Chapter 1

Thursday 9th July

Lauren watched the convoy of coaches winding their way from the lush green valley a few hundred meters below. They slowly snaked and shuddered up towards the mountain pass, bound for Italy and the crystal clear lakes beyond. She envied the tourists their freedom and opportunity to explore beyond the closeted environment of the picturesque alpine valleys. Recently, her own yearning for discovery had driven her to feign sickness. She had walked one glorious summer day up through the dark, steeply sloping forest to emerge again into the shimmering heat of the late morning and there, lazing on the deserted mountainside, she had gazed down at the people in their tiny villages below. The weather had been perfect, the sun shining brilliantly in a cloudless blue sky, reflecting off the snowy mountain peaks, with just a hint of a breeze that cooled her tanned face and rippled the soft down of her arms.

Andleburg, the village where her grandmother had settled forty years earlier, was a few kilometers from Interlaken. It possessed an air of bygone tranquility coupled with stunning views of the Jungfrau and the majestic mountain range beyond. But occasionally, more so recently, she had felt cramped and concerned that while time marched on in the world at large, it passed over Andleburg with abandon, choosing to concentrate on a more receptive audience in the larger towns.

Lauren was not one of the village’s prettiest girls, but her features were distinctive, characterised by her boyish face, deeply set brown eyes and strong nose. It was a face, she thought, that people would find pleasant rather than beautiful, that people would be happy to kiss as a duty rather than as a source of pleasure. Her skin was perfect and unblemished from the childhood ravages of chicken pox or measles. Her wavy brown hair normally fell to her shoulders, but was constrained presently by an elastic band (the height of fashion, she thought to herself) and tied back.

A sharp crack brought her out of her reverie, as Lauren realised that some optimistic team-mate had passed the ball to her.

“Lauren Gisal, for goodness sake run with the ball, look around you!” shouted the games-mistress, umpire and part-time sadist Miss Connely, in her Irish-accented Swiss- German.

She was a petite woman who in Lauren’s estimation was about twenty-five. She looked like as though her body had given up adding inches to her stature during her mid-teens to concentrate on providing a mane of straight dark hair that hung down to her waist, tied back in a similar manner to Lauren’s at the nape of the neck. Miss Connely wore a tracksuit making it difficult to judge her physical build, although the tracksuit looked only partially filled. Lauren remembered that she had seen her undressing in the staff changing area a couple of weeks ago and had remarked to Nikki at the time that she could have passed for one of the senior girls.

“I don’t think so” Nikki had said, “she looks like a virgin”. Lauren smiled at the conversation, looked up towards the goal and hit the ball resoundingly. She was surprised to see it scythe through the grass at great speed, and moreover, in the direction that she had wanted. The flow of adrenaline and the rush of expectation subsided as quickly as it had begun, as the opposing goalkeeper gathered the ball safely just to the side of the net.

She counted herself among the more fortunate of her contemporaries. She had a family who had few financial worries, she had a brother (Lauren saw Mike only when he returned from boarding school), she had a very comfortable house and now had found a wonderful friend in Nikki Brugen. Although Lauren had lived in Andleburg all of her life, Nikki had arrived only a couple of years ago due to her family’s relocation - her father managed one of the largest hotels in the area. It had taken only a few weeks for Lauren and Nikki to become the staunchest of allies, confiding in secrets and personal tittle-tattle that is usually reserved for one’s inner-most thoughts. Nikki was a never- ending source of knowledge (on occasions inaccurate but always entertaining) which came from eavesdropping in the hotel. Lauren’s father, who worked for a government research department, rarely overheard gossip or conversation that was interesting, unless of course import quotas could be considered suitable material for the exchange of whispered wisdom.

Lauren determined that she had spent the past thirty minutes walking, trotting and running around the rectangle of grass to little advantage, the ache in her limbs testament to her exertion. There was a hint of shape in her long brown legs, accentuated by her red socks at half-mast and her dark blue games shorts. Recent months had replaced her gangly features with a recognisable feminine form. Some of the girls said that the exercise would help to give them beautiful legs in later life, but Lauren was a firmer believer in destiny and fate being responsible for shaping her legs and every other event in her life. The final whistle sounded, and so she spun on her heel and headed for the changing rooms, noting that Nikki’s game must have ended earlier as her pitch was now empty.

As she trudged past the goal post, she looked across the fence of the field and down again into the valley. She could see pollen and seeds flying into the summer air as Mr. Hubert, who owned the Chemist shop in town, cut a plot of very tall grass in his back garden. Mixed in with the grass were buttercups, daisies and edelweiss, and the scent wafting up to the school was rich and comforting. In contrast, Lauren thought, to Mr. Hubert’s one and only little girl, Claudette, who was in the same class as Lauren and had recently become a thorn in her side. The animosity had started, as far as Lauren could recall, in this spot, the hockey pitch, when Lauren had accidentally swiped Claudette across the shins with her stick. In revenge, Claudette had struck Lauren on the back of her legs while Miss Connely was repeating commands for the linguistically disadvantaged. That was a week ago today, and they had not spoken since.

Despite Lauren’s lack of exertion, she was hot and sweaty from the afternoon’s exercise and small beads of perspiration clung to her forehead. She looked forward to the end of term, only ten days away, when she wouldn’t have to run up and down in the heat, and could lay by the hotel pool with Nikki - assuming that Nikki’s father didn’t object to them occupying “marketable real-estate in premium season” as he called the few square feet they needed. Lauren entered the main changing area for the school and turned into the girl’s section. At the far end of the changing rooms she could see Miss Connely standing already by the entrance to the showers, waiting to catch some poor girl who tried to leave without showering. Noise echoed around the room as girls shouted, lockers slammed and the showers hissed.

The rows of benches were arranged three on each side of the central aisle leading to the showers and could accommodate about one hundred girls. Presently, there were fewer than fifty, all in various states of undress. Lauren recalled how painful it was during the winter, after the freezing temperatures outside to undo her buttons and pull off the heavy hockey shirts. Today there was no such problem as she sat down on the bench seat to remove her boots. She knocked the mud off them and walked over to her locker to retrieve her white towel and clothes. A pair of her classmates skipped past her on their way to the shower, their cute bottoms showing a hint of shape.

She returned to the bench and pulled down her socks, discarding them by her side. Despite the cacophony of shouting and giggling, Lauren returned to her reverie, remembering her fascination almost a year ago when she discovered two or three minute hairs growing above her vagina. She had wondered how long they had been there and that night had taken a long look at herself in the mirror in her parent’s bedroom, striking a number of poses in a similar fashion to those she had seen on the Miss World contest. Returning to bed, her hands had explored every potential source of interest, finding conclusive evidence that her breasts were starting to form. She had pulled her nipples and discovered that they did indeed get hard and elongated, just as she had hoped they would.

Lauren stood up and saw the steam billowing through the doorway of the showers. Ms Connely looked at each of the girls as they made their way to and from the shower stalls, trying to be the model of supervision and discretion. With a thumb either side, Lauren pulled her shorts down past her knees, bringing each leg up in turn to allow them to drop to the floor. She took hold of her shirt and pulling upwards, removed it in one swift movement to reveal her small breasts. She liked her breasts. In fact, she was very proud of them even though she had nothing to do with their shape, size or circumference. In her opinion, they were classically shaped, and much nicer to look at than the girls she seen in her brother’s magazines. She hung the shirt on the hook above her head, and quickly pulled down her knickers. Lauren now had a thin layer of hair growing above her vagina, which scarcely concealed the lips of her vulva. Then came the walk she detested - past Ms Connely on the way to the showers and the feeling of her eyes taking in her shape and mentally comparing her to the other girls. The return journey, for some obscure reason didn’t matter; she could look at her bum all she wanted.

Chapter 2 »