she had ached to be asked to go with them, Gemma had not really expected it. David was fond enough of her in his way, but the three-year gap between them, and the insistence their parents put on the differing roles in life of their two opposite sexes, had made it impossible for them to be really close.
For the first time since she had met Luke, time seemed to hang heavily on Gemma’s hands. She couldn’t wait for evening to come and for the two boys to come back.
For the first time since they had met, she didn’t go to meet Luke that evening. Instead, she stayed close to the house, waiting for David and Tom to come back. Only they didn’t. At least not until late. Gemma’s room overlooked the front of the house, and she heard them getting out of the car long after she had gone to bed. She slipped out from beneath her duvet and crept to the window to look down at them. Tom’s blond hair shone in the clear moonlight. He was smiling at David, and Gemma wondered in tremulous awe what it would be like to be kissed by him.
She had heard the other girls at school talking about kissing, and other things, and she was suddenly impatient and despairing of her own inexperience. She was sure that Tom must have kissed lots of girls; even if he did kiss her she wouldn’t know what to do … not properly. She tried to imagine it, conjuring up images of what physical desire could be from all that she had read, but all she could think of was the paralysing embarrassment that would be hers if her nose got in the way, or worse still if Tom should guess that she didn’t know how to kiss properly.
In the morning she overslept and got up just in time to see the two boys driving off.
Her mother smiled at her over the breakfast table, and said breathlessly, ‘Tom is such a nice boy, and so good-looking. His family come from Scotland, and he’s invited David up there to spend the last two weeks of the holiday with him.’ A petulant frown suddenly creased her forehead as she looked at Gemma.
‘Oh, Gemma, why are you wearing those awful jeans and not one of your pretty dresses? What on earth must Tom think of you? You’ll have embarrassed poor David, as well. Why on earth can’t you be like other girls? You’re such a dreadful tomboy … not like my daughter at all, really.’
That afternoon, in the shade of the clearing, Gemma had been so preoccupied that at last Luke had put his book down and asked gently, ‘What is it, Gemma? Is something wrong at home?’
She shook her head, suddenly feeling nervous and tongue-tied, glad when Luke didn’t question her more closely.
They had continued to meet for the rest of Tom’s stay, but something was different; Luke was different … more distant somehow but even though she noted this, it didn’t really touch her. She was living, breathing, thinking Tom, and at last, on the very last day of his visit, he said carelessly at breakfast, ‘Since it’s my last night here tonight, David, why don’t the three of us go out somewhere together?’
At first she was too paralysed to say a word. It was like a dream coming true. Tom was taking her out. Rosily her mind blotted out the fact that David would be with them, too, and that until now her hero had barely addressed more than a single word to her.
It was arranged that the three of them would go to a local barn dance that was held every week, and for the rest of the morning Gemma walked round in a state of ecstatic bliss.
It was only over lunch, which she and her mother ate alone, that reality intruded.
‘I don’t know what on earth you’re going to wear tonight,’ her mother fussed. ‘You haven’t got anything to go out dancing in, really, apart from the dress you had for Christmas.’
The dress in question was fussy and little girlish and Gemma hated it, but her mother was right, there was nothing else she could wear. She had spent the summer in jeans and shorts, refusing to go shopping with her mother when asked, and now she had no alternative but to wear the hated pink frills.
And as the afternoon wore on, that wasn’t the only thing to torment her. Suppose when they were out that Tom did want to kiss her? She had learned from the girls at school that a goodnight kiss at the end of a date was very much the expected thing. From glowing anticipation she went to abject dread. As much as she longed to feel Tom’s mouth on hers, she also feared it. How awful it would be if he turned away from her in disgust, or worse still laughed at her. What on earth was she going to do?
The afternoon stretched endlessly in front of her, and she was glad to be meeting Luke; talking to him would give her something to occupy her mind.
He had been swimming, she saw when she reached the clearing. His jeans were splodged a darker blue where his skin had dampened them. They clung to his body in a way that made her aware of how much taller and stronger than either David or Tom he was.
The companionable silence they normally shared was missing today; she felt tense and on edge, barely aware of what he was saying to her, until, at last, he placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face him.
‘Something’s wrong with you, Gemma. Why don’t you tell me what it is?’
She looked up at him uncertainly, blushing and then hanging her head.
‘Is it me? Have I said something to upset you? Have I?’
She shook her head. ‘No … no, it’s nothing like that.’ She looked at him and suddenly a solution to all her problems came to her. Relief spread through her, melting away her fear and tension.
She reached towards him instinctively, her hand on the warm, bare flesh of his arm.
‘Oh, Luke, you’ve got to help me … please …’
‘If I can.’
She saw him frown and was aware of the faint hesitation in his voice, and her courage almost deserted her. She took a deep breath and faced him bravely. ‘Luke … would you … could you teach me how to kiss?’
She could almost feel the shock that ran through him and closed her eyes against the shamed surge of humiliation that coloured her skin. In Luke’s company she had managed to forget that she was too tall and unfeminine, but now in his strained silence she saw all too plainly how little Luke or anyone else would want to kiss a girl like her. Of course Tom wasn’t attracted to her. How could he be? Hadn’t her mother told her often enough how plain she was?
Tears spurted into her eyes before she could stop them. She felt them squeezing through her tightly closed eyelids and splashing down on to her hot cheeks, but as she raised a clenched hand to rub them away, Luke caught hold of her.
‘Stop crying, little one. I didn’t mean to hurt you.’ His voice was rough and yet soft at the same time, and her tears turned to a strangled hiccup of laughter in her throat at the thought of anyone describing her as ‘little’, although compared with Luke’s tall, heavy frame she supposed she was.
‘Why this sudden desire to know how to kiss?’ he asked her gently, but underneath his gentleness Gemma was aware of a certain tension within him, a slight withdrawal from her that she could sense but not explain.
One of his hands cupped the side of her face, his thumb wiping the tear stains from her skin.
‘There’ll be plenty of time for you to learn things like that.’
‘No, there won’t. Tom’s leaving tomorrow morning.’
The mournful words
