Chapter 6

That night Suzanne was fun and flirty but they did no more than kiss. It was the wrong week for anything else, something that Andrew had rarely been aware of as he tended to have passionate and intense sex but relatively rarely. Suzanne changed the timing of the weekends that they were going to go out so as to avoid this issue. And although they both were perpetually horny they also enjoyed spending time with the other person. They hardly ever went to movies and instead spent the time chatting away. Andrew was spending much more time talking to Suzanne about life, university, life after university, than he was with Leslie. He and Leslie were talking all the time but it was almost exclusively to do with Jullesand and the deal that was crawling towards completion. Suzanne had wormed her way, without any effort or plan, completely into his life. It was Suzanne that now kept him grounded and stopped him from too much teenage stupidity.

The year started to take shape and Physics in particular was hard. The maths on his project was pretty complicated and the five subjects kept Andrew fully engaged at school. The computer course was slow and steady, he wanted to make sure that he passed this final hardware course and so far, had an ‘A’ and a ‘C’ on the two completed modules. Module three was nearing completion as well and Andrew felt on track to have the course complete for the end of the year. What awaited him, and most of the rest of his year, was his UCCA form.

UCCA, the Universities Central Council on Admissions, was the mechanism for applying to university. You completed a standard application form and then listed which universities and which courses you wanted to apply to. You could apply to up to five universities but Andrew was only applying to three, Trinity College at Cambridge, Imperial College London and University College London. General engineering at the first and civil & structural engineering at the two London ones. The form was straightforward and Andrew had a swathe of additional extra-curricular activities to make mention of. The CCF, music, Food Bank, the Duke of Edinburgh Award, assistant coach at hockey, prefect. All these activities helped present a candidate that they be foolish to not offer a place to. Or at least he hoped so. They wanted two references who had known the candidate for a number of years. After some thought Andrew decided to name drop in that section and asked his MP, Malcolm Rifkind, who he had met the previous autumn as well as Moira’s dad Lord Barnes. Harry Strachan and Brian Campbell were the more obvious choices, maybe Julian’s dad. But if he was going to apply to places which historically had way more applications than they give out offers then Andrew wanted his application to stand out. A Court of Session judge and an MP seemed to do the trick; both of them wrote nice letters of reference and recommendation.

The section that he was uncomfortable completing was the other academic achievement section. Andrew had talked with everyone as to whether he reference the Open University course. He even contacted the course Administrator in Milton Keynes. Most people insisted he should include it so reluctantly Andrew included a current partial transcript. The final issue was that he had to hand the form into the school. They were responsible for the submission to UCCA. Andrew did not want any teachers to know and for it to be bandied about that he was doing an Open University course. He wondered if he should confess or hope that it was not picked up on in the deluge of applications? If there had been a teacher that he trusted then he would have confessed but other than the Headmaster he could not think of anyone. What saved him was that Caldwell, the English teacher who had tormented him all these years, was the teacher in charge of the UCCA process. Andrew deliberately waited until very near the deadline, despite having had everything completed for days, and then ‘helped him out’ by showing him the completed application, reference letters etc. and then stuffing it all back into the required envelope. Caldwell ticked his master list without looking at any of the detail and it was done.

Andrew would always loudly claim that he was nothing more than a nerd, studying hard every night, a slave to an unyielding routine. And 90% of his life was structured that way. But it was the last 10% that gave his life flavour. The latest hint of seasoning was nothing more than pleasantly warm late summer weather, not unknown in Scotland but a surprise nonetheless. Andrew had told June to wear a bikini and her sundress, trainers on her feet, but to pack a big beach towel and some flip flops. June had a million questions none of which Andrew had answered by 8.30 on the Sunday morning when he collected her. Parking at the Scout Centre outside South Queensferry and then walking along a muddy forest trail was not enlightening her but the 40 paces down to the beach changed everything. June stood and stared.

“Andrew this is amazing. How did you find it?”

He recounted the story of his brief sojourn in the Scouts, and his reconnaissance expedition to check it out. They walked to the headland; to their left, west, was the Forth Bridge just over a mile away; to their right, south east, the main beach stretched out. June sat on a rock and unlaced her trainers. She didn’t even bother with the flip flops. The first roll of film was lots of unstructured shots, just snaps of June as she walked along the beach. Andrew did get some great long panoramas, endless sand stretching off into the distance. But if the first roll was just playing around thereafter June started to draw all the attention back to her. The sundress was simplicity itself with a long zip from neck to bum. Andrew pulled the zipper down far enough that June could reach it herself before stepping back and getting a great series of shots of June just pulling the zip down, dropping the dress to the sand and stepping out of it. There were no more romantic shots of staring off into the distance. June’s eyes were hungrily staring down the barrel of the camera lens. Andrew was still a relatively new photographer of models but he wasn’t an overawed amateur, so his comments to June were? Blunt? Unexpected? It was something like that.

“Keep your arms to your sides and then pull your shoulders back and draw your upper arms forward.”

It was nothing that hadn’t been shot a million times before, but for June it was a surprise to hear her friend tell her to sex up her photoshoot. She complied without question and knew that the resulting three frames would make her modest cleavage as big as possible. Andrew had June work her body, flip her hair, pose in any and every way possible. He shot two rolls of film of June like this. The shoot stopped as Andrew rewound the completed roll and loaded a fresh roll of film. Once the camera was safely closed up and ready to go again June sat down beside him.

“Are you ready to be more daring?”

Again June was surprised it was Andrew keeping the momentum moving along. And she was surprised at the butterflies in her stomach all of a sudden.

“Let’s see what happens.”

Andrew picked up on the ambiguity of June’s response.

“Wait here a second.”

They had been lucky with no sudden appearances of someone walking a dog. Andrew walked back to the headland, the point where it was possible to see people coming from both directions. It was just as well that he did. A couple were walking their dog and heading towards him. He returned to June and she pulled her sundress back on while Andrew stowed his camera. Then the two of them walked hand in hand along the beach, passing and greeting the other couple. Once they were round the headland Andrew stood and watched as they headed down the long beach, not a glance behind them.

“Okay, I think we are alone again.”

June smiled and removed her sundress again.

“Do you want to do like we did in your garden, naked under the dress? Or do you want to start in your bikini?”

“I don’t know. What do you think?”

Andrew handed June her dress back but once it was on, he took several shots of her shimmying out of her bikini bottoms and several more of June demonstrating the trick that women learn of removing her bra from under the dress. In this case it was her bikini top but the principle was the same. He knew it was the right approach and June was infinitely more relaxed. And it translated through into the poses and shots. Her dress was always riding high up her thighs, just the barest hint of arse cheek starting to show. June spent a lot of time with the dress tight across her chest, her nipples leaving no doubt as to her arousal levels, or conversely with the dress hanging loose, and Andrew getting several shots of side boob. They were boiling the frog slowly. But the chance to do anything else dissolved in the late summer sun. Fortunately they heard all the children long before they saw each other and were back to being a respectable couple on a walk. But three families came down onto the beach with enough supplies for a month and the shoot was over. June sat on a rock, wiped her feet and put her trainers back on. They headed back to the car, leaving the screaming children behind.

“That was fantastic. What a place, I can’t believe it is not better known.”

“It is part of the Roseberry Estate and we parked at the closest point. From looking at the map it appears you come out at the Cramond Inn so it is a fair distance even just one way. Because no road goes past it and you can’t access it from Cramond itself nobody bothers going. Anyway, enough of the location. Did you enjoy the shoot?”

“I did but I was surprised at some of my reactions. The being outside thing really threw me. The first half of the shoot was relaxing, I could picture some of the scenes in my head. I always thought they were shot on some Caribbean beach not just outside Edinburgh! But when you asked if I wanted to do more I was surprised at myself. Suddenly when it came time to do it, I was more nervous than excited. So thank you for letting me get used to the idea.”

“Was it because there was a chance to be seen?”

“I don’t think so. It just seemed a big step. And it was you, which makes it even stranger. We have fucked, seen each other naked all the time but yet with the camera in your hand it was different.”

Teenage shrugs were gender neutral.

“I would like to try again though. Do you know someone who could rent out a studio?”

Andrew smiled at the question.

“Yes, I can get a studio. I will get these rolls printed out over the next couple of weeks and then we can review them. We can talk about the nature of your next shoot then, okay?”

“Perfect.”

June pulled Andrew to a halt and grabbed him for a big kiss.

“Thank you. For everything.”

June tucked her arm into his and they walked back to the car.

By the end of September there was not much routine to Andrew’s life. He had uncertainty around his physics project, which didn’t resolve until just before the October break. There were all the ongoing issues with the business and Andrew was involved in a lot of meetings with Mhairi and Leslie. They had started negotiations with Siemens and they were progressing, if somewhat slowly. But it was noticeable, and not just to Andrew, that both Leslie and Julian involved their parents in daily conversations about the deal whereas Andrew did not. And it was as if his parents knew that he was trying to find the right moment to talk to them and self-sabotaged it every time. Andrew had no memories of his own toddler years, no one does, and Rowen was less than two and a half years younger than him so her toddler years were also nothing but vague amorphous shapes in his mind. But at 17 Andrew got to experience Scott’s toddler years full force. He was about to turn three and consumed his mother’s life. Rowan and his father had been close all her life and there just wasn’t enough oxygen in the family for him. Other than laundry and the weekly pot of lentil soup his mother did nothing for him. With getting his own car, the one time when he spent time with his father, getting lifts somewhere, had stopped. Andrew felt more and more that he had left and gone to university years ago and yet still came to the house, almost by accident. And lurking in the back of his mind was the unpleasant worry that his parents would want more money from him if they knew how much the company was making. Andrew could gloss it up any way he liked but he knew he was subsidising the family. And it wasn’t that he objected to that, they were his family after all, but that it seemed so one way. He paid for his own life, Rowan did not. He paid his own school fees, Rowan did not. He had started working, illegally, at the age of 12; Rowan had never worked a day in her life. And he was the third child, the one that was ignored. He had paid the mortgage, subsidised the family and yet was an afterthought. Dinner, when he was there, was the only family time and it was all superficially pleasant, there was no substance to the interactions. So yes, he was conflicted that his parents did not know about the Siemens deal but the other side of the balance was not short of baggage.

The hockey drama blew up at the end of September and so Andrew felt oddly unsettled compared to previous years. But he had found three other pupils on track to get the Gold Award and so the four of them were going to team up with a group of 4^th and 5^th years looking to get their Silver expedition completed. The four of them would stay an additional night and day on the end of their trip to fulfil the four days, three nights requirement for the Gold award. Andrew did not know the other three guys very well, other than by reputation. They were okay guys just not people he knew well. They were going to Stirling, 25 miles west of Edinburgh and the theme of the expedition was Scottish history, with the Wallace Monument, Stirling Castle and the Bannockburn battle site all in, or near Stirling. There were two teachers on the Silver expedition to chaperone the 12 pupils, seven guys and five women. Travis was going to drive up at the end of the fourth day to confirm that they had fulfilled the expedition requirements. This was all planned and scheduled for the third week in October.