Chapter 1

“A week with three girls! I don’t think so! No, no, that wouldn’t do at all.” Mr Bearstow had reacted as expected, and Rupert brought into action phase 1 of the campaign.

“Really? Why?” He had practiced the innocent, uncomprehending face for hours to get it just right. It was a triumph of nonchalant insouciance. Mr Bearstow hesitated, but it wasn’t enough, it was never going to be enough.

“Well, I mean. What would people think? I mean, really. No.” Mr Bearstow was just something of a prude. He couldn’t quite bring himself to explain to his sixteen year old son that he, Albert Bearstow, thought his son would be looking to rip off the girls’ clothes and roger them senseless. He didn’t like to discuss sex, see sex, or hear about it. Sex was for the bedroom, between husband and wife; preferably in the dark, at the weekend. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy it; he loved it. He loved the taste of his wife, the feel of her, the sound of her as he squishilly entered her. He loved all that. But it was not something to discuss at the dinner table whilst he was eating his cottage pie.

“We all saved up. It’ll be brilliant to sail there ... and it will be perfectly safe because it is inland, not on the sea.” Rupert deliberately talked as if no decision against the trip had been made.

“That’s hardly the point, son. No I’m afraid you’ve lost the deposit.”

“What is the point? It’s not like I haven’t been away with them before.”

“That was the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze, for one night. You had separate tents.”

“No Dad, that was when we were fourteen. We did the Silver last year. You were away.” Strike! He’d forgotten they had done the Silver together too. Mr Bearstow was on the back foot. Down but not counted out.

“Still, that was supervised wasn’t it?” Yes it was, there was little or no chance of hanky-panky on that trip away; Mrs Chalmers was fifteen stone of pure man-hating adrenaline. She would have made sure that nothing untoward happened. And nothing had; nothing would have done anyway.

The four of them had known each other since they started school at five. Abigail and Mary for longer than that; they had been at ballet school together. Neither had really been ballet material; Abigail was more of an outdoors type, and Mary had been somewhat chubby at five. They had dropped the ballet in the second year of school as the mothers got tired of an argument every week. Abigail had been crying about going in on that first day, and Rupert had, with no prompting, just put his arm round her and said: “It’ll be fun, I’ll look after you.” Then they had both gone in together, just like that. Mary had gone to the Catholic Infants and Juniors School, so had only joined them at the secondary school, though she and Abigail had stayed friends, so she and Rupert had met at Abi’s house a few times and got on well together. Amelie had been on the periphery for a while (coming to parties because she had cried when her sister had been dropped off the first time, Mrs Gunstone just said “Oh, well stay. Honestly it’s fine.”), and then joined the group full time when she came to the Blair Comprehensive at eleven.

Rupert’s first action, in the infants at five, had got the two mothers talking. Mrs Gunstone was grateful for Rupert making life easier, and the two women started chatting at the school gate.

Rupert was that rare boy, one who never went through a phase of seeing girls as a different species to be avoided. All through Junior school he stayed friends with Abigail, despite their different circumstances. Abigail’s parents were champagne socialists. Mr Gunstone was a solicitor, well paid and able to hold socialist ideals without having to forgo any of the trappings of good living. Mr Bearstow was a manager of the shoe shop in town, and his wife worked part time there. The name they chose to give their son meant that the Gunstones thought they were higher up the pecking order than they were; by the time they realised, it didn’t matter, the children were friends so they fraternised at school socials.

At twelve, Rupert had been invited to go sailing with the Gunstones. Not a dinghy, a proper thirty foot yacht at the coast. He had loved it. Abigail tolerated it. She was actually a good sailor, but lacked the technicalities. From that first day, Rupert had been hooked, he read up the theory of sailing, the rules of the road, the art of navigation. Crucially, he also learned knots. The next time he was invited, a few weeks later, he was asked to tie a trip rope to the kedge so they could free it if it caught in rocks, Mr Gunstone had said “No, you’ve put too many loops round for a bowline. The rabbit only runs round the tree once.”

“I’m using a double bowline rather than a single. Less likely to come undone.” Had been Rupert’s response. Mr Gunstone had checked later, sure enough, the boy had been on the nail. He was impressed. From then on Rupert was accepted as a fellow sailor. It helped that he was a boy. Mr Gunstone was something of a misogynist; he never really believed that a girl could sail properly – even after Tracy Edwards, Ellen MacArthur, and Emma Richards. Rupert was given lots of sailing opportunities.

Mary and Amelie were invited a couple of times, but never took to it. Their attendance was therefore more for company than crew. When Mary reached fifteen, she was no longer chubby, she filled her bikini just right. It would be wrong to say that Mr Gunstone was aware of any sexual frisson of having a pretty young girl on board with his daughter, but it would also be true to say that not being aware of it did not mean it did not exist.