An Expert Teacher
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

‘DARLING, it’s so good to have you home. You can’t imagine how much there is to do! Sophy’s aunt hasn’t the faintest idea of how to go about organising a large wedding, and so she’s left absolutely everything to me.’

As always, implicit in her mother’s welcome was the message that her love was conditional upon Gemma’s performance in her unwanted role as daughter of the house. All through her years at boarding school and then later at college Gemma had heard that dual message. At one time she had even been hurt by it, wishing that her mother wanted her home purely because she loved and needed her. But with maturity had come the wisdom to accept her parents as they were.

It was not entirely her mother’s fault that she held all real emotion at bay; first her parents and then her husband, Gemma’s father, had actively encouraged her to be the pretty, silly, dependent woman she was.

In an era that encouraged women to think and live for themselves, her mother was something of an anachronism, Gemma recognised. At one time, just as she had ached for her mother’s love, so she had also ached to see her assert herself as a human being, but now she could recognise what she had not been able to see then. Her mother had worked too hard and too long at being the wife her father wanted her to be to change now.

Her father did not want an independent woman as his wife, he did not want her mother to be able to meet him on his own level; he preferred to treat her as a pretty, dim-witted child, and Gemma had long ago recognised that that was their pattern of living and that to change it would mean that their relationship would end. It was when she had seen the futility of fighting against the feminine mould her parents wanted to cast her in that she herself had left home. She was not like her mother; she could never settle for the life her mother had led, always the inferior partner in a relationship that was totally opposed to everything that Gemma believed the relationship between a man and a woman should be.

She knew that both her parents were disappointed in her, in their different ways. Her mother had wanted her to be a carbon copy of herself: a daughter who would grow up to enjoy her love of shopping and lunches with her women friends; a daughter who would marry early, have two children, and make her home within easy reach of her parents.

Her father had wanted very much the same thing, with one qualification. First and foremost he had wanted her to be her ‘daddy’s girl’ and he had been prepared to pay for the privilege with expensive presents and spoiling.

Gemma had learned enough about life and human nature now to feel saddened and sorry by the narrowness of her parents’ lives and perceptions.

Other people viewed them differently, of course. Her father was an extremely successful businessman, and her parents were among the most wealthy inhabitants of the small Cheshire village where they lived.

David, her brother, was one of the directors of her father’s building company. Unlike her, he seemed quite happy to fit into the mould their parents had designed for him.

Now David was getting married and it was his wedding that had brought her home. Luckily the date of the wedding fell right in the middle of her school’s long summer holidays, so there had been no problem about her giving in to her mother’s plea that she return to Marwich to help with the preparations for the big day.

She hadn’t been surprised to learn that her mother was organising everything. No doubt her father had had a hand in that decision somewhere. She could just see him now, his rather austere face creased into a faint frown as he stood in front of the fireplace in his study, hands clasped behind his back in his favourite Prince Philip pose, whilst he suggested to David that it might be as well if their mother handled all the arrangements for the wedding.

She wondered rather wryly what Sophy Cadenham had thought of that decision. Gemma didn’t know her brother’s fiancée very well; for one thing Sophy was only twenty-one to her own twenty-five and, for another, both she and Sophy had spent all their teenage years away at their respective boarding schools. Sophy’s schooling had been paid for by one of her more well-to-do relatives. Although an orphan, Sophy was what Gemma’s mother described rather snobbishly as ‘extremely well connected’, which meant, Gemma reflected rather ruefully, that she was a cousin, once or twice removed, to the Lord Lieutenant of the County.

Both Gemma’s parents were pleased about the match, and Sophy’s aunt, a rather thin, tired-looking woman who had been widowed just about the same time that Sophy lost her parents, and who lived just outside the village in a pretty grace and favour house of Queen Anne origin, owned by ‘Sophy’s cousin, the Lord Lieutenant’, had apparently been more than delighted to hand over total responsibility for organising the wedding to Gemma’s mother.

Despite her rather vague and ‘helpless little me’ airs, Gemma’s mother was a skilled organiser. Their house, the largest in the village with its extensive grounds, would make a perfect setting for a June wedding. The date had been decided when David and Sophy announced their engagement at Christmas, and now, with the big event only a week away, the hired gardeners were working tirelessly to bring the lawns and flowers to perfection.

A huge marquee was going to be erected in the grounds; Sophy’s wedding dress, which had come from the Emanuels, was hanging upstairs in one of the guest room wardrobes, and the Lord Lieutenant and his lady had deigned to accept their invitation. In fact, the Lord Lieutenant had actually agreed to give Sophy away, much to her mother-in-law-to-be’s delight.

The last thing her mother really wanted was her help, Gemma recognised, remembering ruefully down through the years how often she had heard the same plaintive sound in her mother’s voice, and how often her childish heart had leapt with delight at the thought of being able to help her.

It had taken her a long time to learn that her mother did not really want her help; that she didn’t want anything from her, in fact, other than her pretty obedience. To her mother she was a toy to be shown off and paraded before her friends, not a human being at all. Just as David had been brought up as the son of the house, his father’s heir, a proper manly little boy, so she had been brought up as a shy, pretty little girl.

Only she had broken free of that confining image to make her own life.

She came out of her reverie to hear her mother saying her name rather sharply.

‘Gemma, you were miles away. I was telling you about the guest list. I want you to go through it for me, and help me with the table plan. The place cards will all have to be written out, too, by hand—typing them is so common.’ She made a face, a pretty moue, that grated on Gemma, although she didn’t let her feelings show.

‘You’re looking so tired, darling.’ He mother’s concern held a faint edge of bitterness. ‘Daddy and I can’t understand why you insist on working at that dreadful place. Daddy could have got you a job much closer to home at a far nicer school.’ She gave a tiny shudder of distaste. ‘Some of those dreadful children you teach aren’t even clean.’

Compressing her mouth against her mother’s distaste, Gemma wondered what on earth her parents would say if she told them that she would ten times rather be with her unclean, ill-educated pupils than here in her parents’ luxurious home.

Long ago she had decided that she wanted to teach; that had been something that was always there. Her desire to teach those who most needed the benefits that education could give, and who were least likely to receive them, had come later, growing gradually, and so far she had no regrets at all about her choice of career.

Of course there were heartaches and problems; days at a time when she ached for the sight of green fields and trees; weeks and months when she battled unsuccessfully against the oppressive weights of poverty and suspicion; nights when she lay awake, aching beyond sleep for the hopelessly narrow and deprived lives of her pupils. For some of them, from the moment they were born, the odds were stacked against them. It was her job, her private crusade, to offset those odds. When she had first arrived at the grey, depressed inner-city school the other teachers had warned her that she would soon lose her bright optimism, that she would be victimised and even physically abused by some of the children. She had been told she was too young and too pretty to teach the adolescent boys, many of whom could and did try to harass their female teachers. But even after three years of enduring all that Bower Street Comprehensive could throw at her she still held true to her original ideals. If she managed to open the gate that, via education, led to an escape from the grimness of his or her life for only one child, then she had achieved something.

This inner need to help and encourage these children wasn’t something Gemma had ever discussed with anyone else. The other girls at the university with her hadn’t shared her views on teaching, and her colleagues were often as ground down by the harshness of their surroundings, and the pressure of living in an area where so few of their pupils would ever be able to get even the most menial of jobs, as the pupils and their parents were.

‘Gemma, you aren’t listening to a word I’m saying.’

Gemma looked up and saw that her mother was frowning at her. How different this pretty, floral sitting-room was to her own grim flat. This room was her mother’s alone. It had french windows opening out on to a York stone-paved patio with tubs of flowers, beyond which stretched lawns, and trees. Her father had designed and built this house twenty years ago, with the proceeds from his first successful contract.

Since Christmas the whole house had been redecorated and refurbished in readiness for the wedding, Gemma thought wryly. Her mother’s sitting-room, which she had last seen decorated in soft creams and pinks, was now all delicate yellows and french blues. A pretty floral fabric of a type often featured in glossy magazines hung at the windows and covered the plump settee. A huge bowl of yellow roses filled the marble fireplace, and the antique sofa table that her father had bought for her mother several years ago was covered in silver-framed photographs of the family. The entire ambience of the room was subtly expensive, faintly ‘county’, and Gemma stifled a faint sigh as she looked through the windows to the gardens beyond.

She missed this view more than she ever wanted to admit; she missed breathing clean, fresh air, and looking out on to green fields and tall trees. She knew that it wasn’t possible for all people to be equal, and she also knew that her father had worked extremely hard to get where he was today. She didn’t think it was wrong that her parents should have so much while others had so little, but she did think it was criminal that they should be so little aware, so little caring, of the reality of how other people lived.

Her mother had been shocked and disgusted on the only occasion she had visited her daughter in her small north Manchester flat, Gemma remembered. She had hated the narrow mean street, and the towering blocks of council flats; she had done everything she could to persuade Gemma to get another job, to come home and allow her father to use his influence to find her something more suitable, more acceptable to their friends, perhaps teaching small children at the local village school. Her father’s company had a contract to build an extension on the local comprehensive and they had also given generously to the appeal to raise money for a swimming pool for the school, she was sure that …

Gemma had cut her off there. She didn’t want to change her job, but trying to explain that, and to explain why, to her mother, had just been impossible.

‘David and Sophy have gone round to the house. It really is lovely, Gemma. You must go and see it. Your father had it built for them as a wedding present. It’s just a nice size for a young couple: four bedrooms and a pretty nursery suite. I do hope they won’t wait too long before starting a family …’

Gemma let her mother chatter on as she tried to suppress her own growing feeling of alienation and tiredness.

‘Of course your father had to invite him, but I was hoping that he wouldn’t accept the invitation. He’s not really one of our set, and if it wasn’t for the fact that he and your father do business together, I wouldn’t invite him here at all. It’s amazing that he’s done so well, when you think how he started, but I must confess that I never feel comfortable with him. The problem is that since he isn’t married, where are we going to seat him?

‘Businesswise, his company is now much bigger than your father’s, and your father won’t want to offend him, but he’s hardly the sort of man one could put on the same table as the Lord Lieutenant, is he?’

Gemma frowned. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, I missed half of that. Who are we talking about?’

‘Oh, Gemma! Luke O’Rourke, of course.’

Luke O’Rourke. Gemma felt the room sway crazily round her, and she gripped hold of the chair back in front of her while her mother carried on, oblivious of her shock.

‘Good heavens, you haven’t met him yet, have you? I’d forgotten that. He was away at Christmas—I think he went to the Caribbean or somewhere on business—but you must have heard me mention him? He owns O’Rourke Construction—they practically built most of the latest stretch of motorway network round here. I’m not really quite sure how he and your father met, but over the last couple of years they’ve worked on several ventures together—those apartments your father’s building in Spain, and the extension to the school. Luke is based in Chester.’

Gemma let her mother rattle on. Luke O’Rourke. It couldn’t be the same man, surely? It had been stupid of her to be so shaken just because of the familiarity of the name. Luke O’Rourke. She closed her eyes unsteadily and then opened them again. It had all been so long ago. Over ten years ago now. She had been what … fourteen, almost fifteen? She shook her head, trying to dispel the images crowding her mind while her mother busily sought a way of dealing with the problem of where to seat Luke O’Rourke.

She could always seat him with Gemma, of course. Although she hated admitting it even to herself, Susan Parish found her daughter disturbing. Why on earth couldn’t Gemma be more like the daughters of her friends, content to marry a nice young man and settle down to be a wife and mother? And if she had to work, to teach, why did she have to work in that awful school with those dreadful children, half of whom couldn’t even speak English? Whenever Gemma was around she was always on tenterhooks, terrified that she would upset her father, or make one of her dreadful sarcastic remarks. She wouldn’t put it past Gemma to say something upsetting or controversial to the Lord Lieutenant, and she had been racking her brains for a way to avoid having the two of them together on the top table. As Sophy’s closest male relative it was of course quite acceptable for him to be there, and even though Gemma had refused to be a bridesmaid, it would still have looked odd to have excluded her from the intimate family group. Now, though, she had the perfect excuse. Luke O’Rourke was definitely not ‘family’ but, as a ‘close friend and her husband’s business partner’, it would be perfectly acceptable to pair him with Gemma, especially since she was not participating in the wedding as a bridesmaid. Breathing a tiny sigh of relief, Susan Parish went back to her mental arrangements, leaving Gemma totally unaware of what was going through her mind.

In the hall the grandfather clock chimed the hour. ‘Oh, my goodness, I promised the vicar I’d see him this afternoon to discuss the final arrangements. Would you like to come with me, darling, or will you be all right here?’

The last thing Gemma felt like doing was joining her mother. Summoning a diplomatic smile, she shook her head.

‘I’m afraid I’m feeling rather tired. Would you mind if I stayed here?’

Relieved, Susan Parish patted her hand. ‘Of course not, darling. You are on holiday, after all. Oh, by the way, did I tell you that Daddy is bringing some people back for dinner tonight? Wear something pretty, won’t you? You know how much Daddy likes to show off his pretty little girl.’

Only by the strongest effort of will was Gemma able to prevent herself from saying that she was neither pretty nor little. She didn’t want to upset her mother, who would quite genuinely not have known why she had been angry.

She hadn’t been lying when she claimed that she was tired. Coming home and living with her parents was always exhausting. There were so many things she wanted to say to them that she couldn’t.

She went upstairs slowly. Her bedroom had been redecorated along with the rest of the house and she had to admit that the coral and grey colour scheme was very attractive. The white furniture with its gilt trim had been a fourteenth birthday present. It was too fussy and frilly for her own taste, and even now she could remember how disappointed her mother had been at her lack of pleasure in the gift.

She looked at herself wryly in the full-length mirror. It was plainly obvious, surely, that she wasn’t the frilly type. As a little girl, her mother had dressed her in frilly pastel dresses and matching pants, tying her strong, dark, remorselessly straight hair into soft bunches.

These days she dressed differently, in comfortable structured clothes that suited her tall narrow frame. She wore her dark hair in a curved bob, and no longer felt awkward or unfeminine because of her height.

At five nine she wasn’t really that tall any more anyway, and she had learned at university that there were just as many men who liked tall slim girls as there were those who preferred small cuddly blondes.

The feeling of inferiority that not being the pretty little blonde daughter her mother had wanted had bred in her had disappeared completely while she was at university, and in its place she had developed a coolly amused distancing technique that held those men who wanted to get closer to her at an acceptable distance. She hadn’t wanted any romantic involvements; marriage wasn’t on her list of priorities. She had seen too much of what it could do to her sex in her own parents’ marriage.

Even so, she hadn’t been short of admirers; there were plenty of young men all too willing to date a girl who made it plain that marriage wasn’t her sole purpose in life. Her mother often bemoaned the fact that she was, in her words, ‘unfeminine’, but there had been many men who had been drawn, rather than repulsed, by her cool indifference. So why, at twenty-five, was she still an inexperienced virgin?

It had been so long since she had given any thought at all to her virgin state that the fact that she should do so now shocked her. She walked from her bed to the window and stared blindly out of it. It had been the sound of the name Luke O’Rourke that had brought on this introspective mood, and she didn’t need a psychiatrist to tell her why.

It had, after all, been Luke O’Rourke who had shattered her childish dreams and shown her the reality of sexual need and desire.

And it had also been Luke O’Rourke who had shown her what she wanted to do with her life, she reminded herself. How ironic it was, then, that she should hear his name mentioned now, when she was once again in a way at a crossroads in her life.

She was going to lose her job. Oh, it wasn’t official yet, but she knew it anyway. The conversation she had had with the head just before the school closed down for the long summer recess had been plain enough. They needed to shed staff; the part-timers wouldn’t be coming back after the holiday, but that wasn’t enough. Government cuts meant that the school still needed to lose one full-time teacher, and, as the head had uncomfortably but quite rightly pointed out, she was in the fortunate position of having parents who were financially both able and willing to support her.

Looking at the position from the head’s point of view, she couldn’t blame him. He was quite right in what he said, after all; if she stayed on at the school now, she would have to do so knowing that she was keeping a job from someone who badly needed the income that teaching brought. She moved restlessly round her room picking things up and then putting them down again. She hated the thought of giving up her job, but what alternative did she really have? It would be morally wrong of her to stay, knowing that in doing so she was depriving someone else of their living.

It was a similar dilemma to the one she had experienced in a much milder form when she first started teaching, and she had long ago decided that, when it came to her own background, her father’s wealth and her mother’s snobbery, she must just accept that these were things she could not change and must go on to live her own life, by her own rules.

She knew why Angus MacPherson had sent for her and talked to her as he had. He was counting on her doing the right thing, on her handing in her notice, and discreetly solving his over-staffing and financial problems for him, and she knew as well that she would. But knowing that she would be doing the right thing didn’t ease the pain of knowing how much she would lose. She would have a period of notice to work—that was written into her contract—but it wouldn’t be more than a month. The man who would take over her classes, would he sense the same burning desire to learn that she had seen beneath Johnny Bate’s truculence? Would he see behind the wide blue eyes of Laura Holmes, with her already almost too-developed body, to the sharply incisive mind that Gemma had seen? There was no reason why he shouldn’t, but so many of her colleagues had been ground down by their own problems and by the depressing poverty of the area they lived and worked in that they often no longer saw their pupils as individuals.

Unlike the majority of them, Gemma was single. She had the time to devote to her class outside the schoolroom. It wasn’t just a job to her, and yet to use the word ‘vocation,’ even if only to herself, made her feel acutely uncomfortable.

Even so, she knew that it gave her a tremendous thrill to be able to impart knowledge to another mind, to witness its awakening and growth, and she had Luke O’Rourke to thank for that.

Luke O’Rourke. Of course it couldn’t be the same man. The coincidence of the Luke O’Rourke she had known and her father’s new business acquiantance both being in the construction industry was no more than just that. The Luke she had known had been nothing more than a labourer working as part of a gang of itinerants. She moved slowly round her bedroom, drifting back to her bed and sitting down on it, letting her mind take her back. Her fingers absently touched the bedspread that was now shiny and tailored in deep coral, but had once been soft baby pink, frilled and flounced.

It had been a hot dry summer that year, and she had been bored and restless, impatient of and embarrassed by her mother’s petty snobbishness, and resentful of her father’s masculine condescension. She had come home from school with high marks in all her classes, only to be told rather reprovingly by her father that girls didn’t need to be clever and that they should certainly never be competitive, this last rebuke having been earned because she had done much better at school than her brother.

At fourteen she had sensed that she wasn’t the daughter her parents wanted, although then she hadn’t really known why. All she had known was that she felt constrained and uncomfortable in the persona they were tailoring for her. Her mother made her feel embarrassed when she went out shopping with her. Gemma didn’t like the way she talked to the people in the shops who served her. Manchester was their nearest city, but her mother didn’t shop there. She preferred Chester, but when Gemma asked her why, when it was so much smaller, all she would say was that it was much more ‘our sort of place’. Occasionally her mother shopped in London and came back with dark green bags from Harrods. Gemma already knew that she had a privileged life; her father was fond of pointing out to her that not many daddies could afford to spoil their daughters the way he spoiled her, but Gemma was always left with the feeling that his gifts weren’t given freely and that they had to be paid for. She also knew that somehow she disappointed him.

With the onset of puberty she was growing tall. Gangly was how her mother had described her. Her skin was smooth and faintly olive, her eyes a deeply serious grey. She often looked in the mirror and was puzzled that she didn’t look more like her pretty blue-eyed and blonde-haired mother.

Her father was very dark and she knew that people thought her parents made a very attractive couple. Mrs Moreton, their daily, was always saying so.

David, two years older than her, had been sent away for the summer on a special adventure training course in the Welsh mountains. She would dearly have loved to go with him, but her father had frowned and told her that it wasn’t suitable for girls.

‘Oh, no, darling, it isn’t at all ladylike,’ her mother had told her when she pleaded to be allowed to go. There were very few children locally for her to play with and so she had been reduced to spending long hours alone riding her pony, Bess.

It was while on one of these sojourns that she had first met Luke …

The Cheshire countryside, surrounding the village was pretty and criss-crossed with public footpaths and walks. In July the fields were heavy with their crops, a blue haze clouding the far distant Welsh hills to the west, and the Derbyshire peaks to the south east.

It was a hot afternoon, and Gemma was content to let fat little Bess amble along at her own pace. While she quite enjoyed riding, she was not strongly obsessed by it.

It had been her mother’s idea that she learn to ride. Mrs Parish had seen it as the right sort of hobby for her daughter, expecting that it would lead to Gemma’s inclusion amongst the rather stand-offish local county set, whose sons and daughters all learned to ride almost before they could walk, but these children were all taught at home, not at the exclusive riding establishment to which Gemma’s parents sent her, and once she realised that the only people they were likely to meet through Gemma’s riding were in much the same position as themselves she had soon lost interest in the whole idea.

Bess had been a tenth birthday present, and although her mother often now complained that the pony was an unnecessary expense, Gemma had insisted on keeping her. She was sturdily enough built to support Gemma’s slim frame, even if her ever-growing legs did dangle rather dangerously either side of Bess’s plump little body. The pony spent most of the year greedily enjoying the luxury of her comfortable paddock adjoining the house, good-naturedly ambling along the country lanes with Gemma on her back when she was at home at a pace not much faster than her rider could have walked.

Her destination on this occasion was a small wood where, the previous summer, she had seen a family of otters at play on the banks of the river that flowed through it. She found the clearing by the river easily enough, dismounting to tie Bess’s reins to a handy tree trunk. Here the ground smelled hot and moist, the sun shading eerily through the umbrella of leaves overhead. Pine needles and other vegetation covered the ground, giving it a stringy texture. Although she couldn’t see it, Gemma could hear the sound of the river. She felt in her pocket for the sandwiches she had brought with her, and the book. She could have read quite easily in the garden at home, but somehow she felt over-exposed and uncomfortable there, and if her mother came back early and caught her slopping around in her old shorts and T-shirt, she would complain.

Neither of her parents approved of Gemma wearing shorts or jeans; they both liked her to wear dresses, preferably with fluffily gathered skirts. Gemma hated them. She felt they looked ridiculous on her. All those frills with her arms and legs sticking out like thin sticks.

Although she was fourteen she had practically no figure at all yet. Not like some of the girls in her class. Well, she did have some figure. Her breasts had started to develop and she was wearing a bra, but she knew that her mother had been shocked to see how tall she had grown this last term.

She found a comfortable place to sit down not far from the river, her back supported by the trunk of an ancient oak. She felt in her pocket for her sandwiches, before spreading her jacket on the ground. They were doing Lawrence at school next term, and she had bought some paperbacks with her pocket money. English Lit. was one of her favourite subjects.

Within minutes she was so deeply engrossed that she was only aware of the intruder when she felt the cold drops of moisture from his skin fall on to her arm.

She looked up, her eyes widening in shock and alarm as they encountered the tall, muscular frame of the man standing looking down at her. He must have been swimming in the river, she realised, because droplets of water were running down over his chest still, darkening the springy mat of hair that grew there. He was wearing jeans that were old and very faded, but his feet were bare. His arms and torso as well as his face were burned dark by constant exposure to the sun. Tiny lines radiated outwards from the corners of his dark blue eyes. His hair clung sleekly to his scalp and it was very dark.

Gemma moistened her lips nervously, suddenly feeling extremely alarmed.

‘It’s all right, I’m not going to hurt you.’

His voice rumbled from the depth of his chest, but it was gentle and reassuring, tinged with an accent she recognised as Irish.

The moment she heard it Gemma felt herself relax. She knew instinctively and beyond any shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t lying to her, and that he meant her no harm.

He looked down at the book she was reading and smiled at her. ‘Lawrence, eh? Now there’s a fine writer. Not as robust as some maybe, but a fine writer nonetheless.’

‘Do you … do you like reading, then?’

There had been an odd pause then while he looked at her for a moment, and then he had said quietly, ‘I like it fine when I have the time.’

And that was how it had all begun.

CHAPTER TWO

IN retrospect, that afternoon seemed to have a fey, almost magical, quality to it.

Gemma remembered that she had offered to share her sandwiches with him and that he had equally gravely accepted.

She had learned that he was working with a gang of labourers on the new motorway that was being built several miles away. He liked the countryside, he had told her, and he preferred to be alone on his time off. His family had come originally from Ireland, but he had been orphaned as a child and brought up in a home. His whole face had hardened when he told her that, and he had added that he didn’t intent to stay a labourer all his life. He had seemed so much older and more mature than she was herself that she had been half shocked to learn that he was only twenty years old.

He questioned her about herself, and she had told him openly and gravely about her background and her family.

In turn he had told her about his plans to educate himself, to start his own business. Labouring paid well, he had told her, but there was no future in it. It was a young man’s work, and it was gruellingly hard. He had told her that he had had to leave school at sixteen and about the night-school courses he was taking, now finished for the summer.

‘It’s to be hoped I don’t forget everything I’ve learned before they start up again in the autumn.’

‘I could help you remember.’

The diffident words were out before she could silence them, and she had tensed stiffly, waiting for him to laugh at her, or maybe even be angry. She had forgotten for a moment that men didn’t like girls who were too clever and her eyes blurred with adolescent tears while her olive skin flamed a miserable scarlet in her embarrassment and shame.

When he had said softly, ‘Maybe you could at that … and perhaps teach me a lot of the things I ought to know as well,’ she had looked at him nervously, not sure whether he was being serious or making fun of her.

‘I aim to make a success of my life,’ he had told her fiercely, ‘and if I’m to be that, I’ll need to know things you can’t learn from a book.’

‘You mean things like using the right knife and fork?’ Gemma had asked him intuitively.

‘Yes, but not just that. You say your father’s a master builder. There are things I need to know, books I need to read, if I’m ever going to be anything more than a labourer, and the building industry is the only one I know. The problem with this sort of life is that I never stay in one place long enough to do more than one full term at night school. If I had the right books, if I knew the right way to go about it, there’s a lot that I could teach myself.’

Gemma had understood what he was trying to say and it would be easy enough for her to help him. Her father’s study was full of just the sort of books he needed. David was to take her father’s place in the company eventually, and every holiday her father drew up a syllabus of things he had to study.

Right from the start it was almost as though she had already known Luke all her life. She could talk to him about things she had never been able to discuss with anyone else, and within a week it seemed to Gemma that they had known one another all their lives.

It wasn’t difficult for her to supply him with the books he needed, nor was it hard for her to slip away from the house most evenings to meet him. Even the weather was in their favour, remaining fine and warm so that they could meet in the clearing by the river.

She knew now that Luke lived in a caravan close by the motorway development and that he shared his accommodation with four other men. He liked to come to the river to swim because he claimed it was the only way he could feel really clean. The caravan boasted only one shower, which wasn’t enough to wash away the ingrained dust and dirt of the backbreaking work of road building.

Of course she never mentioned him at home. She knew how deeply her parents would disapprove of their association. She wasn’t even allowed to mingle with the village children, and Luke, with his Irish background, his accent and his lack of education could never be anyone her parents would approve of her knowing. Anyway, she preferred to keep their friendship a secret. It made it seem more special, more hers and hers alone, and she liked that. She felt comfortable with Luke, and she liked the glow of pleasure it gave her when she was able to give him some nugget of information he hadn’t known. She had ‘borrowed’ an old picnic basket from the pantry, and with it she taught Luke the correct placings of knives, forks and spoons.

Together they explored the mystery of Hardy and the pain of Lawrence, and together they laughed at Luke’s mimicking of her accent and hers of his.

Because of him Gemma felt more at home with herself than at any other time in her life. Her legs and arms were now tanned a soft gold and when she was with Luke she forgot how tall and gangly she was. Luke didn’t mind that she wasn’t blonde and pretty. Sexual awareness as yet had no part in her life. She knew all about it, of course, but physical desire and all its mysteries were something she had yet to experience.

All that changed the day David came home and brought a friend with him. Tom Hardman was the most beautiful-looking human being Gemma had ever seen. He was the same age as David, just seventeen, but he was taller than her brother and broader, his skin sheened golden by their Welsh holiday, his hair thick and brightly fair, his eyes as blue as the August skies.

Gemma fell head over heels in love with him the moment she set eyes on him.

She didn’t tell Luke about him. Not at first; the strange tummy-twisting sensation she had experienced the moment she set eyes on Tom was something still too private and wonderful to talk about to anyone, even Luke. She had barely been able to eat her supper last night, or her breakfast this morning. David had had his birthday while he was away, and as a present he had had driving lessons and a brand new car, and right after breakfast the two boys had set out in it.

Although 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 made Luke frown at her, the comforting movement of his thumb ceasing. It struck her suddenly that there was something extraordinarily pleasant about having him touch her. Her father was not a physically affectionate man, and she had never particularly wanted his touch, but now she had an inexplicable desire to move closer to Luke and to be held within the comfort of his arms.

‘Tom? Who’s Tom?’ he asked her sharply, dispelling her mood.

‘He’s a friend of my brother’s. He’s staying with us. The three of us are going out tonight, to a barn dance at Winston.’

She looked up just in time to catch the smile that curled Luke’s mouth. There was an expression on his face that she didn’t recognise. It made her shiver as though she had suddenly gone cold.

‘And it’s this Tom you really want to kiss you, is that it?’ His mouth twisted, the dark blue eyes no longer smiling at her, but frighteningly hard. ‘Then he’s the one you should be asking for lessons, not me.’

He made to get up, and Gemma knew instinctively that he was going to leave. She had made him angry, and that was the last thing she wanted to do. She could feel fresh tears clogging her throat, and she reached up blindly, tugging on his arm.

‘No. Please, Luke, you don’t understand. If Tom kisses me, he’ll know that I’ve never done it before. He’ll laugh at me …’ She shivered as he stopped trying to move away and instead looked down into her eyes.

‘I know that I’m not … not pretty, or anything … and you don’t have to kiss me if you really don’t want to … but … but …’ She was struggling against a fresh wave of misery, stumbling over the words as she fought against her fear that she had somehow angered him and might lose his friendship, and her need to explain to him just how much she needed his help.

Without being able to explain why, she knew instinctively that when it came to kissing Luke would know exactly what to do. What he did when he left her in the evenings, and where he went when he wasn’t working, was something they never discussed, but with an age-old female intuition that her body recognised, even if her mind could not yet do so, deep down inside Gemma knew that Luke was a man who would appeal to her sex.

‘No, you’re not pretty.’ He said it roughly, as though something had got stuck in his throat, and when she looked up at him in hurt misery, he veiled his eyes with his lashes. They were dark and very thick, casting shadows on the deep bronze of his skin. He smelled of fresh air and growing things, of sunshine, and something else she couldn’t define but that she liked, Gemma recognised as he moved slightly towards her.

His hands curved round her upper arms, his fingers pressing against their bare flesh. He had touched her like this several times before, but now she knew immediately that this was different.

‘All right, little girl, if this is really what you want.’ They were both sitting down, but now Luke was leaning towards her, blotting out the sunlight. He wasn’t wearing a shirt because he had been swimming, and he was so close to her that she could feel the heat of the sun coming off his skin.

His hands moved up her arms, his thumbs probing the firmness of her shoulders beneath the thin covering of her T-shirt.

For some reason her heart had started to pound heavily, and she couldn’t drag her gaze away from his face. He looked different somehow, not the Luke she knew. He was looking at her mouth, she realised, with a sudden jerking leap of her heart. She opened it to say his name and then closed it again, reminding herself stoically that this was what she had wanted.

Her heart was pumping frantically against the wall of her chest; with every breath she took, she half expected it to leap into her throat and choke her. If she felt like this in Luke’s arms, how on earth was she going to feel when she was with Tom? She closed her eyes and shivered.

‘Open your eyes, Gemma. It’s not him who’s teaching you to kiss, it’s me.’

The harshness of Luke’s voice made her obey his command immediately, her own eyes registering the shock of seeing the brittle fury in his.

‘That’s your first lesson,’ he told her softly. ‘No man likes the woman in this arms to pretend that she’s with someone else.’

‘I thought I was supposed to close my eyes,’ Gemma protested chokily. ‘They always do in films.’

‘Maybe, but I like to see the effect I’m having on a girl when I kiss her.’

Although it was still rough, something about Luke’s voice seemed to have changed; now it was like the throaty purr of a lion, Gemma thought dreamily: hypnotic and ever so faintly dangerous.

His face came nearer, and her fingers clutched nervously at his arms. His hands moved, sliding beneath her, one cupping the back of her head, the other holding her waist. Her lips felt dry, and yet somehow swollen. She swallowed nervously and then exhaled in shaky relief as she felt his lips move gently against her forehead, his breath warm on her skin.

His mouth was as delicate and gentle as a summer breeze as it teased her skin. She could feel the hard pad of his thumb, stroking against her jaw, and caressing the soft skin of her throat. He moved away from her a little, studying her flushed face, his mouth …

She shivered suddenly as she stared at his mouth, her hand lifting so that her fingers could touch it, her eyes looking wonderingly into his. When he drew the soft tips of her fingers into his mouth and gently sucked them, her wonder changed to stomach-jerking shock. The oddest of sensations burst into life inside her. Her breasts … She tore her eyes from his, dragging air into her compressed lungs as she looked down at her own body.

As though Luke knew everything she was feeling, he drew her into his arms, soothing her.

‘It’s all right … don’t worry …’

How had he known what had happened to her? She could feel herself shaking as he rocked her gently. Her whole body felt flushed and strange, her wide-eyed, half-frightened gaze meshing with his as he held her away from him.

‘Would you like me to stop?’

Would she? Could she endure to go all through this again with someone strange, someone who wouldn’t understand like Luke did? She shook her head in dogged determination, her voice husky and strained as she whispered, ‘No … No … I want you to go on.’

Trust replaced the fright in her eyes as she looked up at him. ‘I know you don’t really want to kiss me, Luke, but if you won’t teach me, how can I ever learn?’

‘The usual way,’ he told her drily, ‘by trial and error.’

‘But boys don’t like me.’

She felt the all-too-easy tears rise inside her again, and buried her head against Luke’s hard shoulder. His skin smelled faintly male and alien, and yet conversely the contact was also reassuring. She felt Luke move her and opened her eyes to find that his mouth was only a whisper away from her own. She could feel her lips trembling and she pressed them together firmly, trying to get the trembling to stop.

Suddenly panic seized her and she wanted to tell him that she had changed her mind, but it was already too late, his mouth was touching hers, his lips caressing the closed, tight line of hers. His mouth felt warm and soft, but firm, too, and she quivered beneath the sensations clamouring inside her. He was stroking her mouth with tiny, teasing kisses that made her lips swell and soften. When she felt his tongue run along their tightly closed outline she quivered visibly, curling her nails into his flesh.

‘Open your mouth, Gemma.’

His eyes stared into hers, mesmerising her, making her lips open so that he could …

Every reasoning faculty she possessed was suspended beneath the sensations rocking her. She had seen people kissing like this in films and on television, and privately she had always thought it faintly yucky, but now that she was experiencing it for herself … She clung to him eagerly, letting his mouth tutor hers, quivering in eager excitement when his tongue stroked hers. That same peculiar ache she had felt in her breasts before was back, and it seemed as though Luke knew about it, too, because he stopped kissing her, briefly, to take her more fully into his arms, so that her breasts were pressing against his chest. When he kissed her his whole body moved and it made her want to rub herself against him.

She had forgotten why she had asked him to kiss her; she had forgotten everything but the sweet surge of passion flooding through her body, her eyes dark and heavy with the force of it, her lips moist and swollen. She wanted him to kiss her again, and again, but suddenly his body was tensing and he was drawing away from her, his chest expanding and contracting rapidly as he drew in air.

‘Luke.’ She reached out to touch him but he moved away from her.

‘I think you’ve learned enough for one lesson.’ He was looking at her as though he was angry with her. ‘Although I warn you, if you react like that to every boy who kisses you, soneone’s going to have to pin a notice on you warning them that you’re under sixteen.’

It took a few seconds for his meaning to get through to her, but, when it did, she flushed blood-red, and stumbled clumsily to her feet. Suddenly everything seemed all wrong; the magic of those moments in his arms was spoiled and sullied, and she wanted to run from him and hide herself away. He was telling her that she had behaved wantonly. The reason for the tension she had felt in her body and her innocent desire to get as close to him as she possibly could suddenly became unpleasantly clear to her.

He saw the expressions chase one another across her face, and frowned. ‘Gemma …’

It was too late for him to apologise now. He had ruined everything between them; he had made her feel … dirty, she thought, choking, moving slowly back from him as he got up and came towards her, holding out his hand.

‘Gemma, listen to me.’

‘No.’ Her voice sounded strained and shocked. ‘I think I hate you, Luke,’ she said bitterly. ‘And I don’t want to see you ever again.’ She turned round and ran from him to where she had left Bess tethered before he could stop her, loud sobs tearing at her throat. She knew that he had followed her, and when she scrambled up on to Bess’s plump back he reached for her.

‘No … No, don’t touch me.’ She hit out at him wildly, tears streaming down her face. He had spoilt something that had been unbearably precious to her, something that her developing instincts told her was rare and special, and she couldn’t wait to get away from him.

Wisely he let her go, sensing that to try and talk to her in her present state of near hysteria would do no good at all.

By the time she was close to home, she had herself under proper control. She stopped once to scrub at her damp face with a grubby handkerchief, and luckily when she got back her mother was still out.

All the anticipation and excitement with which she had viewed the evening was gone. She prepared for it with a feeling of resignation rather than pleasure, and, irrationally, it was Luke she blamed for her change of heart. Luke had spoiled it all for her by being so nasty to her.

She couldn’t let herself think about those moments in his arms. Half of her wanted to pretend that they hadn’t really happened, because she knew, even if she didn’t want to admit it, that now that they had, they had changed everything between them, and she didn’t want things to change, she wanted them to go on being friends. But how could they be friends when she knew that secretly Luke despised her? He must despise her, mustn’t he? Girls didn’t go around asking people to kiss them, did they?

All through the rest of the afternoon she goaded herself with recriminations and contempt.

After dinner she and the boys went up to their rooms to change. Defiantly she decided that she might as well wear her jeans. It was, after all, a barn dance, and so what if everyone mistook her for a boy? She didn’t care.

She wasn’t allowed as yet to wear make-up, and she looked miserably at her reflection in the mirror once she was ready.

Her jeans were old and worn, the denim soft and faded. Used to her mother’s condemnation of her tall, slim body, she didn’t see the way the denim followed the long lines of her legs, and the smallness of her waist.

David banged on her door as he and Tom went downstairs, and knowing that she couldn’t delay any longer she hurriedly brushed her hair and went after them.

‘Gemma, you can’t go out looking like that! I thought you were going to wear a dress.’

Both her parents were looking disapprovingly at her, and Gemma hovered on the verge of saying that she had decided she didn’t want to go after all, but to her surprise David came to her rescue, saying lightly, ‘It’s a barn dance, Mum. All the others will be dressed casually. She looks fine.’

Both boys were also wearing jeans, and although Gemma could see that her mother wasn’t pleased, she made no further comment.

Since Tom had already passed his driving test, it had been decided that on this occasion he would drive. Gemma sat in the back of her brother’s small car, wondering why she did not feel more excited as they drove towards their destination.

The dance was being held in the village hall. Several cars were already parked outside it, and they could hear the noise from the group as they got out of the car.

Inside the hall was hot and busy with gyrating bodies. The atmosphere was very smoky, and stung Gemma’s eyes. David found them a table while Tom went to the bar and got them all a drink. Gemma had asked for an orange juice and she noticed when he came back with their drinks that Tom wasn’t having anything alcoholic either.

When David laughed at him, Tom reminded him that he was driving.

Gemma couldn’t help noticing that more than one girl looked across to their table, and she tried to contain her feeling of desertion when David tapped Tom on the arm and drew his attention to a couple of girls standing watching the dancers.

‘You’ll be OK here on your own for a while, won’t you?’ David asked her as they got up. And, as he and Tom moved away, to her chagrin Gemma heard her brother saying to his friend, ‘I’m sorry that Ma was so insistent that we bring her with us.’

So Tom hadn’t wanted her company at all, she thought miserably. It had all been arranged by her mother.

She watched as the hall filled up and her brother and Tom kept on dancing with the same two girls. She was so engrossed in her own feeling of misery and self-loathing that she didn’t even look up when the shadow fell across her line of vision.

It took the sound of her name to drag her attention away from the dancers and to the person standing in front of her.

‘Luke!’ The unexpectedness of him being there, coupled with the fact that he had no doubt witnessed the humiliating fact that she was on her own, put the final seal of misery on the evening.

‘Enjoying yourself?’

He had to know that she wasn’t, she thought bitterly, tossing her head in defiant misery as she replied in a brittle voice, ‘Yes, thanks, are you?’

She saw him shrug, the gesture implying a certain amount of amused disdain as he looked around.

‘It’s not really my sort of thing.’

‘No, I don’t suppose it is.’

All the frustration and misery of the day poured out in her voice, two spots of colour staining her skin, her eyes glittering with temper and pain as she said disdainfully, ‘I’m surprised they allowed you in here. Most places seem to have banned the navvies from the motorway.’

She was repeating something she had heard her father say about the men from the road gangs, and the moment the cruel words had left her mouth she was horrified and disgusted with herself. Dimly she recognised that all her pain and misery was somehow connected with Luke and that it was because of this that she had hit out at him, but as she watched the quiet contempt settle in his eyes and saw him step away from her, she knew with bitter self-knowledge that she had driven him away, and that she had spoilt their friendship.

As he walked away from her she stood up and called his name, but either he didn’t hear her, or he didn’t care, because he didn’t stop.

After he had gone her eyes felt heavy with tears. Losing Luke’s friendship mattered far more to her than the fact that her mother had arranged for her to be here with Tom. In fact Tom, and her feelings for him, suddenly seemed to be the least important thing in her life. How could she have spoken like that to Luke? No wonder he had looked at her the way he did. Tomorrow afternoon she would apologise and explain to him. Just thinking that tomorrow she would see him made her feel better.

When the two boys eventually came back to the table, she was astounded to hear Tom ask her to dance.

They had dancing lessons at school, and it was something she was surprisingly good at.

They left at twelve o’clock, Tom and Gemma going out to the car first, leaving David to follow. When they reached the shadows thrown by the buildings, Gemma was astounded when Tom suddenly and clumsily took her in his arms, pressing his mouth wetly against hers.

His kiss wasn’t anything like Luke’s. In fact she found that she hated it; hated the wetness of his mouth, and the jarring sensation of his teeth bumping against her own. As quickly as she could she freed herself from his embrace, trembling with a mixture of disgust and anger. She could see that Tom was chagrined by her lack of response, but she no longer cared. Why on earth had she ever thought he was handsome? He wasn’t at all. Not when she compared him to Luke … Luke. She stopped dead yards away from the car, feeling her tummy begin to flutter and her heart start to leap violently in her chest. If she closed her eyes she could wipe away the memory of Tom’s kiss by conjuring up the things she had felt when Luke kissed her. She shivered slightly, aching for him to be there with her.

Her last thought as she closed her eyes that night was that soon it would be morning. Soon she could be with Luke.

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