‘You OK?’ he asks, which is probably the most he’s ever spoken to any girl since reaching puberty.
‘Sweet Dan, coming to get me,’ she says, her face breaking into that exquisite smile.
Her full lips are pink and faintly glittery as if she’s found lipstick the fairies make.
Her eyes – Daniel has never understood how theRomantic poets could fall into women’s eyes till now but, suddenly, he gets it.
He’s part of her, melded to her: she has power over him with her mystery and her beauty.
‘I’m going onto the roof to smoke,’ she says, and his eyes can’t move from those pillowy lips. ‘Want to come?’
‘Yes,’ he says instantly. She wants to spend time with him!
Daniel doesn’t smoke but sits in the September sun on a piece of flat roof on top of the girls’ rooms. It’s hard to know which is more forbidden.
Leaving a class for no good reason, being above the girls’ rooms – strictly out of bounds for any male student, being with someone who’s smoking long dark-coloured skinny cigarettes which give off a strange, almost cinnamon scent amid the tang of nicotine. Julia lies back on the roof, letting the sun heat her body, school bag discarded and her sheet of blonde hair splayed out around her.
‘C’mere,’ she says, patting the roof beside her. ‘I don’t bite.’
She talks differently to most of the students in the school. This difference is fascinating to Dan. He’d never have had the nerve to stalk out of Carter’s class.
She pats the roof again.
‘I’m sure you don’t bite,’ he replies, startled at his own savoir faire in this situation. He shoves away his rucksack which contains the essay he has to hand in at physics class inside it. Physics is next but there is no way Daniel is going to make it.
Not now. Not when he can be doing this.
‘I’ve been watching you,’ Julia says, offering him her cigarette.
Daniel shakes his head and watches her face, studying it.
Willem has said that Julia likes him, but Willem was joking, surely? She’s even more beautiful when she’s lying down, like a Renaissance painting of a girl lounging on a couch, a knowing look in her violet blue eyes.
‘How can I kiss you if you’re not smoking too? I won’t taste nice, will I?’ Julia says with a hint of petulance, a smile still dancing over her lips.
Daniel’s transfixed by her lips. Pillowy, sheeny with a full lower lip. Her lips look as if they’ll taste of strawberries.
Can he kiss her? Does she want that?
He’s never kissed anyone, never thought that anyone would want to kiss him.
He’s one of the serious science boys at school, never on the top teams, likes running but the team sports leave him cold. Plus, he wants to hold on to his brain cells and not have them bashed out on the rugby field.
Jarvis in his year is six months younger, hopeless at lessons but captain of one of the A rugby teams. Jarvis has had girlfriends since second year, has a sister at Wycombe Abbey and has cut a swathe through the girls in her year. Daniel’s sister, Vicky, is much younger than he is, currently abroad with his mother and stepfather, and her friends are other sweet nine-year-olds.
‘Would you like to kiss me?’ Julia asks.
Smart scientist boys don’t get girls like this, thinks Daniel, but he ignores all the old messages in his head.
There’s new data in and it’s good.
He takes her cigarette, takes a drag and, somehow, manages not to cough.
‘Are we even now?’ he asks, wondering what part of his brain is managing these James Bond-type answers.
‘Even,’ murmurs Julia.
Daniel leans down, puts a very gentle hand behind Julia’s beautiful head and presses his lips to hers.
