’
‘Same as ever. Don’t you see her, at the Hall?’
‘Oh, I don’t get up till midday. She’s long gone by then.’
‘Well, next time, get up a bit earlier and ask her yourself.’
‘Perhaps I will.’ We were walking along the edge of the caravan park now, in crepuscular light. ‘“She dwelt among the untrodden ways/Beside the springs of Dove,/A Maid whom there were none to praise/And very few to love.”’
‘Shut up,’ I said. ‘Don’t quote those poems to me.’
‘Why not? When we read them at school, I always thought of you.’
‘You had no right.’ We were at the entrance of the park. Minna was snogging one of the toffs, laughing as he slid his hand under her vest top.
‘No, I didn’t, you’re right, but Lucy, can’t we start afresh? As friends?’
‘Fuck off.’
I ran away from the lot of them – from the braying laughter of some of his chums, the smacking sound of Minna and the toff joined at the lips, the sickening memories in my head and most of all the desire to fall horribly in love with Joss for no better reason than that he knew a few lines of poetry and could use them like a deadly weapon.
‘You cheap fucking date,’ I railed at myself, slamming the van door behind it all. ‘He’s a bastard and a bully and you hate him, and you’ll always hate him.’
I fell on the bed and cried myself to sleep.
* * *
I was hoping, then, for a less traumatic encounter when I got out of the car and made a cautious way over the Feathers’ gravel.
His back was to me as I entered; he was talking to one of the villagers. Of course, they all fawned over
