âThereâs usually at least six over by the gap in the fence.â
Daisy swivelled round to look. âNot one,â she said. âWe must be losing our appeal. Probably too old. I expect they turn up in droves to watch year eight, all those twelve and thirteen-year-olds, just on the turn. Weâre cooked, finished, and obviously of no interest to the pervs.â
âNo youâre wrong,â Emma said, suddenly perking up and running her fingers through her wind-ravaged yellow hair. âLook, thereâs that one from Benâs lot, the one who looks more like someoneâs dad.â
Daisy recognized the description before she actually saw Oliver, and immediately started arranging her long legs in a decorative pose, leaning, seductively she hoped, against the goalpost with her skirt âaccidentallyâ hiked up and showing her gym knickers. They were baggy and truly horrible, and always referred to as âbloody bloomersâ, but nevertheless, Daisy reasoned, they
were
knickers, and from what she heard Ben saying, that was what boys all wanted to have access to, visually or manually.
Daisy had a soft spot for Oliver; there was an Italian look about him, very dark and knowing. Holidaying at Lake Como when she was thirteen, Daisy had been thrilled by the attention she had attracted from waiters, cab drivers and strangers in the street â a constant stream of exotic, appreciative noises, hissings through dangerous white teeth, low, sly whistles, deliciously rude-sounding foreign words, then the covert squeezes and prods. âDonât take any notice,â Jenny had instructed her, appalled that her baby daughter was already being treated as a sex object. âDonât meet their eyes and theyâll leave you alone.â
But Daisy had gazed brazenly into every passing velvet-dark eye, so different from those of cold, gawky English boys, who blushed to the roots of their acne if she so much as blinked at them. Two years later, on a chill English hockey pitch, Daisy could feel the glint in Oliverâs eyes from a hundred yards and suddenly sensed ice-cream and sunshine.
âDonât hog it, Ben,â Oliver ordered, reaching out his hand. Ben inhaled deeply and passed the loosely rolled spliff over to Oliver, who took a well-practised toke. âNot bad, this stuff. Usual supplier?â he asked Ben.
âYeah. But theyâre putting the price up for next time. Unless we order more, that is.â
âDonât really need it do we?â Oliver leaned contentedly on the fence. âNot when we can get off on watching totty like your little sister. I like a girl who hitches her skirt up instead of down when she knows a bloke is looking. Itâs a very promising sign.â
Ben was watching Emma who was jogging up and down on the spot to keep warm, her games skirt flashing her navy blue underwear at him. It was amazing, he thought, how those awful regulation knickers, so unappealing when left drying stiffly on the laundry room radiator at home, could actually become quite sexy when they were on a non-family bottom.
A laugh rumbled from Oliver. âAnother time, we should bring binoculars, pretend weâre doing a survey on the incidence of black-headed gulls in Londonâs open spaces or something. A good way of combining A-level biology with, well, A-level biology.â
âIâm spending my life spying on sporty women,â Ben muttered. âIâm getting a taste for it. God what will I be like when Iâm sixty?â Emmaâs legs were even firmer than Carol Mathiesonâs, but under those awful knickers he knew there would be a barbed wire fence of deceptively flimsy frills from Knickerbox.
âBy sixty youâll probably have been arrested for it,â Oliver concluded, stubbing out the remains of the joint and making a private bet with himself that he would personally dispose of Daisy Collinsâs virginity before