Chapter 2

“It must be great to be so in love. To have some close to you like that.”

At eight-thirty the next morning, Will and Lizzie huddled under an umbrella in the school car park, awaiting the arrival of a fifty-seat coach. It was already a quarter of an hour late. As Chair and Vice-Chair of the student committee, Lizzie and Will were often called upon to perform such tasks. The sky was dark grey, the wind howled and there was a relentless drizzle—a fine mist of rain that permeated every fibre of the body.

The umbrella wasn’t even providing them with much protection from the miserable conditions since the wind blew the rain sideways.

“Here it is,” Lizzie shouted over the wind. She pointed towards the school gates. “You go and tell Mr Thompson and I’ll go meet the driver.”

“Do you get to keep the umbrella?”

“Of course. I’m the Chair, after all.”

“By one vote.”

“Still beat you though. Go on. Please. You’re quicker than me, you won’t get as wet.”

“I don’t suppose it’ll make any difference. I’m already soaked.” Will shook his head and raced back to the school. After telling Mr Thompson that the coach had arrived, he returned to the car park. Lizzie was already on the bus.

“Will,” she called when he climbed aboard. “I’ve saved us the back row. You, me, Amy, Bobby and Julie.”

“Great! I know Nugent wanted it, so anything that pisses him off is fine by me.”

As he sat looking out of the back window towards the school, Will saw that Nugent and three of his cronies were first out of the reception doors and he watched with a smirk as they raced to the bus.

“Oy, Billy-boy! Shift,” Nugent said when he saw him sitting in the seat he wanted. “Back row’s ours.”

“Who said?”

“I did. The back row is always ours. Get it?”

“Well, we were here first,” said Lizzie. “So tough.”

“Tough? What d’you mean, tough? I’ll—”

“Take a seat, please, Mr Nugent. Quickly. The rest of us are getting quite wet out here,” said Mr Thompson from the entrance.

Nugent grunted and flung himself into a seat a few rows in front of Will as everyone else got on. Lizzie waved to Amy, Bobby and Bobby’s girlfriend, Julie, when she saw them climb on board. There were six seats across the back row. Lizzie sat at one end by the window, Will sat in the middle. Amy planted herself down between the two, while Bobby sat at the other end with Julie leaving an empty seat between them and Will.

Nugent knelt up on his seat, rested his arms on the back and growled, “First one on gets the back row, right? I swear, it’s fucking well ours on the way back.”

“I don’t know why he’s coming anyway,” Amy whispered to Will as Nugent sat down again and they set off for Westmouth. “It’s not as if he’s likely to pass the exams, let alone get good enough grades for a place at university.”

“I think he heard they sell beer in the Student’s Union at lunchtime,” replied Will.

“That would explain it.” Amy smiled her broad smile. Of all Amy’s qualities, her smile was close to the top of the list of things that Will liked about her. It wasn’t just that it was wide and exposed her perfect teeth. It was that it spread across her whole face, especially to her eyes which twinkled and became an even more strikingly deep blue than usual. Amy’s smiles were never faked. She only smiled when she was happy.

Thankfully, she was happy a lot.

King George’s was on the north-western edge of Walminster, less than a mile from the border of one of London’s most deprived boroughs. Rather than drive through Walminster to get to the motorway east of the town, the driver set off in the opposite direction and took them on the winding country roads. Will watched the lush green countryside slip by wearing a wry smile. Walminster, and the area around King George’s in particular, was grey, grimy and depressing. The industrial buildings pumped out a constant flow of smoke that covered the buildings with an ever-thickening layer of grime. It was a stark contrast to the farmland, meadows and woods that separated the town from its coastal neighbour.

“What are you thinking about?” Amy asked.

“What?” Will shook himself out of his trance. “Sorry, what?”

Amy grinned. “You’ve got that far off look again. The one you get when you’re thinking about something.”

Will had been thinking how wonderful it would be to spend some time just walking through the countryside with Amy, but he wasn’t about to tell her that. “Just ... I know it’s only twenty-five miles to Westmouth, but it’s like a different world or something.”

“I know. I love it there. I love the sea and the park and the Winter Gardens. It’s a great place. We were going to move there instead of Walminster when Daddy got his promotion, but he said it was too expensive. Too many rich old people pushing up the price of the houses. He said we could get a much bigger house for less money in Walminster.”

“Do you regret moving to Walminster?”

She offered him a sweet, subtle variation of her dynamite smile. “No. Not really. There are some good things about the place.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. One or two.”

Westmouth University, situated atop Westmouth Hill overlooking the town and the bay, had over a century of academic tradition, whereas Walminster College was less than ten years old. That was the reason the King George’s sixth-formers were taken on a half-hour coach ride to the coast instead of visiting their home town College. It was still raining when they got off the coach in one of the campus car parks and were led to the Student’s Union building. Once there, they spilt up to tour the academic departments they were interested in, their objective for the day being to gather as much information as they could about the particular courses they might apply for. For Will, this meant a morning spent alone in the Law department. He met up with his friends back in the Student’s Union building at lunchtime and they planned to tour the rest of the campus together in the afternoon.

While Will and his friends waited patiently in line for their free meal with the rest of the many visitors to the campus, he couldn’t help notice that not only did John Nugent push into the queue to get served quicker, but he also bought a bottle of lager to go with his meal.

Eventually, they collected their meals and found a table.

“So,” Amy said, “Where have you all been this morning?”

“Maths department,” grunted Bobby through a mouthful of food. “Dead boring really and all the teachers are just as geeky as you’d imagine.”

“You really shouldn’t talk with your mouth full, Bobby. It’s disgusting.”

“Sorry.” His mouth was still full.

“What about you, William?”

“Law. It’s a decent department they’ve got here. They have a really high graduate employment rate. Not as high as the top places, but still pretty good.”