she didn’t look behind her. There was a spot she knew, a dark juncture where she’d become lost once as a little girl, hidden from the world as her mother and father called her name and feared the worst.
Dolly stopped when she reached it, but she didn’t turn around. She stood there, very still, listening, waiting until he was right behind her, until she could feel his breath on the back of her neck, his very closeness heating her skin.
He took her hand and she gasped. She let him turn her slowly to face him, and she waited, wordless, as he lifted the inside of her wrist to his mouth and brushed across it the sort of kiss that made her shiver from way down deep inside.
‘What are you doing here?’ she whispered.
His lips were still touching her skin. ‘I missed you.’
‘It’s only been three days.’
He shrugged, and that lock of dark hair that refused to stay put fell forward across his forehead.
‘You came by train?’
He gave a slow single nod.
‘Just for the day?’
Another nod, half a smile.
‘Jimmy! But it’s such a long way.’
‘I had to see you.’
‘What if I’d stayed with my family on the beach? What if I hadn’t headed back alone, what then?’
‘I still would’ve seen you, wouldn’t I?’
Dolly shook her head, pleased but pretending not to be. ‘My father will kill you if he finds out.’
‘I reckon I can take him.’
Dolly laughed, he always made her laugh. It was one of the things she liked best about him. ‘You’re mad.’
‘About you.’
And then there was that. He was mad about her. Dolly’s stomach turned a somersault. ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘There’s a path through here that leads out into fields. No one will see us there.’
‘You realise, of course, that you could’ve got me arrested.’
‘Oh, Jimmy! You’re being too serious.’
‘You didn’t see the look on that policeman’s face—he was ready to lock me up and throw away the key. Don’t get me started on the way he was looking at you.’ Jimmy turned his head to face her, but she didn’t meet his eyes. The grass was long and soft where they were lying and she was staring up at the sky, humming some dance tune beneath her breath and making diamond shapes with her fingers. Jimmy traced her profile with his gaze—the smooth arc of her forehead, the dip between her brow that rose again to form that determined nose, the sudden drop and then the full scoop of her top lip. God she was beautiful. She made his whole body yearn and ache, and it took every bit of restraint he had not to jump on top of her, pin her arms behind her head and kiss her like a madman.
But he didn’t, he never did, not like that. Jimmy kept it chaste even though it damn near killed him. She was still a schoolgirl, and he a grown man, nineteen years to her seventeen. Two years might not seem a lot, but they came from different worlds, the two of them. She lived in a nice clean house with her nice clean family; he’d been out of school since he was thirteen, taking care of his dad and working at whatever lousy job he could get to make ends meet. He’d been a lather boy at the barber’s for five shillings a week, the baker’s lad for seven and sixpence, a heavy lifter on the construction site out of town for whatever they would give him; then home each night to put the butcher’s gristly odds and ends together for his dad’s tea. It was a life, they did fine. He’d always had his photographs for pleasure; but now, somehow, for reasons Jimmy didn’t understand and didn’t want to unravel for fear of wrecking everything, he had Dolly too, and the world was a brighter place; he sure as hell wasn’t going to move too fast and spoil things.
God it was hard though. From the first moment he’d seen her, sitting with her friends at a table in the street corner cafe, he’d been a goner. He’d looked up from the delivery he was making for the grocer, and she’d smiled at him, just like they were old friends, and then she’d laughed and blushed into her vanilla cup of tea, and he’d known that if he lived to be a hundred years old he’d never see a more beautiful vision. It had been the electric thrill of love at first sight. That