Withering Tights - By Louise Rennison Page 0,66

young and immature, but I am quite, you know…”

He said, “Tall?”

I said, “Well, yes, but I’m, well, there is no need for you to be ashamed to be seen with me.”

Charlie looked at me. “Is that what you thought I meant? That I would have been embarrassed about you?”

I nodded.

He stroked my hair.

“Oh, Lullah. I am so sorry you thought that. I hate to think of you being upset. Look at your eyes in this light, they’re like cats’ eyes.”

Was that a good thing?

And then he kissed me.

Softly on the mouth.

It felt really nice.

Then he did it again.

He had a lovely soft mouth.

It wasn’t like the bat thing at all.

It was soft and melty.

Then he did it again, and put his arms around my waist and pulled me to him.

Oh, please Gabriel, don’t let me faint or fall down a rabbit-hole or bang my head on a branch or…

Then he stopped.

He said, “Tallulah, I can’t do this.”

Oh no.

I said, “I could get better at kissing, if someone would help me…It’s just that I haven’t—”

He hugged me to him.

“Lullah, it’s nothing to do with that, it’s nothing to do with you. You mustn’t think that. And it’s not that I don’t want to. I do. But…”

But what?

He said, “I’ve got a girlfriend.”

When I woke up, it was still dark. In my squirrel bed, I dreamt that I was up on the moors with the Brontë sisters. We were having a book club meeting and I said to Emily, “I’ve rewritten Wuthering Heights and now it has a happy ending. Heathcliff goes to dog obedience lessons with Matilda and the whole thing ends spiffingly.” Then Heathcliff came striding towards us in his white shirt and breeches, and as he gets nearer I realise it is Charlie.

Charlie just looks at us and pours candle wax over his hands.

How could things go so nearly right all the time? First I’m kissed by Charlie, and then he tells me he has a girlfriend.

I suppose if it had been Cain he wouldn’t have bothered to tell me.

It was a good job I was going home.

But I didn’t want to go home.

Even one of the squirrel slippers has lost its tail. I could get Harold to sew it back on if I was staying here.

I got up and went to look out of the window. There was a big full moon, casting silver shadows amongst the trees and across the fields and moors.

It is the big performance of Wuthering Heights tomorrow. The headmaster from Woolfe Academy is coming and some of Monty and Sidone’s ‘theatre dahling’ friends.

I was so restless and upset. I looked at myself in the mirror as the light came up. I don’t mind my face really. Charlie wouldn’t have kissed me at all if he thought I was ugly, would he?

Unless he felt sorry for me.

Would you kiss someone you felt sorry for?

I’d like to think I was a kind person who would.

But maybe I wouldn’t.

In the end I gave up trying to go back to sleep. I thought I would go and see little Lullah and little Ruby. Everyone was still in bed, so I went downstairs and opened the back door quietly. And as I did, I saw Connie swooping off, so the coast was clear.

When I opened the barn door, there was someone in there holding one of the owlets. It was Lullah because I could see her legs sticking out.

I said, “Um, hello?”

And the figure turned round.

Cain.

Fondling the owls.

He’d better not be hurting them.

He said, “Oh, it’s you. You get around for a lanky girl wi’ nowt to her. Are you off back to your soft Southern gaff?”

I said, “You are a complete bounder!”

He half-smiled at me.

“Bounder? Is tha doing a bloody panto at that Dither Hall?”

I was so angry with him. Especially as I was practising being him.

“You know what I mean, all that rock-star stuff, and Jack. And all those poor girls…You pick them up and put them down like they were toy girls. And then they leap into the river. And you just don’t care, because you’re so selfish.”

He looked at me, with his dark eyes gleaming.

“Why ist tha blaming me? I can’t help it, tha knows.”

“What do you mean, you can’t help it?”

He went and sat down, moodily poking the owlets with a little stick.

I said, “Don’t do that, poking them.”

He said, “They like it.”

“They don’t. Anyway, what do you mean, you can’t help it?”

“I’m just a boy.”

“That’s ridiculous, I might as well say I’m