Breaktime by Aidan Chambers Page A

shall meet you where’er you will. Okay?’
    ‘Do you really have to strain the truth so brazenly?’
    ‘Did you?’
    ‘Touché.’
    ‘Maybe I should go out and come in again?’
    ‘Sorry.’
    He had had a picture in his mind of how this meeting would go and it was not like this. She talking so much, he tongue tied. He hated being taken by surprise, unprepared. Surprises always turned him sulky. He did not know why but called it shyness.
    Helen knelt at his side, bent down, and kissed him. A gentle caress; unmistakably inviting.
    ‘I haven’t come sixty miles for a discussion about morality,’ she said. ‘And you’ve been boozing. I can smell it. And taste it now.’
    ‘Further apologies. I met a couple of blokes and had to keep my end up in the pub.’
    ‘Masculine crap. And that wasn’t exactly the end I thought you’d come here to keep up.’
    ‘Thank you for your confidence in my abilities.’
    They laughed at last.
    ‘Why is it always so difficult to be natural when you’re meeting someone again after a long gap?’ she said, settling herself at his side.
    ‘Any prizes for the answer?’ he said, shifting on to his side so that he could keep her reclining figure in view.
    ‘You never know your luck.’
    ‘Try fear.’
    ‘Silly! I’m not scared of you.’
    ‘O, yes, you are. Just as I’m scared of you.’
    ‘How?’
    ‘In case you’ve changed. Not what I remembered. Or expected.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘Better than.’
    ‘Thanks, kind sir.’
    Castle-gazing tourists ambled by, pretending the two recumbent figures they had surprised themselves by discovering were not there. They looked pointedly at the view.
    ‘Are you over your fear yet?’ she asked, her eyes closed to the sun.
    ‘I’m recovering fast.’
    ‘Good.’
    ‘Are you okay here or do you want to go somewhere else?’
    ‘The sun is warm, we’re out of the wind and nearly out of sight. The grass is soft enough. Why move?’
    ‘There are people about.’
    ‘My, what a private soul you’ve got.’
    She sat up, supporting her body with her arms, her head hanging back full-face to the sun. Beautiful. Provocative. Unknowing? or coy design?
    ‘No,’ she said. ‘I really do have to get to my uncle’s. Mother knows my e.t.a. and will telephone to be sure I’ve arrived.’
    ‘I know the feeling.’
    ‘Cloy cloy.’
    She sat cross-legged; plucked at the turf between her knees. ‘Why must they?’
    ‘Yours always seemed pretty easy-going to me.’
    ‘A front. In public they affect a liberal nonchalance.’
    ‘At home?’
    ‘They have three different locks on each of the outside doors, burglar-proof catches on all the windows, and they keep a chromium-plated fire extinguisher under their bed.’
    ‘The latter necessary to douse the ardour of your father’s passions.’
    ‘Which explains, no doubt, why the extinguisher has never been used.’
    They laughed.
    ‘So they’re running scared,’ he said.
    ‘For them life is an obstacle course littered with booby traps.’
    ‘And their little girl is always in danger.’
    ‘That’s how it used to be. I was ten before they stopped worrying about baby-snatchers.’
    ‘And now they worry that you’ll get raped.’
    ‘Wrong. They could almost cope with that. I’d be the injured party, you see. All their expectations about life would be confirmed and they’d have me at home to nurse and coddle all day.’
    ‘So what’s the problem?’
    ‘They think I’ll do the raping. They don’t say so in as many words, naturally. That’s the infuriating thing. They pretend to be concerned, and warn me about men who are after only one thing, as they put it. But they can’t hide what they are really thinking, that I’ll go out and lay any man who takes my fancy.’
    ‘And get yourself pregnant.’
    ‘No, no. You still don’t understand. That’s just what a man would think.’
    ‘So I’m a man!’
    ‘And cute with it. I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m all stewed up about them at