We set off. For the first five minutes we said nothing at all. I couldn’t think of a thing to say and he couldn’t seem to either. What was the point anyway, when we couldn’t speak each other’s language properly? We kept clearing our throats, about to attempt a pleasantry, but thinking better of it. We glanced at each other, grinning foolishly whenever our eyes met.

‘Nice houses. You live this road?’ Léon said at last.

‘No. I live ages away. But you don’t have to come all the way with me. We can say goodbye here,’ I said. I offered him my hand to shake but he misunderstood and held onto it.

‘I come. I like you, Lulu. You pretty girl,’ he said.

No one had ever called me pretty before. Mum was very sparse with her compliments because she said she didn’t want me to get above myself. If I asked her if I looked all right, she’d just give a little sideways nod and say, ‘You’ll do.’ Dad didn’t even go as far as that. He never made a fuss of Mum either. He just wasn’t that sort of man.

Certainly no boys had ever singled me out and admired me. No girls either. They used to play a cruel rating game in our class, giving everyone marks out of ten. I got five. It wasn’t the worst score. Poor Elspeth only got one.

I knew Léon probably didn’t really think I was pretty. He was just saying it because it was one of the few English words he knew. But it was sweet of him all the same.

‘Thank you!’ I mumbled, tucking my chin down shyly.

‘Yes. Very pretty. Pretty hair. Pretty eyes. Pretty dress,’ he insisted.

He was sounding like a vocabulary lesson now. And my hair was a mess because I hadn’t brought a brush and my eyes were red from swimming in chlorinated water and my dress was last year’s and limp with too much washing. But I still loved him saying it. I wondered about telling him he was handsome. Was beau the right word? Could you say that to a boy or would he consider me fast? Perhaps he thought me the wrong sort of girl already because I was letting him hold my hand.

I wished he’d let it go. I was hot with embarrassment and scared it might be starting to get sweaty. It was awkward walking along together because he was tall and took big strides in his tennis shoes and I was small for my age and wearing childish flip-flops. He seemed worried about it and flashed his hands in the air – five, five, five and then one finger, enquiring if I was really sixteen.

‘Oui,’ I said, because I didn’t want him to think Nina and I had been lying all along.

Then he pointed to Madame Bovary. ‘Un vrai roman! Yves say English girls act grown up.’

I shrugged uncertainly. He was looking unsure too.

‘He say they kiss the boys,’ he said.

My heart started thumping. ‘Some do,’ I said.

‘Et vous? Vous embrassez les garçons?’ he persisted, holding my hand tight.

I swallowed. ‘Non!’

He looked terribly disappointed. ‘Because je suis un âne?’

I remembered a list of animals in my French textbook. ‘Did you just say you’re a donkey?’ I asked.

‘Oui. My friend Yves say I am awkward,’ he said dolefully, and he let go my hand.

I understood and sympathized. ‘Your friend Yves is like my friend Nina – I mean, Narissa,’ I said. ‘But you’re not a donkey. You are good-looking.’

‘Vraiment? Then we go home et vous m’embrassez?’ he said eagerly.

‘Non!’ I couldn’t have him going all the way home with me. I could tell by his clothes he was quite a posh boy. He might be shocked if he saw where I lived. And what if any of our neighbours saw me taking a boy into our prefab? They might tell Mum! She would go berserk! ‘Ma mère est très très méchante!’ I didn’t mean Mum was wicked, but I couldn’t think of the French word for strict.

‘Ah!’ said Léon, catching on. ‘Nous allons nous promener dans un jardin?’

He wanted us to go for a walk in my garden? I imagined us trudging round and round Dad’s lily pond until we were dizzy. Then it dawned on me.

‘A park?’

‘Oui! You know a park?’ he asked.

‘I do,’ I said.

‘On y va,’ he said, taking my hand again.

‘Well. We could go there – but just for a walk?’ I said.

He nodded happily. I wasn’t sure if he understood or not. I wasn’t sure what I meant either. I didn’t want to be thought of as a girl who would deliberately go into a park to be kissed. I didn’t even want to be kissed, did I? But it would be something to tell Nina. I was sick of her treating me like a donkey.

So I took him to the park. It wasn’t as if anything terrible could happen there. It was such a bland, boring park, with the kiddy swings and the ducks and the regimented flower beds. It was crowded with sunbathers lying flat on their backs as if felled, and children crying for ice cream.

‘You want ice, Lulu?’ Léon asked.

He bought us both a strawberry ice lolly. We had to eat them quickly because of the sun. Red juice dribbled down my arm before I was finished. Léon reached out and gently touched my mouth.

‘Coty lipstick!’ he said.

I giggled and he laughed too, pleased he’d managed a little joke. We walked on, hand in sticky hand, scuffling along the gravel path and then walking across the clipped green grass of the cricket pitch.

‘English cricket!’ said Léon. He let go of my hand and mimed being a cricketer. I smiled obediently. It was a bit like being kind to Little Richard when he told his interminable corny jokes.

Léon pointed. ‘Alors, le petit bâtiment, là?’

I didn’t catch what he said but looked where he was pointing.

‘That’s the changing hut for the people that play cricket,’ I said.

‘They no play today?’

‘No, it’s generally just on Sundays. And it’s incredibly boring. I wouldn’t bother watching if I were you,’ I said.

He wasn’t listening. ‘We go hut,’ he said.

‘But there’s nothing there,’ I said doubtfully. ‘And it’s probably locked anyway.’

But he insisted we walk over to it. There was a padlock on the door but someone had already broken it. Léon pushed the door open cautiously. There were several empty bottles of beer scattered on the floor. One bottle had spilled.

‘Tramps,’ I said, wrinkling my nose at the smell of stale beer.

‘Bad tramps,’ said Léon. ‘Cette petite maison est pour vous et moi.’

‘Our house?’ I said. ‘So what’s happened to our furniture?’

Léon stepped around the beer puddle and pointed into the gloom. ‘Sofa,’ he said, indicating the torn leather on the changing room bench. ‘And many cupboard,’ he continued, patting the clothes lockers.

I quite liked this game. ‘It’s a bit gloomy in our house. Shall I open the shutters?’ I went to the window.

‘No! It bedtime. Bonne nuit, petite Lulu!’ Léon whispered.

I knew where this was going now. I took a deep breath, wondering what being kissed was going to feel like. I was worried it might be slobbery and disgusting. But Léon was very gentle, stroking my cheek first, and then very lightly kissing me on the lips. It wasn’t horrible at all. In fact I liked it. I liked him. He was sweet and funny and he seemed to like me quite a lot.

We leaned against the wall and he kissed me more, pulling me really close. I thought I wouldn’t know what to do, which way to turn my head, but it seemed so easy and natural now it was happening. It felt so good, so very good. Nina hadn’t told me it would feel so lovely.

‘Ma petite Lulu,’ Léon whispered, lifting my hair and kissing the nape of my neck.

He was trembling, which made me like him even more. It clearly meant just as much to him too.

‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?’ he murmured.

I didn’t know what coucher meant. It wasn’t a verb we’d been taught at school. Perhaps it meant cuddle? I didn’t know how to respond. He started pulling at my clothes. I wasn’t so sure now about what he was doing.

‘Léon?’ I said doubtfully, but he was so absorbed I wasn’t sure he had heard me. It was starting to hurt now. ‘Léon, don’t!’

He gave a great sigh and then collapsed against me. I waited to see what he was going to do next.

‘Léon, are you all right?’ I asked, worried now.

‘Oui, oui. Et vous?’ he muttered.

‘Well. I suppose. Don’t do that again, though,’ I said, adjusting my clothes.

I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened. It was all over so quickly. We couldn’t have actually done it, could we, the huge forbidden thing that Nina was always talking about? Had Léon actually been inside me? Surely it couldn’t count if it was just for two seconds?

I heard children calling to each other outside, playing some kind of game.

‘Quick, hide!’ one shouted.

‘Someone might come in! We have to go!’ I hissed urgently.

Léon seemed just as anxious as me. We both made for the door and rushed out into the blinding sunshine. Thank goodness the children were running in the opposite direction. I peered round, scared that someone might still be watching and guess what we had been doing. I felt hot shame all over me now. What if anyone ever found out?

I looked at Léon, who looked as hot and sweaty and furtive as I felt. I couldn’t bear it.

‘I have to go now,’ I said, and started running.

‘Lulu!’ he called after me.

‘My name’s not Lulu,’ I said, running faster.

I kept looking over my shoulder, scared he might pursue me, but he just stood there looking bewildered. I felt bad that he was in the middle of a strange park and he probably didn’t have a clue how to get back to the Lido, but I couldn’t help it.

I ran and ran and ran though I had to stop every now and then to gasp for breath. It seemed to take hours. When I reached the shopping parade I slowed down at last, trying to walk as if I didn’t have a care in the world. Mrs Bun waved at me from behind her window and I made my arm wave back, grinning at her in a sickly manner.

Our neighbour Mrs Smithson was lumbering down her path as I turned in our gate.

‘Hello, young Laura,’ she said, wincing as she took each step. Her bare legs were swollen and purple and she’d had to cut holes in her sandals to accommodate her bunions. ‘This weather doesn’t half give me gyp,’ she said. She was looking at me. ‘You look a bit hot and bothered too!’

‘Yes, I wish it would cool down,’ I gabbled, struggling to find my door key, desperate to get indoors.

‘What have you been up to then?’ she asked.

I knew she meant it in a general way, and probably wasn’t even very interested, but my heart started thumping inside the tight bodice of my dress.

‘Just swimming,’ I said, and managed to find the key at last.

‘Up at the Lido? Oh, I used to have a grand time there when I was your age,’ she said.

I murmured something vague and got inside my own door at last. It was stiflingly hot inside the house – Mum always shut the windows tight for security though we had nothing to interest any burglar. It smelled stuffy too, of lavender floor polish and the sickly air freshener Mum put in the toilet.

I hurried to the bathroom and ran myself a bath. The immersion heater wasn’t on but I didn’t care. I wanted the water to be as cold as possible. It was a shock getting in, and far worse when I lay down with the icy water lapping round my ears, but I lay there as long as I could, my heart pounding. Then I sat up and soaped myself, scrubbing hard. I was shivering so much when I clambered out that it was hard work towelling myself dry.

I washed out my knickers and swimming cossie, then went into my bedroom and put on clean underwear and another old frock and a cardigan too. It was still stiflingly hot in the house but I couldn’t stop shivering. I made myself a cup of tea and gulped it down immediately, scalding my throat. I helped myself to a custard cream from the tin, and then another and another, munching fast until I had a sickly goo of biscuit coating my teeth, but I couldn’t stop until the packet was finished.

It was still a good two hours before Mum was due home. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I tried to read a few pages of Madame Bovary but I couldn’t concentrate. I did some colouring instead, sitting on the chair and leaning hard against the edge of the table until my chest hurt. I had a special historical colouring book with people in intricate costumes. The hardest section was the Elizabethan one, because the women wore elaborate crinolines studded with hundreds of jewels and I could never get my crayons sharp enough to tackle them. But I tried desperately hard now, feeling that if I could only colour in a whole page without going over the lines once then somehow the whole memory of today would be erased.

I was still colouring when Mum came home looking tired out, dark circles under her eyes.

‘Oh my Lord, this heat!’ she said, flopping down onto the sofa. ‘Good heavens, Laura, why are you wearing your winter cardi? Are you still feeling rotten, pet?’

‘I just felt a bit shivery, that’s all,’ I mumbled, studding a crinoline with tiny rubies.

Mum heaved herself up again and felt my forehead.

‘Yet you’re burning! I think you might have a temperature now! What have you been doing?’

‘Nothing! Well, I went to the Lido with Nina actually, but I came home early,’ I said, selecting an orangey-red for the Elizabethan lady’s hair. She looked regal, as if she might be the queen herself.

‘You shouldn’t go somewhere like that Lido by yourself!’ said Mum, fetching the thermometer from the big chocolate box in the sideboard where she kept our medical supplies: the Elastoplast and aspirin and the Kwells and the Ex-Lax and the Fisherman’s Friends.

‘I wasn’t by myself – I said, I was with Nina,’ I insisted, but Mum thrust the thermometer into my mouth so I couldn’t talk any more.

‘Let’s have a look at your face,’ said Mum, pushing my hair back. ‘It’s bright red! I think you’ve got sunstroke. No wonder, if you’ve been lounging around at that Lido. You didn’t go in swimming, did you? Not with those stomach cramps you had this morning.’ She sounded suspicious now.

‘Of course I did,’ I mumbled. ‘You know I get the cramps before, well, my monthly begins. And swimming helps …’

‘Don’t try and talk or you’ll get a mouthful of mercury, you numpty!’ Mum fussed. ‘I don’t like you swimming there, not in the holidays when it gets crowded. I don’t think the water’s chlorinated enough. You get little kids going to the toilet in the water! And those diving boards are a dreadful hazard. There’ll be a terrible accident one day! Don’t you dare go there again!’

There had already been a terrible accident. A strange French boy had jumped on top of me and walked me back to the park and we’d done terribly embarrassing things together in the cricket changing rooms and now I was so worried I wanted to die.

‘All right, I won’t go back there,’ I said.

‘That’s right!’ Mum said, looking surprised that I wasn’t putting up more of a fight. ‘So what have you been up to now?’ She peered over my shoulder. ‘Oh, you’ve done that very nicely! Quite the little artist, aren’t you?’

I started putting my crayons back in their box, neatly in shade order.

‘It’s all right, you can carry on with your colouring if you want. I don’t have to set the table just yet,’ said Mum.

‘I’ve finished for now. I’ll lay the table for you, Mum. You look a bit tired. I’ll make you a cup of tea,’ I offered.

‘You’re a good girl, Laura,’ said Mum, as I’d hoped. I so wanted to be Mummy’s little good girl now, instead of the bad girl who flirted with strange boys and let them fumble with her in the dark.

‘Perhaps you’d like to invite Nina round here tomorrow so you could do some colouring together? I could put on a good tea for you?’ Mum offered.

As if Nina would want to do something as childish as colouring! I didn’t want Nina round here. It was all her fault I’d ended up with Léon. She’d been horrible to me. I was a fool to let her treat me like that just because I was so desperate to keep her as my friend. I didn’t really want her as a friend now. I decided I didn’t care less if I never saw her again.

Even so, I waited for her to ring the next morning as soon as Mum and Dad were out at work. The phone stayed silent. I kept going to look at it, several times lifting the receiver from its cradle to make sure there was still a dialling tone. I’d given up and got all my crayons out again when it rang, making me jump. A slash of orangey-red jerked across my Elizabethan lady’s face, as if she’d just been slashed with a knife and was bleeding to death.

I sighed and went to answer the phone.

‘Where are you?’ said Nina.

‘Where do you think I am?’ I said impatiently.

‘Why haven’t you come round? I’ve been waiting and waiting,’ said Nina.

‘I’m busy,’ I said.

‘What? Don’t be so daft. Listen, we’re planning a picnic up Blackwood Hill,’ she said.

‘You and Yves?’ I said.

‘Are you crazy? He was such a poser. No, me and Daniel and Little Richard. Jimmy was going to come but he can’t make it. We thought you’d want to come. Still, if you don’t want to …’

‘I do. I’ll just finish something and then I’ll be round in half an hour, say?’ I said.

‘See you then. If we haven’t left already,’ said Nina and put the phone down.

I knew she was just winding me up now but I was out of the prefab in five minutes, leaving my crayons all over the table. I was wearing a pink and white check long-sleeved shirt and my blue jeans, clothes that covered up as much of me as possible. My hair was a bit of a mess still from swimming yesterday so I’d hurriedly tied it up in a ponytail. I peered at my reflection in the shop windows along the parade. I looked reassuringly myself again.

I’d quickly manipulated a florin out of my piggy bank, expertly wiggling it out with a knife. I went into the baker’s shop and bought four jam and cream doughnuts.

‘Oh my! You’ll be sick if you try and eat them all yourself!’ said Mrs Bun.

‘No, I’m going on a picnic with my friends,’ I said proudly.

‘Well, have a lovely time, dear,’ she said.

I so hoped I would. I knew Nina was only joking when she said they might go without me if I wasn’t at their house quickly enough. Or was she? I couldn’t trust her any more. I couldn’t even trust myself.

I scurried along, trying hard not to let the doughnuts jiggle around too much in their paper bag. The door to Nina’s house was open when I got there. Little Richard was sitting on the doorstep. He jumped up and charged towards me.

‘She’s here!’ he yelled. ‘Now we can go on the picnic!’ He threw his arms round me. ‘I do like you, Laura!’

I was so touched I nearly burst into tears.

‘I like you too, Little Richard,’ I said, hugging him back. The doughnuts shifted in their bag. ‘Whoops! We’re getting the cakes all squished,’ I said, gently wriggling out of our embrace.

‘Cakes? What sort of cakes?’ Little Richard asked, his eyes gleaming.

‘Doughnuts. The long kind with cream. Nina likes them. Do you like them too?’ I asked anxiously.

‘I totally adore them,’ said Little Richard.

‘So do I!’ Daniel was in the doorway. He looked even browner in his white T-shirt and khaki shorts. ‘Hey, Laura. Have you had a good summer so far?’

‘Great,’ I said, and it was great now. Even Nina acted pleased to see me.

‘Are there cakes in that bag?’ She had a peep. ‘I hoped you’d bring some! Mum’s made us some bread pudding, which is OK, but a bit boring. No jam, no cream, no sugary bits!’

‘And we’ve got egg and tomato sandwiches and cheese rolls and apples and Twiglets and orange juice!’ said Little Richard. ‘And I’m helping Daniel carry the picnic, aren’t I, Dan?’

‘If you’re very good, you can carry all of it if you like,’ said Daniel, winking at me.

Little Richard took him seriously and looked anxious. ‘I’m not sure I’m quite strong enough to carry all of it,’ he said.

‘Then I’ll carry you and the picnic,’ said Daniel, lifting him up onto his shoulders and galloping down the hall with him. Little Richard clung to his hair, squealing with delight.

‘Brothers!’ said Nina, rolling her eyes. ‘So, how did you get on with that Léon bloke? I saw you go off with him when you came out the changing hut. He looked a bit gormless if you ask me, but maybe that was because he couldn’t speak English.’

I swallowed, not sure what to say.

‘Come on! Did he get the trolley with you? You did have enough money on you, didn’t you? I felt a bit bad about that,’ said Nina. This was clearly meant as an apology.

‘We walked,’ I said.

‘What, hand in hand?’ Nina teased.

‘Some of the time,’ I mumbled.

‘Really! Hey, did he kiss you?’ she demanded.

‘Did Yves kiss you?’ I asked quickly.

‘Maybe,’ said Nina. Then she sighed. ‘No, if you must know, he went and started diving again, showing off, and then this girl went up on the diving boards too. Peroxide blonde with a great figure and a very tight swimming costume. She couldn’t dive for toffee, practically belly flopped – it was just a pathetic ploy to get Yves interested in her.’

‘And was he? Interested?’ I asked.

‘Well, he went off with her, didn’t he, so I was left all on my tod. Charming!’

‘Oh, poor Nina!’ I said.

‘I wasn’t really that into him anyway. Anyway … Léon? Tell me all about it!’ said Nina.

I glanced at Daniel and Little Richard, who were still larking around, probably in earshot. Nina looked too and pulled me into the kitchen. The picnic was set out on the table, wrapped in separate tinfoil parcels. She started packing them in two duffel bags, presumably the big one for Daniel and the small one for Little Richard.

‘We won’t let him carry the doughnuts. He’ll fish one out and eat it before we even get to the forest,’ she said. She put her head close to mine. ‘Did Léon kiss you?’

I screwed up my face. ‘Yes.’

‘And did you like it?’

‘No. Well, I suppose at first I did,’ I said honestly.

‘It can’t have been a real film-star kiss in broad daylight out on the street,’ said Nina.

‘Well, we weren’t. We went in the cricket changing hut in the park,’ I said, feeling my cheeks burning.

‘What? Laura! I never thought you of all people would neck with a strange boy in a hut!’ Nina gasped.

‘Shut up! The boys might hear!’ I said, panicking.

‘It was just kissing, wasn’t it? You didn’t go any further? You didn’t get to number three or four, did you?’ Nina whispered.

The girls at school all had an elaborate numerical system to show what they’d done with a boy. It saved the embarrassment of spelling it out. Up until yesterday I hadn’t even got to number one. A few of the girls had gone as far as seven or eight. No one had got to ten, the last forbidden number, not even Nina.

‘Laura, please. Tell me! I’m your best friend, aren’t I?’ said Nina.

‘Yes, but I don’t want to talk about it,’ I mumbled.

I couldn’t talk about it, because I wasn’t sure how far I had gone. Could I have got to number ten without actually realizing it? I could spell things out to Nina and she might know, but I wasn’t a total fool. She wasn’t the sort of girl you could trust with a terrible secret. She would swear on her life she wouldn’t tell anyone, but I remembered some of the secrets she’d confided about Patsy and some of her other friends. She wouldn’t be able to resist it. She’d spread it all round the school the first week we went back.

I took a deep breath. ‘He tried to go a bit further, but I wouldn’t let him. I didn’t even like him that much,’ I said. At least the second sentence was true.

‘Oh well. Never mind. At least you’ve had your first proper kiss,’ said Nina.

I wished I hadn’t. Thinking about it now made me feel queasy. I found I was wiping my lips hard on the back of my hand, as if I wanted to scrub them clean. I shut my eyes.

I’m not going to think about it any more. It didn’t even happen. It was just a silly dream. I walked home from the Lido by myself.

‘Laura?’

I opened my eyes.

‘What’s the matter?’ Nina looked concerned.

‘Nothing.’

‘Your face was all screwed up like you were in pain.’

‘Oh. It was just a tummy cramp. You know, it’s the first day of my period today,’ I lied.

‘Poor you. Would you sooner stay at home then?’ Nina asked.

‘No, it’s fine. Don’t say anything to the boys!’ I said.

‘As if!’ said Nina. She gave me an unexpected hug. ‘But whisper to me if it’s really bad and we’ll go home together, OK?’

‘Sure,’ I said, hugging her back.