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  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I will. For sure.’

  ‘Good, that’s the spirit. Are you going to see the Leader at Bournemouth next week?’

  ‘I hope so,’ she said enthusiastically, ‘Frank said he’d take me.’

  ‘Excellent, it’ll be a day never to be forgotten. He is a good boy, that Frank, I can see that, we have very high hopes for him, and if I may say so, we have high hopes for you too, miss Cornelius.’

  Joss smiled broadly. Things were looking up.

  ‘Just you make sure you enrol in the Party before you go to Bournemouth.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I think I will.’

  ‘Excellent. I believe that is everything for today. You think on about what we have discussed, and remember, just between ourselves mind, just between ourselves,’ and he touched his nose with his index finger and tapped it three times, an action she thought faintly ridiculous.

  ‘Yes,’ she said again, never tempted to reciprocate.

  ‘Very nice to meet you, Joss,’ he said, and both of the guys stood up in unison and re-created those cracked smiles. The meeting was over. Granger went to the door and opened it for her.

  ‘I look forward to our next little chat,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘so do I.’

  LATER ON, SHE BUMPED into the headmaster in the corridor.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Joss?’ he said. ‘Did it go all right, your meeting?’

  ‘Yes, Mister Kimpton, fine thank you.’

  He leant slightly down and whispered in her ear.

  ‘What exactly did they want to know, Joss? You can tell me.’

  ‘Oh, they just wanted to know....’ and Granger’s words dashed back into her head, do please remember it is quite confidential, just between the three of us, no one else you understand. ‘Oh nothing really, just some details as to what the EWP might mean for me, nothing much to it. I don’t really know why they came all that way.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said, clearly disappointed, ‘if that’s all it was.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘that’s all it was. Nothing at all.’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said, moving away unconvinced.

  Fifteen

  In the darkness, Frank and Joss embraced on the Stour river bridge. He was leaning back against the metal railings, his arms around the girl, tugging her ever closer. They were learning how to snog, not that either of them needed a great many lessons.

  It was not a word that Joss used or appreciated that much, snogging, though Frank used it all the time. How about a snog? Let’s have a snog. I’m going to snog you. How about a snogging session, I’ll be round for a snog in ten minutes, even in his emails and text messages he always signed off with: Snog! Snog! Snog!

  Beneath them, three small pleasure cruisers were bumbling up the busy river in line astern, hurrying to get berthed before the deadline, not that Frank and Joss noticed that, not even when the first boat had disappeared under the bridge they were standing on, and the leading hand had whistled vociferously in their direction, did they pay any attention.

  The Priory clock began chiming nine.

  In their interrupted moment, Frank whispered in her ear, ‘Do you fancy going up the reed beds?’

  Do I fancy going up the reed beds?

  She knew well enough what going up the reed beds entailed. It was a desolate and lonely place further up the river where people went who were up to no good, or so her mother always said. Half the sixth form were becoming better acquainted with one another up the reed beds; better acquainted with everything that life had to offer. Joss couldn’t think of anything worse. A quick fumble about in flattened mucky reeds, amongst the water rats and dog shit, and unofficial vigilantes, and peeping toms, who had often been reported creeping about in that peculiar piece of flat damp ground. She didn’t fancy going up the reed beds one little bit, not then, not ever.

  ‘No,’ she said, as gently as she could. ‘Not now, Frank. It’s too late.’

  ‘Well, when then?’

  ‘I don’t know, Frank, I’ll let you know when.... but not yet.’

  ‘I won’t wait forever!’

  ‘I know that! But you will have to wait awhile yet. If you want to, that is.’

  Fact was, she didn’t know if she would ever be ready to go up the reed beds with Frank Preston, or with anyone else, come to that. She liked Frank well enough; it was true, even his plump figure, which others made so much fun of, and which she knew was down to too many cheap cheese and sausage pizzas. It didn’t put her off him, nothing did, and that must mean something. He had a cute enough face, he was clean cut, and for a big guy, he was gentle, but there had to be more to life than that. Didn’t there? In reality he was the big brother she never had.

  He’d looked after her since the first day they had entered the big school together. He was big even back then as an eleven-year-old. The other kids would rarely mess with him, or with her, because she was under his wing, and in the intervening six or seven years, she had seen him progress in that direction. Bigger.

  At home, she suffered from the age-old curse of the oldest one always being expected to look after the younger siblings, or so she saw it that way, being the eldest. She couldn’t remember a time when her parents weren’t saying, Look after Eve, Joss, she’s only little, or: Take care of Donald; he’s just a baby. But who looks after the looker-afterer?

  In Joss’s case, more often than not, it had been big Frank Preston, and she was grateful for that. She always would be. The big man, as she sometimes addressed him, as she addressed all her emails to him, was the most important person in her life, outside the family. He had been for years. Hey big man! The truth was he was the first person she thought about when waking in the morning. Every morning, when she would wonder what he was doing, and how he was feeling, and she would hate to lose him, it was true. But did that mean she had to do that? Go up the reed beds? No, the answer was no, and that was final. No means no!

  He was big in other places too; she knew that for an absolute certainty. She had discovered it during the recent summer when they had the use of Joss’s auntie’s beach hut at Steamer Point, by Friars Cliff. For some reason, she had been teasing him about his manhood all day, as he changed inside the hut, and she lolled around outside in her new slimline pink bikini.

  ‘Go on, Frank, give us a flash!’ she’d said, grinning to her best mate Leticia Edwards, who had just donned her fabulous white cossie. To their astonishment he came and stood in the doorway, and did precisely that! He’d dropped his pants, and though he was not in any way excited, the sheer size of it had stunned them both into opened mouthed silence.

  ‘Jesus, he’s well hung!’ said Leticia later, when she rang Joss.

  ‘He’d better not think of bringing that thing near me!’ Joss had replied half in jest, and afterwards they both collapsed in laughter, before Leticia had said, ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ and it was the way she had said it, that alarmed Joss. Never a true word spoken in jest, don’t they say, Joss thought, and in her mind she kept returning to the possibility that one day Frank might dump her, for Lets. She’d go up the reed beds with Frankie Preston in a flash, and no mistake, and after witnessing that sight in the beach hut doorway, Lets might even suggest it.

  He had never been short of admirers, had Frank, despite his bulk, and Joss knew that well enough, and if she didn’t put out soon, then there were plenty of others who were only too keen to go up the reed beds with him. The funny thing was, it didn’t make any difference, she wasn’t ready, and that was all there was to it. No really does mean no. Tough luck Frankie. You will just have to wait.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Joss, still on the bridge, kissing Frank tenderly on the neck, ‘there is something important I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘Oh aye,’ he said, suddenly becoming interested, for this was more like it. Did she want to talk to him about birth control, or something else to do with doing it? Did she need any advice in that direction? Had she made secret plans when they could be
alone together? Was she making ready to surprise him, perhaps on his birthday? He could cope with surprises, come to think of it, he’d adore any nice surprise that involved Joss Cornelius, and what was more he could handle whatever came his way. He was well experienced, several times as a matter of fact, with several different members of their very school class, now including the luscious Lets; not that Joss knew that, or at least he hoped she didn’t, and God forbid she ever found out.

  ‘What, my sweet?’ he said. ‘Ask me anything you like, and I promise to give you a clear and truthful answer,’ he said, pompously. Frank knew well enough that Joss couldn’t talk to her parents about personal things; she never had been able to do that. He was her rock, or so he saw himself, and in the past, he was the first person she had ever turned to whenever she had something on her mind, personal or otherwise, Frank was her confidante. But this time, he was to be disappointed.

  ‘I had a visitor,’ she said. ‘At school.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘A guy called Mister Granger; he came with a copper too, though it was this Mister Granger who did all the talking.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’ said Frank, now slightly less interested.

  ‘Apparently, this Mister Granger is a big noise in the Party, up in London.’

  ‘He is,’ said Frank decisively. ‘Very big.’

  ‘You know him?’ said Joss, in a mixture of surprised and impressed.

  ‘Yep, you don’t cross Mister Granger, I am telling you. You must have been singled out. They must think a hell of a lot of you.’

  ‘Can’t think why. He wanted me to join the Party.’

  ‘I’ve been telling you to do that for yonks.’

  ‘I know Frank, well you’ll be pleased to know, I have decided to do just that.’

  Frank smiled inwardly. It would be another feather in his cap, because he could detail that he had sponsored her. Another one, and he was becoming good at it, signing up the school-kids, especially the girlies. Joss Cornelius would be his thirty-eighth recruit, though that little statistic would remain secret between him and head office. In due course he would receive a nice little financial kickback, not that he would tell her anything about that, not that the money was so important, not really. He wasn’t in it for the money, he told himself.

  ‘Great,’ he said, ‘when?’

  ‘Soon as. I thought I’d fill in the application form and send it off tomorrow.’

  ‘No, you don’t want to do that,’ he said in a hurry. ‘Do it online, that’s the safest and quickest way. Look, why not come back to mine now and we’ll fill in the form on my computer?’

  Frank knew well enough that if the application went through his computer he would receive the automatic financial bonus, and no one would ever know where it had come from, or the reason why.

  ‘All right,’ she said, ‘if there’s time.’

  ‘There’s time for that, always time for that, and afterwards, I’ll walk you home, and we can have a good snog in that alleyway just after the bridge.

  ‘All right, Frankie,’ she said, ‘if you’re sure.’

  ‘Oh I’m sure, I’ve never been so certain of anything.’

  FRANK KEPT HIS WORD, and directed her through the surprisingly complicated application form to become a fully paid up member of the National Party of Great Britain. She had been surprised that she was expected to pay the initial £25 application fee up front, easy bank transfers accepted via the National Bank, and an annual contribution for a similar amount, (it is very expensive to run a political party, Frank had explained to her, and they simply had to defray their expenses somehow. Consider it an honour.)

  Frank assured her that she wouldn’t have to pay any more money, not until her EWP placement was completed, and not until she was earning good cash. There was no financial pain to worry about there, and now that she was a Party member, albeit provisional, they would be able to apply for preferential positions when the Leader visited Bournemouth, and Frank seemed incredibly thrilled at that.

  All the way home Joss pondered on telling him the rest of that meeting between her and Granger and Tomkins, but something told her to keep quiet, and as time was running out, their snogging session had to be trimmed, not that it was unlikeable, because it wasn’t. Frank was becoming a very good snogger; kisser she preferred, perhaps it was all the practice she was giving him, she imagined, though she would never tell him that.

  Later that night as she lay in her bed alternating between daydreaming of her future, and pondering as to whether she should tell her mother and father of that strange conversation with Mister Granger, the same chat he had insisted that she keep secret, she eventually fell into a fitful sleep without ever reaching any clear conclusions.

  Sixteen

  Conscious that he had been late the previous week, come Saturday night, Martin arrived at the hut early. It wasn’t raining, though as it often did on Hengist, it was blowing a gale. Predictably, Colin wasn’t there, and in the darkness Martin sat down and waited, alone with his thoughts.

  He found himself thinking of Liz. She had returned from the SPATs office and poured out everything that had happened there. Thankfully, the lad had gone missing, and though Martin had some second thoughts about that, deep down he was glad the kid had disappeared. But he was soon to be disappointed, for Adam turned up like a bad penny, in the middle of their evening meal, in a bloodstained jacket and shirt, Martin’s jacket and shirt, that Liz had seen fit to loan the kid.

  ‘What the hell’s happened to you this time?’ Liz had said.

  Adam proceeded to tell them about his visit to the cottage, and the blow that someone had crashed down on his head.

  ‘You didn’t see anything at all?’ Martin quizzed him aggressively, the doubt there for all to hear.

  ‘Not a bloody thing!’ Adam snapped back.

  ‘Not even whether it was a man or a woman?’

  ‘Not even that! Though something tells me it was a woman, I don’t know why.’

  ‘I wonder if it was that weaselly bugger, Inspector Smeggan,’ said Liz, thinking out loud.

  ‘I don’t know, it could have been,’ said Adam. ‘But why would he do that?’

  ‘Serves you right for going back there, you idiot!’ said Martin, and that was where things took a turn for the worse, so far as Martin was concerned.

  ‘He can’t stay here any longer,’ insisted Liz, ‘they might be watching the apartment.’

  ‘Where then?’ said Martin.

  ‘With you, of course!’ Liz had said, grinning.

  ‘Oh no! No way, you can get that idea out of your head.’

  BUT DURING THE COURSE of the evening Liz had made it clear to him that unless he played ball and housed Adam, albeit temporarily, at his mother’s grand house over in Canford Cliffs, she would not play ball with him. In short: she was saying: You no helpee me – you no longer stay over here.

  She hadn’t exactly said there would be no further favours in the bedroom unless he complied, but he knew well enough what she had in mind, and he knew too that Elizabeth was nothing, if not stubborn. On more than one occasion, Martin had previously jokingly described her as having been descended from the donkeys that patrolled the beach. She had always been that way, and Martin soon realised he was fighting a losing battle in opposing her. He had no desire to be deprived of her company, not for any amount of time, not for anything.

  Predictably, he capitulated, and that night, long before the VCS curfew bit, he took Adam home and introduced him to his mother as a trainee reporter at the BBC.

  ‘He’ll be staying here for a little while,’ explained Martin.

  ‘You should have given me more notice,’ complained his mother, somehow managing to keep the annoyance from her voice. ‘I would have aired the bed.’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Reamse,’ said a grateful Adam, happy enough to be sleeping in what he saw as the safest house in Dorset.

  MARTIN SAT ALONE IN the darkness in the stinking hut, and recalled the quizzical look his
mother had given him when the pair of them had turned up on her doorstep, a look that said: What mess have you got yourself into this time? As mothers do, she knew him better than anyone else. At least she’d kept her darkest thoughts to herself, even as Martin was fleeing out through the front door, rushing back to Blue Reef Point, before the curfew came down. There was a decent consolation, he and Liz would have the apartment all to themselves, and that was worth hurrying for. Martin was still thinking about that, when a man entered the hut.

  ‘Colin?’ he said, glancing up.

  ‘Expecting someone else?’

  ‘No, not at all. Sorry, I was miles away.’

  ‘Well pay attention, schmuck, there seems to be more people about this week.’

  ‘It’s the rain,’ said Martin, ‘or lack of it.’

  ‘You’re right there. So, Mister Reamse, down to business, any developments this week?’

  ‘There are, as a matter of fact. How long have you got?’

  ‘As long as it takes, within reason.’

  ‘And you Colin, anything new with you?’

  ‘I’m not sure, you start, and we’ll see where we go.’

  ‘I have some news on your esteemed employer,’ said Martin.

  ‘The Messenger?’

  ‘The same.’

  ‘Spill, I’m all ears.’

  ‘Two things. First, the name of your new competitor will be National Today.’

  ‘So, it’s really going to happen?’

  ‘Oh yes. I told you that.’

  ‘Naff title,’ grunted Colin.

  ‘My thoughts, entirely. I think you will see something moving within a couple of months.’

  ‘And second?’

  ‘The other juicy piece of gossip I picked up is that The Messenger has bagged an interview with our esteemed Leader at the Bournemouth conference.’

  ‘No!’ said Colin in disbelief. ‘How did you find that out?’